The Mongol Empire's conquests made the Silk Road safer than it had ever been

After the brutal wars of conquest that built the largest contiguous land empire in history, the 13th and 14th centuries saw something unexpected: merchants, missionaries and travelers like Marco Polo could cross thousands of miles of Mongol-controlled territory under a single set of laws and protections. Historians call this relative stability the Pax Mongolica, and it let ideas, goods and diseases move across Eurasia faster than ever before.

— David Morgan, The Mongols — Wiley-Blackwell, 2nd edition, 2007
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