AHC: Mongolian as the world's lingua franca

The challenge is to make Mongolian the most commonly spoken language in the world by the year 2000.
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
The most effective way I can think to do this is to have the Mongols survive longer. If they can somehow also become vital to oversea trade, perhaps by forcing all shipping to have manifests using Mongolian Script.

To make them survive longer, or permenantly, I'd suggest finding a way to prevent the rise of Russia, as we know it. Pillage, burn, assimilate, whichever works. Personally, don't use any Russians as enforcers, instead use them as levies to invade Europe once again.
 
The most effective way I can think to do this is to have the Mongols survive longer. If they can somehow also become vital to oversea trade, perhaps by forcing all shipping to have manifests using Mongolian Script.

To make them survive longer, or permenantly, I'd suggest finding a way to prevent the rise of Russia, as we know it. Pillage, burn, assimilate, whichever works. Personally, don't use any Russians as enforcers, instead use them as levies to invade Europe once again.

Not viable in the long term. They just don't have the numbers to absorb the Russians, not to mention their pastoral nomadic lifestyle just sucks to everyone they've faced and beaten down.
 
Not viable in the long term. They just don't have the numbers to absorb the Russians, not to mention their pastoral nomadic lifestyle just sucks to everyone they've faced and beaten down.

If they take hungary, they could do what Attila's Goths did, settle down in the Danube Basin when the empire falls apart. It wouldn't fulfill the AHC, though, unless you give the Mongols a generation to settle in Hungary without assimilation, and then they get orders from Syr Draya or wherever to conquer the rest of Europe, and succeed. This is borderline ASB, and it leading to Mongol linguistic dominance is even more impossible. However, it could create a substantial population of European Mongols who are more resistant to assimilation than their OTL Asian counterparts.
 
Note that when the Mongols conquered China, they used Chinese clerks to do their record keeping.

Having a Mongol dynasty make CHINESE the world's lingua franca would be 'easy'. Making Mongolian that, much, much, much harder.

How early are Mongols even an identifiable people, let alone a world threat?

A quick search suggests that they don't really arise until about the 6th century, by which time Chinese culture is well established, Europe is well on the way to Christianizing, etc.

When barbarian pagan conquerors take over civilized countries, they usually assimilate to the local culture. Cf. Mongols in China, German tribes in the ex-Roman Empire, Bulgars and Avars in the Balkans, etc.

To prevent that, you probably need a sufficiently strong religion (e.g. Turks taking over Anatolia, Arabs most of the rest of the Middle East).

So....

Convert the Mongols to Buddhism or Christianity, and have them go Crusading (or local equivalent), and you MIGHT be able to get such a thing happening. If you manage it before Islam arises (or spreads widely), you might get a Mongolian based Persian Empire or even (possibly) Persian and Chinese empires.


Darn close to ASB, though.
 
Would be very interesting.

The thing with China is - if you force the Confucian exams to be in Mongolian, while making Mongolian script easy to learn, and potentially sponsoring peasants to learn, I'm very sure you can easily get rid of the upper-class Chinese script, which was pretty hard.

From there on, you would have to assimilate China, which would be extremely hard, and you'd have to have borderline ASB luck to not get a million revolts in this time. But if they somehow weather it, you could have a Mongolian China by the 1800 or 1600s, which could be a China-wank, if you look at it from a different view.

The key thing is not just a separate Mongol identity - but rather, adoption of Chinese characteristics. Like I said, lots of revolts, which is why the Qing refused to do it (and also the prestige), but I think it can be doable.
 
You did get the diffusion of Mongolian or at least related languages into Russia but it was an upper class thing, I believe. Even as late as Ivan the Terrible you had evidence between him and correspondence between several khans.
 
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