AH: A World without Genghis Khan

If "A World without Genghis Khan"
May be Jamukha unites Mongolian tribes but not to be succesful outside Mongolia.
Kara Khitans conquered west parts of Mongolia in 1210s.
Tanguts conqured east parts of Mongolia 1220s.
In Middle East Khwarezmid Empire may be conquer Abbasid Iraq,Arabia,Syria.
I think Khwarezmid Empire like muslim version Achaemenid Empire
 
Jack Wetherford's recent book on the impact of the Mongols on world civilization and technology would be a very useful tool for such a timeline and save a ton of research. His other books for that matter would be useful as well as he studies a lot of the interface and economic development impacts of nomadic tribes and settled civilizations. It's been several years since I read that book (highly recommended for anyone) but:

China's empires, Persia, Northern India, Afghanistan, Georgia, Russia, Korea wouldn't fall as far or hard as they did with Mongol conquest and slaughter of whole cities, only plagues would have similar impacts and still not as devastating.

So world history would shape up far differently as much of the focus has been on what countries NOT devastated by Mongols accomplished over the next 400-800 years. This is right around the period that these advanced societies stopped and mostly fell behind (Wetherford disagrees and sees a lot of technology transfer and free trade zone in the Mongol empire as a bounty for the whole Eurasian continent.

The ancient Silk Road connecting China with Europe would continue to function fully and the Central Asian empires would continue to be rich and advanced because of that constant infusion of new ideas from trade across the continent. So great news for Samarkand, Kazakhistan, etc. and we'd not have heard of Marco Polo, Roger Bacon, Johannes Gutenberg, or others who later brought Asian knowledge to European attention and were credited with inventing it by local scholars.

Europe would remain the distant backwater it had been or the Renaissance would come earlier with the Asian and Middle Eastern knowledge infusions continuing and accelerating with trade.

"Trivially" I guess for geopolitical history, many millions of people would live rather than be slaughtered or enslaved, live within their extended families/clans/cities and with the accumulated knowledge of their place and resources...disrupting that is very expensive to progress (and the dead people, looted/burned cities and farms, abandoned millenia of infrastructure and fields/orchards/mines, etc.). Statistically that tells us tens of thousands of geniuses, great artists, master craftspeople, master traders, etc. were lost to Mongol arrows, lances, and sieges making the progress lost a good question as some of those regions never really recovered. Certainly many who would have made major impacts on the world were lost with Europe and the Middle East having a relative vacuum with so much of the competition dead and crushed so long.

Weatherford points out the last of Ghengis Khan's descendants/ruling dynasties lasted into the 1920's (Persia?) and it considerably eclipsed Rome's empire in size, population, diversity, duration, cities, and resources. In reality it's as big of a POD as the Etruscans stamping out their troublesome neighbors to the South on the Italian peninsula at a stage where only Etruscan histories might mention the several small battles it took one summer.
 
I think Europe is unlikely to remain a backwater - eliminating the Mongols doesn't eliminate the European curiosity about the world or desire to trade.

http://old.nationalreview.com/books/rose200409231429.asp

And I'd really like to note that at least for some places - Armenia and Iran being the ones I know - being ruled by the Mongols was doing worse than you could have otherwise.
 
Last edited:
Just a thought when no mongol hordes, the plague will not ravage europe/rest of the world or far less. although the mongols didn't carry it alone, it has been considered a serious possibility that the mongols were the biggest carrier of the black death. So no mongol hordes would cause serious butterflies.
 
The Black Death or something like it is coming sooner or latter anyway, although exactly when or how is complicated.

What broke the feudal system was not so much the black death specifically as the consequences - that is, too few laborers, too much demand for labor, and lords offering those who would come to work good deals.

Or in Eastern Europe, tying the peasantry to the land.
 
The Black Death or something like it is coming sooner or latter anyway, although exactly when or how is complicated.

What broke the feudal system was not so much the black death specifically as the consequences - that is, too few laborers, too much demand for labor, and lords offering those who would come to work good deals.

Or in Eastern Europe, tying the peasantry to the land.

Pretty much what I was trying to say. I think this would delay Europe's development somewhat.
 
OP, you are indeed demanding a lot here. Killing the Mongol Empire means that you change the history of all of Eurasia soon, which means that you have to do research on many different cultures and countries. Even with Wikipedia, it's not that easy.

I don't mind if you think basileus writes better, he is a great TL writer, and I'd like to see his TL continued.

Although, actually I may have good news for you: While I liked telling my Chaos TL, sometimes I think that several things would happen in different ways. So I will probably do a Chaos TL 2.0 somewhen in the future. And by that I mean, when I'm retired - in 30 years or so. Can you wait until then? If not, I recommend you to become a great TL writer soon.

Thanks to all my fans reading and answering here.
 
Last edited:
@Montanian: Whenever the Mongols conquered a great city, they took the best artisans and such and brought them to Karakorum.

And I tend to agree on the quality. I can think of areas I'm not sure about, and quite a few I really wish we did get the details (the Quadruple Monarchy, say), but it is a fine example of alt-history.

What do you want to know about the Quadruple Monarchy?
 
What do you want to know about the Quadruple Monarchy?

Can't think of anything specific off the top of my head. Can I get back to you on this?

It seems like you put a lot of work into the timeline, but the amount that we read feels like the summed up version.

Understandable, given how much is being covered.

By the way, whatever happens to the Assassins there?
 
Of course, ask me whenever you want.

Yes, I could make the Chaos TL more expansive... the question is, where to start. Obviously, some areas like India and the Caucasus (frex) could need a bit more description. Otherwise... if it isn't mentioned explicitly, imagine that it's much like OTL, just with people having different names, and technology and other developments a few decades ahead or backwards, extrapolated from what I wrote.

I imagine that the Assassins didn't end with a bang but with a whimper. They are around for a longer time, maybe centuries, but don't achieve anything more notable than IOTL. If you can call "assassinating random people" notable.
 
Top