Pax Mongolica • Hacker News Board

Re: Pax Mongolica

#21

Post by mbubb » Mon, Dec 29, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

restalis wrote: post #19

mbubb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply had to visit Mongolia and did at the earliest I could. I loved it when I was there in the mid 90s. Very challenging place for me to be and it took me out of my shell a bit. Nothing was obvious for me at the time... ("is that a restaurant or a private house?, etc) I think about this book all the time. I am honestly nto enough of a historian to judge it overall but the portrait of Ghengis Khan is very striking…

"How did they conquer without leaving a standing army? If they were so brutal then those left behind would revolt, eventually." From the "Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia"¹ about cities which opposed resistance: 1. Otrar - "Genghis killed many of the inhabitants, enslaved the rest" 2. Bukhara - "Survivors from the citadel were executed, artisans and craftsmen were sent back to Mongolia, young men who had not fought were…

Well - except they did not leave a standing army. Once they get up to Hungary they have thousands of km to get back.

Genghis' goal was always to return. Not occupy. They had to make sure they could get back.

Re: Pax Mongolica

#22

Post by aminok » Mon, Dec 29, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

eldargab wrote: post #5

lqdc13 wrote: post #2

It also completely destroyed Russian culture for example and set them back hundreds of years[1]. Payments to Mongols continued up until almost 1500. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27#Impac...

It doesn't. Even link you provided says about that. In fact, according to many historians, the only reason which made Mongolian expansion possible, was high degree of infighting and corruption within seized territories. This concerns not only Rus, but Bulgars, Khwarezm, etc. By establishing strong "fair" law they stopped long lasted inner-conflicts and "made life better".

"By establishing strong "fair" law they stopped long lasted inner-conflicts and "made life better"."

They established fair law for 80 years at most, and at the price of killing off a substantial percentage of the peasantry (who the Mongols, as pastoralists, viewed individually as less valuable than a horse) of conquered regions. In Iran, the depopulation led to the underground irrigation system, known as the qanats, falling into disrepair, which led to formerly productive agricultural lands drying up, and the region regressing from agriculture to pastoralism. In the absence of a productive countryside, some of the largest cities never recovered until the 20th century.

Re: Pax Mongolica

#23

Post by maga » Mon, Dec 29, 2014, 8:48 PM UTC

Agathos wrote: post #9

maga wrote: post #8

Folks, what is this doing here?

Somebody's been browsing Wikipedia while watching Marco Polo.

Well, I guess they no longer teach history in middle school.

Re: Pax Mongolica

#24

Post by skaevola » Mon, Dec 29, 2014, 10:00 PM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #17

mbubb wrote: post #16

The book that heydenberk mentions above is remarkable in that it presents a very different picture of the 'ruthless Mongol hordes' as a well disciplined and very flexible moving force. The thing to consider if they were so brutish as presented in books and media then they would have collapsed from within. And if they were simply brutal eventually there would have been revolt. The book presents them as able to learn q…

I agree that they were certainly a disciplined and flexible moving force. But I also think they were every bit as brutal as presented in books. I'm not the most studied person on Mongol history but the impression I'm left with is that you can piece together accounts of the Mongol invasion in the texts of ancient russia, europe, china and the middle east. In russia they call them the huns, in europe there's a legend o…

You're mixing up your history. The Huns were an entirely different nomadic people (separated from the Mongol Empire by about a thousand years). Prestor John was a mythical Christian king who lived beyond the Islamic lands and whose land was full of wealth and treasures.

Re: Pax Mongolica

#25

Post by encoderer » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 12:32 AM UTC

skaevola wrote: post #24

encoderer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that they were certainly a disciplined and flexible moving force. But I also think they were every bit as brutal as presented in books. I'm not the most studied person on Mongol history but the impression I'm left with is that you can piece together accounts of the Mongol invasion in the texts of ancient russia, europe, china and the middle east. In russia they call them the huns, in europe there's a legend o…

You're mixing up your history. The Huns were an entirely different nomadic people (separated from the Mongol Empire by about a thousand years). Prestor John was a mythical Christian king who lived beyond the Islamic lands and whose land was full of wealth and treasures.

No I'm not.

The russians of the time called the mongols by the ancient name "huns." Or at least, those that wrote the history did.

Prestor John was the mythical christian king who was purportedly laying waste to Islam from the east as Europe was attacking in the crusades from the west. Of course, at that time, it was Genghis Khan that was attacking the Islamic states from the west.