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Hi I’m John Green; this is Crash Course
World History and today we’re gonna discuss…
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wait for it… THE MONGOLS.
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So you probably have a picture of the Mongols
in your head. Yes, that’s the picture: brutal,
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bloodthirsty, swarthy, humorously mustachioed
warriors riding the plains, wearing fur, eating
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meat directly off the bone, saying, "Bar bar
bar bar bar bar bar". In short, we imagine
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the Mongol empire as stereotypically barbarian.
And that’s not entirely wrong.
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But if you’ve been reading recent world
history textbooks like we here at Crash Course
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have, you might have a different view of the
Mongols, one that emphasizes the amazing speed
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and success of their conquests — how they
conquered more land in 25 years than the Romans
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did in 400. How they controlled more than
11 million contiguous square miles. And you
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may even have read that the Mongols basically
created nations like Russia and even Korea.
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One historian has even claimed that the Mongols,
“smashed the feudal system” and created
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international law. Renowned for their religious
tolerance, the Mongols, in this view, created
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the first great free trade zone, like a crazy
medieval Eurasian NAFTA. And that’s not
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entirely wrong either. Stupid truth, always
resisting simplicity.
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[theme music]
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So remember herders? We talked about them
back in episode one as an alternative to hunting
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and gathering or agriculture. Here are the
key things to remember:
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1. Nomads aren’t Jack Kerouac: They don’t
just go on like random road trips. They migrate
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according to climate conditions so they can
feed their flocks.
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2. Nomads don’t generally produce manufactured
goods which means they need to trade, so they
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almost always live near settled people.
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And 3. Because they live in generally live
close to nature and in harsh conditions, pastoralists
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tend to be tougher than diamond-plated differential
calculus. Like, think of the Huns, or the
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Xiongnu. Or the Mongols. Okay, Stan. That’s
enough. Back to me. Stan. I AM THE STAR OF
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THIS SHOW NOT THE MONGOLS!!! Hi. Sorry about
that.
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Right, so one last thing: pastoral people
also tend to be more egalitarian, especially
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where women are concerned. Paradoxically,
when there’s less to go around, humans tend
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to share more, and when both men and women
must work for the social order to survive,
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there tends to be less patriarchal domination
of women. Although Mongol women rarely went
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to war. I can’t tell your gender. I mean
you’ve got the pants, but then you also
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have the floopity flop, so… That’s the
technical term, by the way. I’m a historian.
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If you had to choose a pastoral nomadic group
to come out of central Asia and dominate the
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world, you probably wouldn’t have chosen
the Mongols. Because for most of the history
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we’ve been discussing, they just hung out
in the foothills bordering the Siberian forest,
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mixing herding and hunting, quietly getting
really good at archery and riding horses.
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Also, the Mongols were much smaller than other
pastoral groups like the Tatars or the Uyghurs.
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And not to get like all Great Man History
on you or anything, but the reason the Mongols
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came to dominate the world really started with one
guy, Genghis Khan. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
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The story goes that Genghis or Chingus Khan
was born around 1162 with the name Temüjin
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to a lowly clan. His father was poisoned to
death, leaving Temüjin under the control
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of his older brothers, one of whom he soon
killed during an argument. By 19 he was married
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to his first and most important wife, Börte,
who was later kidnapped. This was pretty common
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among the Mongols, Temüjin’s mom had also
been kidnapped. In rescuing his wife, Temüjin
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proved his military mettle and he soon became
a leader of his tribe, but uniting the Mongol
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confederations required a civil war, which
he won, largely thanks to two innovations.
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First, he promoted people based on merit rather
than family position, and second, he brought
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lower classes of conquered people into his
own tribe while dispossessing the leaders
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of the conquered clans. Thus he made the peasants
love him. The rich hated him — but they
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didn’t matter anymore, because they were
no longer rich.
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With these two building block policies, Temüjin
was able to win the loyalty of more and more
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people and in 1206 he was declared the Great
Khan, the leader of all the Mongols. How?
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Well, the Mongols chose their rulers in a
really cool way. A prospective ruler would
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call a general council called a kurultai,
and anyone who supported his candidacy for
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leadership would show up on their horses,
literally voting with their feet.
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Past John: Mr. Green, Mr. Green! But horses
don’t have feet they have hooves.
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I hate you, Me From the Past. Also, NO INTERRUPTING
THE THOUGHT BUBBLE!
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After uniting the Mongols, Genghis Khan went
on to conquer a lot of territory. By the time
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he died in his sleep in 1227, his empire stretched
from the Mongol homeland in Mongolia all the
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way to the Caspian Sea. Thanks, Thought Bubble.
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So that’s a pretty good looking empire,
and sure a lot of it was pasture or mountains
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or desert, but the Mongols did conquer a lot
of people, too. And in some ways with Genghis’
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death, the empire was just getting started.
His son Ögedei Khan expanded the empire even
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more. And Genghis’ grandson Möngke was
the Great Khan in 1258 when Baghdad, the capitol
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of the Abbasid Empire, fell to the Mongols.
And another of Genghis’ grandsons, Kublai
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Khan, conquered the Song Dynasty in China
in 1279. And if the Mamluks hadn’t stopped
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another of Genghis’ grandsons at the battle
of Ain Jalut, they probably would have taken
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all of North Africa. Genghis Khan sure had
a lot of grandkids… It must be time for the open letter.
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An Open Letter To Genghis Khan’s Descendants.
But first, let’s check what’s in the secret
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compartment today. Oh. A noisemaker and champagne
poppers? Stan, you know I suck at these. What's
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all this for? Ohhh, it’s because it’s a BIRTHDAY PARTY!!
YAY. Happy birthday to Genghis Khan’s descendants.
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How do I know it’s your birthday, Genghis
Khan’s descendants? Because every day is
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your birthday. Because right now on the planet
Earth, there are 16 million direct descendants
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of Genghis Khan, meaning that every day is
the birthday of 43,000 of them. So, good news,
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Genghis Khan: Your empire might be gone, but
your progeny lives on. And on, and on, and
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on. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
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Best wishes, John Green
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Unfortunately for the Mongols, those guys
weren’t always working together, because
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Genghis Khan failed to create a single political
unit out of his conquests. Instead, after
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Genghis’ death, the Mongols were left with
four really important Empires called Khanates:
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The Yuan Dynasty in China, the Il-Khanate
in Persia, the Chagatai Khanate in Central
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Asia, and the Khanate of the Golden Horde
in Russia.
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If you remember all the way back to the Hellenistic
period, this is similar to what happened to
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another good general who wasn’t much for
administration, Alexander the Great. Also,
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neither of them ever conquered India.
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The Mongols succeeded primarily because of
their military skill. Genghis Khan’s army,
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which never numbered more than 130,000 was
built on speed and archery. Just like this
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guy. Mongol mounted archers were like super
fast tanks, compared to the foot soldiers
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and knights they were up against.
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But wait, all the military history nerds are
saying, once people knew that the Mongols
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were coming, why didn’t they just hole up
in castles and forts? It’s not like the
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Mongols had flying horses. EXCEPT THEY DID. They
didn’t? Stan, why are you always making history boring?
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So the Mongols apparently didn’t have flying
horses, but they were uncommonly adaptable.
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So even though they’d never seen a castle
before they started raiding, they became experts
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at siege warfare by interrogating prisoners.
And they also adopted gunpowder, probably
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introducing it to Europeans, and they even
built ships so they could attack Japan. That
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might have worked, too except there happened
to be a typhoon.
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Also, people were terrified of the Mongols.
Often cities would surrender the moment the
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Mongols arrived, just to escape slaughter.
But of course, that only happened because
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there were occasions when the Mongols, did,
you know, slaughter entire towns.
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So with all that background, let us return
to the question of Mongol awesomeness. First,
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five arguments for awesome.
1. The Mongols really did reinvigorate cross-Eurasian
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trade. The Silk Road trading routes that had
existed for about 1000 years by the time the
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Mongols made the scene had fallen into disuse,
but the Mongols valued trade because they
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could tax it, and they did a great job of
keeping their empire safe. It was said that
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a man could walk from one end of the Mongol
empire to the other with a gold plate on his
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head without ever fearing being robbed.
2. The Mongols increased communication throughout
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Eurasia by developing this pony express-like
system of way stations with horses and riders
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that could quickly relay information. It was
called the yam system and also included these
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amazing bronze passports, which facilitated
travel.
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3. Another thing that travelled along the
Mongol trade routes was cuisine. For example,
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it was because of the Mongols that rice became
a staple of the Persian diet. Which I mention
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entirely because I happen to like Persian
food.
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4. The Mongols forcibly relocated people who
were useful to them, like artists and musicians
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and, especially administrators. As you can
imagine, the Mongols weren't much for administrative
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tasks like keeping records, so they found
people were good at that stuff and just moved
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them around the empire. This created the kind
of cross-cultural pollination that world historians
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these days get really excited about.
And 5. The Mongols were almost unprecedentedly
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tolerant of different religions. They themselves
were shamanists, believing in nature spirits,
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but since their religion was tied to the land
from which they came, they didn’t expect
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new people to adopt it and they didn’t ask
them to. So you could find Muslims and Buddhists
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and Christians and people of any other religion
you can think of prospering throughout the
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Mongol empire. And it’s that kind of openness
that has led some historians to go back and
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re-evaluate the Mongols, seeing them as kind
of a precursor to modernity.
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But there’s another side to the story that
we should not forget, so, here are five reasons
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why the Mongols might not be so great.
1. Here is Genghis Khan’s definition of
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happiness: “The greatest happiness is to
vanquish your enemies, to chase them before
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you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those
dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to
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your bosom their wives and daughters." Off-topic,
but if that quote rings a bell, it might be
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because Oliver Stone blatantly plagiarized
Genghis Khan in the movie Conan the Barbarian.
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2. Is an extension of one. The Mongols were
seriously brutal conquerors. I mean, not uniquely
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brutal, but still: the Mongols destroyed entire
cities, and most historians estimate the numbers
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they killed to be in the millions.
3. Their empire didn’t last. Within 80 years
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they’d left China and been replaced by a
new dynasty, the Ming. And in Persia they
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blended in so completely that by the 15th
century they were totally unrecognizable.
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I mean, they’d even taken up agriculture!
Agriculture, the last refuge for scoundrels
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who want to devote their lives to working
instead of skoodilypooping.
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4. They also weren’t particularly interested
in artistic patronage or architecture. I mean,
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your palace may last forever, but my yurt
can go anywhere.
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5. The Mongols were probably responsible for
the Black Death. By opening up trade they
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also opened up vectors for disease to travel,
in the case of the Plague via fleas infected
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with Yersinia pestis. And at least according
to one story, the Mongols intentionally spread
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the plague by catapulting their plague-ridden
cadavers over the walls of Caffa in the Crimea.
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While this primitive act of biological warfare
might have happened, it’s unlikely to be
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what actually spread the plague. More likely
it was the fleas on the rats in the holds
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of Black Sea ships that were trading with Europe. But
that trade only existed because of the Mongols.
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All right Stan, one last time- cue the Mongol-tage.
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So the Mongols promoted trade, diversity,
and tolerance, and they also promoted slaughter
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and senseless destruction. And what you think
about the Mongols ends up saying a lot about
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you: Do you value artistic output over religious
diversity? Is imperialism that doesn’t last
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better or worse than imperialism that does?
And are certain kinds of warfare inherently
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wrong? If you think those are easy questions
to answer, than I haven’t been doing my job.
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Regardless, I look forward to reading your answers in
comments. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you
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next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by
Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson.
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The show is written by my high school history
teacher Raoul Meyer and myself, and our Graphics
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Team is Thought Bubble. Last week's Phrase
Of The Week was "Hawaiian Pizza". If you want
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to suggest future phrases of the week or guess
at this week's, you can do so in comments,
00:10:48
where you can also ask questions about today's
video that can be answered by our team of
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historians. By the way, if you want to wear
your love for Crash Course there's a Mongols
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shirt, link in the video info.
00:10:56
Thanks for watching Crash Course. Nobody can beat
Crash Course viewers. Well, except for the Mongols.
