WI: Yelü Chucai dies

SinghKing

Banned
Yelü Chucai (1190-1244): Prime Minister to Genghis Khan

The history of Beijing is littered with mashed reputations of once proud and noble people. Perhaps none were more proud than the ruling classes of 10th century Beijing, when it comprised the capital of the Liao empire. The Liao was an ethnic Khitan dynasty that descended directly from northern Steppe nomads. With their power waning in the early 12th, another semi-nomadic people, the Jurchen Jin dynasty seized the Liao power base in northern China and converted Beijing into their own capital.

Despite being sworn enemies, not all of the Khitans did badly under Jurchen rule, and the family of Yelü Chucai rose to some note at the height of the Jurchen court in around 1190. Legend has it that Yelü received the name Chucai (literally material from the Kingdom of Chu) from the classical Chinese story of a man from Chu who was forced to flee and ended up serving another kingdom. Yelü’s father reportedly foresaw that his son would also serve another power, and named him thus.

When only a young scholar in his twenties, Yelü Chucai witnessed one of the most horrific events in the history of Beijing – the Mongol siege led by Ghengis Khan. Lasting for months on end, and combined with some of the worst famines for decades, the siege of 1213 claimed thousands of lives. When it became apparent that all was lost to the Mongols, Chucai’s brother threw himself off the walls of Beijing.

Yelü Chucai, however, submitted himself alive to the Khan, following the great leader through Central Asia as his soothsayer. It was while on the border with India that Yelü is supposed to have spotted a mysterious, greenish, talking animal that warned the Mongols against going any further. As the main religious advisor, Yelü advised that the sign did not bode well for going further, and thus India was spared from the savage Mongol hordes. Historians think the creature to have been nothing more than the common rhinoceros!

On his return from Central Asia, Yelü rose in fame and was given a power base in Beijing as the prime minister of China north of the Yellow River. At first favoured highly by Ghengis Khan’s successor, Ögödei Khan, Yelü Chucai was accredited with the amazing feat of successfully arguing against a Mongol plan to slaughter the population of the north China plains to make room for pasture lands for Mongolian horses.

This success was short lived, however, as politics in the Mongol empire started to shift away from favouring Yelü Chucai’s Khitans, to a preference to doing business with Turkic Central Asians. As the Ögödei Khan became less interested in playing a direct role in politics, his advisors moved to oust Yelü from power. Thus Yelü Chucai’s career was extinguished, and he was forced to retire early. Yelü Chucai was buried along with his wife, and later their son, in the family estate in the Western Hills. Their family estate was taken over in the 18th century, and converted by the Qianlong emperor into what is now the Summer Palace.

So, for a WI which hasn't really been done before, WI Yelü Chucai had died along with his brother in the siege of Beijing? As such, the two most obvious consequences are, A) in Yelü Chucai's absence, there's no-one to dissuade Genghis Khan and the Mongol Hordes from pursuing their planned invasion of India, and B) in Yelü Chucai's absence, there's no-one to dissuade Genghis Khan, and his successor Ögödei Khan, from going ahead with their plans to slaughter the population of the north China plains in order to create larger pasture lands for the Mongolian horses. What would the consequences be?
 
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SinghKing

Banned
Bumping this thread. Can anyone provide any feedback? Plausibly, how far do you think the Mongols could have gone if they'd pressed on with their invasion of India (specifically, into the lands of the Delhi Sultanate after the flight of Jalal ad-Din from the Battle of Indus)? What would the repercussions of such a Mongol invasion have been? And what would have been the long-term repercussions if their original plan to massacre the peoples of the North China plains (wiping out the Jurchen people of the Jin Dynasty in the same manner that they'd wiped out the Tangut people of Western Xia) had gone ahead ITTL, and the Mongols had pursued Genghis Khan's preferred policy of completely eradicating the peoples of the Jin Empire in the same way that they'd dealt with Western Xia (present-day Inner Mongolia & Ningxia)? It was only Yelü Chucai's direct intervention which prevented both of these things from happening IOTL.
 
I think we probably over-estimate the power of Yelu Chucai to argue against the Khan in these sort of things - likely a quirk of Chinese history where the power of the bureaucrats vs. the emperor tended to be exaggerated.

I don't know about India, but it seems very likely that Ogadai himself would have seen that the mass-slaughter of Chinese in the former Jin territories was not something that was either feasible or desirable. As the Nazis found out mass slaughter, even haphazardly, is a significant investment of resources and manpower, both of which could have been used on the frontiers to expand the Mongol Empire. For a civilization that relied on tribute and plunder to sustain itself (at least at the beginning), extermination not only wastes effort, but it also gives no real rewards.

Of course you could paint Ogadai as a Hitler-esque character who wanted to destroy the Chinese no matter what, which would lead to Northern China simply rising up in arms as the peasantry seeks to defend itself. It's quite likely that extermination will also vastly strengthen the position of the pro-war party in the Southern Song, which would now devote even more of its resources towards military preparation and subterfuge. You'd also see less movement into India and Central Europe as Mongol troops are needed to kill millions in China.
 

SinghKing

Banned
I think we probably over-estimate the power of Yelu Chucai to argue against the Khan in these sort of things - likely a quirk of Chinese history where the power of the bureaucrats vs. the emperor tended to be exaggerated.

I don't know about India, but it seems very likely that Ogadai himself would have seen that the mass-slaughter of Chinese in the former Jin territories was not something that was either feasible or desirable. As the Nazis found out mass slaughter, even haphazardly, is a significant investment of resources and manpower, both of which could have been used on the frontiers to expand the Mongol Empire. For a civilization that relied on tribute and plunder to sustain itself (at least at the beginning), extermination not only wastes effort, but it also gives no real rewards.

Of course you could paint Ogadai as a Hitler-esque character who wanted to destroy the Chinese no matter what, which would lead to Northern China simply rising up in arms as the peasantry seeks to defend itself. It's quite likely that extermination will also vastly strengthen the position of the pro-war party in the Southern Song, which would now devote even more of its resources towards military preparation and subterfuge. You'd also see less movement into India and Central Europe as Mongol troops are needed to kill millions in China.

Thing is though, it definitely happened IOTL in the Xi-Xia Empire; large scale genocide/ ethnocide which wiped out a huge population. Historically, Xi-Xia's population was cited as being roughly 3 million hu (families)- a 'hu' at this time averaged around 5 people, so that's a total of 15 million people. No more accurate estimates exist because the Mongols destroyed them all. The Tangut peoples were all effectively eliminated, and the vast majority of those few who escaped extermination only did so by joining the Mongol Empire. They were assimilated completely, with their remaining troops incorporated into the Mongol armies and granted Semu caste status.

For comparison, the contemporary Jin Dynasty had a population of 8.4 million hu (with their official records citing 6.6 people per hu) at this time. The two empires' population densities prior to the Mongol Invasions, and the subsequent genocide of the Tangut people, were practically identical. If the Mongols had wanted to rape and pillage all of the Jin's cities to the ground, and to wipe out the Jurchen people in the same way, they probably could have done it just as comprehensively. But yes, they'd have been left with a smaller and a far, far less populous empire as a result.
 
Thing is though, it definitely happened IOTL in the Xi-Xia Empire; large scale genocide/ ethnocide which wiped out a huge population. Historically, Xi-Xia's population was cited as being roughly 3 million hu (families)- a 'hu' at this time averaged around 5 people, so that's a total of 15 million people. No more accurate estimates exist because the Mongols destroyed them all. The Tangut peoples were all effectively eliminated, and the vast majority of those few who escaped extermination only did so by joining the Mongol Empire. They were assimilated completely, with their remaining troops incorporated into the Mongol armies and granted Semu caste status.

For comparison, the contemporary Jin Dynasty had a population of 8.4 million hu (with their official records citing 6.6 people per hu) at this time. The two empires' population densities prior to the Mongol Invasions, and the subsequent genocide of the Tangut people, were practically identical. If the Mongols had wanted to rape and pillage all of the Jin's cities to the ground, and to wipe out the Jurchen people in the same way, they probably could have done it just as comprehensively. But yes, they'd have been left with a smaller and a far, far less populous empire as a result.
No, the Mongols wouldn't be as successful. The Mongols were successful because, among other things, they managed to employ defectors from the Jin and Song. If the people of Jin and Song find nothing to be gained by defecting to the Mongols, they won't. So exceedingly harsh policies will make things harder for the Mongols, not easier. Even if the Mongols aren't out to kill all of the Jin's inhabitants (they were quite dependent on Jin's Khitans, for example, but the Mongols had good relations with the Khitans), you can be sure that the response by the other peoples in the Jin would be much fiercer and probably braver if they know they only face annihilation.
 
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