Wait For It...The Mongols!: Crash Course World History #17

Key Takeaways

hi i'm john green this is crash course world history and today we're going to discuss wait for it the mongols so you probably have a picture of the mongols in your head yes that's the picture brutal bloodthirsty swarthy humorously mustachioed warriors riding the planes wearing fur eating meat directly off the bone saying in short we imagine the mongol empire as stereotypically barbarian and that's not entirely wrong but if you've been reading recent world history textbooks like we here at crash course have you might have a different view of the mongols one that emphasizes the amazing speed and success of their conquests how they conquered more land in 25 years than the romans did in 400 how they controlled more than 11 million contiguous square miles and you may even have read that the mongols basically created nations like russia and even korea one historian has even claimed that the mongols smashed the feudal system and created international wall renowned for their religious tolerance the mongols in this view created the first great free trade zone like a crazy medieval eurasian nafta and that's not entirely wrong either stupid truth always resisting simplicity so remember herders we talked about them back in episode one as an alternative to hunting and gathering or agriculture here are the key things to remember one nomads aren't jack kerouac they don't go on like random road trips they migrate according to climate conditions so they can feed their flocks two nomads don't generally produce manufactured goods which means they need to trade so they almost always live near settled people and three because they generally live close to nature and in harsh conditions pastoralists tend to be tougher than diamond-plated differential calculus like think of the huns or the zhong nu or the mongols okay stan that's a no back to me come stan i am the star of the show not the mongols hi sorry about that right so one last thing pastoral people also tend to be more egalitarian especially where women are concerned paradoxically when there's less to go around humans tend to share more and when both men and women must work for the social order to survive there tends to be less patriarchal domination of women although mongol women rarely went to war i can't tell your gender i mean you've got the pants but then you also have the the floopity flop so that's the technical term by the way i'm a historian if you had to choose a pastoral nomadic group to come out of central asia and dominate the world you probably wouldn't have chosen the mongols because for most of the history we've been discussing they just hung out in the foothills bordering the siberian forest mixing herding and hunting quietly getting really good at archery and riding horses also the mongols were much smaller than other pastoral groups like the tatars or the uyghurs and not to get like all great man history on you or anything but the reason the mongols came to dominate the world really started with one guy genghis khan let's go to the thought bubble the story goes that genghis or chingaz khan was born around 1162 with the name timogen to a lowly clan his father was poisoned to death leaving temujin under the control of his older brothers one of whom he soon killed during an argument by 19 he was married to his first and most important wife vorte who was later kidnapped this was pretty common among the mongols temujin's mom had also been kidnapped in rescuing his wife temijin proved his military medal and he soon became a leader of his tribe but uniting the mongol confederations required a civil war which he won largely thanks to two innovations first he promoted people based on merit rather than family position and second he brought lower classes of conquered people into his own tribe while dispossessing the leaders of the conquered clans thus he made peasants love him the rich hated him but they didn't matter anymore because they were no longer rich with these two building block policies temujin was able to win the loyalty of more and more people and in 1206 he was declared the great khan the leader of all the mongols how well the mongols chose their rulers in a really cool way a prospective ruler would call a general council called a coral thai and anyone who supported his candidacy for leadership would show up on their horses literally voting with their feet mr green mr green but horses don't have feet they have hooves i hate you me from the past also no interrupting the thought bubble after uniting the mongols genghis khan went on to conquer a lot of territory by the time he died in his sleep in 1227 his empire stretched from the mongol homeland in mongolia all the way to the caspian sea thanks thought bubble so that's a pretty good wicked empire and sure a lot of it was pasture or mountains or desert but the mongols did conquer a lot of people too and in some ways with genghis death the empire was just getting started his son ogidai khan expanded the empire even more and genghis grandson monka was the great khan in 1258 when baghdad the capital of the abbasid empire fell to the mongols and another of genghis's grandsons kubla khan conquered the song dynasty in china in 1279 and if the mamluks hadn't stopped another of genghis's grandsons at the battle of ein jolot they probably would have taken all of north africa and genghis khan she had a lot of grandkids well must be time for the open letter [Music] an open letter to genghis khan's descendants but first let's check what's in the secret compartment today oh a noisemaker and champagne poppers stan you know i suck at these what's all this for oh it's because it's a birthday party yay happy birthday to genghis khan's descendants how do i know it's your birthday genghis khan's descendants because every day is your birthday because right now on the planet earth there are 16 million direct descendants of genghis khan meaning that every day is the birthday of 43 000 of them so good news genghis khan your empire might be gone but your progeny lives on and on and on and on happy birthday best wishes john green unfortunately for the mongols those guys weren't always working together because genghis khan failed to create a single political unit out of his conquests instead after genghis's death the mongols were left with four really important empires called khanates the yuan dynasty in china the ill khanate in persia the chagadai khanate in central asia and the khanate of the golden horde in russia if you remember all the way back to the hellenistic period this is similar to what happened to another good general who wasn't much for administration alexander the great also neither of them ever conquered india the mongols succeeded primarily because of their military skill genghis khan's army which never numbered more than 130 000 was built on speed and archery just like this guy mongol mounted archers were like super fast tanks compared to the foot soldiers and knights they were up against but wait all the military history nerds are saying once people knew the mongols were coming why didn't they just hole up in castles and forts it's not like the mongols had flying horses except they did they didn't stan why are you always making history boring so the mongols apparently didn't have flying horses but they were uncommonly adaptable so even though they'd never seen a castle before they started raiding they became experts at siege warfare by interrogating prisoners and they also adopted gunpowder probably introducing it to europeans and they even built ships so they could attack japan that might have worked too except there happened to be a typhoon also people were terrified of the mongols often cities would surrender the moment the mongols arrive just to escape slaughter but of course that only happened because there were occasions when the mongols did you know slaughter entire towns so with all that background let us return to the question of mongol awesomeness first five arguments for awesome one the mongols really did reinvigorate cross-eurasian trade the silk road trading routes that had existed for about a thousand years by the time the mongols made the scene had fallen into disuse but the mongols valued trade because they could tax it and they did a great job of keeping their empire safe it was said that a man could walk from one end of the mongol empire to the other with a gold plate on his head without ever fearing being robbed two the mongols increased communication through eurasia by developing this pony express-like system of weigh stations with horses and riders that could quickly relay information it was called the yam system and it also included these amazing bronze passports which facilitated travel three another thing that traveled along mongol trade routes was cuisine for example it was because of the mongols that rice became a staple of the persian diet which i mentioned entirely because i happen to like persian food four the mongols forcibly relocated people who were useful to them like artists and musicians and especially administrators as you can imagine the mongols weren't much for administrative tasks like keeping records so they found people who were good at that stuff and just moved them around the empire this created the kind of cross-cultural pollination that world historians these days get really excited about and five the mongols were almost unprecedentedly tolerant of different religions they themselves were shamanists believing in nature spirits but since their religion was tied to the land from which they came they didn't expect new people to adopt it and they didn't ask them to so you could find muslims and buddhists and christians and people of any other religion you can think of prospering throughout the mongol empire and it's that kind of openness that has led historians to go back and reevaluate the mongols seeing them as kind of a precursor to modernity but there is another side of the story that we should not forget so here are five reasons why the mongols might not be so great one here is genghis khan's definition of happiness the greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies to chase them before you to rob them of their wealth to see those dear to them bathed in tears to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters off topic but if that quote rings a bell it might be because oliver stone blatantly plagiarized genghis khan in the movie conan the barbarian two is an extension of one the mongols were seriously brutal conquerors i mean not uniquely brutal but still the mongols often destroyed entire cities and most historians estimate the number they killed to be in the millions three their empire didn't last within 80 years they'd left china and been replaced by a new dynasty the ming and in persia they blended in so completely that by the 15th century they were totally unrecognizable i mean they'd even taken up agriculture agriculture the last refuge of scoundrels who want to devote their lives to working instead of scootery pooping they also weren't particularly interested in artistic patronage or architecture i mean your palace may last forever but my yurt can go anywhere five the mongols were probably responsible for the black death by opening up trade they also opened up vectors for disease to travel in the case of the plague via fleas infected with yercinia pestis at least according to one story the mongols intentionally spread the plague by catapulting their plague-ridden cadavers over the walls of kapha in the crimea while this primitive act of biological warfare might have happened it's unlikely to be what actually spread the plague more likely it was the fleas on the rats and the holds of black sea ships that were trading with europe but that trade only existed because of the mongols all right stan one last time cue the mongol taj so the mongols promoted trade diversity and tolerance and they also promoted slaughter and senseless destruction and what you think about the mongols ends up saying a lot about you do you value artistic output over religious diversity is imperialism that doesn't last better or worse than imperialism that does and are certain kinds of warfare inherently wrong if you think those are easy questions to answer then i haven't been doing my job regardless i look forward to reading your answers and comments thanks for watching and i'll see you next week crash course is produced and directed by stan mueller our script supervisor is danica johnson the show is written by my high school history teacher raul meyer and myself and our graphics theme is thoughtbubble last week's phrase of the week was hawaiian pizza if you want to suggest future phrases of the week or guess at this week's you can do so in comments or you can also ask questions about today's video that can be answered by our team of historians by the way if you want to wear your glove for crash course there's a shirt link in the video info thanks for watching crash course nobody can beat crash course viewers well except for the mongols [Music] google [Music] you