

Pax Mongolica - Thevet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Mongolica

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restalis
The Mongol invasion, although destructive for probably all civilizations of
the time, had definitively a positive effect to the survival of eastern
romance culture. In the dark ages the amount of migrating population was so
great that for quite some time they outnumbered the descendants of the former
Roman Empire around Carpathians and Balkans. The dominance of the vulgar-Latin
speaking population suffered serious setbacks and were being confined to
smaller and smaller less accessible areas like mountainous regions. The west-
most areas of the Mongol raids were around Carpathian Mountains up to
Pannonian Basin and were they went through, they basically cleaned the
densely-populated lowland of the most of its inhabitants. Its a known fact
that the Mongol incursions were disastrous for Hungarians, Poles, Russians,
and other populations that were in the region at the time, but on the other
hand they were vital for romance population. Of course, the romance population
suffered from those raids too, along with other cohabitant populations, but
after that, that mountain-descending romance population become dominant again.
Have not Mongols come, the fate of the eastern romance population around
Carpathians would have been the same as the one of the former eastern romance
populations south of Danube - for a while they probably would have managed to
manifest some cultural and even political power (like the Vlach-Bulgar Empire
of Asănești), but in the end they would have been assimilated completely.

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aminok
The Mongol horde displayed unparalleled ruthlessness in Eastern Iran:

The garrison at Merv was only about 12,000 men, and the city was inundated
with refugees from eastern Khwarezmia. For six days, Tolui besieged the city,
and on the seventh day, he assaulted the city. However, the garrison beat back
the assault and launched their own counter-attack against the Mongols. The
garrison force was similarly forced back into the city. The next day, the
city's governor surrendered the city on Tolui's promise that the lives of the
citizens would be spared. As soon as the city was handed over, however, Tolui
slaughtered almost every person who surrendered, in a massacre possibly on a
greater scale than that at Urgench.

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mbubb
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 quickly from each place they
conquered. One of the first groups in Asia they came across were excellent
accountants. The non-literate Mongolians brought them along to inventory
further conquests.

That is remarkable.

They built a network of roads ( a memorable sentence from the book -
paraphrase: "The only structures the Mongolians knew how to build were bridges
- so that they would always have a way back home"

They had no religion that they wanted to impose. No particular ideology.

They came up with innovative answers to problems that included prototypes for
paper currency; law between states; religious tolerance.

They could be brutal - but to the noble/clerical ruling classes, supposedly
not so much to the peasant and trade classes. And compared to what? Life for
peasants was pretty much 'nasty, brutish and short' as it was. It seems
possible that the Mongols could have offered them a better bargain they they
were getting from King and Church. And that is why there was not sustained
revolts.

There is an oft quoted cliche "History is writ by the victors..."

In this case not true. They were non-literate in Ghengis' generation. The
history of the Mongol invasions were written by the vanquished upper classes.

~~~
encoderer
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 of "prestor john". All accounts
share the same ruthlessness.

~~~
skaevola
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.

~~~
encoderer
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.

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heydenberk
A great book on the subject is "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern
World"[0], a revisionist history which emphasizes the institutions and
liberalism of Genghis and Kublai Khan's reigns while not soft-pedaling the
violence that made it possible.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan_and_the_Making_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan_and_the_Making_of_the_Modern_World)

~~~
mbubb
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.

Only slightly tongue in cheek - he was as disruptive in his time as Google.
Not because of his cruelty (he supposedly forbid his troops from pillaging and
raping and sent the accountants in first...) The deliberately did _not_
destroy towns if they could avoid it so that they could keep the productive
capacity going. And they learned every step of the way. New techniques, new
technologies.

They engineered a relatively safe road back to the homeland. To insure they
could return and they could send back earning of war.

This book answered a nagging question I always had about Mongolia:

1) How did they conquer without leaving a standing army? If they were so
brutal then those left behind would revolt, eventually.

2) Did they offer the tradesmen a bagain - give up the yoke of Nobility and
Church for a 20% cut and relative safety trading with the other town?

This is an amazing book.

~~~
restalis
"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
drafted into the Mongolian army and the rest of the population was sent into
slavery."

3\. Samarkand - "After the fortress fell, Genghis reneged on his surrender
terms and executed every soldier that had taken arms against him at Samarkand.
The people of Samarkand were ordered to evacuate and assemble in a plain
outside the city, where they were killed and pyramids of severed heads raised
as the symbol of Mongol victory."

4\. Urgench - "As usual, the artisans were sent back to Mongolia, young women
and children were given to the Mongol soldiers as slaves, and the rest of the
population was massacred."

5\. Gurjang - "Upon its surrender the Mongols broke the dams and flooded the
city, then proceeded to execute the survivors."

6\. Merv - "Tolui slaughtered almost every person who surrendered, in a
massacre possibly on a greater scale than that at Urgench."

7 Nishapur - "Tolui put to the sword every living thing in city"

Then an outlier:

"After Nishapur's fall, Herat surrendered without a fight and was spared."

Now, let's see... who wants to revolt?

¹
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Khwarezmia_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Khwarezmia_and_Eastern_Iran)

~~~
mbubb
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.

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lqdc13
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27#Impact_on_development)

~~~
ansgri
It's debatable, but from your reference it seems like the opposite:

 _It has been argued[by whom?] that without the Mongol destruction of Kievan
Rus ', the Tsardom of Russia and subsequently the Russian Empire would not
have risen. Trade routes with the East came through the Rus' lands, making
them a center for trade from both worlds. Mongol influence, while destructive
to their enemies, had a significant long term effect on the rise of modern
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus._

—
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27#Impac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27#Impact_on_development)

~~~
ajuc
It seems unlikely, considering the fact that the lands conquered by Mongols
were later the most backward parts of Europe till at least XXth century.

~~~
notahacker
The argument is that the effect of the invasions on both the Rus and other
peoples in regions the Mongols conquered or subjugated might have been hugely
beneficial to the ability of Tsars to rule a huge amount of land from St
Petersburg afterwards, most of it to the east.

That's is entirely consistent both with it decimating the earlier civilisation
across a smaller region centered on Kiev, and with it having a negative impact
on economic and cultural growth in that region and surrounding regions which
was felt centuries afterward. Especially if you consider Tsarist rule that
Mongol invasions arguably paved the way for to be amongst the factors
responsible for the relative backwardness of the Russian Empire.

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utopkara
Yes, and Marco Polo is a captivating series.

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maga
Folks, what is this doing here?

~~~
Agathos
Somebody's been browsing Wikipedia while watching Marco Polo.

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

