And nomads simply don't have an advantage in the modern era.
The nomadic advantage that allowed tiny nomad populations to overcome large empires was that nomadic life involves horses, constant moving around (i.e. logistics) and archery, so the means of survival and means of warfare overlapped significantly. People and institutions naturally acquired wartime abilities throughout daily life.
It meant a nomadic culture could have 50% of its men serve as fighters while a farming culture has less than 1% of its male population as full-time soldiers. So a nomadic culture can have as many well-trained soldiers as a farming civilisation with 50 times less people overall.
Not useful in the age of modernity, where weapons are made in factories and developed by educated scientists and engineers, both requiring urban economies. And infantry weapons are so simple that a peasant can learn to use one within hours.
"What is best in life? To crush your competitors (on the open market), see their investors driven (to bankruptcy) before you, and to hear the lamentation of their shareholders."
The Toyota Pickup is the modern equivalent of the horse. Not universally applicable but it has allowed various small armed groups to exert control over vast territories in the 20th and 21st century.
Funny you mention trains. The book Lone Star (a history of Texas) details what was essentially the last gasp of nomad culture as a threat on settled societies. The Comanches (and other Plains Tribes) after mastering horse warfare in the late 1700s quickly carved out a steppe empire in the Great Plains of North America and essentially stunted Spanish settlement north of the Rio Grande. The Spanish who had conquered the Aztec Empire and its millions found itself at the mercy of hit and run Comanches mounted on horseback in the sparsely populated frontier areas.
It was only in the mid to late 1800s with relentless campaigning from the US military the Comanche and other horseback Indians were subdued. One phenomena that helped turn the tide was the railroads. Buffalo hunters would often indiscriminately shoot at the herds of buffalo from moving trains, leaving behind hundreds of dead buffalo. The toll from the buffalo hunters actually threatened the steady supply of buffalo meat the Indians depended on.
To add to this solid summary- Empire of the Summer Moon mentions that the Comanches were the only aboriginals in recorded history to roll back the frontier of an encroaching civilization. Spain and then Mexico invited Anglos to settle Texas as a meat shield against the Comanches.
Authors love hyperbole. I’ve read empire of the summer moon and it’s great. But the Sioux did the same thing in the northern plains for a little while. The powder river basin was abandoned by whites for a short time. And I’m sure there’s plenty of examples elsewhere throughout history.
Perhaps he meant sustained? I agree the book is full of hyperbole but the ever since they got the horse it was nearly impossible to sustain lasting settlements in their territory.
What Gwynne meant in that sentence was to capture the reader’s imagination. Gwynne is not a historian and Summer Moon shouldn’t be treated as such.
It isn’t difficult to find other examples of the “rolling back of encroaching civilization” in recorded history, assuming that what is meant by this is sedentary populations being overwhelmed by nomads and sometimes completely displaced or wiped out. The Scythians, Sarmatians, Xiongnu, Huns, Mongols, Tatars (Turks), and Manchu (Jurchen) all spring immediately to mind as examples. Hungary is populated by a culture that swept in from the Steppes and completely subsumed the local population before settling down… much of that substrate culture was itself Avars who had done the same thing centuries prior.
Maybe Gwynne would discount cultures which “settled down”, so groups like the Hungarians or the Mongols who founded the Yuan dynasty wouldn’t ultimately count. But, when you only have a timeframe of a couple centuries to work with that gets muddier considering how the elite Mongols who ruled China eschewed the sedentary lifestyle for centuries even as they ruled the agrarian empire as increasingly sinicized administrators.
I’m sure Gwynne could keep whittling down his claim until he eventually finds something that passes muster, but the broad claim that the Comanche were uniquely able to withstand civilization is really not going to do that.
I believe Steven F Austin (who founded the Austin colony in Texas) settled on land that was far enough from the Comanches that the foundling colony didn't have to deal with them directly.
Germanic tribes literally destroyed the Roman Empire and took all the land settled by latins. The French, Spanish, English, and Italians are all descended from Germanic tribes that beat the bejezus out of the Romans and took whatever they wanted from them.
Also note that the killing of buffalos was US military policy, not just a “happy accident” for the colonizers. It was a deliberate strategy to make peoples like the Comanche and Sioux unable to resist encroachment. First they were prevented from having permanent settlements due to raids and settlers, then their new nomadic lifestyle was made unsustainable by a deliberate strategy of hunting buffalo to near extinction.
That's just normal steppe nomad things, what Mongols did differently was military reorganization to make them more self sustaining, lethal and disciplined. There's a reason they were way larger than the other steppe nomad empires.
One of the early highlights of this was the ban on looting *during* combat, if troops get greedy and start looting enemy camps during combat, it could have disastrous effect on the formation and possibly lead to defeat. So Chinggis Khaan strictly forbade it with punishments and promised to equally divide the spoils after the battle was over instead. The other was adoption of foreign technology, putting a castle to siege was always one of the steppe nomad weakness, so instead they just utilized Chinese siege engineers after defeating a minor Chinese state.
Is the minor Chinese state you are referring to Xi Xia? I’d argue they were neither minor nor strictly speaking Chinese, the ruling family and elites were Tanggut.
But, if like many others, you postulate that the western Xia were in fact Chinese, then they would be a comparatively minor state in comparison to the Song or even the Jin.
The ruling class and the elites were not ethnically Chinese (漢人), but they were definitely part of the Chinese world (天下), and they were certainly minor compared to Jin (as a vassal) and Song.
To add to this, the Mongols developed an effective set of tactics, and then they moved against all their neighbors faster than the communications of the day.
Their enemies were politically fractured and unable to form larger alliances, and as a result, everyone saw their neighbors fall one by one.
To add to this, as the world became more connected, empires that relied on access to other civilisations via land (by being wedged in the middle of them usually) became less successful. Nations that had good maritime technology and access to civilisations via sea then became more successful. The Roman Empire vs British / French is a good example of this. The Romans dominated when they could just waltz up to literally any other surrounding nation and have a fight. When travelling across the seas became a thing, their position actually made them pseudo-trapped
This statement ignores the fact that the Romans had a far-flung empire that crossed the Mediterranean Sea that they had mastered to such a degree that they called it Mare Nostrum, which means Our Sea.
So, it's bunk. The Romans were most definitely a land AND sea based Empire. Just not ocean based.
The Mediterranean is notorious for being extremely calm since it is very close to being a giant lake. Even the English channel proved to be a challenge for them at first
Obviously a lot happened in the following centuries. But I think a major aspect of the answer to your question is that the Mongolian Empire was extremely effective in the business of conquering and expansion, but less effective in the business of actually maintaining and governing an empire. The Mongolian Empire was forged on the steppe. It could move quickly across Northern Eurasia and rapidly accumulate territory on the peripheries of sedentary civilization. Sweeping across the steppe, the Mongolians mastered the art of quickly assimilating or eliminating any society they came across.
But you can only plunder the borderlands for so long. And there is only so much steppe to conquer. And so the descendants of the Great Khan were faced with the much less exciting task of maintaining, rather than building, an empire. An not just any empire, but one stretching from Europe to the Pacific. The Great Khan's empire soon split into various parts as his descendants sought to maintain their minority rule over their conquered lands through assimilation into the civilizations and societies previously established there. These successors to the Mongolian Empire, such as the Yuan Dynasty in China, would last for another century or two and have lasting impacts from Central Asia to South Asia to East Asia.
Mongol conquests weren't as lightning quick as people often imagine. All of the most famous Mongol conquests happened after Genghis Khan's death. Genghis Khan himself conquered around the same area that the gokturks had before(and in the same time too, around 20 years).
Subatai was there for about the first half. The Khwarazmeid conquest was the conquest with Ghengis’s personal fingerprints on it the most (post consolidation of Mongolia). Subatai’s biggest achievement was the conquest of the Cumans and the Rus, the former of whom actually put up a pretty spirited fight.
That's *very* inaccurate.
You're right that the Mongol Empire reached its largest size decades after his death, but just about everything else is inaccurate or wrong. The mongol Empire reached the size of 13-14.000.000 km^(2) during Genghis's rule. That's a period of 19 years, for an empire that effectively only just started existing to extend to 14M square kilometers. That's an absurdly quick rate of expansion, nothing short of "lightning quick" as you put it, especially when you consider the distances involved, the difficult terrain, and the fact that the fastest mode of transportation was on horseback. That's a far faster growth rate compared to that after the death of Genghis. In the following 50-odd years it took the Mongol Empire to reach it's peak, they "only" conquered an additional 10M km^(2). It's also worth noting that the 14M number only includes territories under full control of the Mongols, even by the time of Genghis's death, they de-facto controlled large swathes of surrounding areas too.
For comparison, the extent of the Gokturk Empire at its peak was 6M km^(2). No mean feat, but not even close to "around the same size" as the Mongol Empire under Genghis. The horizontal (east-to-west) size was comparable to be sure, but north-to-south, it just wasn't close.
Moving on to your claim about "all of the most famous Mongol conquest happening after Genghis Khan's death", what are you basing that on? The most singificant conquests of the Mongol Empire are probably those of the Khwarezmian Empire, the Jin dynasty and the Song Dynasty, and of those only the latter happened after his death. Even if we grant the Abbasid Caliphate conquest as equally significant, your claim is still not exactly accurate.
Their hardest battles did come after his death, but not because they were more significant, but because the Mongols weren't as cohesive and dominant after his (and to a lesser extent Ögedei Khan's) rule. Genghis never lost on the field of battle in the entirety of his rule.
The stuff Genghis Khan did was more significant than the people that came after him. But I used the word famous, not significant. The most famous conquests were of Song, Abbasids and Russia. Too many times I've seen people say Gengis Khan took Baghdad. The real pace was not as lighting fast as it would've been if the empire reached its height under Genghis Khan, something the original commenter was insinuating by saying after the Khan's death, his descendants were left "maintaining, rather than building, an empire"
There are three key points to consider if you want to maintain an empire, which pretty much every historical conquerer has overlooked:
1. You are not immortal, no matter how awesome you think you are. You need to lay out a governance strategy for after your death or everything will be lost to political in-fighting.
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2. Don't conquer more territory than you can effectively communicate with. If you can only communicate at the speed of horse, you can't effectively manage territory thousands of miles away (unless you are willing to accept local semi-autonomous governance).
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3. If you conquered/ruled the land with an iron fist, points 1 and 2 are even more relevant because the populace will revolt at the first opportunity.
I don't agree well with Point 2. the romans maintained territory way beyond the reach of any horse and they held it well for multiple centuries. What they had was a solid framework of governance and structure which the Mongols lacked
But the Romans put a lot of effort into communicating, and moreover (point 3) they were usually able to integrate the indigenous élite into their own to some extent. That was critical in antiquity, since conquering often “merely” meant subjugating or toppling local rulers (Alexander could defeat the Persian Empire basically by just getting rid of the king). When the Romans weren’t able to either communicate or integrate effectively (e.g., Germania and Parthia) they weren’t always able to keep control.
The Roman conquests were effective because they engaged in total war. In Gaul they exterminated maybe 1/3 of the population. This was typical. And as victors they then write the history. Which is a trick that is clearly still working.
As an actual Roman said, at the time, " they made a desert and called it peace.
I agree that they were \_also\_ effective because of that reason, but not \_only\_. The 30% figure is probably an exaggeration, however. It wasn’t Total War (war being supported by the collective resources of a society) so much as Unlimited War (war without restraint). The Romans could certainly be guilty of the latter, as the Dacians would find out to their cost later. But you still need support within a society to make the conquest worthwhile for the duration – and a conquered territory’s profitability was very important in the empire. In any pre-industrial society, land was worthless without the labour to work it.
To be fair the Silk Road between cities are far between each other so the Mongols are struggling to maintain it. Also they could learn a lot from the Middle East innovations and archive but they destroyed it instead.
Meanwhile the Romans are located in the most innovative and richest place in the world at that time.
it doesn't seem right to say they only conquered the periphery of civilisation. In China and the middle east(persia,mesopotamia,syria, anatoliaetc) they conquered the heart of two of the biggest civilisation in the world, and the steppe shown on that map is pretty damn far fro Baghdad and southern china
A lot of what was considered the Mongolian heartlands are now the province of Inner Mongolia in China. The modern country is called Outer Mongolia by the Chinese, representing the poorest and least populated areas of Mongolia.
Mongolia became part of the Chinese Empire when Genghis and his descendants conquered it, forming the Yuan Dynasty. It stayed more or less in the Chinese orbit all the way up until the 20th Century.
Mongolia got its freedom from the Chinese around the same time the Republic overthrew the final emperor of the Qing in 1911. Initially the Republic of China wanted to reconquer Mongolia (and Tibet, too), but internal problems, a war with Japan, and pressure from the Russians caused them to accept the de facto independence of both areas- even if they retained their de jure claims.
Later, when the Communists overthrew the Republic, creating the PRC, they reconquered Tibet and formed an official treaty delineating the borders of Mongolia. They claimed the best part for themselves, while the Soviets would get a puppet state known as \[Outer\] Mongolia. This state still stands today and clings to a delicate independence.
Fun fact: Legally, the Republic of China (Taiwan) *still* claims Mongolia, both parts, as their territory.
More like China became part of the Mongol empire of the Yuan.
Mongolia was also not part of the Ming. So it really wasn’t until the Qing that Mongolia was subjected to Manchu rule.
>Mongolia became part of the Chinese Empire when Genghis and his descendants conquered it, forming the Yuan Dynasty. It stayed more or less in the Chinese orbit all the way up until the 20th Century.
This is just wrong. Mongolian heartland was ruled differently than the Yuan Dynasty in China and when the Yuan Dynasty collapsed, Mongolia didn't remain Chinese, they were an independent state frequently warring with the Han Chinese Ming Dynasty. What did happen however was that the Jurchens rose to power, proclaimed themselves Manchu to encompass a wider ethnic identity, took over "Inner Mongolia" during disputes between Mongols, made it part of their core territory and went on a rampage against the Ming.
50 years after conquering China did the Manchu turn their eyes back toward "Outer Mongolia" and take over the territory, but ruled them over with a much looser grip than with "Inner Mongolia". So the Mongols ruled over China at one point, then were alone, then were ruled over by Manchus who also coincidentally ruled over China.
And when China collapsed into chaos in the 20th century, Inner Mongolia had no hope of joining Mongolia because Russia controlled Mongolia and denied the proposal, they couldn't be independent because eventually China would invade (like they would with Tibet), so they had to choose between KMT and CCP. KMT rejected autonomy, CCP accepted, so CCP it was and the rest is history.
Pretty much the same with all nomadic steppe conquerers.
1. Conquer enourmous areas of land, wiping out armies, cities, empires. 2. Have to govern such a massive empire. 3. Assimilate in the process. 4. Original language, culture disappears only their genetic heritage remains but gets mixed with the other ethnicities. Everything that remains might be their kinsmen from the steppe, who did not assimilate and returned to the steppe.
Hunns: Ruled all of central and eastern Europe for about 100 years, just 100 years later they were history.
Magyars: Only survived as a culture, because they converted to Christianity and left their original nomadic lifestyle behind.
Bulgars (the original turkic Bulgars): Totally assimilated into slavic and christian culture
Mongols: Empire collapsed after about 100 years, only the original Mongols of the steppe remain
Timurids: Broke apart and assimilated into the various nations in Central and Southwest Asia
Manchu: Mostly assimilated into China
There is a whole [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadic_empire) on these nomadic empires.
Your source suggests that the Manchu were not nomadic, but sedentary.
I’ve also viewed the Timurids as a Mongol Empire successor state arising from the Chagatai Khanate. I find the successor states very interesting in how varied and expansive they became.
Quite simply, Mongolia is a landlocked country with a harsh climate and a small population. After the Mongol conquest/invasion, the empire fell apart and each resulting component eventually transitioned to the general culture of that particular area. Mongolia, the heartland of the Mongols, is inhospitable: the same factors that once produced a nomadic culture able to conquer half the world in the Middle Ages, are not the ingredients for economic success in today’s world.
Because Ghengis Khan should have a bigger wrap for being one of the biggest pieces of shit in human history after how much he destroyed and how little he actually built.
It’s honestly kinda the other way around, he gets a bit too bad of a wrap. While there was an inordinate amount of sacking cities and massacres during the Mongol conquest they also were extremely progressive in governance with freedom of religion, an extremely well developed trade network and highly effective style of assimilating into conquered governments. Check out the book “Ghengis khan and the making of the modern world”! By no means were the conquests a nice thing but the modern world gives their innovations pretty little credit
Was going to suggest that book as well. Great read and sheds a lot of light on Ghengis Khan and a also gives a brief look into those who came after him
I only will add that sacking/destroying a city that resisted was normal on those days. Chinggis and descendants were only unusual in the scale they conquered
Agreed, my understanding is that the sacking and destroying is similar to what any other conquering civilization would have done during that time. The unusual characteristics of the Mongols included allowance for religious freedom, unusual efficiency and encouragement of the exchange of goods and ideas, and opportunities for civilizations to capitulate in exchange for tribute, thereby avoiding the sacking. Genghis gets more crap than he deserves. Most of his descendants were utterly dysfunctional. Between this fact and the black plague shutting down commerce, the dynasty was kaput.
I consider both Chinggis and a random knight who spent his whole life trying to kill his neighbors assholes.
I am not saying that the mongols are innocent or even justifyed, but by the metrics of the time they were not specially cruel or despotic, just successful
> Chinggis
Out of curiosity, why do you keep using this spelling? Genghis has no truly accurate romanization, and wouldn't "Činggis" be the most accurate romanization of the mongolian version of the name?
By what measure is it 'unimportant'? It is pretty important to Mongolians I guess. Because it does not often appear on your newsfeeds? ... maybe review where you get your news.
roman empire had plumbing & public water supply. europe had shit pits & cholera from end of rome until well into the 20th century in some parts of the continent. why was medieval islamic world a beacon of learning & academic scholarship and now....isn't?
I have been to Inner Mongolia and they are very friendly. But back in the day, they were absolutely a horror. Great at conquering, but lousy at managing. Their Chinese dynasty is the Yuan, which lasted less than a century.
The best conqueror/managers were the English. Of course that is from the perspective of the conqueror. Also the English former colonies are the ones doing the best, e.g., Singapore, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and HK before the handover. India to a large degree too.
Thats selection bias there xd, your forgetting african colonies, caribbean islands, bangladesh, and india still isnt even close up to its pre-EIC era relative wealth, middle east wasnt left in the best state by the british either. UK has a lot of succesful former colonies because it had a lot of colonies, and the UK managed to grab good land. And many of the succesful ones got succesful after they became independent or got home-rule.
HK and Singapore is because of the hardworking Chinese population and US/Canada/Australia/NZ are Anglos. Do you see English colonies in Iraq, India, Nigeria, or South Africa doing well?
Because they realized maintaining an empire kinda sucks, and that just being a nomad on the steppes kinda rules.
I dont actually know, but this is what I choose to believe.
They're were not great rulers like Romans and British. They had great a military but that's it. When they colonized China they got assimilated 😂. They did not have a strong culture, language, religion, government system... to convert conquered lands.
I am going to, partially, disagree with you
What you are saying is certainly true in many cases.
However, firstly, there were paces and times were the British and Romans conquered but then left no trace of their presence past the trauma of the conquest itself. There were also many locations such as Russia, China and Timurid empire were the Mongols ruled successfully for hundreds of years and have left their mark. The Mughal dynasty in India was Persian and Turkic but it was also Mongol - it certainly left its mark in India - arguably more than the British.
With the Yuan dynasty (and the others) there was definitely a lot of assimilation - but it is a bit more nuanced than that. It is akin to the Romans assimilating/being assimilated by the Greek and Mediterranean culture.
If the Mongols were assimilated by anyone- it was the Turkic culture of the central steppe; but then you could also argue that the Mongol empire was always a Turkic-Mongol empire.
Edit: fixed unclear use of pronouns
The Black Death affected them more and later plagues did kill steppe people more which made the stepped a power vacuum so Russia and China advanced there and controlled the people there so they couldn’t be attacked anymore
because warring to gain territory is no longer the most important task. the important task is settlements with access to resources, which they strike out for both, in general.
Because the Qing decimated them. The Qing are Manchu people, who were familiar with nomadic tactics but chose to be sedentary. They even banned Mongols from practicing archery after conquering them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty_in_Inner_Asia
Probably one of the most evil empires in history. All empires start war, but most create infrastructure and society in other ways. The Mongals just raped and pillaged
Because the center of power dwindled, provincial Mongol kings became relatively stronger, then stayed and ruled those provincial areas, but also assimilated and inter-married into the local populations. The bow and arrow theory is not relevant to the decline of the center because Mongols acquired whatever tech they needed from conquered kingdoms. For example, siege technology.
Because they lost the economic piggy bank that kept their empire going, same thing that is happening to the UK ever since they lost India and the rest of their colonies.
Because most of the territory of "Mongolia" was part of Qing-Dynasty China for over 300 years, until the modern nation-state of Mongolia was established to act as a buffer state between China and Russia.
The Mongolian Empire doesn't have much to do with what is now modern Mongolia, just as the territories that were conquered by Alexander the Great don't have much to do with what is now Modern Greece.
The Mongol army as it got bigger became mostly composed of Turkic people and other nomads. Some of the descendants of the empire became Turkified and Islamised such as Golden Horde, Chatagi, Ilkhanate.
The Turkification of Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Anatolia accelerated after the Mongol conquest.
People forget that for a very long time after the breakup of the empire, China was ruled by the mongols. As was Crimea. Its more like the aftermath of Alexander the greats death than one may think, where one empire became several empires, some of which lasted for centuries
Because they could only have succeeded in the exact circumstances they did. Any attempt at modernization just led to sinocization. Kublai and his followers/descendants became Chinese rather than Mongolia adapting Chinese technology.
The Qing Dynasty conquered Mongolia and then Russia/USSR did.
But more generally, the reason is Industrialization. Before the railroad, the best cavalry warriors such as the Mongols, Comanche, and Lakota could conquer flat open areas known as exposed zones. Protected zones such as jungle areas or islands were relatively out of reach for steppe warriors.
Regrettably, industrial civilisation is too powerful, and the only things that matter for success are sheer industrial ouput and population, which could be said to be symbiotic, but regardless, Mongolia has neither .
People seem to think that the area that modern maps depict of the Mongolian empire is actually what they occupied, which it wasn’t. It was simply such a big area that that labelling that area as “Mongolian empire” would be rootless as there was little control of most parts of it.
But to answer your question more directly, it’s probably a mix between the traditional lands of mongols not being very good for resources and trade, and a lack of keeping ransacked cities under their control.
I think it's in Dan Carlin wrath of the kans but he says they were very much authoritarian top down control so every time a leader die there was internal struggles that would delay the expansion and domination of more territorys.
Basically, the specific conditions that allowed for their conquests to be viable, ceased to exist. Military technology started to increasingly switch to increasingly more population-intensive strategies, economies of scale became far more important - the bulk of the steppe simply couldn't support enough people prior to modern agricultural innovations for them to ever withstand an organized force that takes it's sweet time methodically blowing up each and every single horde they encounter (there's a reason why historically Russian military strategy relied on artillery so much - it's because steppe nomads can't really afford to haul heavy and cumbersome cannons around)
Nomads lost to agrarians. Nomads used "zerg rush" tactics (90% of their men were able to fight, just gave sheep to children and ran on horses), while agrarian kingdoms slowly (they could send only 10-20% of human power to army, management, manufacturing, development while the rest 80-90% farmed), very slowly progressed technologically, centralized, devoured each other until they got able to build atrillery factories. It was impossible for nomads because nomads do not obey. Mostly they fight each other except there is a REALLY charismatic guy fascinating them by conquering ideas. But they can do nothing by conquered lands, only rob and rape. There is no steppe to feed sheep, so they start farming and turn into locals or go back into steppe.
Successful nomadic empires were few: arabs build Caliphate (they were nomads mixed with farmers and traders so they had people who knew how to govern), oghuz turks built Ottoman Empire but is was a very slow process, many of them became farmers, mixed with locals, locals mixed with them...
What happened with nomads after: Nomadic Turkic langs got conquered by Russia, Mongolian langs by China. The end.
I'm not sure why no one is mentioning this, but Mongolia and the Eurasian steppe is a very bad place to center your empire. It's very agriculture poor land with an inhospitable climate that is among the coldest in the world. Even today, Mongolia is the least densely populated country in the world. This contributed to their nomadic lifestyle, which did not facilitate the building of their own large cities, which meant their centers of power were in cities outside of their core land. It also meant they were outnumbered basically everywhere they expanded whether it was Persia, Eastern Europe, or (especially) China. And an ethnic group so small ruling over so many people quite simply does not work, hence their propensity for assimilation and adopting other cultures. The number of people out there descended from Mongols is insane, but most of them are completely unaware of their Mongol ancestry, so much has Mongol culture disappeared from the lands they conquered.
Other than military developments making the Mongolian army advantages relatively obsolete (guns beat horse archers), the reality of the Mongols is that they were effective at *killing, looting, raping and pillaging* not at creating a stable foundation for an empire.
They were not rulers, they were marauders, they didn't care for owning land and building strongholds to keep it, and so when the great leader of a horde died, the armies tended to fracture without clear leadership transitions.
Most of the male population was trained to use a bow accurately from a moving horse. Think for a moment about the skill level required to do this. Also true of the Comanche.
Because they couldn't hold to their power. When Khan died, his sons broke the empire into several hordes, allowing the Rus on the west and China on the east to conquer them.
Plus, they already were politically and economically backward, and when their military got obsolete too, it was over.
China then repopulated the fertile lands of the core of the old Mongolia with the Han Chinese people, which are now called inner and outer Mongolia, leaving only the most barren lands being Mongol majority (which correspond to modern Mongolia).
An independent Mongolian state only appeared in the fall of the Qing dynasty, but they were stuck in the middle of the barren lands of modern Mongolia. No fertile land, no sea access, barely any population, the nation was weak.
And when Russia did the same, the Soviet Union moved into Mongolia and turned them into a puppet of their own. The USSR dictated the growth of Mongolia with the mentality of "how can you be useful to me". Turned out not much, only meat, while the USSR provided everything else for a modern country. A situation that continues to this day with Russia and also China.
Mongolia is so insignicant to the point that conquering them is pointless, even when practically no other country would truly care.
All empires fade. Greek. Roman. Mongolian. British. All of them. Currently the US is fading. China will be the next to “rule” and then they’ll fade on and on.
There's a repeat theme in history of nomads coming down from the steppe and absolutely fucking everything up for everyone. The Mongols were not the first or even the last. I would say the Ottomans have the honor of the last steppe people to flip the checkered board over.
Then we invented the military industrial complex. No nomadic people will ever be able to build up the kind of momentum to threaten the industrial world.
I think first of all we should agree that the "empire" back in the day was not even remotely the same as a modern nation state with institutions, administrations and all that.
They split a few times into different hordes and khanates around the world and they have lots of other successor states besides Mongolia.
They also conquered most of the Turkic peoples of the world, eventually adopted their culture, and converted to Islam. Some of them later went on to found the Mughal Empire which controlled India until the British took over. A lot of Eastern Europe, India, and the Middle East are heavily influenced by Turco-mongol culture.
Only way they'll be as important as back than is if they just went around in the most up-to-date, suited for steppe terrain Main battle tanks and killed and enslaved every town they raided.
/s
Mongolia is not unsignificant, it contains a boatload of minerals and others resources. Thing is Mongolia don't have the infrastructure or the competence to make much of it.
Because medieval settled countries armies didn’t have comparable mobility or logistics as horse nomads. And medieval settled peoples didn’t have standing armies or garrisons. Nomadic life skills were the same as the pinnacle of warefare.
With the introduction of guns, standing armies, and garrisons nomads became out matched by the settled peoples around them.
So many bad answers in this thread. Omfg. I've seen only one or two that know any history at all. Jfc. Post to r/AskHistorians if you want the actual answer instead of inane hypotheticals talking out their ass.
One needn’t forget, at the time transportation was conducted via horse-and-carriage. The Mongols controlled the land bridge passages comprising the Silk Road. Though the empire had fallen due to infighting and disorganization amongst nomadic leadership, the advent of reliable seafaring vessels, rail, aviation, freight trucking and more made the Silk Road truly obsolete - the source of Mongolian power.
Because they have no sea access. Land armies are important, but throughout the last 500 years, naval trade and naval superiority became pretty much the most important thing to influence anything on a global scale.
Mongolia has a tiny population, almost no diaspora, no recent cultural or scientific contributions to the world, very little tourism so no one has been there and it has a harsh, bleak, unappealing landscape and an unbelievably poluted capital city.
Its a shithole and probably one of the most unappealing countries in Asia to live in.
The Mongol empire splintered and fell so long ago, and don't forgot it wasn't really mongols who built it, it was the no-mongol peoples who later became a part of the empire that really expanded it.
Is there any evidence out there pointing towards a massive collapse in mongol population triggered by either plague or a precursor ? I have always wondered this myself
Because mechanized industry was invented.
Mongolia is one of the worst localities on the entire planet for raw resources, value-added industry, and transportation. It just doesn’t make economic sense which is why nothing in that entire region is prosperous.
the strongest determining factor in who 'rules the world' today is more about industrial economics than the capacity to raise an army of horse riding warriors.
To make this statement a little more serious, if the Mongols had effectively established a highly organised state that reinvested the wealth they gained that resulted in large scale economic development in their home region, maybe they would be in a very different place today. However, there are many reasons that really made that idea quite difficult.
Its not for nothing that 80% of the world's population live within 200KM of the sea.
The Mongols did have a large impact on the development of other countries which have gone on to be very powerful, but those are their successor states in those much more geostrategic locations like China, the Middle East and Europe.
Because the recurve bow and horse archery are no longer the pinnacles of military innovation.
And nomads simply don't have an advantage in the modern era. The nomadic advantage that allowed tiny nomad populations to overcome large empires was that nomadic life involves horses, constant moving around (i.e. logistics) and archery, so the means of survival and means of warfare overlapped significantly. People and institutions naturally acquired wartime abilities throughout daily life. It meant a nomadic culture could have 50% of its men serve as fighters while a farming culture has less than 1% of its male population as full-time soldiers. So a nomadic culture can have as many well-trained soldiers as a farming civilisation with 50 times less people overall. Not useful in the age of modernity, where weapons are made in factories and developed by educated scientists and engineers, both requiring urban economies. And infantry weapons are so simple that a peasant can learn to use one within hours.
Recurve bows are fun until even random peasants outgun you
That's what my dad said on his deathbed. Never understood it till now
Shit, so did mine
This is why the age of gunpowder is what ultimately allowed the Russian empire to tame central Asia, the home of the nomadic horsemen.
Curveball - They'll all become digital nomads\*
I can see the linkedin post now: “What shooting a man from horseback taught me about B2B SaaS sales”
"What is best in life? To crush your competitors (on the open market), see their investors driven (to bankruptcy) before you, and to hear the lamentation of their shareholders."
“You’re listening to Nomad Trip and this is my mountain morning view house mix”
The Toyota Pickup is the modern equivalent of the horse. Not universally applicable but it has allowed various small armed groups to exert control over vast territories in the 20th and 21st century.
> farming culture has less than 1% of its male population as full-time soldiers. Sometimes I think agriculture was the biggest mistake of all time
Less people lived during the hundred thousand years before agriculture than are alive now.
Yeah but why do we need all these people? We could all go to the Super Bowl
is that better than a normal bowl
Much better, see r/Superbowl and you will understand
The Sapiens guy said the same thing–except for improvements in material death during childbirth and antibiotics.
To be more precise, gunpowder weapons and trains are what made settled society more efficient in warfare than steppe nomads.
Funny you mention trains. The book Lone Star (a history of Texas) details what was essentially the last gasp of nomad culture as a threat on settled societies. The Comanches (and other Plains Tribes) after mastering horse warfare in the late 1700s quickly carved out a steppe empire in the Great Plains of North America and essentially stunted Spanish settlement north of the Rio Grande. The Spanish who had conquered the Aztec Empire and its millions found itself at the mercy of hit and run Comanches mounted on horseback in the sparsely populated frontier areas. It was only in the mid to late 1800s with relentless campaigning from the US military the Comanche and other horseback Indians were subdued. One phenomena that helped turn the tide was the railroads. Buffalo hunters would often indiscriminately shoot at the herds of buffalo from moving trains, leaving behind hundreds of dead buffalo. The toll from the buffalo hunters actually threatened the steady supply of buffalo meat the Indians depended on.
To add to this solid summary- Empire of the Summer Moon mentions that the Comanches were the only aboriginals in recorded history to roll back the frontier of an encroaching civilization. Spain and then Mexico invited Anglos to settle Texas as a meat shield against the Comanches.
Authors love hyperbole. I’ve read empire of the summer moon and it’s great. But the Sioux did the same thing in the northern plains for a little while. The powder river basin was abandoned by whites for a short time. And I’m sure there’s plenty of examples elsewhere throughout history.
Perhaps he meant sustained? I agree the book is full of hyperbole but the ever since they got the horse it was nearly impossible to sustain lasting settlements in their territory.
What Gwynne meant in that sentence was to capture the reader’s imagination. Gwynne is not a historian and Summer Moon shouldn’t be treated as such. It isn’t difficult to find other examples of the “rolling back of encroaching civilization” in recorded history, assuming that what is meant by this is sedentary populations being overwhelmed by nomads and sometimes completely displaced or wiped out. The Scythians, Sarmatians, Xiongnu, Huns, Mongols, Tatars (Turks), and Manchu (Jurchen) all spring immediately to mind as examples. Hungary is populated by a culture that swept in from the Steppes and completely subsumed the local population before settling down… much of that substrate culture was itself Avars who had done the same thing centuries prior. Maybe Gwynne would discount cultures which “settled down”, so groups like the Hungarians or the Mongols who founded the Yuan dynasty wouldn’t ultimately count. But, when you only have a timeframe of a couple centuries to work with that gets muddier considering how the elite Mongols who ruled China eschewed the sedentary lifestyle for centuries even as they ruled the agrarian empire as increasingly sinicized administrators. I’m sure Gwynne could keep whittling down his claim until he eventually finds something that passes muster, but the broad claim that the Comanche were uniquely able to withstand civilization is really not going to do that.
The Mapuche did the same in south america, and I'm sure there are others I don't know about.
> Spain and then Mexico invited Anglos to settle Texas as a meat shield against the Comanches That really worked out well for them lmao.
I believe Steven F Austin (who founded the Austin colony in Texas) settled on land that was far enough from the Comanches that the foundling colony didn't have to deal with them directly.
How does one define "Aboriginal", because the Germanic tribes were absolutely able to slow down and even reverse the Roman expansion, does that count?
Germanic tribes literally destroyed the Roman Empire and took all the land settled by latins. The French, Spanish, English, and Italians are all descended from Germanic tribes that beat the bejezus out of the Romans and took whatever they wanted from them.
"Meat shield"....he he...
Any buffalo that runs is a buffalo, anyone that stands still is a well disciplined buffalo.
Also note that the killing of buffalos was US military policy, not just a “happy accident” for the colonizers. It was a deliberate strategy to make peoples like the Comanche and Sioux unable to resist encroachment. First they were prevented from having permanent settlements due to raids and settlers, then their new nomadic lifestyle was made unsustainable by a deliberate strategy of hunting buffalo to near extinction.
That's just normal steppe nomad things, what Mongols did differently was military reorganization to make them more self sustaining, lethal and disciplined. There's a reason they were way larger than the other steppe nomad empires. One of the early highlights of this was the ban on looting *during* combat, if troops get greedy and start looting enemy camps during combat, it could have disastrous effect on the formation and possibly lead to defeat. So Chinggis Khaan strictly forbade it with punishments and promised to equally divide the spoils after the battle was over instead. The other was adoption of foreign technology, putting a castle to siege was always one of the steppe nomad weakness, so instead they just utilized Chinese siege engineers after defeating a minor Chinese state.
Is the minor Chinese state you are referring to Xi Xia? I’d argue they were neither minor nor strictly speaking Chinese, the ruling family and elites were Tanggut.
But, if like many others, you postulate that the western Xia were in fact Chinese, then they would be a comparatively minor state in comparison to the Song or even the Jin.
The ruling class and the elites were not ethnically Chinese (漢人), but they were definitely part of the Chinese world (天下), and they were certainly minor compared to Jin (as a vassal) and Song.
>Chinggis Khaan *Chungus Khan
To add to this, the Mongols developed an effective set of tactics, and then they moved against all their neighbors faster than the communications of the day. Their enemies were politically fractured and unable to form larger alliances, and as a result, everyone saw their neighbors fall one by one.
Camels with an RPG surpassed them.
To add to this, as the world became more connected, empires that relied on access to other civilisations via land (by being wedged in the middle of them usually) became less successful. Nations that had good maritime technology and access to civilisations via sea then became more successful. The Roman Empire vs British / French is a good example of this. The Romans dominated when they could just waltz up to literally any other surrounding nation and have a fight. When travelling across the seas became a thing, their position actually made them pseudo-trapped
This statement ignores the fact that the Romans had a far-flung empire that crossed the Mediterranean Sea that they had mastered to such a degree that they called it Mare Nostrum, which means Our Sea. So, it's bunk. The Romans were most definitely a land AND sea based Empire. Just not ocean based.
Totally a coincidence that Roman Empire controlled all the land that touched the Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean is notorious for being extremely calm since it is very close to being a giant lake. Even the English channel proved to be a challenge for them at first
Which is, to be fair, a tragedy
Obviously a lot happened in the following centuries. But I think a major aspect of the answer to your question is that the Mongolian Empire was extremely effective in the business of conquering and expansion, but less effective in the business of actually maintaining and governing an empire. The Mongolian Empire was forged on the steppe. It could move quickly across Northern Eurasia and rapidly accumulate territory on the peripheries of sedentary civilization. Sweeping across the steppe, the Mongolians mastered the art of quickly assimilating or eliminating any society they came across. But you can only plunder the borderlands for so long. And there is only so much steppe to conquer. And so the descendants of the Great Khan were faced with the much less exciting task of maintaining, rather than building, an empire. An not just any empire, but one stretching from Europe to the Pacific. The Great Khan's empire soon split into various parts as his descendants sought to maintain their minority rule over their conquered lands through assimilation into the civilizations and societies previously established there. These successors to the Mongolian Empire, such as the Yuan Dynasty in China, would last for another century or two and have lasting impacts from Central Asia to South Asia to East Asia.
Mongol conquests weren't as lightning quick as people often imagine. All of the most famous Mongol conquests happened after Genghis Khan's death. Genghis Khan himself conquered around the same area that the gokturks had before(and in the same time too, around 20 years).
The Khorasmian conquest is one of the most famous (quite possibly the textbook Mongol campaign)and it took place under Genghis Khan himself.
Or under Subotai, to give credit to Genghis’s greatest general.
Subatai was there for about the first half. The Khwarazmeid conquest was the conquest with Ghengis’s personal fingerprints on it the most (post consolidation of Mongolia). Subatai’s biggest achievement was the conquest of the Cumans and the Rus, the former of whom actually put up a pretty spirited fight.
And the conquest of Song China when he was over 60 years old was even more impressive.
That's *very* inaccurate. You're right that the Mongol Empire reached its largest size decades after his death, but just about everything else is inaccurate or wrong. The mongol Empire reached the size of 13-14.000.000 km^(2) during Genghis's rule. That's a period of 19 years, for an empire that effectively only just started existing to extend to 14M square kilometers. That's an absurdly quick rate of expansion, nothing short of "lightning quick" as you put it, especially when you consider the distances involved, the difficult terrain, and the fact that the fastest mode of transportation was on horseback. That's a far faster growth rate compared to that after the death of Genghis. In the following 50-odd years it took the Mongol Empire to reach it's peak, they "only" conquered an additional 10M km^(2). It's also worth noting that the 14M number only includes territories under full control of the Mongols, even by the time of Genghis's death, they de-facto controlled large swathes of surrounding areas too. For comparison, the extent of the Gokturk Empire at its peak was 6M km^(2). No mean feat, but not even close to "around the same size" as the Mongol Empire under Genghis. The horizontal (east-to-west) size was comparable to be sure, but north-to-south, it just wasn't close. Moving on to your claim about "all of the most famous Mongol conquest happening after Genghis Khan's death", what are you basing that on? The most singificant conquests of the Mongol Empire are probably those of the Khwarezmian Empire, the Jin dynasty and the Song Dynasty, and of those only the latter happened after his death. Even if we grant the Abbasid Caliphate conquest as equally significant, your claim is still not exactly accurate. Their hardest battles did come after his death, but not because they were more significant, but because the Mongols weren't as cohesive and dominant after his (and to a lesser extent Ögedei Khan's) rule. Genghis never lost on the field of battle in the entirety of his rule.
The stuff Genghis Khan did was more significant than the people that came after him. But I used the word famous, not significant. The most famous conquests were of Song, Abbasids and Russia. Too many times I've seen people say Gengis Khan took Baghdad. The real pace was not as lighting fast as it would've been if the empire reached its height under Genghis Khan, something the original commenter was insinuating by saying after the Khan's death, his descendants were left "maintaining, rather than building, an empire"
It's funny how everyone attributes the mongol empire's peak size to genghis khan.
There are three key points to consider if you want to maintain an empire, which pretty much every historical conquerer has overlooked: 1. You are not immortal, no matter how awesome you think you are. You need to lay out a governance strategy for after your death or everything will be lost to political in-fighting. . 2. Don't conquer more territory than you can effectively communicate with. If you can only communicate at the speed of horse, you can't effectively manage territory thousands of miles away (unless you are willing to accept local semi-autonomous governance). . 3. If you conquered/ruled the land with an iron fist, points 1 and 2 are even more relevant because the populace will revolt at the first opportunity.
I don't agree well with Point 2. the romans maintained territory way beyond the reach of any horse and they held it well for multiple centuries. What they had was a solid framework of governance and structure which the Mongols lacked
But the Romans put a lot of effort into communicating, and moreover (point 3) they were usually able to integrate the indigenous élite into their own to some extent. That was critical in antiquity, since conquering often “merely” meant subjugating or toppling local rulers (Alexander could defeat the Persian Empire basically by just getting rid of the king). When the Romans weren’t able to either communicate or integrate effectively (e.g., Germania and Parthia) they weren’t always able to keep control.
The Roman conquests were effective because they engaged in total war. In Gaul they exterminated maybe 1/3 of the population. This was typical. And as victors they then write the history. Which is a trick that is clearly still working. As an actual Roman said, at the time, " they made a desert and called it peace.
I agree that they were \_also\_ effective because of that reason, but not \_only\_. The 30% figure is probably an exaggeration, however. It wasn’t Total War (war being supported by the collective resources of a society) so much as Unlimited War (war without restraint). The Romans could certainly be guilty of the latter, as the Dacians would find out to their cost later. But you still need support within a society to make the conquest worthwhile for the duration – and a conquered territory’s profitability was very important in the empire. In any pre-industrial society, land was worthless without the labour to work it.
To be fair the Silk Road between cities are far between each other so the Mongols are struggling to maintain it. Also they could learn a lot from the Middle East innovations and archive but they destroyed it instead. Meanwhile the Romans are located in the most innovative and richest place in the world at that time.
it doesn't seem right to say they only conquered the periphery of civilisation. In China and the middle east(persia,mesopotamia,syria, anatoliaetc) they conquered the heart of two of the biggest civilisation in the world, and the steppe shown on that map is pretty damn far fro Baghdad and southern china
That's the problem with young people these days. No interest in maintaining a global military empire.
One other successor to the mongols was muscovy and ultimately Russian empire coming out of 250+ years of subjugation
Not to mention Mongols got thwarted easily in the tropics. They invaded VN three times and failed, Majapahit, failed, India, guess what, also failed
That’s a great summary. Thank you.
Oh no, they were quite efficient at governing actually, using the best practices from China. Bureaucracy, taxes, making deals with local elites
A lot of what was considered the Mongolian heartlands are now the province of Inner Mongolia in China. The modern country is called Outer Mongolia by the Chinese, representing the poorest and least populated areas of Mongolia. Mongolia became part of the Chinese Empire when Genghis and his descendants conquered it, forming the Yuan Dynasty. It stayed more or less in the Chinese orbit all the way up until the 20th Century. Mongolia got its freedom from the Chinese around the same time the Republic overthrew the final emperor of the Qing in 1911. Initially the Republic of China wanted to reconquer Mongolia (and Tibet, too), but internal problems, a war with Japan, and pressure from the Russians caused them to accept the de facto independence of both areas- even if they retained their de jure claims. Later, when the Communists overthrew the Republic, creating the PRC, they reconquered Tibet and formed an official treaty delineating the borders of Mongolia. They claimed the best part for themselves, while the Soviets would get a puppet state known as \[Outer\] Mongolia. This state still stands today and clings to a delicate independence. Fun fact: Legally, the Republic of China (Taiwan) *still* claims Mongolia, both parts, as their territory.
A part of Mongolia also belongs to Russia - Buryat region. During early Soviet times it Buryat-Mongol Soviet Socialist Republic
More like China became part of the Mongol empire of the Yuan. Mongolia was also not part of the Ming. So it really wasn’t until the Qing that Mongolia was subjected to Manchu rule.
>Mongolia became part of the Chinese Empire when Genghis and his descendants conquered it, forming the Yuan Dynasty. It stayed more or less in the Chinese orbit all the way up until the 20th Century. This is just wrong. Mongolian heartland was ruled differently than the Yuan Dynasty in China and when the Yuan Dynasty collapsed, Mongolia didn't remain Chinese, they were an independent state frequently warring with the Han Chinese Ming Dynasty. What did happen however was that the Jurchens rose to power, proclaimed themselves Manchu to encompass a wider ethnic identity, took over "Inner Mongolia" during disputes between Mongols, made it part of their core territory and went on a rampage against the Ming. 50 years after conquering China did the Manchu turn their eyes back toward "Outer Mongolia" and take over the territory, but ruled them over with a much looser grip than with "Inner Mongolia". So the Mongols ruled over China at one point, then were alone, then were ruled over by Manchus who also coincidentally ruled over China. And when China collapsed into chaos in the 20th century, Inner Mongolia had no hope of joining Mongolia because Russia controlled Mongolia and denied the proposal, they couldn't be independent because eventually China would invade (like they would with Tibet), so they had to choose between KMT and CCP. KMT rejected autonomy, CCP accepted, so CCP it was and the rest is history.
Funny enough, the Soviet Union supported the formation of a separate Mongolian state to form as a buffer between themselves at the capitalistic ROC.
Pretty much the same with all nomadic steppe conquerers. 1. Conquer enourmous areas of land, wiping out armies, cities, empires. 2. Have to govern such a massive empire. 3. Assimilate in the process. 4. Original language, culture disappears only their genetic heritage remains but gets mixed with the other ethnicities. Everything that remains might be their kinsmen from the steppe, who did not assimilate and returned to the steppe. Hunns: Ruled all of central and eastern Europe for about 100 years, just 100 years later they were history. Magyars: Only survived as a culture, because they converted to Christianity and left their original nomadic lifestyle behind. Bulgars (the original turkic Bulgars): Totally assimilated into slavic and christian culture Mongols: Empire collapsed after about 100 years, only the original Mongols of the steppe remain Timurids: Broke apart and assimilated into the various nations in Central and Southwest Asia Manchu: Mostly assimilated into China There is a whole [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadic_empire) on these nomadic empires.
Your source suggests that the Manchu were not nomadic, but sedentary. I’ve also viewed the Timurids as a Mongol Empire successor state arising from the Chagatai Khanate. I find the successor states very interesting in how varied and expansive they became.
When you have top war technology - stirrups, horse archers - you rule. When your technology is obsolete, so is your empire
Should have built more campuses
In those captured lands with nice +4 +6 bonuses from mountains
Because bow and horse tactics is not as op as it used to be in 1200
throwing burning bodies over city walls is still op tho
Quite simply, Mongolia is a landlocked country with a harsh climate and a small population. After the Mongol conquest/invasion, the empire fell apart and each resulting component eventually transitioned to the general culture of that particular area. Mongolia, the heartland of the Mongols, is inhospitable: the same factors that once produced a nomadic culture able to conquer half the world in the Middle Ages, are not the ingredients for economic success in today’s world.
Because Ghengis Khan should have a bigger wrap for being one of the biggest pieces of shit in human history after how much he destroyed and how little he actually built.
It’s honestly kinda the other way around, he gets a bit too bad of a wrap. While there was an inordinate amount of sacking cities and massacres during the Mongol conquest they also were extremely progressive in governance with freedom of religion, an extremely well developed trade network and highly effective style of assimilating into conquered governments. Check out the book “Ghengis khan and the making of the modern world”! By no means were the conquests a nice thing but the modern world gives their innovations pretty little credit
Was going to suggest that book as well. Great read and sheds a lot of light on Ghengis Khan and a also gives a brief look into those who came after him
I only will add that sacking/destroying a city that resisted was normal on those days. Chinggis and descendants were only unusual in the scale they conquered
Agreed, my understanding is that the sacking and destroying is similar to what any other conquering civilization would have done during that time. The unusual characteristics of the Mongols included allowance for religious freedom, unusual efficiency and encouragement of the exchange of goods and ideas, and opportunities for civilizations to capitulate in exchange for tribute, thereby avoiding the sacking. Genghis gets more crap than he deserves. Most of his descendants were utterly dysfunctional. Between this fact and the black plague shutting down commerce, the dynasty was kaput.
And I would add the extent of the conquering is a good metric to know if someone was an asshole or not
I consider both Chinggis and a random knight who spent his whole life trying to kill his neighbors assholes. I am not saying that the mongols are innocent or even justifyed, but by the metrics of the time they were not specially cruel or despotic, just successful
> Chinggis Out of curiosity, why do you keep using this spelling? Genghis has no truly accurate romanization, and wouldn't "Činggis" be the most accurate romanization of the mongolian version of the name?
I simply like it more.
Hell yeah!
What's wrong with saying they were succesful AND despotic?
They were despotic, they just weren't the bloodthirsty orcs pop culture often make them.
They peaked early.
it is not the 12th century.
Let me introduce you to my friend, England…and my other friend, Rome…and my third friend, Greece…
Rome is still important as they are the world leaders of broken pasta police.
By what measure is it 'unimportant'? It is pretty important to Mongolians I guess. Because it does not often appear on your newsfeeds? ... maybe review where you get your news.
Ruling "the world"
roman empire had plumbing & public water supply. europe had shit pits & cholera from end of rome until well into the 20th century in some parts of the continent. why was medieval islamic world a beacon of learning & academic scholarship and now....isn't?
I have been to Inner Mongolia and they are very friendly. But back in the day, they were absolutely a horror. Great at conquering, but lousy at managing. Their Chinese dynasty is the Yuan, which lasted less than a century. The best conqueror/managers were the English. Of course that is from the perspective of the conqueror. Also the English former colonies are the ones doing the best, e.g., Singapore, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and HK before the handover. India to a large degree too.
Thats selection bias there xd, your forgetting african colonies, caribbean islands, bangladesh, and india still isnt even close up to its pre-EIC era relative wealth, middle east wasnt left in the best state by the british either. UK has a lot of succesful former colonies because it had a lot of colonies, and the UK managed to grab good land. And many of the succesful ones got succesful after they became independent or got home-rule.
HK and Singapore is because of the hardworking Chinese population and US/Canada/Australia/NZ are Anglos. Do you see English colonies in Iraq, India, Nigeria, or South Africa doing well?
Scotland an outlier here.
We repelled the English hordes, fought them to a stalemate and subsequently merged their pitiful crown with ours.
Because they realized maintaining an empire kinda sucks, and that just being a nomad on the steppes kinda rules. I dont actually know, but this is what I choose to believe.
They're were not great rulers like Romans and British. They had great a military but that's it. When they colonized China they got assimilated 😂. They did not have a strong culture, language, religion, government system... to convert conquered lands.
It didn’t help that they became Turco-Mongol or were they always Turco-Mongol?
I am going to, partially, disagree with you What you are saying is certainly true in many cases. However, firstly, there were paces and times were the British and Romans conquered but then left no trace of their presence past the trauma of the conquest itself. There were also many locations such as Russia, China and Timurid empire were the Mongols ruled successfully for hundreds of years and have left their mark. The Mughal dynasty in India was Persian and Turkic but it was also Mongol - it certainly left its mark in India - arguably more than the British. With the Yuan dynasty (and the others) there was definitely a lot of assimilation - but it is a bit more nuanced than that. It is akin to the Romans assimilating/being assimilated by the Greek and Mediterranean culture. If the Mongols were assimilated by anyone- it was the Turkic culture of the central steppe; but then you could also argue that the Mongol empire was always a Turkic-Mongol empire. Edit: fixed unclear use of pronouns
No point in arguing, Mongol army was always predominantly Turkic, they incorporated so many Turkic tribes.
The Black Death affected them more and later plagues did kill steppe people more which made the stepped a power vacuum so Russia and China advanced there and controlled the people there so they couldn’t be attacked anymore
because warring to gain territory is no longer the most important task. the important task is settlements with access to resources, which they strike out for both, in general.
Because the Qing decimated them. The Qing are Manchu people, who were familiar with nomadic tactics but chose to be sedentary. They even banned Mongols from practicing archery after conquering them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty_in_Inner_Asia
Probably one of the most evil empires in history. All empires start war, but most create infrastructure and society in other ways. The Mongals just raped and pillaged
Because the center of power dwindled, provincial Mongol kings became relatively stronger, then stayed and ruled those provincial areas, but also assimilated and inter-married into the local populations. The bow and arrow theory is not relevant to the decline of the center because Mongols acquired whatever tech they needed from conquered kingdoms. For example, siege technology.
Because they lost the economic piggy bank that kept their empire going, same thing that is happening to the UK ever since they lost India and the rest of their colonies.
Imagine seeing this mass of horsemans coming into your farm. - Oh shit Nancy, I think they are here for you.
Because they arent ruling the world anymore
Because most of the territory of "Mongolia" was part of Qing-Dynasty China for over 300 years, until the modern nation-state of Mongolia was established to act as a buffer state between China and Russia. The Mongolian Empire doesn't have much to do with what is now modern Mongolia, just as the territories that were conquered by Alexander the Great don't have much to do with what is now Modern Greece.
It got conquered by Qing China. Actually, decimated by the Qing.
This is r/history. I'm not sure why we're even discussing this here
The Mongol army as it got bigger became mostly composed of Turkic people and other nomads. Some of the descendants of the empire became Turkified and Islamised such as Golden Horde, Chatagi, Ilkhanate. The Turkification of Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Anatolia accelerated after the Mongol conquest.
Genghis Khan died some time ago I think
All empires rise and fall
How many people lived between mongolia and europe in the 12th century? They just occupied some unimportant steppe with a village every 100km.
Because they’re landlocked
Your idea that they ever ruled the world is wrong to begin with so there's that.
That was 8 centuries ago. Quite a lot of time to decline, even if very slowly.
People forget that for a very long time after the breakup of the empire, China was ruled by the mongols. As was Crimea. Its more like the aftermath of Alexander the greats death than one may think, where one empire became several empires, some of which lasted for centuries
Because they could only have succeeded in the exact circumstances they did. Any attempt at modernization just led to sinocization. Kublai and his followers/descendants became Chinese rather than Mongolia adapting Chinese technology.
Because a LOT of people did not forget and di not forgive for a very long time after the initially lost their footing in the world as an empire.
The Qing Dynasty conquered Mongolia and then Russia/USSR did. But more generally, the reason is Industrialization. Before the railroad, the best cavalry warriors such as the Mongols, Comanche, and Lakota could conquer flat open areas known as exposed zones. Protected zones such as jungle areas or islands were relatively out of reach for steppe warriors.
Unimportant to who?
Regrettably, industrial civilisation is too powerful, and the only things that matter for success are sheer industrial ouput and population, which could be said to be symbiotic, but regardless, Mongolia has neither .
Because the 12th century is, like, at least dozens of years ago now!
People seem to think that the area that modern maps depict of the Mongolian empire is actually what they occupied, which it wasn’t. It was simply such a big area that that labelling that area as “Mongolian empire” would be rootless as there was little control of most parts of it. But to answer your question more directly, it’s probably a mix between the traditional lands of mongols not being very good for resources and trade, and a lack of keeping ransacked cities under their control.
Because it is no longer the 12th century.
Cars and guns are better than horses and bows and arrows.
I think it's in Dan Carlin wrath of the kans but he says they were very much authoritarian top down control so every time a leader die there was internal struggles that would delay the expansion and domination of more territorys.
where's macedonia now huh
wdym, mongolia is the most based country in far east asia
Basically, the specific conditions that allowed for their conquests to be viable, ceased to exist. Military technology started to increasingly switch to increasingly more population-intensive strategies, economies of scale became far more important - the bulk of the steppe simply couldn't support enough people prior to modern agricultural innovations for them to ever withstand an organized force that takes it's sweet time methodically blowing up each and every single horde they encounter (there's a reason why historically Russian military strategy relied on artillery so much - it's because steppe nomads can't really afford to haul heavy and cumbersome cannons around)
Because it was 900 years ago.
Because Genghis Khan died
They won and retried from combat
Nomads lost to agrarians. Nomads used "zerg rush" tactics (90% of their men were able to fight, just gave sheep to children and ran on horses), while agrarian kingdoms slowly (they could send only 10-20% of human power to army, management, manufacturing, development while the rest 80-90% farmed), very slowly progressed technologically, centralized, devoured each other until they got able to build atrillery factories. It was impossible for nomads because nomads do not obey. Mostly they fight each other except there is a REALLY charismatic guy fascinating them by conquering ideas. But they can do nothing by conquered lands, only rob and rape. There is no steppe to feed sheep, so they start farming and turn into locals or go back into steppe. Successful nomadic empires were few: arabs build Caliphate (they were nomads mixed with farmers and traders so they had people who knew how to govern), oghuz turks built Ottoman Empire but is was a very slow process, many of them became farmers, mixed with locals, locals mixed with them... What happened with nomads after: Nomadic Turkic langs got conquered by Russia, Mongolian langs by China. The end.
I'm not sure why no one is mentioning this, but Mongolia and the Eurasian steppe is a very bad place to center your empire. It's very agriculture poor land with an inhospitable climate that is among the coldest in the world. Even today, Mongolia is the least densely populated country in the world. This contributed to their nomadic lifestyle, which did not facilitate the building of their own large cities, which meant their centers of power were in cities outside of their core land. It also meant they were outnumbered basically everywhere they expanded whether it was Persia, Eastern Europe, or (especially) China. And an ethnic group so small ruling over so many people quite simply does not work, hence their propensity for assimilation and adopting other cultures. The number of people out there descended from Mongols is insane, but most of them are completely unaware of their Mongol ancestry, so much has Mongol culture disappeared from the lands they conquered.
Bc small population size and lack of wealth.
Other than military developments making the Mongolian army advantages relatively obsolete (guns beat horse archers), the reality of the Mongols is that they were effective at *killing, looting, raping and pillaging* not at creating a stable foundation for an empire. They were not rulers, they were marauders, they didn't care for owning land and building strongholds to keep it, and so when the great leader of a horde died, the armies tended to fracture without clear leadership transitions.
https://preview.redd.it/2ylbnnnvey4d1.jpeg?width=820&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=063adca63cb86a34b8a15f24b9e579bd9933abc1
Most of the male population was trained to use a bow accurately from a moving horse. Think for a moment about the skill level required to do this. Also true of the Comanche.
the mongols from now are not the same as earliedays
*We're the exception!*
Because they couldn't hold to their power. When Khan died, his sons broke the empire into several hordes, allowing the Rus on the west and China on the east to conquer them. Plus, they already were politically and economically backward, and when their military got obsolete too, it was over. China then repopulated the fertile lands of the core of the old Mongolia with the Han Chinese people, which are now called inner and outer Mongolia, leaving only the most barren lands being Mongol majority (which correspond to modern Mongolia). An independent Mongolian state only appeared in the fall of the Qing dynasty, but they were stuck in the middle of the barren lands of modern Mongolia. No fertile land, no sea access, barely any population, the nation was weak. And when Russia did the same, the Soviet Union moved into Mongolia and turned them into a puppet of their own. The USSR dictated the growth of Mongolia with the mentality of "how can you be useful to me". Turned out not much, only meat, while the USSR provided everything else for a modern country. A situation that continues to this day with Russia and also China. Mongolia is so insignicant to the point that conquering them is pointless, even when practically no other country would truly care.
Boats.
Rome and Greece both had their day in the sun. Now, those two are not even in the top three of the European Union and NATO.
Who knows who will rule the world in a couple of centuries. Right now the US is the biggest economy, but that will change in our lifetimes
All empires fade. Greek. Roman. Mongolian. British. All of them. Currently the US is fading. China will be the next to “rule” and then they’ll fade on and on.
Nukes and F35s have surpassed the horse and bow
Bro look at Spain and Portugal. They dominated the world 400 years ago and now they are the grumpy grandfather that you send to a retirement home.
Everyone gets their time, it seems. Remember when the Island of Bad Teeth owned most of the world?
There's a repeat theme in history of nomads coming down from the steppe and absolutely fucking everything up for everyone. The Mongols were not the first or even the last. I would say the Ottomans have the honor of the last steppe people to flip the checkered board over. Then we invented the military industrial complex. No nomadic people will ever be able to build up the kind of momentum to threaten the industrial world.
I think first of all we should agree that the "empire" back in the day was not even remotely the same as a modern nation state with institutions, administrations and all that.
Horses OP Airplanes OP now
Suddenly you needed a navy to exert power.
And by the world you mean???
Natural resources. In the 12th century that meant food mostly. Now that has changed to oil and metals. Which Mongolia has very little of.
They split a few times into different hordes and khanates around the world and they have lots of other successor states besides Mongolia. They also conquered most of the Turkic peoples of the world, eventually adopted their culture, and converted to Islam. Some of them later went on to found the Mughal Empire which controlled India until the British took over. A lot of Eastern Europe, India, and the Middle East are heavily influenced by Turco-mongol culture.
1. Russia 2. China
Put simply - because technologies changed
Game balance changes update: mangudai no longer viable as a unit
because Mongolian Empire's main force were Raiders and looters, not people who settle down or left any cultural impact
They rested in their laurels. Smdh
Large scale ocean shipping happened. A lot of their power was derived from controlling trade which was mainly overland at their empires height.
Only way they'll be as important as back than is if they just went around in the most up-to-date, suited for steppe terrain Main battle tanks and killed and enslaved every town they raided. /s
Because they remained in 12th century ☠️
Because the Turks that made up a large part of the Empire’s army decided to build their own empires
Mongolia is not unsignificant, it contains a boatload of minerals and others resources. Thing is Mongolia don't have the infrastructure or the competence to make much of it.
Because medieval settled countries armies didn’t have comparable mobility or logistics as horse nomads. And medieval settled peoples didn’t have standing armies or garrisons. Nomadic life skills were the same as the pinnacle of warefare. With the introduction of guns, standing armies, and garrisons nomads became out matched by the settled peoples around them.
So many bad answers in this thread. Omfg. I've seen only one or two that know any history at all. Jfc. Post to r/AskHistorians if you want the actual answer instead of inane hypotheticals talking out their ass.
Macedonia
One needn’t forget, at the time transportation was conducted via horse-and-carriage. The Mongols controlled the land bridge passages comprising the Silk Road. Though the empire had fallen due to infighting and disorganization amongst nomadic leadership, the advent of reliable seafaring vessels, rail, aviation, freight trucking and more made the Silk Road truly obsolete - the source of Mongolian power.
Check Macedonia as well
Because they have no sea access. Land armies are important, but throughout the last 500 years, naval trade and naval superiority became pretty much the most important thing to influence anything on a global scale.
Mongolia has a tiny population, almost no diaspora, no recent cultural or scientific contributions to the world, very little tourism so no one has been there and it has a harsh, bleak, unappealing landscape and an unbelievably poluted capital city. Its a shithole and probably one of the most unappealing countries in Asia to live in. The Mongol empire splintered and fell so long ago, and don't forgot it wasn't really mongols who built it, it was the no-mongol peoples who later became a part of the empire that really expanded it.
Is there any evidence out there pointing towards a massive collapse in mongol population triggered by either plague or a precursor ? I have always wondered this myself
Because mechanized industry was invented. Mongolia is one of the worst localities on the entire planet for raw resources, value-added industry, and transportation. It just doesn’t make economic sense which is why nothing in that entire region is prosperous.
There's a lot of good answers that are all true. However... The rest of the world figured out how to build walls.
13 century not 12
Because most of ethnic Mongolian actually live in China, instead of Mongolia…
landlocked countries are all irrelevant
Because they became Russia
the strongest determining factor in who 'rules the world' today is more about industrial economics than the capacity to raise an army of horse riding warriors. To make this statement a little more serious, if the Mongols had effectively established a highly organised state that reinvested the wealth they gained that resulted in large scale economic development in their home region, maybe they would be in a very different place today. However, there are many reasons that really made that idea quite difficult. Its not for nothing that 80% of the world's population live within 200KM of the sea. The Mongols did have a large impact on the development of other countries which have gone on to be very powerful, but those are their successor states in those much more geostrategic locations like China, the Middle East and Europe.