Mongol empire

What has always puzzled me is the destructive mind set in terms of the Mongol Khans.

Why so destructive? Was there any inherent reason?

Admittedly, my knowledge is mostly based on the school as few years back and Conn Iggulden's books.

Also admittedly, Of course there is a certain attraction in burning down a city and killing all - I could be tempted myself sometimes.

But if we try to imagine a Mongol empire where the conquest might have happened along the lines of Kublai Khan's 'mercy'?

Would the empire still have been there? was the destruction the carrying element?

Ivan
 
What has always puzzled me is the destructive mind set in terms of the Mongol Khans.

What is even more puzzling is why so many people are thinking and writing things like that in a complete disregard of the existing evidence. ;)

Why so destructive? Was there any inherent reason?

Can you please clarify how exactly creation of a multinational empire where trade flourished and a person could securely and reasonably comfortably travel from, say, Volga, to China would be a manifestation of a "destructive mindset"?

Admittedly, my knowledge is mostly based on the school as few years back and Conn Iggulden's books.

Did not try to read his books on Genghis but it is a literature with the same dangers as confusing Henry V from Shakespeare's play with a real person.

Also admittedly, Of course there is a certain attraction in burning down a city and killing all - I could be tempted myself sometimes.

FYI, burning down a city was a common practice not only during the ancient and medieval times but in quite modern times as well. As for "killing all", people tend not to pay attention to the fact that quite often this complete extermination of a population was quite often reported either by someone who lived in that city (which means that "all" is an exaggeration) or by a person who lived in a different time and place (and often did not have a clue). And, another intriguing phenomena, in most cases almost immediately after all that complete destruction and annihilation we are seeing mentioning of that destroyed city not as a big functioning local center with the population of all ages and occupations.

Then, of course, comes another set of questions (what's below is far from a complete list):

1. How come that with the Mongols presumably killing everybody in the Northern China (which is well before Khunilay's time), the Chinese had been defecting to their side not just on individual basis but by the whole provinces and armies. By 1237 there were more than 4,000 Chinese officials handling administration of the conquered provinces and Mukhali's army had significant number of the Chinese contingents (not to mention that the Chinese engineers had been incorporated into the armies fighting elsewhere). BTW, when Kublai got into the picture, the Northern China was not exactly a desert littered by the corpses and smoking ruins which means that the previous Khans were not just a bunch of the murderous maniacs.

2. How come that after (presumably) a complete destruction of the Central Asia with the whole population being either killed or transported to Mongolia most of the big cities were still there and functioning and you could find numerous locals in various positions within imperial administration (in and outside the CA)?

3. How come that after (presumably) a complete destruction of the Central Russia with a thorough annihilation of the ruling families, not only most of the (burned to the ground with everybody inside being killed) cities were functioning almost immediately after their destruction but we can also see an impressive number of the local princes surprisingly alive and competing with each other at Khan's court for the right to rule these "ruins"? So-called "Golden Horde" (Vernadsky proved that the name is anachronistic and invented by the later Western travelers; a peripheral ulus could not be "Gold" - this color being reserved for the Great Khan) was by all accounts very rich and the riches had been coming from ...er... burned to the ground territory where all population had been massacred (;)).

4. How come that immediately after conquest of the Eastern Europe (from Ural to Volga - Don steppes) the Mongols immediately started creation of a new state (and a nation in which they were a minority) with its own cities which flourished all the time until Timur destroyed them? Is this an indication of a "destructive mind"?


But if we try to imagine a Mongol empire where the conquest might have happened along the lines of Kublai Khan's 'mercy'?

Would the empire still have been there? was the destruction the carrying element?

The Mongols had been destroying the resisting places and people. Those that submitted upon request just paid tribute. The patter existed since the time of Genghis and Kublai did not invent it. It is just that he conducted conquest of the Southern China from a position that was much stronger than one of Genghis when he started his conquests.
 
I think the Mongols main idea was that it was divinely ordained that they already ruled the world. If you don’t realise that, you will die, and it will be painful- if you do and pay tribute cool you’re free to go about life as you please. I will say though, even if they weren’t destructive, they certainly weren’t very creative. The Roman and Arab empires were so much smaller than the Mongols and yet, they were orders of magnitude more influential- there’s no mongol art style, no Mongol grand architecture, no mongol traditions carried on by all their descendants. So considering they didn’t make anything, it can be a bit too easy to perceive them as destructive, when they really just let other people get on with the making and then took it as tribute.
 
The Mongols' brutality is often exaggerated. Were the Mongols any more brutal than the Romans?

Large empires often resort to brutality in order to maintain control. It's classic Machiavellian thinking: it is good to be loved, but often it is better to be feared. This becomes especially true of subjugated peoples who resist. If you can't win their hearts, you must break their will to resist. What made the Mongols so successful is that, like the Romans, they treated their friends very well and their enemies very harshly, making the choice of enemy or friend a very easy choice to make.
 
Tamerlane was a pretty good example of pointless destruction and slaughter (witness his invasion of India), but the destruction caused by the Mongols, to my knowledge, very much had a point.
 
I think the Mongols main idea was that it was divinely ordained that they already ruled the world. If you don’t realise that, you will die, and it will be painful- if you do and pay tribute cool you’re free to go about life as you please. I will say though, even if they weren’t destructive, they certainly weren’t very creative. The Roman and Arab empires were so much smaller than the Mongols and yet, they were orders of magnitude more influential- there’s no mongol art style,

Of course, there is.


no Mongol grand architecture,

They were nomadic people but they built a number of cities.

no mongol traditions carried on by all their descendants. So considering they didn’t make anything, it can be a bit too easy to perceive them as destructive, when they really just let other people get on with the making and then took it as tribute.


I would be cautious about "no mongol traditions" and them not "making anything" because this is patently not true. You can start with a legacy stretching for centuries, which limited usage of the title "khan" to the Ghengisids and putting the Crimean Khans on a line of the Ottoman succession. Then, their military system had a noticeable impact upon the developments in the Eastern Europe. For example, armies of the Muscovite state (both Great Princedom and Tsardom) had been to a noticeable degree copying general tactical organization of the Mongolian army all the way to the modern times. And, as their "descendants", the Tatars of the Crimea.

Quite a few historians had been suggesting that an absolute monarchy in Russia had been strongly based upon the Mongolian tradition.
 
IMO the Mongols were not more devastating then other conquerors most time they devastated cities for punishment after a trason of the inhabitants or as an example if a city didn't surrender at once
 
I don’t know the source but there’s an argument that the wars between nomadic Xiongnu and sedentary Han were especially bloody because they represented two competing visions of civilization. The nomads did not grow cereal crops, for them grass was what they fed livestock and they themselves in turn ate meat. Pastoralism was the definition of humanity and civilization.

To them farming was a sub-human activity, as it involved digging in the dirt like animals and eating cereal like livestock. The Xiongnu also believed their people were descendants of wolves and perhaps saw sedentary populations as natural prey. Making war against farmers and looting their property was as natural as predators hunting for food and not hindered by moral considerations. Thus they saw agricultural civilizations as abhorrent and and the destruction of their cities not as tragedies but a reclamation of pasturelands.

For the Han the Xiongnu were barbarians without civilization. They contribute nothing to civilization as they knew it and were pests to be fenced off by a big wall and exterminated if possible. Quite different from when two agricultural kingdoms go to war, there is at least an acknowlegement of eachother’s shared humanity.
 
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IMO the Mongols were not more devastating then other conquerors most time they devastated cities for punishment after a trason of the inhabitants or as an example if a city didn't surrender at once

Looting the conquered cities was a common practice both before and after the Mongols and as far as the countryside in general is involved, look at the definition of "chevauchée" (style of warfare favored by the English during the 100YW but, again, widely used before and after this war all over Europe): "a raiding method of medieval warfare for weakening the enemy, primarily by burning and pillaging enemy territory in order to reduce the productivity of a region".
And there was nothing new or original in "making an example" out of a resisting city to convince other places that surrender is more productive than resistance. I'd say that in the medieval Europe a surrendering city had a greater chance to be looted than in the Mongolian case even if just because the Mongolian discipline had been much higher than in the medieval armies of Europe.
 
I don’t know the source but there’s an argument that the wars between nomadic Xiongnu and sedentary Han were especially bloody because they represented two competing visions of civilization. The nomads did not grow cereal crops, for them grass was what they fed livestock and they themselves in turn ate meat. Pastoralism was the definition of humanity and civilization.

To them farming was a sub-human activity, as it involved digging in the dirt like animals and eating cereal like livestock. The Xiongnu also believed their people were descendants of wolves and perhaps saw sedentary populations as natural prey. Making war against farmers and looting their property was as natural as predators hunting for food and not hindered by moral considerations. Thus they saw agricultural civilizations as abhorrent and and the destruction of their cities not as tragedies but a reclamation of pasturelands.

Allegedly, the issue had been brought up during the early reign of Ogdai with a logical proposal to exterminate all Chinese (as being completely useless and perhaps contributing to a pollution and global warming, not sure if this specific argument was brought up) and use the territory productively by converting it into a pasture (which was a sound idea from the environmental perspective). However, it was brought to everybody's attention that, while being generally useless, the Chinese can pay a lot of taxes and produce some valuable goods (silk being one of them) and as a result the proposal had been rejected to a great sorrow of the Mongolian environmentalists. XD

Of course, the whole story is most probably a legend because even under Muqali the Mongols had been closely cooperating with the locals using their administration and troops. Muqali had something like 20 - 30,000 Mongols and at least 7 Chinese tumens (four Han tumens and three Khitan) led by the Chinese generals (Han and Khitan generals) and the numbers were growing with a passage of time with, AFAIK, Kublai's armies being predominantly Chinese. Add to this Chinese presence at the highest administrative positions (Yélǜ Chǔcái was on Mongolian service since 1219) and fact that Mongolian nobles were looking for the estates in China and the story starts looking not quite realistic.

For the Han the Xiongnu were barbarians without civilization. They contribute nothing to civilization as they knew it and were pests to be fenced off by a big wall and exterminated if possible. Quite different from when two agricultural kingdoms go to war, there is at least an acknowlegement of eachother’s shared humanity.

Unfortunately, the agricultural states of the XVII century Europe were not quite aware of that fact during the 30YW: general reduction of population in the HRE was anywhere between 25 and 40% and in some areas much more. Württemberg lost three-quarters of its population during the war. In the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. The male population of the German states was reduced by almost half. The Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns. (https://www.geni.com/projects/Thirty-Years-War-1618-1648/11799). x'D
 
What is even more puzzling is why so many people are thinking and writing things like that in a complete disregard of the existing evidence. ;)



Can you please clarify how exactly creation of a multinational empire where trade flourished and a person could securely and reasonably comfortably travel from, say, Volga, to China would be a manifestation of a "destructive mindset"?



Did not try to read his books on Genghis but it is a literature with the same dangers as confusing Henry V from Shakespeare's play with a real person.



FYI, burning down a city was a common practice not only during the ancient and medieval times but in quite modern times as well. As for "killing all", people tend not to pay attention to the fact that quite often this complete extermination of a population was quite often reported either by someone who lived in that city (which means that "all" is an exaggeration) or by a person who lived in a different time and place (and often did not have a clue). And, another intriguing phenomena, in most cases almost immediately after all that complete destruction and annihilation we are seeing mentioning of that destroyed city not as a big functioning local center with the population of all ages and occupations.

Then, of course, comes another set of questions (what's below is far from a complete list):

1. How come that with the Mongols presumably killing everybody in the Northern China (which is well before Khunilay's time), the Chinese had been defecting to their side not just on individual basis but by the whole provinces and armies. By 1237 there were more than 4,000 Chinese officials handling administration of the conquered provinces and Mukhali's army had significant number of the Chinese contingents (not to mention that the Chinese engineers had been incorporated into the armies fighting elsewhere). BTW, when Kublai got into the picture, the Northern China was not exactly a desert littered by the corpses and smoking ruins which means that the previous Khans were not just a bunch of the murderous maniacs.

2. How come that after (presumably) a complete destruction of the Central Asia with the whole population being either killed or transported to Mongolia most of the big cities were still there and functioning and you could find numerous locals in various positions within imperial administration (in and outside the CA)?

3. How come that after (presumably) a complete destruction of the Central Russia with a thorough annihilation of the ruling families, not only most of the (burned to the ground with everybody inside being killed) cities were functioning almost immediately after their destruction but we can also see an impressive number of the local princes surprisingly alive and competing with each other at Khan's court for the right to rule these "ruins"? So-called "Golden Horde" (Vernadsky proved that the name is anachronistic and invented by the later Western travelers; a peripheral ulus could not be "Gold" - this color being reserved for the Great Khan) was by all accounts very rich and the riches had been coming from ...er... burned to the ground territory where all population had been massacred (;)).

4. How come that immediately after conquest of the Eastern Europe (from Ural to Volga - Don steppes) the Mongols immediately started creation of a new state (and a nation in which they were a minority) with its own cities which flourished all the time until Timur destroyed them? Is this an indication of a "destructive mind"?




The Mongols had been destroying the resisting places and people. Those that submitted upon request just paid tribute. The patter existed since the time of Genghis and Kublai did not invent it. It is just that he conducted conquest of the Southern China from a position that was much stronger than one of Genghis when he started his conquests.
Another Genghis apologist! I thought I was alone :L
 
Another Genghis apologist! I thought I was alone :L

To quote from "My blue heaven", "You are not alone!" :)

I'm not Genghis apologist but it does not make sense to judge things based upon the modern framework of the values. Unfortunately, the "classic history" is quite often misleading because the "primary sources" (quite often written by the people who were relying upon the hearsay) tend to be unreliable, especially when the numbers are involved, and also reflect attitudes of the time. For example, the big numbers of the killed enemies (including civilians) were part of a great general's image, something to brag about (look at the Assyrian base reliefs and texts). Anyway, the acceptable "general practices" of war were changing over the centuries and had been quite cruel even in the relatively modern times (BTW, even the modern conventions are not protecting the "illegal combatants", those who do not belong to the armed forces, do not wear uniforms or at least some insignia and keep fighting after official surrender of their country so many of the Mongolian practices would be "covered" :teary:).
 
To quote from "My blue heaven", "You are not alone!" :)

I'm not Genghis apologist but it does not make sense to judge things based upon the modern framework of the values. Unfortunately, the "classic history" is quite often misleading because the "primary sources" (quite often written by the people who were relying upon the hearsay) tend to be unreliable, especially when the numbers are involved, and also reflect attitudes of the time. For example, the big numbers of the killed enemies (including civilians) were part of a great general's image, something to brag about (look at the Assyrian base reliefs and texts). Anyway, the acceptable "general practices" of war were changing over the centuries and had been quite cruel even in the relatively modern times (BTW, even the modern conventions are not protecting the "illegal combatants", those who do not belong to the armed forces, do not wear uniforms or at least some insignia and keep fighting after official surrender of their country so many of the Mongolian practices would be "covered" :teary:).
A fun fact RE the numbers, the "total massacre" of Urgench (which then seemingly has a large population immediately) comes from the Persian historian Juvayni (on phone, I think that is right off the top of my head) who has built up a reputation of massively overstating numbers beyond the populations of given areas (being the same person from whom we get the higher numbers RE the sacking of Baghdad for instance).
 
A fun fact RE the numbers, the "total massacre" of Urgench (which then seemingly has a large population immediately) comes from the Persian historian Juvayni (on phone, I think that is right off the top of my head) who has built up a reputation of massively overstating numbers beyond the populations of given areas (being the same person from whom we get the higher numbers RE the sacking of Baghdad for instance).

As I said, the historians of that period had "the more the better" attitude toward the numbers and did not bother with the precision or believably because the important thing was "to make a point" and this was applicable not just to Asia but to Europe as well (in the case of a medieval Rus the whole thing is complicated by the fact that meaning of the word "to kill" changed over the centuries: the old equivalent to the modern word "убил" would be "killed to death" and without that "clarification" the word would mean any type of a damage so if it was written that a prince XYZ "killed" certain tribe it did not mean a complete genocide because quite often in the same or next sentence you'd find that he took numerous prisoners).

An additional confusion (even in the modern estimates) is created by the fact that population density in the medieval cities of the Central Asia/Middle East was quite often lower than in the contemporary cities of the Western Europe (the individual houses often had inner yards) and, as a result, calculating population based upon the Western analogies can easily produce over-inflated numbers. As someone commented, a big achievement in calculation of population in the cities of the CA would be a method which has an error margin of only 100% :))). As a result, population of the XIII century Bukhara is evaluated as anywhere between 40 - 50,000 (one of the modern calculations) and all the way to over a million (IIRC, "primary sources" correctly). Ditto for the losses. In 1220 Genghis took the city and (according to the "primary sources") population was either killed or taken prisoners and marched away. But in 1238 population was big enough to start an anti-Mongolian (and anti-aristocratic) rebellion and, with a help of the local peasants, defeat the Mongolian detachment and resist until 1239. So, in less than 18 years in a presumably depopulated area we have a lot of a grown up population, local rich and poor and even aristocracy (which had enough time to piss off the lower classes into rebelling). Perhaps after all not all of them had been killed (or taken away) in 1220?
 
@OP: Once read the claim that they spread so much terror because they had a relatively small army and had to win this way.

@alexmilman : What is it with the Genghis apologism? If you had told me "he did some big bad things and some big good things", I would have been OK. But that's too one-sided. We may need a new word for you Genghis fanboys, like "Tankie" or "Wehraboo".

Other than that: Population kept growing, and if some city had been founded in a good site, the Mongol conquests didn't change geography. At least they didn't go so far to salt the earth.
 
Why no apologism?If other Conquerors made their Conquest with Love and Peace make no sense Genghis was just a child of his Time and Space give me one Nation or Person who conquered without Bloodshed
 
@OP: Once read the claim that they spread so much terror because they had a relatively small army and had to win this way.

@alexmilman : What is it with the Genghis apologism?

There is none and you clearly missed smileys in both posts.

My point is that apologism does not make too much sense, just as its opposite: if you start looking for Mother Theresa types among the great conquerors you may end up with an empty list. Ditto for applying the modern criteria to the events which happened almost thousand years ago.
 
if you start looking for Mother Theresa types among the great conquerors you may end up with an empty list.

Not necessarily, if you believe her critics. Forced conversions, failure to sterilize medical equipment, mismanagement of donations, speaking openly about poor-people-suffering being a good thing, the list goes on. You could find a fair few great conquers who fit that bill.

Although yeah, still not Temujin. If nothing else, he didn't go around forcing people to convert. Pretty sure he used unsterilized medical equipment, though.
 
Not necessarily, if you believe her critics.
Yes, I read some pointed and seemingly well-founded criticism but I'm talking about the "everybody knows" image.

Forced conversions, failure to sterilize medical equipment, mismanagement of donations, speaking openly about poor-people-suffering being a good thing, the list goes on. You could find a fair few great conquers who fit that bill.
Although yeah, still not Temujin. If nothing else, he didn't go around forcing people to convert. Pretty sure he used unsterilized medical equipment, though.

Not a complete list of his good deeds: nobody (AFAIK) accused him of mismanaging the donations. Not sure about him saying anything about poor-people-suffering being a good thing: his famous definition of what is good thing (stolen from "Conan the Barbarian") was clearly about suffering of the rich people (not sure if this qualifies him as being "progressive").
 
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