What is the plausibility of one of the various nomadic people kicking around the Pontic Steppe at some point in the Middle Ages subjugating the other nomadic peoples going on a conquering spree across the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe and expanding Eastward and taking part or all of China at their height i.e. pulling off the sort of conquests the Mongol did but going from the West to the East.
Would the
Cuman-Kipchaks be a likely candidate for this given their size and geopolitical position?
What is the plausibility?
Well, if some nomadic people in the East had been given the 'Great Man' like Chengizz Khan, they might have achieved something spectacular, I guess.
But anyway I am afraid that plausibility is close to zero.
It doesn't look like a coincidence that since somewhere 300-200 B.C. to 1800 A.D. (roughly) the direction of the nomadic peoples' movement in the Great Eurasian Steppe was from the East to the West mostly.
That makes two millennia(!).
You cannot explain
that long period of time by saying that it just happened, it cannot be just a game of chance.
The initial movement of the nomadic tribes was from the West to the East, but that's easy to explain, as the nomadic way of life was born in the West of the Great Eurasian Steppe. This and the war chariots gave an enormous edge to the Aryans - the so called
Indo-European migrations.
But why moving from the East?
One of the explanations mentioned in this thread is China. That seems like a sound explanation.
The Great Eurasian Steppe is truly great in size, but the only part of this steppe which suffered periodic serious genocidal invasions of huge armies is the steppe bordering China. Army after an army, hundreds of thousands Chinese warriors invade steppe butchering everybody on their way; it didn't happen every year or every century but it did happen.
All other (Non-Chinese) parts of the 'Great Steppe' had empires on their borders, but the Roman Empire(s) happened to have a very short (comparatively) steppe border, and that part was decently protected by nature, so the Romans had huge resources to invade steppe, but they didn't have a reason to.
'Iranian/Mesopotamian' empires had bigger border with steppe, and they had the reason for deep genocidal invasions into the steppe, meaning "kill them all" invasions; but they lacked the resources.
This is 'billiard ball theory' - China generated pushes in the steppe and the human waves moved from the East to the West.
But that cannot be the only explanation, as China had long periods of weakness when it paid the nomads annual subsidies and suffered itself from the nomadic invasions. And when I say long periods I mean
centuries.
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So the other "pushing" factor from the East to West in 'Great Steppe' is climate.
If you never read about five types of the Mongolian
zud it's highly recommended to
click here.
The
zuds were regular, as opposed to the Chinese invasions.
To make a long story short, the climate in the "Great Eurasian Steppe" was worst in the East and best in the West; and in between the trend was the same more or less - the climate got better gradually from the East to West, and it got worse bit by bit from the West to East.
If some nomad tribes were starving, dying out, they generally moved to the West, that's natural.
Moving in most cases meant 'pushing' other tribes, conquering them, robbing them, enslaving them, annihilating them. To do that it was crucially important to be able to unite (at least for a period of time). That meant the Eastern nomads had better abilities of empire building.
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So, if you want to conquer the 'Great Eurasian Steppe' from the West to the East you're swimming against the current, which is hard, sometimes impossible.