@soumyadiptamajumder8795

6 months ago

I’m going to approach this one from a different angle though since there have been developments in scholarship about the subject that I wasn’t previously aware of. One thing we need to keep in mind when examining the 13th-century Mongol expansions is that many of the sources written about the Mongols that survive have a clear agenda and are not always all that reliable as a result. This means we have to take them with a grain of salt and examine them alongside other evidence that exists to verify them. This is common with many fields and subjects in history and I know this subject makes some people irrationally emotional for some reason but we cannot make things up in history, we need to focus on the evidence and the facts to get as close to the truth as possible. While there is no doubt that the Mongols conquered plenty of land thanks to their mastery of warfare and therefore killed plenty of people, some sources give us numbers of dead that just make absolutely no sense and are essentially propaganda. They will list millions of people killed by the Mongols in a given settlement despite census tax records indicating that only tens of thousands of people lived in some of these locations. There are certainly particularly violent episodes like what happened at Bagdad, which can be verified, or the large-scale warfare that occurred in China (alongside famine and plague which must be kept in mind when looking at the death toll indicated in census records.) With that said, this idea that the Mongols were bloodthirsty barbarians who killed everyone they came across and killed millions everywhere they went is clearly an exaggeration. In fact, focusing on China we actually do see a population increase when the military campaign is complete and China would go on to prosper under the Yuan dynasty. This is also a broad trend we see across the Mongol empire in general, the secure trade network they set up resulted in a boom in commerce and generally speaking, the Mongol empire proved to be a net benefit to its subjects. I know its easy to focus on the brutal wars that took place, but we cannot ignore the fact that the Mongols were also very competent diplomats and in actual fact, in some cases they did start diplomatic relationships with peaceful intentions but if you kill another countries envoys and merchants, that sends a very clear message that you intend to fight and every ruler knew it so they only had themselves to blame if they got a bunch of their people slaughtered due to the mistake they made. So, there is no doubt the Mongols were at times, nasty on the one hand, but the historical evidence simply doesn’t suggest they were any worse than anyone else. They just had all the pieces of the puzzle in place to become really damn good at conquering. Often times people focus on the Mongols but do not even consider the foes they are facing and how they stack up morally speaking and I have to give the Mongols a lot of credit. They could have easily justified some kind of holy crusade or jihad equivalent with their whole “universal ruler” belief justified by the Mandate of Heaven but they didn’t. They didn’t care what your background was or your religion was, they treated you the same as everyone else. Additionally, while their meritocratic system in practice does not quite reflect what we see in the modern day, they deserve credit for that as well all the same, at a time where bloodline was usually king outside of the Mongol sphere. The Mongol empire is also such a vastly big entity that frankly, I am making some oversimplifications as this subject really deserves a book. Because they were so hands off like any other successful empire in that era as long as you paid your tribute, acknowledged the Great Khan as your ruler, and fulfilled your military obligations, your experience under the Mongol empire will depend at least just as much on the governing body of your state and even settlement. Regardless, I hope this answer provides a clearer picture all the same. Yeah, they killed people. But the caricatures people often turn them into simply are not reflected in the historical record.

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