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Let's Discuss the Mongol Empire
- Thread starter g23
- Start date
OP
OP
History is written by the victors and the world will always remember (hopefully) Nazi Germany as an evil institution.
The Mongols may have been bloodthirsty and ruthless in conquest but so did most empires preceeding and following it as I mentioned earlier. What I don't get is the complete villification of them from a standpoint of history.
The Mongol empire was one of the most religiously tolerant empires at the time. They would generally also let the institutions that were already in place before them continue to govern after conquest as long as they paid taxes.
Another thing that also is understated is that they brought security and safety to merchant routes across the empire which encouraged sharing of technology and trade along the Silk road.
Most of the rest of the Mongol Empire survived just as long though. In the late 13th Century, the Mongol Empire fragmented into four major successor khanates. All four of them survived into the mid-14th Century, where they all began to break apart by roughly 1340 to 1360 for various reasons. Two in particular were devastated by the Black Death at that time. However, smaller Mongol/Tatar states lasted for centuries after that.
Actually just started reading Genghos Khan and the Making of the Modern World.
My boy Genghis is crazy.
My boy Genghis is crazy.
Nah they got fucked up by the communists. They didn't even know the truth about their history until the 20th century because the communists were so scared they'd gain a sense of nationalism and rise up.
Fascinating how people admire these monsters and vilify more recent Empires and colonial powers. Is all that's required to admire mass butchers and genocidal maniacs a gulf of time between then and now?
And yet they were repelled 3 times by tiny Vietnam, how about that huh.
(that was the only history fact regarding them i remember from my days in school)
(that was the only history fact regarding them i remember from my days in school)
I think the Serbians beat them back as well? Maybe it was another Eastern European country.
I also find it fascinating the Western view into the Mongols tends to be heavily through Marco Polo, and there is a big question mark as to whether he even ever made it to their region, how much interaction he had with them, etc. I remember one podcast said that its weird he never mentions the Great Wall or chopsticks and that there are no accounts of Marco Polo in Chinese records, which is weird.
Definitely a very interesting period of history, and for all that we decry modern times as "the worst" and such, its really nothing compared to how brutal things could be during the Mongol or Mayan periods if you weren't aligned right.
The number of stories of how his armies completely massacred cities when they displeased him is crazy, he erased a few from history itself to show his displeasure.
I was really bummed to hear Netflix cancelled Marco Polo after 2 seasons, while it had its faults it was still a fascinating show with a lens on something we don't see much on TV.
Definitely a very interesting period of history, and for all that we decry modern times as "the worst" and such, its really nothing compared to how brutal things could be during the Mongol or Mayan periods if you weren't aligned right.
The number of stories of how his armies completely massacred cities when they displeased him is crazy, he erased a few from history itself to show his displeasure.
I was really bummed to hear Netflix cancelled Marco Polo after 2 seasons, while it had its faults it was still a fascinating show with a lens on something we don't see much on TV.
The Polish repelled them
Wasn't it that the Great Khan died, so the Mongols returned to settle the matter of succession? They lucked out, in other words.
The Mongol Art of War, The Mongol Empire, and The Mongol Conquests in World History, all by Timothy May, are really good places to start.
Empires are build on butchering your enemies and securing your interests. Over a couple of centuries the world will talk about the US as a butcher and as a imperialistic power like every empire that came before it.
Something about history doesn't repeat but it often rhymes.
The biggest reason the Mongolian Empire isn't remembered in the same way Rome or Persia is likely comes down to the length of time it spent at its peak which was <100 years.
The Mongols were great at taking over places but without a firm leader the lands they conquered didn't really have the infrastructure to last (it didn't help that they killed off much of the native population in the places they invaded).
And yeah, I ain't gonna sit here and whitewash the atrocities of other empires but the Mongol invasions were unfortunately impressively horrific. Estimates range but the Mongolian Empire likely killed around 50 million people. The only war that had more casualties was WWII around 800 years later. They pretty much decimated entire populations.
The Mongols were great at taking over places but without a firm leader the lands they conquered didn't really have the infrastructure to last (it didn't help that they killed off much of the native population in the places they invaded).
And yeah, I ain't gonna sit here and whitewash the atrocities of other empires but the Mongol invasions were unfortunately impressively horrific. Estimates range but the Mongolian Empire likely killed around 50 million people. The only war that had more casualties was WWII around 800 years later. They pretty much decimated entire populations.
This. Plus, their reign was relatively short. Other civilizations were brutal in their methods, but they contributed a lot to modern culture, art, philosophy, technology, etc. The Mongols were basically just great at fighting.
90% of Persia? Of all questionable numbers this one is the questionable-est.
Do you guys think a few hundred years from now people will the Nazis like we see the mongol empire? Or are the photos and video evidence of the atrocities going to prevent that from happening?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire
Yeah, its hard to tell how many they killed exactly (for obvious reasons), but it was a very large number of people. They basically slaughtered anyone who wouldn't be immediately useful to them, and the result of the war on the food and infrastructure killed off a large proportion of the rest.
Its also a matter of recorded history. The people slapped around by the Mongols ended up writing most of the pop history surrounding them (versus other empires making sure to run pr in recording histories). It's why you do have a massive over correction now where people are trying to reevaluate them as an empire and probably go a little too far in absolving them of shit.
That said, the Khwarazmians did totally start shit.
Yeah, it's not surprising they were not kind in writing down the history of an empire that killed so much of their countries population. It's definetly true that the viewpoints of the primary sources (which were in the places invaded) have a huge impact on how history views one event or another.
If it were, we wouldn't have Y'allqaeda whining about states rights in the Civil War.
It's kind of cool to read about how they fucked up just about everyone's armies just by (literally) riding circles around them.
That's where it stops for me though dawg.
That's where it stops for me though dawg.
OP you can like history without giving 'props' to particularly brutal warlords, just like I'll always hold nothing but disgust for Nazi Germany and the Spanish conquistadors. History isn't a game of Civilization where more land = more props, get off my clay, let's celebrate murderers just because they won. There's more to history then gawking at world maps, and giving people in the ancient past credit for the formation of the modern world is ridiculous, their actions had no such goal and you could make the same argument for just about any random ass person if you go far back enough, down to the nameless peasants who first famed crops. And that's completely ignoring the implication that we should be grateful for how history turned out; must be nice to be white and have 'won' history. And/or must also be nice to have lived somewhere where you can celebrate Genghis Khan's accomplishments instead of hold the near universal loathing his name inspires anywhere that had to suffer his depravities. It's amazing how you can gloss over multiple genocides, the decimation of the Levant and Persia's most prosperous settlements which still affect the region to this day, the literal annihilation of Khwarazm to the point where the land became a wasteland instead of a breadbasket, the list goes on and on. Tl;dr the fuck is wrong with you
In one hand, like you said, nazis were probably the first empire where we have enough photographic evidence to not worship them. That pictures of the holocaust were shocking enough to make people not appreciate them (yet you still find people denying it or actually thinking that it was cool)
In the other hand, even on this day you see people saying that nazis did a lot of good things to germany and that the wermacht was actually a clean military unit that was just doing their job and that had zero responsability for nazi crimes, so the whitewashing of nazis is already happening, as good as it was for the allies to take enough pictures of the holocaust so no one who wanted could deny it, they did an horrible job selling the myth of the clean wermacht
Same here. What the fuck is this thread? Fucking disgusting.
Homes invaded
People killed
Women raped
The Mughals that invaded India were a result of the Mongols.
So Op wants me to appreciate tyranny, torture, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
But since they didn't invade Europe it's all good to appreciate them.
No thanks.
So Op wants me to appreciate tyranny, torture, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
But since they didn't invade Europe it's all good to appreciate them.
No thanks.
Mah, that saying has always been bullshit. History is written by everyone who has ever written anything down. As far as victors go, all victors eventually become losers, as all empires eventually crumble or decline. Both the conquerors and their enemies leave their own accounts behind.
A historian is someone who tries to piece together the truth of what happened from these disparate accounts. In order to do that though, a good historian needs to both be objective and willing to look at history from a variety of angles. For example, it is okay to say both that the Mongols were wildly successful conquerors who laid the groundwork for future states, and that the Mongols butchered a shocking number of people and devestated entire countries to a horrific degree.
because it's cool to love non-European empires while it's cool to vilify European empires.
Wtf is people's obsession with appreciating oppressive genocidal regimes. Another 50 years we'll get Third Reich appreciation Pol Pot appreciation threads.
There was a huge thread about that at the old place. Many of them are active posters here even though they got banned at the old place.
There was a huge thread about that at the old place. Many of them are active posters here even though they got banned at the old place.
The British Empire also did some good, which may surprise some people! I wonder if anyone has heard of the West Africa Squadron. They were formed in 1808, a year after the Slave Trade Act was passed, and their aim was to suppress the atlantic slave trade. Between 1808 and 1860 they captured 1600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. There are other examples, the most recent one being standing up to the nazis.
I find the Mongolian Empire to be incredibly fascinating. The pretty crazy religious tolerance for the time, that they were quite meritocratic, and so on.
The sheer scale of it is simply mind blowing too. There's a part in Dan Carlin's Wrath of the Khan's talking about one of the kurraltais and just the sheer varieties of people and vassal states that showed up there was crazy. Steppe Peoples, Chinese peoples, Europeans, Persians. Muslims, Christians, Daoists, Buddhists. Something about having so many disparate people under one banner stirs something in me. It's incredibly impressive.
I'm making my way through "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" and there's a great juxtaposition of how while Mongke Khan was hosting a religious debate between Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, you had the King of France burning Jewish scriptures, kicking them out, and getting canonized for it.
They were obviously brutal as hell, but something about them is just awe inspiring to me.
The sheer scale of it is simply mind blowing too. There's a part in Dan Carlin's Wrath of the Khan's talking about one of the kurraltais and just the sheer varieties of people and vassal states that showed up there was crazy. Steppe Peoples, Chinese peoples, Europeans, Persians. Muslims, Christians, Daoists, Buddhists. Something about having so many disparate people under one banner stirs something in me. It's incredibly impressive.
I'm making my way through "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" and there's a great juxtaposition of how while Mongke Khan was hosting a religious debate between Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, you had the King of France burning Jewish scriptures, kicking them out, and getting canonized for it.
They were obviously brutal as hell, but something about them is just awe inspiring to me.
Never saw that thread, and thankfully it's been a year and I haven't seen a single positive post on the British Empire. I've seen quite a few posts here and there vilifying them tho.
Was there ever an empire, really?
They basically did a coup in china, but didn't really export their ways or customs anywhere.
The mongols raided nations, they didn't conquer them.
.. They technically conquered China, only to be absorbed culturally in two or three generations.
I wonder if we'd speaking Farsi right now if the Mongol Horde didn't happen.
They basically did a coup in china, but didn't really export their ways or customs anywhere.
The mongols raided nations, they didn't conquer them.
.. They technically conquered China, only to be absorbed culturally in two or three generations.
I wonder if we'd speaking Farsi right now if the Mongol Horde didn't happen.
was it really an empire or more like a plague that left various pockets of non unified half destroyed civilizations in its wake
it was certainly an impressive amount of conquest i guess, but to what end
it was certainly an impressive amount of conquest i guess, but to what end
Brits also didn't contribute much at all to the countries they conquered. The empires existed to help the nation, and essentially leeched others. It simply served to slow down the progress of all the colonized countries.
There is at least merit in reevaluating the Mongols to try and sort out the exagurations from what actually happened due to the nature of how their history was recorded around the old world, though obviously we have to be careful of over correcting and romanticizing them.
We won't (or at least shouldn't) have that problem with people like Hitler or Pol Pot because that historical record is clear enough in recording their atrocities.
The British Empire was certainly not good, but it was one of the more "benevolent" Empires. Not that that's saying much mind you. Every Empire has a million plus bodies to it's name.
They didn't do much besides kill people. Places like Rome have technological and cultural advancements though they shouldn't be romanticized either. On the other hand Mongols could have been replaced by a tornado across Asia and history wouldn't be that much different.
They were impressive conquerors and had some fascinating cultural quirks, but the Mongols only real contribution to history was the massive devastation they left in their wake. That is why they are probably less talked about than other empires. Well that and the fact that Western Europe was left untouched by them.