History · Mongolia

Mongolia: The Steppe Empire, and After

The nomad heartland that produced Genghis Khan and the largest land empire in history — then Qing rule, the world's second communist state, a Stalinist terror, and a peaceful turn to democracy in 1990

By Worldlore Editorial · 19 September 2026

A colossal stainless-steel statue of Genghis Khan on horseback on the open steppe
The 40-metre Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue on the steppe east of Ulaanbaatar, built in 2008. Banned as a symbol under communism, Genghis has been restored as Mongolia's founding hero. (Martin Vorel / Wikimedia Commons · CC0)

An empty country with a very large past

Mongolia is landlocked between Russia and China — the size of Western Europe, with only about 3.5 million people, the most sparsely populated sovereign state on Earth. Around half live in the capital, Ulaanbaatar; a large minority still herd livestock across the steppe. For most of history this plateau was the launch point of nomad horse empires that repeatedly threatened China, and one of them, under Genghis Khan, built the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever seen.

A short history

  1. 3rd century BCE onward

    Steppe empires

    The Xiongnu, Göktürks, Uyghurs and others.

  2. 1206

    Genghis Khan

    Temüjin unites the tribes and is proclaimed "universal ruler".

  3. 1206–1279

    The Mongol Empire

    Conquests from Korea to Persia, Russia and China.

  4. 1271–1368

    The Yuan

    Kublai Khan rules China from Beijing.

  5. 16th century

    Tibetan Buddhism

    Adopted, and central to Mongol identity thereafter.

  6. 1691

    Qing rule

    The Khalkha Mongols submit to the Manchu emperor.

  7. 1911

    Independence

    Outer Mongolia breaks away as the Qing fall.

  8. 1924

    The People's Republic

    The world's second communist state.

  9. 1937–1939

    The terror

    The Buddhist church is destroyed; tens of thousands killed.

  10. 1990

    Democracy

    A peaceful transition to multiparty rule.

Genghis Khan

Temüjin united the warring tribes of the plateau and was proclaimed Genghis Khan in 1206. Over the following seventy years the Mongols conquered an empire of some 24 million square kilometres, from Korea to the gates of Europe and Egypt.

Empire and faith

A classic ink-and-colour portrait of Genghis Khan with a white beard and simple robe
Genghis Khan, in a portrait made under the Yuan dynasty. The Mongol conquests were both extraordinarily effective and catastrophically destructive, with a death toll in the tens of millions. (Wikimedia Commons)
A walled Buddhist monastery of white stupas and temple roofs on the open Mongolian plain
Erdene Zuu monastery, built in the 1580s partly from the ruins of Karakorum, the imperial capital. Tibetan Buddhism, adopted in the 16th century, became central to Mongol life. (Jonashtand / Wikimedia Commons)

The empire brought a revived Silk Road trade, a relay postal system, religious tolerance and a written law — and then, after 1260, fragmented into four khanates, the greatest of which, the Yuan, ruled China until it was expelled in 1368. The Mongols retreated to the steppe and spent centuries in internal war.

Qing rule, and independence

From 1691 the Khalkha Mongols submitted to the Manchu Qing dynasty, partly for protection. For 220 years Outer Mongolia was a Qing frontier region, ruled through the Mongol nobility and the Buddhist church, with a huge monastic population supported by the herds. When the Qing fell in 1911, Outer Mongolia declared independence under the "Living Buddha" of Urga as a theocratic monarch. China refused to recognise it, Russia backed limited autonomy, and after a decade of Chinese reoccupation and a brief, murderous rule by a White Russian warlord, Mongolian revolutionaries with Soviet Red Army help took Urga in 1921.

The People's Republic

On the monarch's death in 1924, the Mongolian People's Republic was proclaimed — the world's second communist state, and a Soviet satellite for the next 66 years.

Khorloogiin Choibalsan in military uniform, around 1925
Khorloogiin Choibalsan, 'Mongolia's Stalin'. In the terror of 1937–39, the state razed hundreds of monasteries and killed tens of thousands of people, mostly monks — out of a population under a million. (Wikimedia Commons)

Collectivisation of the herds was forced through, and Mongolia served as a buffer between the USSR and China — the launch point for the 1939 Soviet defeat of Japan at Khalkhin Gol. Soviet aid built near-universal literacy and healthcare and amounted to roughly a third of the economy. China recognised Mongolian independence only after 1945.

The democratic turn

Two Mongolian wrestlers in traditional open-fronted jackets grappling at a Naadam festival
Wrestlers at the Naadam festival — one of the 'three manly games', with archery and horse racing. Nomadic and warrior traditions remain part of national life. (FischerFotos / Wikimedia Commons)

In early 1990, peaceful demonstrations and hunger strikes in Ulaanbaatar forced the communist Politburo to resign. Mongolia held free multiparty elections that July and adopted a democratic constitution in 1992 — a rare negotiated, non-violent post-communist transition, and one of the few in Asia to produce a genuine liberal democracy. The withdrawal of Soviet aid caused a severe contraction.

A large public square in Ulaanbaatar with government buildings and a mounted statue
Sükhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar, named for the 1921 revolutionary leader. Mongolia's economy now rides on mineral exports — coal, copper and gold — sold overwhelmingly to China. (Bernard Gagnon / Wikimedia Commons)

Mongolia is now a functioning multiparty democracy with a free press, riding a mineral roller-coaster of booms and busts, dependent on China for exports and Russia for fuel, and balancing both against outreach to "third neighbours" like Japan, the EU and the US. Ulaanbaatar's rapid growth — swelled by herders driven off the land by catastrophic winters, the dzud — has given it some of the world's worst winter air pollution.

What Mongolia carries

Mongolia's history is bracketed by two very different things: the 13th-century empire that briefly made the steppe the centre of the world, and the modern reality of a tiny population wedged between two giants. The communist decades tried to erase Genghis Khan and nearly erased the Buddhist church; the democratic years have restored both as national symbols. The enduring fact is the geography — a vast, thinly peopled land that must get along with Beijing and Moscow to survive.

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