AH Challenge: Lasting influence of the Mongol Empire.

birdboy2000

Banned
Currently, there are six languages of the United Nations. Arabic, Russian, English, French, Chinese, and Spanish. All of these languages are historically associated with large and powerful empires. The largest empire in human history, however, has a language spoken by a shade over five million people. The ruling dynasty of Genghis Khan's own family did last a bit longer in steppe politics outside Mongolia, but even there it was a fraction of the territory under which the Mongols once held sway, and they were swept away in time by the Russians. Admittedly, there are huge challenges facing them, and good reasons why not much of their empire survived - the Mongols were a tiny fraction of the people they ruled, were often hated for the brutality of their conquests, and they lost power after barely more than a century. Even if they could avoid constant civil war, there's still the fact that they were a small population of horse nomads who only gained writing in Genghis Khan's lifetime.

How can we get the Mongol Empire to have, well, a legacy similar in influence to that of other large empires in human history? Some cultural facet which connects Sarai to Beijing, if not Baghdad as well.
 
The problem is that the Mongols will always form such a small ruling class over the territories that they conquer, and there will always be some degree of upward-pressure to assimilate. These are civilisations more technically and culturally advanced, and a Mongol khan is going to find many reasons to adopt Islamic, Indian or Chinese culture, particularly as the empire fractures - which it inevitably will.

If you want a coherent and permanent imperial Mongol culture, you've got to keep the Empire united under one great khan which, I don't think, is particularly feasible.

Moreover, these khans need to have a reason to impose Mongolian culture on their more advanced subjects, which is also unlikely: why train illiterate Mongol clerks when you can just use Persians or Chiense? The line of khans ruling this empire would need to impose Mongolian functionaries over the societies they ruled. At best, they're going to either emerge as hated minorities to be overthrown, or they'll go native (as they did in real life).

Put simply, there aren't enough Mongols, there isn't the infrastructure, and Mongolian remains the language of a backwards, windswept wilderness compared to Persian, Arabic and Chinese, which have prestigious and literate histories.

Compare Mongol to the languages in use by the United Nations today: two of them - French and English - rose to prominence over the 19th century, with 19th century technology to back them. Spanish rose to prominence in the wake of massive depopulation of indigenous peoples in the C16th which left the survivors little choice but to acquiece to the dominance of Spanish as a language. One - Arabic - is much older, but is essentially a liturgical language for a fifth of the world's population, and maintains its attraction on the back of religious value and demographic weight. Chinese is older still, but has sheer numbers and a prestigious history on its side. Mongol has none of these benefits.

Widespread Mongol is something that's possible, but it would take a) an enduring Mongol Empire, b) more demographic success on the part of the indigenous Mongols against the peoples they conquered and c) Mongol to be as prestigious a language as those it overcame. None of these are particularly likely.

The Mongols achieved something incredible under Genghis Khan. But while they were great at empire building, they were terrible at empire maintaining. To put it into perspective, the great Khan managed to contribute a Y-chromosome that hundreds of millions of Asian men carry. But of them, I'll bet that well less than 5% speak Mongol or are aware of their Mongol heritage.
 
They did leave several lasting influences. First, there's Genghis Khan's 16 million living descendants.

Second, their political legacies such as the Yuan Dynasty, the Khanate of the Golden Horde, the Ilkhanate, the Mughal Empire, and suchlike *did* leave major impacts on much of Eurasia. As did the sacking of Baghdad.

Third, the Mongol impact brought the Black Death across much of Eurasia, and nobody can say that wasn't a lasting legacy.
 
How about the Mongols establishing a belief that it is best for governments to be religiously tolerant?

The Mongol Empire was very advanced in this respect and some post-Mongol ruler might think that this was one area that brought concrete benefits to the khanates and it would be a worthy policy to emulate.
 
How about the Mongols establishing a belief that it is best for governments to be religiously tolerant?

The Mongol Empire was very advanced in this respect and some post-Mongol ruler might think that this was one area that brought concrete benefits to the khanates and it would be a worthy policy to emulate.

MerryPrankster

Possible although difficult in a time of religious bigotry and conflict. Not to mention that none of the conquered religions will want to say anything favourable about the group that conquered them.

More importantly religious tolerance is an attractive policy to a ruler of a region with diverse but fairly moderate religious sections, but it's not really tied to the Mongols. I.e. there's no need to adopt the language, which seems to be the main desire of the OP.

An alternative, although still doubtful and much darker, is that presuming the legend is true a Chinese bureaucrat isn't able to persuade Genghis not to slaughter the northern Chinese and open the region to settlement by Mongol pastoralists. In the short term it would probably slow Mongol expansion elsewhere as it would need a lot of forces to carry out, even without intervention by the southern Chinese. Hence slower [possibly less or greater] impact further west. However it opens up a sizeable amount of rich land for a great increase in population. Might well include other pastoralists but they are likely to be absorbed into the greater Mongol state. Over time as well some will start to settle down. In a century or two you might have a sizeable Mongol state that wars with/conquers the larger Chinese state to the south but has enough identity and possibly contempt for the Chinese that it stays distinct in language, culture, writing, etc. This might also, via it's still nomadic out fringes, control much of central Asia and southern Siberia and successfully contest the region with Muscovy/Russia when that seeks to cross the Urals. Also continual war with the Chinese to the south and Muslim states to the SW could help keep it and possibly it's neighbours more competitive with other powers if/when industrialisation begins.

Steve
 
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