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Comment by cato_the_elder | Hacker News Reader

This part sounds very similar to the traditional role of women, and it is quite dishonest to frame it as "Running Genghis Khan’s Empire":

> Chinggis Khan’s senior wife, Börte, is responsible for a camp. She’s responsible for their home, the yurt or ger that they live in. She’s responsible for the kids. If merchants come through, she’s going to talk to them about economic activity. She is going to oversee or perform the typical daily herding activities. There’s food preparation. There’s clothing preparation. There are religious rituals. There’s entertainment. It’s often a woman’s job to be the hospitable partner, to bring in food and welcome guests.

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The thing to remember is that a "camp" comprised thousands of people, livestock and other moving parts. She was essentially project and logistics manager of a massive project, with no automation tools or modern mechanical equipment. The logistics of it would have been mind boggling. Not sure what you mean by "traditional role of women", as that would differ between cultures, but her job would be no mean feat, in my opinion.

which is a fair point, but its a far cry from the claim of running the empire.

The wives of many leaders tend to be important politically and have a hand in the nation's affairs, but its a large leap to claim that means they ran it.

She was important absolutely, but the article was just using too much hyperbole.

also the army stat was complete bs, we know they were not in need of resorting to female soldiers due to their large enough population.

Household economics were often controlled by women, as well as structuring/securing social alliances or solidify social status. So it isn't hyperbole, so much as this aspect is entirely lost with more "modern" ideas about gender roles, rather the lack thereof.

In older societies it was common to view women as playing a central role in bringing great ruin or great fortune to men, and by extension "their" empires, for this very reason.

>In older societies it was common to view women as playing a central role in bringing great ruin or great fortune to men, and by extension "their" empires, for this very reason.

Honestly, even if we don't talk about it, it still is this way. If you want to achieve success, the single most important decision you make is who you marry.

>but its a large leap to claim that means they ran it

I don't think it is, not just women in particular but also bureaucrats and diplomats in general is what actually ran and does still run empires and nations. Today you'd call it the administrative state. Both historically as well as today people vastly overstate the importance of visible leaders and vastly underestimate the role that administrators, managers, and so on play.

I think Robert Moses is a good modern example of an unelected bureacrat who accumulated lots of power and used it in pretty sinister ways when he all but ran New York City.

Traditional role doesn't mean the role is not hard to fullfil.

I think part of the issue is that the title of the article is using the word "ran" in "ran Genghis Khan's Empire" to imply that Börte made strategic, judicial, or political decisions, and then the text in the article talks about more operational or logistical work. It's hyperbolic.

The reasons are obviously: precious, precious clicks.

A title like "The Women Who Kept Genghis Khan's Empire Running" would have been better.

Not sure why you're being downvoted for pointing this out. She was responsible for "their" home. Not the tens of thousands of households across the empire. There was also a sentence where the scholar being interviewed estimates that women made up to 20% of Mongolian armies of that era. That just seems flatout unbelievable.

he is being downvoted for the same reason this article exists, pc culture doesn't like being corrected. There is a war against historical accuracy for the sake of adding in women or random races that wouldn't be there.

The annoying thing is that it makes no sense to do this because there are plenty of non-male or non-white leaders to pick from anyway.

My favorite empire is the Ajuuran sultanate that was a very powerful african sultanate in modern day somalia. It traded as far as china and it had many victories over great powers like portugal.

A great female leader that actually existed was queen boudica, one of the greatest celtic anti-roman rebels. She led her people and dealt a lot of damage to the roman invaders before she inevitably lost to the chads that are the roman legions.

Rather than blackwash or add in random women we can just look to the parts of history that already contain that.

What portion of this article do you believe is inaccurate?

the main claim that borte ran the mongol empire, she didn't. She was a great help and most great leaders had amazing wives who helped them.

Despite this her actions were greatly inflated by the title and main claim.

Running an empire is a lot different than leading it. It's like COO and CEO, Sandberg and Zuck.

Too bad that in reality her role would be more of executive assistant by those standards.

I'd take every claim in this article with a grain of salt. There simply isn't much documentation from that time in the Mongol empire.

I think they’re basing that claim on some buried women exhibiting archery and horseback riding strength in their skeletal structures. I doubt they routinely fought in the army, given the lack of contemporary accounts observing any women in the Mongol army.

This contrasts with, say, the ancient Sarmatians, where we see female burials with actual weapons of war, and have contemporary accounts that women did fight extensively in battles. There, a figure of 20% would be roughly accurate.

Suddenly everyone is an expert on the logistics of running an empire! Is it so hard to believe that women were in positions of real power there, especially when men were overwhelmingly occupied with warfare? If you read the article you find she later ran the whole shop. It's not dishonest at all, quite the opposite, as the scholar in the article notes, it is dishonest to _downplay_ the role women had in running and expanding the empire. They just weren't riding to battle.

> Suddenly everyone is an expert on the logistics of running an empire!

That's a strawman.

> If you read the article you find she later ran the whole shop.

May I suggest that before looking down on others like this, it is wise to make sure you've been careful when reading the thing?

The article contains no such claim. Most likely, you are mixing up Töregene and Börte.

And what about "Töregene, who became regent of the entire Mongol Empire after the death of Chinggis Khan’s son Ögedei"?

"The traditional role of women" and "running an empire" are not mutually exclusive. What did you expect the day-to-day business of keeping the Mongol empire running to look like?

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