Hi and welcome back to Heimler’s History. In this video we fittin to be talking about the Mongols. Now thanks to John Green over at Crash Course, everyone loves the Mongols now. But if you had lived during their reign and you had resisted them, they would have given you the black plague and the catapulted your dead, bulbous, oozing body over the defensive walls of their enemies in order to spread the plague to them and eviscerate their entire population. So back then we wouldn’t have bought tshirts with the Mongols on them, we would have evacuated our bowels at the first sign of their approach. Even so… I admit the Mongols are pretty awesome. Why does John Green always have to win? Doesn’t matter. Let’s get to it. Now over the course of World History many pastoral peoples took the stage, but by far the most significant of them are the Mongols. They emerged in the 13th century and within only a few years controlled the largest land-based empire in all human history. But what’s strange is that even though what I just said is 100% true, they Mongol Empire itself left a very small cultural footprint on history. They gave us no new language, no new religion, and no lasting civilization. So let’s get into how these folks accomplished all they accomplished, and in order to tell their story, we really need to start with one individual by the name of Temujin (that name might mean nothing to you, but you might recognize the title he acquired later in life: Genghis Khan). So Temujin was born in the 12th century into a network of Mongolian tribes that were fractured and at war with one another. Through a series of unfortunate events, Temujin and his family became social outcasts without much of a way to scratch a living. Even so, Temujin’s personality was magnetic and he soon forged critical personal alliances among the tribes. Not long after he was recognized as a chief among his growing band of followers. And as such, he gained himself a reputation for brutality and ruthlessness with his enemies, and secured a healthy string of military victories. One of the distinctive features of his method of conquering is worth noting. Instead of destroying his enemies or enslaving them, he made the people he conquered part of his tribe. And on the wave of his growing power, a tribal council in 1206 recognized him as Genghis Khan, the supreme leader of a newly unified Mongol nation. And just to be clear, historians of late have changed the spelling of his title to Chinggis Khan, so don’t get confused: it’s the same guy. And now that he was the Chinggis Genghis of all Mongolia and he had a powerful army at his beck and call, what would he do? I reckon he could be satisfied in his power and sit on the porch of his yurt sipping yak milk for the rest of his life. But that’s not what he did. When a leader has supreme power and an army bent on destruction at his fingertips, you expand. And that’s what he did. Genghis Khan’s first leg of expansion was into CHina. In 1209 he perpetrated his first attack which set in motion the expansion of the Mongol world empire. And his attacks were fierce. A recent scholar said it this way: In a flash, the Mongol warriors would defeat every army, capture every fort, and bring down the walls of every city they encountered. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus would soon kneel before the dusty boots of illiterate young Mongol horsemen. -Jack Weatherford And my question is, how could the Mongols, with a population of less than a million people do such a thing? Let’s try to answer that question. What tactics gave them the ability to conquer so many people? Well the first thing to note is that the Mongol Empire grew without a guiding blueprint. Old Chinggis Genghis didn’t sit down with a map, draw some lines, and say, “Now THAT’S my empire.” No, they just went out and conquered. And the more land and people they conquered, the more resources they had to keep conquering. And in many cases the odds were patently NOT in their favor. For example, when they invaded China, the Chinese outnumbered them 100 to 1 and they possessed far more advanced technology. But Mongol success lay in the organization of their army. Genghis Khan reorganized the entire Mongol society into military units of 10,000, 1,000, 100, and 10. And with such organization he was able to quickly and effectively control and command his troops. And when he conquered a people, they got swept into that organizational system as well, only he scattered them among different units so they wouldn’t get ideas about rebelling. And in this way, Genghis Khan created a growing army that was fiercely loyal to him. But not necessarily because they loved him, but because they feared him. In fact, the policy was that if even one member of a unit deserted, the WHOLE unit was massacred. And this reputation for brutality spread to the surrounding nations, and did much of the work for him before he even got to those places. His policy to those surrounding nations was as follows: Whoever submits shall be spared, but those who resist, they shall be destroyed with their wives, children, and dependents. So obviously he was kind of a moderate. But actually, despite those words, he did have a reputation for tolerance. Take religion for example. Genghis Khan allowed conquered peoples to keep their religion as long as they didn’t become the center of political opposition. So wherever the Mongols encountered Buddhists or Christians or Muslims or Daoists, he let them be in terms of their beliefs. Now we’ve been talking about Mongolian conquest in general, but let’s look specifically at how two different cultures responded: China and Persia. The Mongol conquest of China was the most difficult and extended of all. It lasted seventy years from 1209-1279. It began in northern China and the Mongols’s concern was destruction and plunder. But the further into China they moved, their concern changed. As they worked their way to southern China, they were more concerned with accommodating the local population. For example, they allowed landowners to keep their land as long as they pledged loyalty. Now regardless of the different methods, the result of the China conquest was the unification of China. In fact, some of the more learned Confucians were persuaded that the Mongols had been given the Mandate of Heaven to rule over their people. And in China, the Mongols fit themselves pretty neatly into the Chinese mold by making use of existing systems of administration and taxation. They even established a new dynasty called the Yuan dynasty. And under the authority of this dynasty roads were improved, canals were built, scholars and artists were patronized. So the Mongol leaders very much ruled like beneficent Confucian leaders. Even so, their rule in CHina was relatively brief, only 100 years. By the mid-14th century they were forced out by factionalism, the plague, and numerous peasant rebellions. Now let’s see what happened when the Mongols encountered the Persians. This conquest was far more abrupt than the one in China. In relatively short order, the Muslim Persians fell to Mongol attacks. And to the Persians this reality was deeply disconcerting. After all, the Mongols were infidels, and how in the world could a band of non-believers conquer them so easily? And not only did the Mongols conquer them, they slaughtered the Persians with a ferocity they had never known before. A Persian historian of the time recounted it like this: Every town and every village has been several times subjected to pillage and massacre and has suffered this confusion for years so that even though there be generation and increase until the Resurrection the population will not attain to a tenth part of what it was before. It was insane. In fact in 1258, at the sacking of Baghdad alone, the Mongols put over 200,000 people to death. Even so, the Mongols were far more transformed themselves by the Persians than the Persians were by the Mongols. They made use of the Perian administrative system and even left many Persian rulers in place. Most significant, though, is that the Mongols who conquered Persia became Muslims in large part. This kind of large scale conversion certainly didn’t occur in China. And as for the end of Mongol rule in Persia, it was much different than in China where they were driven out. In Persia, the Mongols just sort of disappeared gradually. Mainly they assimilated into Persian society and soon found that they were no longer a people distinct from the Persians. Okay, that’s the Mongols. If you’re trembling in your boots, you’re doing it right. See you in the next one.