Writes Manvir Singh, in "The Mongol Hordes: They’re Just Like Us/Scholars now argue that early nomadic empires were the architects of modernity. But do we have the right measure of their success?" (The New Yorker).
Singh faults this historical project:
Global history’s professed aim of decentering world history requires a more sophisticated grasp of what sophistication looks like. In the case of nomadic societies, we need to shift our orientation from the static to the flexible, from social complexity embodied in brick and bureaucracies to something that dwells within networks: an ever-responsive capacity for large-scale collective action. What made nomads impressive, after all, is what made them unique. They lived in enormous, travelling societies. They subsumed diverse ethnic groups and could mobilize for war almost instantly.... [T]hose hordes [were] self-sufficient, mobile units that contained as many as a hundred thousand people and that transported homes, statues, workshops, palaces, and supply lines. Through settled eyes, we might call these “moving cities,” yet the phrase misses their almost aqueous nature....
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And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
Longfellow
The radiant past has made brilliant promises to the future: it will keep them. To scrape together my sentences I needs must employ the natural method, regressing to the savages so they may give me lessons. Simple and majestic gentlemen, their gracious mouths ennoble all that flows from their tattooed lips.
- Lautreamont
who formed societies no less complex than the sedentary states they confronted
Not sure I agree with this part. Even today people do things like adopt a #VanLife lifestyle to escape the grind and the complications of modern day living. I'm assuming this is just the author trying to improve the view of the nomads versus the static. He might do better bringing up Cain and Abel and pointing out how the naughty one Cain was the first to fence off land for his farms.
I read somewhere that when human groups began to settle and farm, their body weight dropped along with their life expectancy, for a good while. Becoming sedentary was a gamble. And certainly the logistical issues around maintaining a large nomadic society are formidable and, when they've succeeded, shouldn't be overlooked as markers of innovation and intelligence.
But I think it's pretty patent that nomadism is limiting. At least, there isn't a modern nomadic society that can compete with the sedentary ones. I'm not out to insult any remaining Bedouin or Australian aboriginal or, heck, nomadic Mongol societies that still hew to their traditional ways; it's just life, I suppose.
Anyway, it's always been my impression that the reason the Mongol hordes got such a bad rap wasn't because of their primitivism, specifically, but because of their cruelty - their "barbarity." And it's not as if we don't see that today among some sedentary societies.
the uncivilized; the barbarians at the gate...
...the deplorables, the irredeemables...
Or are those less than the Mongol Hordes and not remotely like us?
What prevented the Mongols from becoming "the moderns" instead of the Europeans, eventually the northern Europeans? Arguably the Mongols were on the way, cultivating technical and decorative arts, to some degree science. Then waves of plague arrived, and trade was cut back with the vague idea that disease could be spread by contact.
Europeans were stuck in their shithole villages. Plague reduced the work force, and it became necessary to raise wages and innovate. Christianity became consistent with the idea of fixing things in this world. Living in geographically dense if not static cummunities has developed languages and brains, but has also come close to killing us several times.
Have some nomadic groups achieved happiness, whereas we with our yearnings make ourselves unhappy? Possibly.
Early science fiction rendered as Cities in Flight by James Blish. A four volume tetrology where cities disconnected in toto from planet Earth and spread through the galactic cluster. These Earth cities were considered "Barbarians at the Gate" by the rest of the Galaxy.
Certain ultra nationalists, let's call them, are not going to like the idea of rehabbing the status of the Orcs, err, I mean Mongols.
Those societies only worked because they had access to horses. Mobility allowed them to be able to harvest the resources of an area and then move onward to greener pastures ( literally for their horses) - they were grass plain dependent organizations. But that mobility gave them military power and they used it - the Mongols didn’t get cuddly awards for their tolerance.
The American Indian experience wasn’t like that at all until the Europeans reintroduced horses into the new world. The same power dynamic re-emerged as the natives tamed and mastered horses and they grew in power against the other tribes. Had their numbers been higher ( say before the disease epidemics that ravaged the new world from the European contact) they might have stopped the expansion of the US into the west. But their glory was short as the transformation of the land into farming eliminated the open plains necessary to support such a mobile society.
it's Important, to Understand, that to Modern Science.. All societies and people are Equally good.
Take two hypothetical people
One goes to church, and has a job, and a family, and kids, and contributes
the Other rapes and murders and destroys
As you can EASILY SEE..
There is No "moral" difference between these two: They just live different life styles
Oh, at the same exact time:
it's Important, to Understand, that to Modern Science.. white societies and people are Evil.
Take two hypothetical people
One goes to church, and has a job, and a family, and kids, and contributes
the Other rapes and murders and destroys
As you can EASILY SEE..
ONE of those people is "good".. The Other is EVIL.. Which is which? Judge by the color of their skin
It "seems" like these concepts aren't possible to hold at the same time. THAT is WHY you need education
culture relativism MEANS
ALL societies are equally valuable.. And that all white/western societies are worthless
"[T]hose hordes [were] self-sufficient, mobile units that contained as many as a hundred thousand people and that transported homes, statues, workshops, palaces, and supply lines. "
Yes but....is it really true? Statues, workshops, palaces? Doesn't sound very 'nomadic horde' to me.
In any case, this is an interesting story, but he needs to work a little harder to make it that way. These days, when I start reading and I soon come across the standard 'tropes of tripe', where the denigration of western civilization is the central supporting theme to some kind of lesson in unfairness - and this prose is a lesson - I start discounting, and tuning out. If you have to rely on tearing down Western Society to make your case seem important, then maybe your case ain't that important. I've been to the Eurasian steppe, although not in Mongolia. It was interesting, but....they can have them.
At about the same time the Romans were inventing concrete and aqueducts, the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppe were developing saddles with stirrups, and the highly effective mounted archery tactic that became known as the “Parthian shot” but was probably invented by the Scythians or Huns. One technology favored settled city life, while the other provided unprecedented long-range mobility and agility in battle.
For their time, they were technological advancements of approximately equal importance to the course of world history. But the concrete structures of the Romans have endured, while the stirrups of the Huns and Mongols are decayed or rusted away, and so we tend to regard civilized Rome as superior in every way to the barbaric nomads. It’s surely just an accident of history, though, and I think that if their inventors were reversed, we would now be speaking of the majestic ruins of the Hunnic Empire that was overwhelmed and destroyed by the cavalry of the barbarian Roman nomads.
What did the nomads contribute to humanity in terms of science, math, medicine, astronomy, art, architecture, literature, agriculture, technology, philosophy, etc.? If you want to tip your hat to them for managing the logistical demands of being nomads, fine. But, in the overall analysis, I don't think they stack up well against so-called sedentary societies.
I'm in love
I'm in love with Atilla the Hun
Atilla the Hun
Atilla the Hun
We will pillage a village and kill everyone
But I still love Atilla the Hun.
What is the "measure of success" today? Genes spread per adult male? Kill ratio in battle? Maximum social complexity? Key innovations developed per 100K? Life expectancy? Physical or intellectual legacy? Is it even kosher to apply any "measure" to older, especially non-Western civilizations?
Academia marches on. Dragging all, even long dead societies down to the lowest common denominator.
Our Continents Native tribes that colonize the lands of the native Tribes that preceded them, were able to adapt to some technology, refused to consider others.
Indians were able to incorporate guns into their culture, making killing easier. But shunned the wheel, that would have made it much easier to live.
Here, according to the revisionists, are the good things we can say about the Mongol Horde: They weren't religious bigots, they weren't bourgeois, and, most importantly, they weren't white.....From what I read, the Mongols although they didn't have guns, germs, and steel, they did have the composite bow, sturdier mounts and the skills necessary to kill in an efficient way. They were the superpower of their day, and mass murder was one of their tactical weapons. After they murdered every living soul they could find in Baghdad, they moved on towards Damascus. The people of Mesopotamia became refugees and also fled towards Damascus. The city was inundated with panicked refugees and there was no possibility of withstanding a siege. The good citizens of Damascus consulted the Koran and discovered that there was no religious prohibition against paying tribute to heathens.....Here's the lesson of history: Groups that can conquer their neighbors and exact tribute tend to conquer their neighbors and exact tribute.....The first army to successfully resist the Mongols were the Mamluks. The Mamluk army consisted of castrated Muslim slaves. Perhaps the Muslim fundamentalists should move towards forming an army of castrated slaves in order to resist the incursions of westerners.
War, not building. Nomadic, not history. Advancement arising from education, not rigid repetition. Women as chattel. No thanks.
How boring academic thought has become.
Razib Khan had a great series on Steppe people and history. I'm not sure if it's only available to subscribers. The first one is:
https://www.razibkhan.com/p/entering-steppelandia-pop-77-billion
And Hitler was a democrat. Read/Listen to Dan Carlin's description of the mongol hordes to see more of this disease by democrats.
I’m getting pretty tired of the whole “everything you know is wrong” thing.
@ Heartless Aztec:
That Blish series was great reading, back in the day in grade school.
See the Tarzan comic strip today! (try gocomics.com)
What prevented the Mongols from becoming "the moderns" instead of the Europeans, eventually the northern Europeans?
Arguably they did, didn't they? My daughter, blonde, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned, of French, Irish, German, and English descent historically, has something like 5% East Asian DNA, according to Ancestry.
Next thing they'll be telling us the collection of huts made of sticks and mud near the rivers in Zambezi are the same as Tokyo.
The American Indian experience wasn’t like that at all until the Europeans reintroduced horses into the new world.
Let alone the wheel...
Dan carlins Hardcore History is one of the best podcasts in the universe.
A long time back he did a 5 parter on ghengis khan and the Mongols that was even better than usual
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-wrath-of-the-khans-series/
Current podcasts are free but he charges for older ones. This is $12 now. Since it is about 14 hours that's still a bargain.
John Henry
Now I see Dude beat me to it.
Gmta
John Henry
For their time, [stirrups and mounted archery and composite bows] were technological advancements of approximately equal importance to the course of world history.
But do we really think that the Romans, for instance, if they hadn't ever encountered these advancements, wouldn't have come up with them on their own eventually?
This is a real question: how much of the technology that the Mongols encountered in their comments did they shoot for themselves? I'd like to know the answer. It may be "most of it." It may be "almost none."
"Had their numbers been higher (say before the disease epidemics that ravaged the new world from the European contact) they might have stopped the expansion of the US into the west"
Hoo boy, that's one for the 1619 Project. How many Stone Age warriors without metals, machinery, or any kind of industrial capacity at all, would it take to subdue the world? Indians won a few battles when they had overwhelming advantage in numbers and when they had repeating rifles when the squad of soldiers they were fighting did not, but really, the end was never in doubt. Isn't it conventional wisdom today to acknowledge that The South never had a chance against The North in the Civil War because The South had inferior manpower and industrial capacity?
The mongol's just raped, pillaged, and murdered their way accross Asia and into Europe. No big whoop, just their "way of life".
If a city or town surrendered, the Mongols would confine themselves to theft and maybe a rape or two, before setting themselves up as rulers. If the town/city didn't surrender, it was attacked, pillaged, and anyone who survived was dragged away as slaves.
I guess they were builders in their way, "creative destruction" allowed others to inherit the land and rebuilt new cities. Somewhat like the black death.
The mongol's just raped, pillaged, and murdered their way accross Asia and into Europe. No big whoop, just their "way of life".
If a city or town surrendered, the Mongols would confine themselves to theft and maybe a rape or two, before setting themselves up as rulers. If the town/city didn't surrender, it was attacked, pillaged, and anyone who survived was dragged away as slaves.
I guess they were builders in their way, "creative destruction" allowed others to inherit the land and rebuilt new cities. Somewhat like the black death.
Then waves of plague arrived
Spread to Europe from the Mongol siege of Caffa, the Mongols flung plague infected corpses into the city. Ships leaving the port brought the plague to Italy.
I see the "noble savage" bullshit is rising again.
I love how they/he ignores the Mongol's conquest and subsequent rule over China.
I believe it was Daniel Boorstin in one of his books who gave them a revisionist fair shake. Apparently once they conquered an area, they were relatively tolerant of local religion and customs, and promoted free trade and rule of law.
Dogma and Pony Show said...
What did the nomads contribute to humanity in terms of science, math, medicine, astronomy, art, architecture, literature, agriculture, technology, philosophy, etc.? If you want to tip your hat to them for managing the logistical demands of being nomads, fine. But, in the overall analysis, I don't think they stack up well against so-called sedentary societies.
***************
WORD.
"Large areas of Islamic Central Asia and northeastern Persia were seriously depopulated,[13] as every city or town that resisted the Mongols was destroyed. Each soldier was given a quota of enemies to execute according to circumstances. For example, after the conquest of Urgench, each Mongol warrior – in an army of perhaps two tumens (20,000 troops) – was required to execute 24 people, or nearly half a million people per said army.[14]"
---- wikipedia
It's impossible to regard Mongols as bringers of civilization when they destroyed the cities---themselves the signs of a more advanced culture----and killed off their inhabitants.
Call it an Inconvenient Truth.
I recommend reading Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. While there's no doubt Genghis Khan earned his brutal reputation, the tolerance after successful takeover is notable both in contrast with Europe at the time and countries today who had been under Mongol rule.
I also observed that the Mongol empire didn't leave the cultural impact of Alexander the Great, the Roman empire, Islamic empires, European colonialism, etc.
This is a topic that I have put some research into, so let me add my comments about the article. There will be multiple posts, if our good host will tolerate it.
In regard to religious tolerance, the Mongols were relatively tolerant but the idea of true religious freedom is overblown. The tribes that made up Chinggis Khan's steppe confederation followed a number of religions, but the main religious practice was Tengri shamanism. In fact, many nomads followed both a "civilized" religion like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. and also engaged in the shamanism, to the point of what exactly was a person's religion is often up to interpretation. The thing is Tengri shamanism is very much attached to the nomadic steppe lifestyle, so trying to force it on non-nomads was always going to be a non-starter, something Chinggis Khan realized.
Religious freedom was simply a matter of practicality. He was conquering China (Buddhism, Taoism, etc.), Persia and the Islamic world (Islam, Judaism, Christianity, what was left of Zoroastrianism), and Eastern Europe (Christianity, mainly). His own closest advisors followed several different religions. How is he going to force all these different people to convert to, well, anything? And why would he bother? This wasn't a religious war.
Furthermore, if he can get people to surrender to him, rather than waste limited resources, with the promise of religious freedom, that's another tool for him to use, and would be very useful in the conquest of the Kara Khitai, which was then suffering under an usurper who was very religiously intolerant. A lot of cities saw the Mongols as an improvement and just surrendered voluntarily. It also has to be noted that many Mongol rulers would be very coy as to their religious leanings, often telling the audience what they wanted to hear or being open to learning about their religion, but not actually agreeing to anything.
That said, it had limits. For instance, the animal butchery practices of the Mongols were not compatible with halal, and Chinggis Khan essentially made halal, at least when it came to animals, illegal. There are accounts of Muslims being very unhappy with this situation. How tightly this was enforced depended on who was the ruler at the time, ranging from non-enforcement to violent persecution.
The reason why the Mongols specifically and the nomads in general were not given much consideration in the history books is they did not have a written language and did not record their own histories except orally. It is not the responsibility of your neighbors to write your histories for you, especially when the neighbors do not have the resources for it. History is a luxury. This is especially true when their main interaction with you is when you raid them and then burn down their libraries, and when their historians go out to meet you and never come back.
One of the notable achievements of Chinggis Khan is he had a written language developed for the Mongols, and the Mongols did get a proper history book, of sorts, in The Secret History of the Mongols. How many Mongols could actually read the book is an open question, but I doubt it was anywhere close to a majority. It is notable that the European translation of the book did not come from a Mongolian copy from a Chinese translation found by a Russian monk by accident.
The key to the Mongols success, especially compared to other nomadic empires, is several factors:
1. They had excellent horsemen and especially horse archers. This was absolutely necessary as the steppe was a miserable place. Resources are very limited, the weather is always fighting against you, and there is always someone over the next hill that wants your stuff, who could just grab it and run away before you could do anything. The nomads were fighting amongst themselves all the time, often being encouraged by China to the south. If you were not a good warrior, you were dead. It is notable that Chinggis Khan's father got his wife by literally stealing her from her husband as the husband was taking her home for the first time, and Chinggis Khan's wife was similarly kidnapped and he had to rescue her. (There is a strong probability that Chinggis's first son was not his biologically.)
2. The climate on the steppe improved significantly at that time. That meant more population. This meant more army, both because of the population growth and because plentiful food freed up the men. The women were more than capable of taking care of the herds without help.
3. The Mongols were excellent at military organization. In the steppe, the Mongols had to provide pasture for horses, cattle, camels, sheep, and goats, which meant regular migration. All of these herds have different needs and move at different speeds, so trying to get them all to the same place at the same time was a logistical nightmare, and that's not including moving the people, their homes, and their possessions. The Mongols would be famous for splitting up their army and then managing to get it to regroup at a particular location hundreds of miles away, often to the dismay of the defenders who found themselves surrounded.
4. It also helped that the very difficult terrain allowed the Mongols to maneuver in conditions that other armies found impossible. There are stories of them crossing mountain passes covered in feet of snow, and crossing deserts that were supposedly certain death. (That said, when they ran into unfamiliar terrain, they struggled. The jungle of southeast Asia gave them fits.)
5. For a while, no one had a solution against the horse archer menace other than to hide behind their walls. However, once the Mongols started their conquests they got ahold of Chinese siege engineers, and those walls were a lot less successful.
6. The political environment that Chinggis Khan encountered was weak. China was broken into 3 major powers, none of which liked each other, and none of which were particularly strong. (The Song Dynasty in the south had a reputation of military ineptitude.) Central Asia was dominated by the Kara Khitai, which was being ruled by a very unpopular usurper. Persia was ruled by the Khwarazmian Empire, a relatively new power that had not yet consolidated and was led by a man who was of dubious talent but extraordinary arrogance. The Caliphate was reduced to not much outside of Baghdad, the Seljuk Turks had collapsed, and there was nothing unified in the west among the Muslims. Russia was divided into warring states. The Byzantines were barely hanging on, having been ravaged by the Fourth Crusade. The Crusader States were barely holding on themselves. It is arguable that the leading power in the Middle East at the time was Georgia, a country the Mongols crushed as a literal afterthought.
As to the progressive nature of the Mongols, well, no. Their idea of diplomacy was "surrender or die" which they applied to everyone from China to the pope. If you surrendered, then you would live, you would get to keep your possessions, and the Mongols would be honor bound to come to your defense, something they took very seriously. If you struggled, they might show mercy if the cost had not been that much. If you fought back, it was going to be extremely unpleasant. If you were lucky, after your inevitable defeat then all the learned and artisans would be packed off to Mongolia for use by the Khan, the garrison and anyone else troublesome would be slaughtered, and everyone else was enslaved or killed. Sometimes that slavery involved being turned into forced military labor, which often involved being pressed into filling in moats and trenches, building siege works, etc. while being shot at by the defenders of the next city the Mongols wanted to take. The Mongols didn't want to die. That was your job.
There were 3 things that would really trigger the Mongols. First, if anyone important, like say Chinggis Khan's favorite grandson, was killed, everyone is dying. We are well past the point of negotiation. Second, if you surrendered to the Mongols and then betrayed them, then everyone was going to die. Third, if you violated sacred hospitality, may God have mercy on your soul. Chinggis Khan's father was killed by Tartars poisoning him after they granted him hospitality, and Chinggis barely survived the aftermath of that. The war with the Khwarazmian Empire was caused by a local governor massacring a Mongol trade delegation and stealing their wares, followed by the Shah murdering one or more envoys sent demanding the surrender of the governor, followed by Chinggis dropping everything for a roaring rampage of revenge that depopulated much of Central Asia. There are stories of the Mongols killing not only all the citizens of a city but also all the animals, and other stories of the Mongols returning a week after the massacre to kill anyone who managed to survive the first massacre. The Mongols could be utterly ruthless and brutal.
Those of us descended from Corded Ware forefathers should adopt a more philosophical attitude toward a more recent steppe warrior invader. Civilization has its material and intellectual advantages, but over time, these open the door to parasitic memes that fatally weaken the whole, render it passive in the face of existential threats. A historicism or morality that smugly assumes "we're the good guys" is itself open to Tonto's question: who's "we," white man?
Finally, if you want to know why the Mongols faltered:
1. Any empire that huge is going to fracture. The Mongols did surprisingly well keeping it together given they had zero cities before they started conquering them, but it had started to crack before the death of Chinggis Khan and it was irrevocably broken into separate states by the time of Chinggis's grandsons.
2. The Mongol population was dwarfed by any place they conquered, save for the places they completely depopulated. I believe the estimate for the original army was around 100,000, which was pretty much 95% of the Mongol able bodied military age males. I think China's population was around 140 million. ("Was" being the key word. It was down to about half that afterwards.) It was inevitable that they would eventually be assimilated by the locals, and this happened almost everywhere. The Mongols in China became Chinese, the Ilkhanate was essentially the latest version of the Persian Empire, the Golden Horde converted to Islam. After a few generations, the Mongol ruling families did not really resemble each other much. The reason why the Mongols did not leave much of a cultural mark on most of their empire is because they were culturally irrelevant.
3. The steppe climate took a turn for the worse, which cut them off from their supply of horse archers.
4. This was made worse by all those people going native. A child brought up in the saddle from a young age will be an excellent horseman. A child clothed in silk and taught poetry, not so much. This was a major problem at the time and caused tension between the civilized Mongols and the old school Mongols. The latter end of the Yuan Dynasty is basically the old school taking over, then being replaced by the new school, which is then replaced by the old school, until they had weakened themselves such that the Chinese drove them out.
5. Alcohol. The number of Mongol rulers that had alcohol as a primary or secondary cause of death is legion. Alcohol was hard to come by in the steppe, but once they got ample supplies of the stuff the life expectation shrank considerably.
The Mongols outdid the Nazis for mass murder. Does that matter? Should we view them through the lens of modern morality? It’s curious that the same people who say that America should judge its founders by modern standards are perfectly willing to judge the Mongolia by the standards of the 11th century.
"The" Mongols were, after the earliest days, made up partly of non-Mongols, whether voluntarily going with the strong horse, or impressed to serve in front of the Mongol array on occasion.
After the initial massacres and razings, as others have noted already, they imposed a degree of law and order across their domains that facilitated economic and cultural exchange across Eurasia, and they kept specialists like engineers and gunners alive to serve when needed.
I was in history grad school with a guy who just HATED the Roman Empire--which I guess he must have thought about a lot. It struck me as weird, like HATING the Vikings. Or the Mongols.
Reclaiming my insurrection!
Michael Fitzgerald:
industrial capacity
An example being the South didn't have the standardization the North did in their rail system, causing shipment delays due to change at stops along the way.
@Static Ping - Many thanks.
In Xanadu, did Mongol, Kublai Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree.
"There are stories of the Mongols killing not only all the citizens of a city but also all the animals,"
Ever read the Book of Joshua?
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
Sure, you can read and follow the detailed, well researched account presented by Static Ping...
Or....
You can watch John Wayne as Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror".
[h/t to you Static Ping]
I was in history grad school with a guy who just HATED the Roman Empire--which I guess he must have thought about a lot. It struck me as weird, like HATING the Vikings. Or the Mongols.
Entire books have been written about the ways in which the Romans were wicked proto-fascists (brutish, warlike, authoritarian, patriarchal, unimaginative, etc.), especially by comparison to the enlightened and cosmopolitan Greeks (democratic, communitarian, artistic, philosophical, gay-friendly, etc.) I had to read one such book for a college class, but the title and the name of the author now escape me. He was positively vituperative about the evils of Rome. It struck me as a bizarrely displaced form of the usual oikophobia and Europhilia typical of American college campuses and Upper West Side dinner parties.
I remember Red Dawn opened up with a teacher describing the Mongol's frenzy, before he gets shot by a Spetznaz team
Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!
We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!
We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
How soft your fields so green
Can whisper tales of gore
Of how we calmed the tides of war
We are your overlords
On we sweep with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins
For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ahh, ah
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
I was in history grad school with a guy who just HATED the Roman Empire--which I guess he must have thought about a lot. It struck me as weird, like HATING the Vikings. Or the Mongols.
Entire books have been written about the ways in which the Romans were wicked proto-fascists (brutish, warlike, authoritarian, patriarchal, unimaginative, etc.), especially by comparison to the enlightened and cosmopolitan Greeks (democratic, communitarian, artistic, philosophical, gay-friendly, etc.) I had to read one such book for a college class, but the title and the name of the author now escape me. He was positively vituperative about the evils of Rome. It struck me as a bizarrely displaced form of the usual oikophobia and Europhilia typical of American college campuses and Upper West Side dinner parties.
Static Ping, Bravo, but...
"Chinggis Khan?!"
It pains me to think that John Kerry was pronouncing "Gin-Jis" correctly all those years ago.
First Hiroshima, now this.
It's Ka-Tar, Kee-yev and Ging-giss for me.
I've done some research on the Mongols. Partly because there's a tendency in popular culture to romanticize them.
They were spectacularly awful. They eviscerated the lands and the populations which they attacked. They killed millions. And they committed what we would call war atrocities.
Perhaps I misunderstand the history. But that's what I found so far.
rcocean said...
The mongol's just raped, pillaged, and murdered their way accross Asia and into Europe. No big whoop, just their "way of life".
If a city or town surrendered, the Mongols would confine themselves to theft and maybe a rape or two, before setting themselves up as rulers. If the town/city didn't surrender, it was attacked, pillaged, and anyone who survived was dragged away as slaves.
I guess they were builders in their way, "creative destruction" allowed others to inherit the land and rebuilt new cities. Somewhat like the black death.
***********
Congratulations. You've just offered a novel example of the "Broken Window Fallacy".
A difference between the "civilized" and "barbarian" societies: The civilized had cities and stone buildings and aqueducts, but no stirrups for their saddles; the barbarians had stirrups for their saddles, but no cities, stone buildings, or aqueducts. The civilized could adopt stirrups and not become barbarians. The barbarians couldn't adopt cities, stone buildings, and aqueducts and still be barbarians -- if they adopted these features of civilization, it might take a couple of generations, but they became civilized.
Any empire that huge is going to fracture
Giovanni da Pian del Carpina made the trip from Lyon to Karakorum on behalf of Pope Innocent IV. The last part of the trip was by horseback with multiple mounts across the steppe. That part took almost four months: "Giovanni and his companions rode an estimated 3000 miles in 106 days." Giovanni was 66 at the start of the trip, and he made it back. Those old guys were tough.
"Congratulations. You've just offered a novel example of the "Broken Window Fallacy".
Good. I was just going for sarcasm, but its always nice to accomplish something more.
And now, that we've decided the Mongols are A-OK, and that their murder of millions and bloody conquests was somehow a good thing, can we stop weeping over the death penalty or Oct 7th and Hamas? After all, just think of Jhengis Khan (John Kerry voice) would've done.
Genghis Kahn's mongols changed the climate during their empire. Doesn't that make them awful? No, only *we* are awful for doing that.
baghdadbob: "Chinggis Khan?!"
Yeah, that was one of the things that came up during my research. "Genghis Khan" is the standard English spelling and pronunciation, but it is based off an 18th century mistranslation from a Persian source. "Chinggis" is probably closer to the what it would have sounded like at the time, but that's a best guess. It is definitely closer to how it would be pronounced in modern Mongolian. Arabic did not have the proper letters to spell "Chinggis" properly so they replaced the start with a "J" like letter. If the Mongols say this is the correct spelling, I figure I might as well go with it.
https://correctmongolia.com/genghis-khan-pronunciation/
the ways in which the Romans were wicked proto-fascists (brutish, warlike, authoritarian, patriarchal, unimaginative, etc.),
Kind of describes the demmies in general and team Brandon in particular, doesn't it?
John Henry
Static Ping, you ought to write a book about it all. Very entertainingly offered.
tim in vermont, I agree that other people went about the total extermination route from time to time. But this was considered extraordinarily brutal by the Mongols. Remember, these are people whose entire life revolved around livestock. Slaves you had to feed. Cattle you can use.
Checking my notes, the city with the animal extermination was Nishapur which is now located in northeast Iran. The defenders managed to kill Chinggis's son-in-law, and the widow, who was allowed to decide the city's fate, demanded they kill everything. I think a few hundred learned and artisan types were spared, but everyone else was beheaded - men, women, children - and their skulls piled up. And they not only killed the livestock, but there are reports of them beheading cats and dogs, something they normally wouldn't even bother with. I believe this was one of the cities that got the revisit a week later as well.
One of the other cities that gets mentioned is Bamyan, the place where those Buddhas were destroyed by the Taliban. They killed his favorite grandson. That city was put to the sword, the citadel torn down along with most of the city, looting was prohibited as this was essentially a funeral, and then they went around the countryside and killed anyone they found. The Mongols would name the place "The City of Screams" as if they thought they may have gone just a bit too far.
Do keep in mind that there is always the potential of exaggeration for propaganda purposes. Those that hated the Mongols would be well motivated to manufacture atrocities, but the Mongols were also more than willing to spread fear in the hopes that it would make other cities more likely to surrender than fight back.
If only we had written records of what these wonderful Mongols did.
Why is it that people make excuses for anyone who murders millions of Chinese?
Seriously. Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked, the Japanese were murdering several thousand Chinese a day. Yet we hear about the unfortunate Japanese who were incinerated instead of the millions of Chinese who died from bullets or bayonets.
And yes, the Chinese communists have had a good try at killing even more. They have their apologists, too, which is really weird.
The Mongols killed maybe 40-70 million people... in the middle ages when populations were much lower. Most were Chinese. Because the West got off light, I guess it's fashionable to play revisionist games with history. I assure you that the Chinese don't buy it.
Chinese lives matter. Most of the really horrible things that happen on this planet kill a lot of Chinese, so maybe it's a good indicator.
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