What's also interesting about the mongols and their inheritors (India's mughals especially) was how weird but effective their administration was. India knew around no global famines and very few local ones (none around the Bengal) in ~300 years of Mughal rule. In ~100 years of British rule, you had regular famines all around India, and some very harsh ones where millions of people died from hunger (which used to be more than extremely rare), including one in Bengal which never in its written history had ever suffered even a local one.
There were several great famines during the Mughal reign in India, for example, Peter Mundy, the English merchant and traveller, describes the great famine of Deccan and Gujrat. The Mughal rule was brutal. The European travellers have written about the plight of the farmers who rebelled due to excessive taxation despite the fear of punishment. The Mughals built towers of severed heads outside each village and even they were not able to quell the rebellion, such was the state of affairs. So I'd say the assumption you're making isn't true.
Mughal rule in India was very inconsistent depending on the ruler in power at the time. There was a huge variety in quality of governance from Akbar to Aurangzeb.
You broke the site guidelines quite hideously in this thread—so much so that I actually banned your account, although I've since unbanned it for now (see below).
Worse, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot in other threads too. Recent examples:
Since you've ignored our requests to stop doing this and have done it repeatedly and egregiously, you're well over the line at which we'd ban an account. However, as mentioned, I've unbanned it again for now, because (a) many of your comments are fine contributions, and (b) I don't feel good about banning one account but not the other in this kind of spat.
But please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this going forward, because it's a serious problem and much as I don't want to ban you, if it happens again I don't think we'll have much choice.
@dang, I completely disagree with you here and we have had this conversation before too. I had mentioned then that this site is being manipulated by political propagandists/fraudsters/etc. which you had hand waved away.
These two threads which you are pointing to are the perfect example of what i was talking about, with evidence which you seem to disregard. My language was harsh in order to shame the manipulators and get them to stop. HN's guidelines should be followed in spirit and not always in letter.
HN needs to do a better job of moderating political/agenda-driven/propaganda/manipulation in its threads.
Read the comment chain in the threads to see for yourself.
1) In a thread to do with "Feynman Lectures" i.e. Physics, a few introduce a talking point on his behaviour which is then amplified by others in a co-ordinated manner (not random) to hijack the thread in a totally cancel-culture direction. More than 50% of comments on that thread is about this irrelevant negative topic which others pointed out too. "ShamLegacyTldr" is created just to add inflammatory comments in the guise of virtue signaling all of which was obvious. Being polite with these sort of people is just playing into their hands and does not get them to stop; You have to be blunt and harsh. That account has not contributed/participated in anything else. The inference should be clear.
2) In a thread to do with French/Mongols, "thisislife2" drags in Mughal History of India, current Indian political talking points, Israel/Palestine issues in a most inflammatory manner. Their version of history is not factual, their dates are wrong, no references/citations are given and everything is suspect. Some excerpts from them below;
Let me begin with a disclaimer - I consider any "history lessons" that seeks to perpetuate the "Hindu victim-hood" mentality with formulaic politics of - "if not for the stupid Buddhist rulers or the evil Muslim, Christian invaders etc. etc. India would be so advanced, like, you wouldn't believe it!" /s as revisionist history (mostly stemming from the politics of the RSS - India's Hindu-right).
Like with any religious fundamentalist political grouping, Hindu religious fundamentalists (Sanghis) too tend to be overly fixated on the religious identity of anyone they meet (dead or alive), past rulers included, and judge everything they do, or whatever happened around them, through the coloured lens of religion.
You may be right - Russian invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza (most westerners don't even know that Israel is a settler-colony - https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-fares-abraham-021826 that has been deliberately oppressing, chasing and killing Palestinians for a long time) and Trump demanding Greenland - all indicate that certain oligarchs are working to bring back imperialism.
Not sure what you are saying - Israel has colonised Palestine. Palestine is still not free or independent. Nor have the Palestinian natives been absorbed and made Israeli citizens like the Americans, Canadians or Australians did with the natives on the land they colonised. Do you see why this is problematic - by not giving them their own state or making them citizens, and culling them over the decades, they are effectively seeking the genocide of Palestine. And then westerners act surprised when Palestinians fight for their freedom (is the second amendment only for white, Christian, Americans?).
"freethinker101" account is created (there are zero contributions from this user), posts a most inflammatory comment (now deleted) to which "thisislife2" responds within minutes with a very inflammatory and obviously made-up story, viz;
True. I didn't believe about houses not being rented to muslims, till I helped a muslim friend hunt for a house - a woman we contacted to rent a house said that her husband doesn't want to rent their flat to muslims. She was genuinely embarrassed by it when I asked why, and she honestly said she doesn't understand this kind of religious bigotry and her husband is has become a "khattar Hindu" who just doesn't like muslims ...
Do you see the manipulation here? Or are you okay with this but not okay with me calling them out?
To see the manipulation; Note the trigger/anchor words/phrases like "perpetuate/victim-hood/Hindu-Right/Sanghi/RSS/settler-colony/chasing and killing palestinians/Israel has colonised Palestine/culling them over the decades/genocide of Palestine/khattar Hindu/doesn't like muslims" etc.
The account should be banned for using such inflammatory/instigatory language on such sensitive political topics. If that is not the very definition of agenda-driven manipulation, i don't know what is.
HN either needs to police these itself or allow "real-world" people (like myself) to help you do it if you want to maintain the standard/quality of discussions on this site.
You need to read up on history better, especially if you are talking of a country whose history has been ravaged by holocausts of the worst variety: man-made.
Background:
India has been among the most fertile and richest lands in the world, since many millenia, due to it having some of the world's biggest rivers (most of them being Himalayan rivers, as perennial icemelts, pushing out fresh alluvial soil, that's very fertile), hence India has had advanced agriculture and complex industries for thousands of years.
3 regions of India are among the most fertile (due to the geography and climate): the Deccan, Bengal and South region (sizeable chunk of it used to be called as Madras during British Raj in India). Please note this, as it is important context of what I'm explaining next.
India gets 2 monsoons and also the Westerlies winds, so it gets a lot of seasonal rainfall. (e.g., Chirrapunji in India was the world's wettest place for centuries, till climate change in modern era changed the wettest wetspot to nearby locations.)
In fact, before the Persian & Turkish invaders (whose descendants called themselves Mughals, as a link to their supposedly Mongol heritage) and European (including British) invaders invaded India, it was India that was the richest land in the world and a global economic superpower, contributing to 25-30% of the entire world's GDP. e.g, Surat was the richest city in the world.
So such immense wealth and fertile lands, and lots of women, attracted the worst kind of invaders from across the hot deserts and the cold seas.
The Muslim invaders (Persians/Turks) invaded and destroyed the world's oldest universities in Nalanda and Takshashila in India. They and the colonial Whites who followed, aggressively raped and pillaged at will, and enslaved the native people, brutally (this lead to further societal problems such as Purdah (veil) system and Sati system (where the native Hindu women would immolate themselves in funeral pure as mass suicide, as the invading barbaric Mughals would rape even dead bodies)).
So atrocious was the barbarism and brutality of these invaders, that tens of millions of Indians died in artificial famines and inhuman tortures.
An entire mountain range begot an evil name - Hindu Kush (the Killer of Hindus) - so called because of the tens of thousands of Hindus (and other natives) who died on its treacherous icy slopes, as part of chain gangs of captured slaves dragged to be sold in Persian and Arabia as slaves, sex slaves or worse (e.g., little children chained to camels for races, many of them died due to injuries,starvation, exhaustion, or sheer terror).
Now mention of all these evils is important because that historic information destroys the fallacy that Turk/Persian/Mughal or European/British rule in India were benevolent and just. The reality was that India was turned into living hell.
Within few hundred years of Persian/Turk/Mughal rule and European+British rule in India, those captured regions of India had become impoverished and wrecked by artificial famines induced by deliberate crippling of local industries and agriculture by systematic dismantling of those industries and agriculture and debilitating taxes (jizya, etc.).
India went from being a global industrial & economic superpower, to becoming a poor crippled enslaved nation.
Prior to the pre-medieval era, Indians knew how to deal with natural famines, because the monsoons could fail or be erratic once in a few years (drought years).
One of the earliest treatises on famine relief goes back more than 2,000 years. This treatise is commonly attributed to Kautilya who was also known as Vishnugupta (Chanakya), who recommended that a good king should build new forts and water-works and share his provisions with the people, or entrust the country to another king. Historically, Indian rulers have employed several methods of famine relief. Some of these were direct, such as initiating free distribution of food grains and throwing open grain stores and kitchens to the people. Other measures were monetary policies such as remission of revenue, remission of taxes, an increase of pay to soldiers, and payment of advances. Yet other measures included the construction of public works, canals, and embankments, and sinking wells. Migration was encouraged. Kautilya advocated raiding the provisions of the rich in times of famine to "thin them by exacting excess revenue". Famines preserved only in oral tradition are the Dvadasavarsha Panjam (Twelve-year Famine) of south India and the Durga Devi Famine of the Deccan from 1396 to 1407.The Vanjari story of the great Durgadevi famine, which lasted from 1396 to 1407, is that it was named from Durga a Lad Vanjari woman, who had amassed great wealth and owned a million pack bullocks, which she used in bringing grain from Nepal, Burmah, and China. She distributed the grain among the starving people and gained the honourable title of 'Mother of the World', Jagachi Mata.
But under the Muslim and Christian regimes in medieval India, tens of millions of Indians starved to death on the streets in these artificial famines. Or they became cannibals and robbers. Or they perished in epidemics caused by forced migrations and unsanitary conditions (because the invaders didn't bother to improve civic infrastructure, sanitation, etc.).
e.g., Bubonic plague was unleashed in India, due to infected rats that came in European/British ships, and millions of Indians died in such plagues.
But why should a fertile land struggle due to few seasons of lack of rains?
You see, the Muslim and Christian invaders followed the "scorched Earth" policy in India and elsewhere. If they lost a battle, they would burn all local crops and destroy villages during their retreat. They captured women and children (to turn them into sex slaves or soldiers), so the local population would gradually dwindle. They forced remnant populations to migrate, and imposed harshest taxes and atrocities on those that stayed. They systematically dismantled the local industries (killed or chopped off limbs of industry experts and artisans, broke their tools of trade, destroyed their schools and books, and banned cultural and scientific education). They deliberately starved and weakened the enslaved population so they wouldn't revolt. They caused caste conflicts and wars (did you know - the word "caste" comes from Portuguese word "casts", meaning societal class). The result was that these most fertile lands in the world, were turned into unlivabke hell.
e.g., In 1630, after the monsoon had failed for two years, the Deccan famine erupted and lasted two years. Abdul Hamid Lahori’s Badshahnama recorded that starvation was so rife that “life was offered for a loaf”. Other desperate forms of survival were not unknown: “Men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love.”
The English merchant Peter Mundy, travelling near Surat, confirmed that parents sold or consumed their own children, or sometimes gave them away to anyone who would feed them. Ravenous subjects accosted others walking in public to prey on them. Given these wretched circumstances, many chose migration. As Lahori recalled, “Every man whose dire sufferings did not terminate in death and who retained the power to move wandered off to the towns and villages of other [provinces].”
Drastic famines occurred under the Delhi Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1290-1351). As described by the thirteenth century Indo-Persian historian, Ziauddin Barani (1285-1357), the primary reasons behind the emergence of famine was the imposition of immense land taxes and the exploitation of the peasants at the hands of the aristocrats.
Gujarat and Deccan Famine (1630–1632):
One of the most devastating famines in pre-colonial India occurred during the Mughal era. The famine resulted from three consecutive crop failures, leading to intense hunger, disease, and displacement. Contemporary Dutch records estimate that approximately 4 million people died in Gujarat and neighbourhood (Deccan region) in the ten months ending in October 1631. The overall death toll for the region was estimated at 7.4 million by late 1631.
I will probably add more data and links here, but I think now you understand how awful and horrible those evil regimes of history were.
Modern ndia is slowly rising again, from the ashes of these centuries of devastations.
Indiais making good strides in some industries, its economy is the fastest growing economy, its UPI is the biggest most-successful payments system in the world, and Indian government is standing tall and strong against bullies and terrorists.
I agree with you that some of these are indeed historical facts. Islamic invaders - that sought to raid India and loot it - did cause a lot of destruction. As did the Europeans (mostly the British) who colonised us and looted all our wealth to their own country.
These foreign invaders did do great harm to India as their intention in invading us was to only exploit India's wealth, weaken us and make their own kingdom richer.
But indian muslim rulers, who sought to create their own independent kingdoms in India, after conquering them, did not send India's wealth anywhere. They used it to develop their own kingdom's (i.e. India's) economy and growth. The Mughal empire is the perfect example of this, as they made India one of the richest country in the world during their period (which is what attracted the Europeans to colonise our country, and loot it).
As rulers of their own kingdom, muslim kings or emperors had no interest in creating famines in their own kingdoms. Indeed, Famines in India - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India outlines that famines have been documented in India even during the Maurya rule (2000+ years ago), (which is why you find Kautilya writing about famine relief), and gives examples of many famine reliefs documented in Indian history, even amongst Indian kingdom with muslim rulers. Note that I am not denying that famines happened in indian kingdoms with muslim rulers. It was however not common practice to artificially create to target a particular any community. As with any Hindu or Buddhist kingdoms in India, some were just natural disasters (because of flooding or drought) or due to flawed policies (like taxation) by despotic or inexperienced kings and a few may have been possible acts of warfare against an enemy kingdom.
As I wrote elsewhere here, if one is not obsessed with religious identity of a ruler, one will find that they are all the same everywhere - some or good and some are average and some are just weak despots. Their religious identity had nothing to do with why their kingdom was great or weak*.
Famines are, with very few exceptions, politico-economic actions, often with intentional malice, rather than a complete inability to obtain enough food.
Famines are political. They happen because one population is happy to starve another. The Mughals ruled themselves. The British stole harvests for themselves and let the local population starve.
The potato famine in Ireland is treated as some kind of unavoidable, natural event. No, the British just stole the harvest. And this continued right up until Churchill in India.
So the Mughals might’ve been effective but the big difference is they weren’t being exploited as an imperial subject.
So, counterpoint: genocide aim to destroy the culture of a group, either by killing the women and children alongside to fighters during a conquest/repression, or by forcefully moving them to make them mix with a new dominant culture (Crimean Tatars are an example). This almost always end in streamlining the language and destroying language diversity, often reducing it to a single one for all the survivors/moved. While not even close to the SEA level, India is one of the subcontinent with the most different spoken languages, which would indicate that it might not have been that bad. At least, not genocide-bad.
I have been taught the exact same verbose propaganda (invented maths, science, military, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, won this and that war blah blah) written by people from the middle east.
I worry Colonialism will come back again. Or at least in a different form.
Most International Relations practitioners are followers of (Systems) Realism. You might find some minor power with Idealists/Instituitonalists, but they only get that privilege by being under the umbrella of a great power.
Colonialism was not some greedy merchant/state thing, it was an Arms Race. It follows the inevitable forces produced by anarchy, there are no police to call so power is the greatest form of security. It causes a Tragedy of the Commons situation in the form of an Arms Race.
After Colonialism, we had essentially client states, which seems similarly brutal.
You may be right - Russian invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza (most westerners don't even know that Israel is a settler-colony - https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-fares-abraham-021826 that has been deliberately oppressing, chasing and killing Palestinians for a long time) and Trump demanding Greenland - all indicate that certain oligarchs are working to bring back imperialism.
All westerners have heard this claim repeated many times, but it’s never called a “colony” after gaining independence - otherwise every country on earth would be a colony.
Not sure what you are saying - Israel has colonised Palestine. Palestine is still not free or independent. Nor have the Palestinian natives been absorbed and made Israeli citizens like the Americans, Canadians or Australians did with the natives on the land they colonised. Do you see why this is problematic - by not giving them their own state or making them citizens, and culling them over the decades, they are effectively seeking the genocide of Palestine. And then westerners act surprised when Palestinians fight for their freedom (is the second amendment only for white, Christian, Americans?).
Israel has fully absorbed and given equal citizenship to the 2 million Arab Palestinians that live within the borders of the state of Israel. Their numbers grew from 156,000 in 1948 to 2,000,000 today. So your claims of a “culling” are ridiculous.
The Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza have also grown exponentially since the Israeli occupation.
Um, colonialism never left. It just morphed. The most common form is the economic colonialism/imperialism by the United States.
The World Bank and IMF are tools of colonialism. We extract resources and exploit cheap labor from the Global South. We kidnap heads of state and seize that country’s oil.
We may not send settlers like we did in the colonial era. We’ve just found a more efficient method.
> Even if you can argue the British didn't deliberately cause famine over their subjects, they almost never took active steps to alleviate them.
They sent Protestant missionaries with free food for kids (souperism). Private charities, but the government used them as an excuse to not provide more government aid.
And a lot of Catholic parents decided they’d rather their children be dead than risk them becoming Protestant.
Interesting to not mention Rabban Bar Sauma ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabban_Bar_Sauma ) who was a Mongol ambassador to France. He was born a Christian in Beijing and walked all the way to Paris in a sort of reverse Marco Polo situation.
He was a medieval Italian diplomat. And seems like when he was at the court of the Khan, we was trying to make a push of Catholicism and was getting into debates with other theologians, including one from a Islamic country and one from the Byzantine empire.
For some reason, the website is down for me. I have always been fascinated by the Mongols after reading “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford.
I have turned at least one friend onto history podcasts using Mike Duncan's work. Now our wives look at us like we're a bunch of two headed goats whenever we meet and talk referncing revolutionary figures and events, raving about how much more "you feel the history" when visiting Rome and Paris and know some of the history. It's great!
I just finished carlins kings of kings episodes before visiting the british museum. Carlin mentioned the contrast between what was depicted in the Assyrian and Achaemenid empires palace/throne and being able to see it in the museum with the added context made me appreciate it so much more.
Visited Rome/Pompeii with my GF and she said it was like having a private tour guide. I just felt like I knew so little and could only add sparse bits of context.
Dan Carlin has a great radio voice, and is an entertaining presenter. Hardcore history is really only okay on the history front though. Plus they are relatively shallow with how short they are.
I think Carlin himself would be the first to admit that, even does so in the intro to many episodes. I think he already suffers from the length of some of his series.
Revolutions is my go-to. I also listened to History of Rome from Duncan. And because of this History of Byzantium is on my to check out list as well. I will try the others you mentioned. I'm very eager to find others as in depth as revolutions. Thanks!
As a rule, "pop history" is full of shit and is probably better considered misinformation than anything else. I probably don't I know of a single general-audience history/anthropology book that doesn't horrify scholars of the field.
As unfortunate as it is, studying cause-and-effect is extremely complex. If it's even theoretically possible to distill it down to easily digestible ideas, that's well outside our current technical capabilities.
There's usually going to be some true and interesting information in these books, but it will be too deeply embedded in a narrative that is misleading.
I'm an avid reader of history books (antiquity, middle ages), and I'd say I'm very picky, trawling through reviews and recommendations from trusted sources before deciding on a book.
I have already come across books that were a slog to read because of the author's simplistic worldview or obvious contrarian agenda (so I can definitely relate), but I've also read some masterpieces (for example, Kaldellis I believe is solid).
Unfortunately I don't count any historians among my friends, so I'd welcome any recs from you for authors that are the least bad, or a teardown of main antiquity/middle ages historians.
"The kings of medieval France were fascinated by the Mongols, who they saw as great empire builders."
Well, surprising, as they were supporting military actions against Mongols, plus medieval France was nothing like Mongols empire in terms of social live organization, way of fighting wars (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_Truce_of_God).
Later, in XV century, France started to turn into Mongols-like regime, but those weren't medieval times.
I honestly had no idea about the French fascination with the Mongols. People tend to admire people who have traits they aspire to. I wonder if this stems from France, being a major imperial power at the time, admiring the Mongols as an imperial power.
This timeline coincides with the Crusades with, which the article talks about at length. I find the Crusades fascinating because they've shaped the modern world in so many ways.
Dan Carlin (of Hardcore History fame) once said that why he cares about military history is it shapes the world. If you look at the lightbulb, it doesn't really matter who invented it. Somebody would've. But take the Battle of Marathon, which shaped the entire history of Western Europe as the Greeks repelled the Persians. History would've been completely different. Or how Cyrus II (IIRC) essentially saved Judaism by rebuilding the Temple. Without that, Judaism may well have died out and, with it, all the Abrahamic religions may never have existed.
So the Crusades are fascinating because they've often portrayed as a religious war but they were anything but. Religion was simply the excuse. Instead medieval powers wanted to control the Levant to enrich themselves.
The Crusades essentially created international banking, making the Knights Templar incredibly wealthy [1]. One wonders if this was a necessary condition to the rise of the mercantile class that eventually displaced feudalism and brought on capitalism.
But back to the French. It's interesting that they were fascinated with the Mongols with everything else that was going on. During this same period, the Eastern Roman Empire still existed and the Moors occupied the Iberian peninsula. In many ways, the Mongols were more distant whereas the Arab "threat" was closer and more real. So why the Mongols?
Why the Mongols? Because they were distant. You can't afford to admire the people next door; you're either fighting them or preparing for when fighting breaks out again.
I disagree. It's very hard to admire a direct enemy, even if you can see their strengths, you'll rationalize them in your head as being the evil sort of strength, which comes not from virtue but from their total lack of morality or whatever you can conjure up. We see that everywhere in history and even in contemporary conflicts.
France was not a major imperial power at the time. It was much smaller than today, lacking Savoy and much of Burgundy for start, with Normandy and many other areas only nominally part of it and technically under control of English king (who was just a duke in France, but that changed only a very little on the battlefield).
Crusades in middle east started as an attempt of Eastern Roman empire (although they just called it Roman empire / Basileia Romaion) to recover from recent advances of Muslim invaders in Anatolia (modern Turkey). But turned into an overwhelmingly religious effort in the west. The first crusade especially was largely ill organized and chaotic affair. Where on one end of the spectrum you had nobles arriving with somewhat well equipped forces and idea of what to do, and on the other you had pilgrims, with whatever they just picked up in their hands and not answering commands of anyone, but their priest.
The economic side of things came into play after the process started and gradually became dominant. But it didn't start like it.
Finally. Interest of France in Mongols can be easily explained precisely by the influence crusades had on French and other Christian elites in Europe. The initial victory of 1st Crusade was followed by a series of setbacks. Muslims gradually begun to push crusaders out, the fact that crusaders started to fight amongst themselves helped a lot.
And then mongols arrived, almost from nowhere, crushed one of most powerful Muslim states at the time, and didn't stop there. It did seem like an immense opportunity, and in a way it was. If French, or someone else in Christendom, could convince khans that some form of cooperation is possible, or even better, if Mongols converted to Christianity, there would be a decent chance to not only save Jerusalem, but to move on to Egypt (still majority Christian).
By the time of William the Conqueror, which I think is the sixth generation of Rollo's line in Normandy, they were just French (with a cultural memory of North Sea origins). The tapestry of Bayeux, which was made in England, calls them that.
Its a mess. Vikings (mostly danes) did "move" there by conquering and being given lands as bribes. William conquered England but was still a vassal to the king of France due to still being the Duke of Normandy. So for example when France got a new king the king of England would need to go and swear loyalty and such, which would become a problem later.
Through marriages and such the Duke of Normandy took over large parts of France and it became the Angevin Empire, but still just a puny vassal to the King of France.
The 100 year war was fought over this essentially and England would end up losing all French land and thus the problem was solved forever.
yes, but when they moved to England, the Normand duke made himself king of England, so he (and his heirs) had the crown of England and the ducky of Normandy.
The arabs were broken into smaller kingdoms for a long time when it came to the XIII century. The Eastern Roman Empire had been in decline since the fall of Constantinople in 1204 and even before that it was only a regional power. Compared to those, the mongols managed to build an empire spreading on millions of square kilometers. There is no base for comparison. It is like comparing the UK and the US 20 years after WWII.
So this is a fallacy of seeing historical events through a modern lens.
We know how far the Mongols spread and we have accurate maps but in no way am I convinced that France could possibly conceive of the size and scope of Central Asia in the 11th century.
They could conceive that you can go across France in a couple of weeks and that you might need a few months to reach China. What's more, they could see how rich the khan is and that it is much more than their king. And that he has much bigger army. Surprisingly, they were not idiots.
Disliking them doesn't make their empire smaller and success is a virtue of its own according to many. They were successful and people noticed, the rest is commentary.
They also smelled and had a big rich empire. What I can say? Won't bother you with the guy who supposedly planted trees so that merchants can travel and rest in their shadows, nor should I tell you stories how those extractive people facilitated trade between Europe and China.
PS: The russians got lots of things from the eastern roman empire, just not the humanistic renaissance, but let's not go there.
What's also interesting about the mongols and their inheritors (India's mughals especially) was how weird but effective their administration was. India knew around no global famines and very few local ones (none around the Bengal) in ~300 years of Mughal rule. In ~100 years of British rule, you had regular famines all around India, and some very harsh ones where millions of people died from hunger (which used to be more than extremely rare), including one in Bengal which never in its written history had ever suffered even a local one.
There were several great famines during the Mughal reign in India, for example, Peter Mundy, the English merchant and traveller, describes the great famine of Deccan and Gujrat. The Mughal rule was brutal. The European travellers have written about the plight of the farmers who rebelled due to excessive taxation despite the fear of punishment. The Mughals built towers of severed heads outside each village and even they were not able to quell the rebellion, such was the state of affairs. So I'd say the assumption you're making isn't true.
Mughal rule in India was very inconsistent depending on the ruler in power at the time. There was a huge variety in quality of governance from Akbar to Aurangzeb.
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Addendum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41537261
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You broke the site guidelines quite hideously in this thread—so much so that I actually banned your account, although I've since unbanned it for now (see below).
Worse, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot in other threads too. Recent examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083277
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46997343
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987281
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46983913
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824319
Surely you realize you can't post like this to HN? It has been a problem for a long time and we've warned you more than once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41692895.
Since you've ignored our requests to stop doing this and have done it repeatedly and egregiously, you're well over the line at which we'd ban an account. However, as mentioned, I've unbanned it again for now, because (a) many of your comments are fine contributions, and (b) I don't feel good about banning one account but not the other in this kind of spat.
But please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this going forward, because it's a serious problem and much as I don't want to ban you, if it happens again I don't think we'll have much choice.
@dang, I completely disagree with you here and we have had this conversation before too. I had mentioned then that this site is being manipulated by political propagandists/fraudsters/etc. which you had hand waved away.
These two threads which you are pointing to are the perfect example of what i was talking about, with evidence which you seem to disregard. My language was harsh in order to shame the manipulators and get them to stop. HN's guidelines should be followed in spirit and not always in letter.
HN needs to do a better job of moderating political/agenda-driven/propaganda/manipulation in its threads.
Read the comment chain in the threads to see for yourself.
1) In a thread to do with "Feynman Lectures" i.e. Physics, a few introduce a talking point on his behaviour which is then amplified by others in a co-ordinated manner (not random) to hijack the thread in a totally cancel-culture direction. More than 50% of comments on that thread is about this irrelevant negative topic which others pointed out too. "ShamLegacyTldr" is created just to add inflammatory comments in the guise of virtue signaling all of which was obvious. Being polite with these sort of people is just playing into their hands and does not get them to stop; You have to be blunt and harsh. That account has not contributed/participated in anything else. The inference should be clear.
2) In a thread to do with French/Mongols, "thisislife2" drags in Mughal History of India, current Indian political talking points, Israel/Palestine issues in a most inflammatory manner. Their version of history is not factual, their dates are wrong, no references/citations are given and everything is suspect. Some excerpts from them below;
Let me begin with a disclaimer - I consider any "history lessons" that seeks to perpetuate the "Hindu victim-hood" mentality with formulaic politics of - "if not for the stupid Buddhist rulers or the evil Muslim, Christian invaders etc. etc. India would be so advanced, like, you wouldn't believe it!" /s as revisionist history (mostly stemming from the politics of the RSS - India's Hindu-right).
Like with any religious fundamentalist political grouping, Hindu religious fundamentalists (Sanghis) too tend to be overly fixated on the religious identity of anyone they meet (dead or alive), past rulers included, and judge everything they do, or whatever happened around them, through the coloured lens of religion.
You may be right - Russian invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza (most westerners don't even know that Israel is a settler-colony - https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-fares-abraham-021826 that has been deliberately oppressing, chasing and killing Palestinians for a long time) and Trump demanding Greenland - all indicate that certain oligarchs are working to bring back imperialism.
Not sure what you are saying - Israel has colonised Palestine. Palestine is still not free or independent. Nor have the Palestinian natives been absorbed and made Israeli citizens like the Americans, Canadians or Australians did with the natives on the land they colonised. Do you see why this is problematic - by not giving them their own state or making them citizens, and culling them over the decades, they are effectively seeking the genocide of Palestine. And then westerners act surprised when Palestinians fight for their freedom (is the second amendment only for white, Christian, Americans?).
"freethinker101" account is created (there are zero contributions from this user), posts a most inflammatory comment (now deleted) to which "thisislife2" responds within minutes with a very inflammatory and obviously made-up story, viz;
True. I didn't believe about houses not being rented to muslims, till I helped a muslim friend hunt for a house - a woman we contacted to rent a house said that her husband doesn't want to rent their flat to muslims. She was genuinely embarrassed by it when I asked why, and she honestly said she doesn't understand this kind of religious bigotry and her husband is has become a "khattar Hindu" who just doesn't like muslims ...
Do you see the manipulation here? Or are you okay with this but not okay with me calling them out?
To see the manipulation; Note the trigger/anchor words/phrases like "perpetuate/victim-hood/Hindu-Right/Sanghi/RSS/settler-colony/chasing and killing palestinians/Israel has colonised Palestine/culling them over the decades/genocide of Palestine/khattar Hindu/doesn't like muslims" etc.
The account should be banned for using such inflammatory/instigatory language on such sensitive political topics. If that is not the very definition of agenda-driven manipulation, i don't know what is.
HN either needs to police these itself or allow "real-world" people (like myself) to help you do it if you want to maintain the standard/quality of discussions on this site.
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Please stop the lies.
You need to read up on history better, especially if you are talking of a country whose history has been ravaged by holocausts of the worst variety: man-made.
Background: India has been among the most fertile and richest lands in the world, since many millenia, due to it having some of the world's biggest rivers (most of them being Himalayan rivers, as perennial icemelts, pushing out fresh alluvial soil, that's very fertile), hence India has had advanced agriculture and complex industries for thousands of years.
3 regions of India are among the most fertile (due to the geography and climate): the Deccan, Bengal and South region (sizeable chunk of it used to be called as Madras during British Raj in India). Please note this, as it is important context of what I'm explaining next.
India gets 2 monsoons and also the Westerlies winds, so it gets a lot of seasonal rainfall. (e.g., Chirrapunji in India was the world's wettest place for centuries, till climate change in modern era changed the wettest wetspot to nearby locations.)
In fact, before the Persian & Turkish invaders (whose descendants called themselves Mughals, as a link to their supposedly Mongol heritage) and European (including British) invaders invaded India, it was India that was the richest land in the world and a global economic superpower, contributing to 25-30% of the entire world's GDP. e.g, Surat was the richest city in the world.
So such immense wealth and fertile lands, and lots of women, attracted the worst kind of invaders from across the hot deserts and the cold seas.
The Muslim invaders (Persians/Turks) invaded and destroyed the world's oldest universities in Nalanda and Takshashila in India. They and the colonial Whites who followed, aggressively raped and pillaged at will, and enslaved the native people, brutally (this lead to further societal problems such as Purdah (veil) system and Sati system (where the native Hindu women would immolate themselves in funeral pure as mass suicide, as the invading barbaric Mughals would rape even dead bodies)).
So atrocious was the barbarism and brutality of these invaders, that tens of millions of Indians died in artificial famines and inhuman tortures.
An entire mountain range begot an evil name - Hindu Kush (the Killer of Hindus) - so called because of the tens of thousands of Hindus (and other natives) who died on its treacherous icy slopes, as part of chain gangs of captured slaves dragged to be sold in Persian and Arabia as slaves, sex slaves or worse (e.g., little children chained to camels for races, many of them died due to injuries,starvation, exhaustion, or sheer terror). Now mention of all these evils is important because that historic information destroys the fallacy that Turk/Persian/Mughal or European/British rule in India were benevolent and just. The reality was that India was turned into living hell.
Within few hundred years of Persian/Turk/Mughal rule and European+British rule in India, those captured regions of India had become impoverished and wrecked by artificial famines induced by deliberate crippling of local industries and agriculture by systematic dismantling of those industries and agriculture and debilitating taxes (jizya, etc.).
India went from being a global industrial & economic superpower, to becoming a poor crippled enslaved nation.
Prior to the pre-medieval era, Indians knew how to deal with natural famines, because the monsoons could fail or be erratic once in a few years (drought years).
One of the earliest treatises on famine relief goes back more than 2,000 years. This treatise is commonly attributed to Kautilya who was also known as Vishnugupta (Chanakya), who recommended that a good king should build new forts and water-works and share his provisions with the people, or entrust the country to another king. Historically, Indian rulers have employed several methods of famine relief. Some of these were direct, such as initiating free distribution of food grains and throwing open grain stores and kitchens to the people. Other measures were monetary policies such as remission of revenue, remission of taxes, an increase of pay to soldiers, and payment of advances. Yet other measures included the construction of public works, canals, and embankments, and sinking wells. Migration was encouraged. Kautilya advocated raiding the provisions of the rich in times of famine to "thin them by exacting excess revenue". Famines preserved only in oral tradition are the Dvadasavarsha Panjam (Twelve-year Famine) of south India and the Durga Devi Famine of the Deccan from 1396 to 1407.The Vanjari story of the great Durgadevi famine, which lasted from 1396 to 1407, is that it was named from Durga a Lad Vanjari woman, who had amassed great wealth and owned a million pack bullocks, which she used in bringing grain from Nepal, Burmah, and China. She distributed the grain among the starving people and gained the honourable title of 'Mother of the World', Jagachi Mata.
But under the Muslim and Christian regimes in medieval India, tens of millions of Indians starved to death on the streets in these artificial famines. Or they became cannibals and robbers. Or they perished in epidemics caused by forced migrations and unsanitary conditions (because the invaders didn't bother to improve civic infrastructure, sanitation, etc.). e.g., Bubonic plague was unleashed in India, due to infected rats that came in European/British ships, and millions of Indians died in such plagues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
But why should a fertile land struggle due to few seasons of lack of rains?
You see, the Muslim and Christian invaders followed the "scorched Earth" policy in India and elsewhere. If they lost a battle, they would burn all local crops and destroy villages during their retreat. They captured women and children (to turn them into sex slaves or soldiers), so the local population would gradually dwindle. They forced remnant populations to migrate, and imposed harshest taxes and atrocities on those that stayed. They systematically dismantled the local industries (killed or chopped off limbs of industry experts and artisans, broke their tools of trade, destroyed their schools and books, and banned cultural and scientific education). They deliberately starved and weakened the enslaved population so they wouldn't revolt. They caused caste conflicts and wars (did you know - the word "caste" comes from Portuguese word "casts", meaning societal class). The result was that these most fertile lands in the world, were turned into unlivabke hell.
e.g., In 1630, after the monsoon had failed for two years, the Deccan famine erupted and lasted two years. Abdul Hamid Lahori’s Badshahnama recorded that starvation was so rife that “life was offered for a loaf”. Other desperate forms of survival were not unknown: “Men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love.” The English merchant Peter Mundy, travelling near Surat, confirmed that parents sold or consumed their own children, or sometimes gave them away to anyone who would feed them. Ravenous subjects accosted others walking in public to prey on them. Given these wretched circumstances, many chose migration. As Lahori recalled, “Every man whose dire sufferings did not terminate in death and who retained the power to move wandered off to the towns and villages of other [provinces].”
Drastic famines occurred under the Delhi Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1290-1351). As described by the thirteenth century Indo-Persian historian, Ziauddin Barani (1285-1357), the primary reasons behind the emergence of famine was the imposition of immense land taxes and the exploitation of the peasants at the hands of the aristocrats.
Gujarat and Deccan Famine (1630–1632): One of the most devastating famines in pre-colonial India occurred during the Mughal era. The famine resulted from three consecutive crop failures, leading to intense hunger, disease, and displacement. Contemporary Dutch records estimate that approximately 4 million people died in Gujarat and neighbourhood (Deccan region) in the ten months ending in October 1631. The overall death toll for the region was estimated at 7.4 million by late 1631.
I will probably add more data and links here, but I think now you understand how awful and horrible those evil regimes of history were.
Modern ndia is slowly rising again, from the ashes of these centuries of devastations.
Indiais making good strides in some industries, its economy is the fastest growing economy, its UPI is the biggest most-successful payments system in the world, and Indian government is standing tall and strong against bullies and terrorists.
I agree with you that some of these are indeed historical facts. Islamic invaders - that sought to raid India and loot it - did cause a lot of destruction. As did the Europeans (mostly the British) who colonised us and looted all our wealth to their own country.
These foreign invaders did do great harm to India as their intention in invading us was to only exploit India's wealth, weaken us and make their own kingdom richer.
But indian muslim rulers, who sought to create their own independent kingdoms in India, after conquering them, did not send India's wealth anywhere. They used it to develop their own kingdom's (i.e. India's) economy and growth. The Mughal empire is the perfect example of this, as they made India one of the richest country in the world during their period (which is what attracted the Europeans to colonise our country, and loot it).
As rulers of their own kingdom, muslim kings or emperors had no interest in creating famines in their own kingdoms. Indeed, Famines in India - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India outlines that famines have been documented in India even during the Maurya rule (2000+ years ago), (which is why you find Kautilya writing about famine relief), and gives examples of many famine reliefs documented in Indian history, even amongst Indian kingdom with muslim rulers. Note that I am not denying that famines happened in indian kingdoms with muslim rulers. It was however not common practice to artificially create to target a particular any community. As with any Hindu or Buddhist kingdoms in India, some were just natural disasters (because of flooding or drought) or due to flawed policies (like taxation) by despotic or inexperienced kings and a few may have been possible acts of warfare against an enemy kingdom.
As I wrote elsewhere here, if one is not obsessed with religious identity of a ruler, one will find that they are all the same everywhere - some or good and some are average and some are just weak despots. Their religious identity had nothing to do with why their kingdom was great or weak*.
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Famines are, with very few exceptions, politico-economic actions, often with intentional malice, rather than a complete inability to obtain enough food.
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You’re so close to the point but not quite there.
Famines are political. They happen because one population is happy to starve another. The Mughals ruled themselves. The British stole harvests for themselves and let the local population starve.
The potato famine in Ireland is treated as some kind of unavoidable, natural event. No, the British just stole the harvest. And this continued right up until Churchill in India.
So the Mughals might’ve been effective but the big difference is they weren’t being exploited as an imperial subject.
> The Mughals ruled themselves
> So the Mughals might’ve been effective but the big difference is they weren’t being exploited as an imperial subject.
The Mughals were the imperium, ruling over their subjects. They came in to the subcontinent as outsiders, just like the British.
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So, counterpoint: genocide aim to destroy the culture of a group, either by killing the women and children alongside to fighters during a conquest/repression, or by forcefully moving them to make them mix with a new dominant culture (Crimean Tatars are an example). This almost always end in streamlining the language and destroying language diversity, often reducing it to a single one for all the survivors/moved. While not even close to the SEA level, India is one of the subcontinent with the most different spoken languages, which would indicate that it might not have been that bad. At least, not genocide-bad.
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I have been taught the exact same verbose propaganda (invented maths, science, military, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, won this and that war blah blah) written by people from the middle east.
Rise above.
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Western colonialism is a very high bar in terms of damage imo.
This subject really interesting to read, thank you for mentioning it!
Found this in case anyone is interested in reading about it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
I worry Colonialism will come back again. Or at least in a different form.
Most International Relations practitioners are followers of (Systems) Realism. You might find some minor power with Idealists/Instituitonalists, but they only get that privilege by being under the umbrella of a great power.
Colonialism was not some greedy merchant/state thing, it was an Arms Race. It follows the inevitable forces produced by anarchy, there are no police to call so power is the greatest form of security. It causes a Tragedy of the Commons situation in the form of an Arms Race.
After Colonialism, we had essentially client states, which seems similarly brutal.
You may be right - Russian invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza (most westerners don't even know that Israel is a settler-colony - https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-fares-abraham-021826 that has been deliberately oppressing, chasing and killing Palestinians for a long time) and Trump demanding Greenland - all indicate that certain oligarchs are working to bring back imperialism.
All westerners have heard this claim repeated many times, but it’s never called a “colony” after gaining independence - otherwise every country on earth would be a colony.
Not sure what you are saying - Israel has colonised Palestine. Palestine is still not free or independent. Nor have the Palestinian natives been absorbed and made Israeli citizens like the Americans, Canadians or Australians did with the natives on the land they colonised. Do you see why this is problematic - by not giving them their own state or making them citizens, and culling them over the decades, they are effectively seeking the genocide of Palestine. And then westerners act surprised when Palestinians fight for their freedom (is the second amendment only for white, Christian, Americans?).
Israel has fully absorbed and given equal citizenship to the 2 million Arab Palestinians that live within the borders of the state of Israel. Their numbers grew from 156,000 in 1948 to 2,000,000 today. So your claims of a “culling” are ridiculous.
The Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza have also grown exponentially since the Israeli occupation.
None of these facts are even disputed.
Um, colonialism never left. It just morphed. The most common form is the economic colonialism/imperialism by the United States.
The World Bank and IMF are tools of colonialism. We extract resources and exploit cheap labor from the Global South. We kidnap heads of state and seize that country’s oil.
We may not send settlers like we did in the colonial era. We’ve just found a more efficient method.
What's the saying, the Irish famine was caused by a parasite, known as the British.
Even if you can argue the British didn't deliberately cause famine over their subjects, they almost never took active steps to alleviate them.
> Even if you can argue the British didn't deliberately cause famine over their subjects, they almost never took active steps to alleviate them.
They sent Protestant missionaries with free food for kids (souperism). Private charities, but the government used them as an excuse to not provide more government aid.
And a lot of Catholic parents decided they’d rather their children be dead than risk them becoming Protestant.
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Interesting to not mention Rabban Bar Sauma ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabban_Bar_Sauma ) who was a Mongol ambassador to France. He was born a Christian in Beijing and walked all the way to Paris in a sort of reverse Marco Polo situation.
Yeah it is easy to imagine the past as a set of very disconnected cultures when they were not. I remember hearing about people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_da_Pian_del_Carpine
He was a medieval Italian diplomat. And seems like when he was at the court of the Khan, we was trying to make a push of Catholicism and was getting into debates with other theologians, including one from a Islamic country and one from the Byzantine empire.
A bit later in the medieval times, you have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Rubruck who was an envoy from the court of France (Louis XIV) to the Khan. Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_de_Longjumeau (from France too)
Marco Polo is the most well know but far from the first one
For some reason, the website is down for me. I have always been fascinated by the Mongols after reading “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford.
Recently, I stumbled upon the 6:40+ hour YouTube video, “The Mongols - Terror of the Steppe.” You might like it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFwMDuAnS4
I guess you already found the hardcore history podcast episodes.
EDIT: Didn't pay attention to what channel you linked, didn't know they made videos for their podcasts.
I still get weird looks when I rave about 8 hours of podcasts on the Mongols. Hard to appreciate without having heard it. Dan Carlin is exceptional.
Here’s the first episode on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wuQ7JPneMRJTU9UJrJRNs?si=6...
And link to buy for those who prefer that over streaming https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-wrath-of-...
I have turned at least one friend onto history podcasts using Mike Duncan's work. Now our wives look at us like we're a bunch of two headed goats whenever we meet and talk referncing revolutionary figures and events, raving about how much more "you feel the history" when visiting Rome and Paris and know some of the history. It's great!
I just finished carlins kings of kings episodes before visiting the british museum. Carlin mentioned the contrast between what was depicted in the Assyrian and Achaemenid empires palace/throne and being able to see it in the museum with the added context made me appreciate it so much more.
Visited Rome/Pompeii with my GF and she said it was like having a private tour guide. I just felt like I knew so little and could only add sparse bits of context.
Dan Carlin has a great radio voice, and is an entertaining presenter. Hardcore history is really only okay on the history front though. Plus they are relatively shallow with how short they are.
I think Carlin himself would be the first to admit that, even does so in the intro to many episodes. I think he already suffers from the length of some of his series.
I think this is a fair take but it works great as a gateway drug!
I am curious what are your recommendations though. Always eager for expanding my horizon.
Revolutions Podcast is good and well researched (Especially later seasons).
The History of the Germans Podcast is really great (100+ episodes from Ottonians just to Habsburgs, so its pretty well in depth).
History of France Podcast is good, its from a University professor, but not overly academic but well researched.
History of England Podcast is good as well, starting with Anglo Saxon and Post Roman England. He uses a lot of high quality and primary sources.
A History of Italy podcast starts with the end of Rome and is 200 episodes to get to 1500.
I like in depth, single topic podcasts as you can tell as opposed to the podcasts that jump around topics.
Revolutions is my go-to. I also listened to History of Rome from Duncan. And because of this History of Byzantium is on my to check out list as well. I will try the others you mentioned. I'm very eager to find others as in depth as revolutions. Thanks!
Goodreads reviews don't instill confidence in the book.
As a rule, "pop history" is full of shit and is probably better considered misinformation than anything else. I probably don't I know of a single general-audience history/anthropology book that doesn't horrify scholars of the field.
As unfortunate as it is, studying cause-and-effect is extremely complex. If it's even theoretically possible to distill it down to easily digestible ideas, that's well outside our current technical capabilities.
There's usually going to be some true and interesting information in these books, but it will be too deeply embedded in a narrative that is misleading.
By general audience, do you mean any book that's not intended for academics?
Yes
I'm an avid reader of history books (antiquity, middle ages), and I'd say I'm very picky, trawling through reviews and recommendations from trusted sources before deciding on a book.
I have already come across books that were a slog to read because of the author's simplistic worldview or obvious contrarian agenda (so I can definitely relate), but I've also read some masterpieces (for example, Kaldellis I believe is solid).
Unfortunately I don't count any historians among my friends, so I'd welcome any recs from you for authors that are the least bad, or a teardown of main antiquity/middle ages historians.
Baudolino from Umberto Eco (an excellent book) is partially about that, I recommend the read !
"The kings of medieval France were fascinated by the Mongols, who they saw as great empire builders."
Well, surprising, as they were supporting military actions against Mongols, plus medieval France was nothing like Mongols empire in terms of social live organization, way of fighting wars (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_Truce_of_God).
Later, in XV century, France started to turn into Mongols-like regime, but those weren't medieval times.
Real recognizes Real.
Even better;
The Story Of The Mongols Whom We Call The Tartars by Friar Giovanni DiPlano Carpini (an Account of his embassy to the court of the Mongol Khan in 1245-1247) - https://archive.org/details/the-story-of-the-mongols-whom-we...
The cover; a picture of a Mongol Warrior in full Panopoly, is itself worth the price of the book!
I honestly had no idea about the French fascination with the Mongols. People tend to admire people who have traits they aspire to. I wonder if this stems from France, being a major imperial power at the time, admiring the Mongols as an imperial power.
This timeline coincides with the Crusades with, which the article talks about at length. I find the Crusades fascinating because they've shaped the modern world in so many ways.
Dan Carlin (of Hardcore History fame) once said that why he cares about military history is it shapes the world. If you look at the lightbulb, it doesn't really matter who invented it. Somebody would've. But take the Battle of Marathon, which shaped the entire history of Western Europe as the Greeks repelled the Persians. History would've been completely different. Or how Cyrus II (IIRC) essentially saved Judaism by rebuilding the Temple. Without that, Judaism may well have died out and, with it, all the Abrahamic religions may never have existed.
So the Crusades are fascinating because they've often portrayed as a religious war but they were anything but. Religion was simply the excuse. Instead medieval powers wanted to control the Levant to enrich themselves.
The Crusades essentially created international banking, making the Knights Templar incredibly wealthy [1]. One wonders if this was a necessary condition to the rise of the mercantile class that eventually displaced feudalism and brought on capitalism.
But back to the French. It's interesting that they were fascinated with the Mongols with everything else that was going on. During this same period, the Eastern Roman Empire still existed and the Moors occupied the Iberian peninsula. In many ways, the Mongols were more distant whereas the Arab "threat" was closer and more real. So why the Mongols?
[1]: https://bigthink.com/the-past/knights-templar-crusades-finan...
Why the Mongols? Because they were distant. You can't afford to admire the people next door; you're either fighting them or preparing for when fighting breaks out again.
The idea that you can't admire people you're fighting is ridiculous. You're forced to admire them. If you don't admire where they win, you lose.
I disagree. It's very hard to admire a direct enemy, even if you can see their strengths, you'll rationalize them in your head as being the evil sort of strength, which comes not from virtue but from their total lack of morality or whatever you can conjure up. We see that everywhere in history and even in contemporary conflicts.
We do?
Where, like Totila and Belisarius?
Richard the Lionheart and Saladin?
The death of Taira no Atsumori?
Byrhtnoth and the Vikings?
The Black Prince and King John II?
The Song dynasty's opinion of the Mongols?
David Hackworth saying that the US Army had to out-G the G?
GWOT instructors telling you that when you're out partying, the Muj is sharpening his knife?
France was not a major imperial power at the time. It was much smaller than today, lacking Savoy and much of Burgundy for start, with Normandy and many other areas only nominally part of it and technically under control of English king (who was just a duke in France, but that changed only a very little on the battlefield).
Crusades in middle east started as an attempt of Eastern Roman empire (although they just called it Roman empire / Basileia Romaion) to recover from recent advances of Muslim invaders in Anatolia (modern Turkey). But turned into an overwhelmingly religious effort in the west. The first crusade especially was largely ill organized and chaotic affair. Where on one end of the spectrum you had nobles arriving with somewhat well equipped forces and idea of what to do, and on the other you had pilgrims, with whatever they just picked up in their hands and not answering commands of anyone, but their priest.
The economic side of things came into play after the process started and gradually became dominant. But it didn't start like it.
Finally. Interest of France in Mongols can be easily explained precisely by the influence crusades had on French and other Christian elites in Europe. The initial victory of 1st Crusade was followed by a series of setbacks. Muslims gradually begun to push crusaders out, the fact that crusaders started to fight amongst themselves helped a lot.
And then mongols arrived, almost from nowhere, crushed one of most powerful Muslim states at the time, and didn't stop there. It did seem like an immense opportunity, and in a way it was. If French, or someone else in Christendom, could convince khans that some form of cooperation is possible, or even better, if Mongols converted to Christianity, there would be a decent chance to not only save Jerusalem, but to move on to Egypt (still majority Christian).
> under control of English king (who was just a duke in France,
I thought the folks in Normandy were just Nordic people who moved there and later to England
By the time of William the Conqueror, which I think is the sixth generation of Rollo's line in Normandy, they were just French (with a cultural memory of North Sea origins). The tapestry of Bayeux, which was made in England, calls them that.
Its a mess. Vikings (mostly danes) did "move" there by conquering and being given lands as bribes. William conquered England but was still a vassal to the king of France due to still being the Duke of Normandy. So for example when France got a new king the king of England would need to go and swear loyalty and such, which would become a problem later.
Through marriages and such the Duke of Normandy took over large parts of France and it became the Angevin Empire, but still just a puny vassal to the King of France.
The 100 year war was fought over this essentially and England would end up losing all French land and thus the problem was solved forever.
yes, but when they moved to England, the Normand duke made himself king of England, so he (and his heirs) had the crown of England and the ducky of Normandy.
So he was a Robber Ducky?
The arabs were broken into smaller kingdoms for a long time when it came to the XIII century. The Eastern Roman Empire had been in decline since the fall of Constantinople in 1204 and even before that it was only a regional power. Compared to those, the mongols managed to build an empire spreading on millions of square kilometers. There is no base for comparison. It is like comparing the UK and the US 20 years after WWII.
So this is a fallacy of seeing historical events through a modern lens.
We know how far the Mongols spread and we have accurate maps but in no way am I convinced that France could possibly conceive of the size and scope of Central Asia in the 11th century.
They could conceive that you can go across France in a couple of weeks and that you might need a few months to reach China. What's more, they could see how rich the khan is and that it is much more than their king. And that he has much bigger army. Surprisingly, they were not idiots.
Mongolian empire was so large because it is cheap to run an extractive regime
Disliking them doesn't make their empire smaller and success is a virtue of its own according to many. They were successful and people noticed, the rest is commentary.
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They also smelled and had a big rich empire. What I can say? Won't bother you with the guy who supposedly planted trees so that merchants can travel and rest in their shadows, nor should I tell you stories how those extractive people facilitated trade between Europe and China.
PS: The russians got lots of things from the eastern roman empire, just not the humanistic renaissance, but let's not go there.
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contemporary mongol throut singing with heavy metal done on electrified tradition instruments. the HU
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ7XW0_teB4
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