Scholars now argue that early nomadic empires were the architects of modernity
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I can’t really think of any positive outcome of murdering every one of a city’s 2 million inhabitants- with knives, no less, which is a lot less impersonal than bombs. They genuinely considered non-mongols to be a form of cattle. You could make the case that the whole central Asian region never really recovered.
The whole article does not mention what made the mongols the "architects of modernity" or how are "scholars now argu[ing]" that mongols were architects.
Yes, nomads did do lots of empire building. The arab empires were largely an offshot of nomadic upbringing and went to conquer. The mongols were largely an offshot of nomadic upbringing and went to conquer. The turks (aka ottomans) were largely an offshoot of nomadic upbringing and went to conquer.
And I am pretty sure in europe, there is some trace of nomdic upbringing that gave rise to early empires, especially the scandinavian vandals and vikings and saxons.
They didn't architect. They set the house structures for which empires needed to set the groundworks (conquering, pillaging, conforming). And the house structures are the preambles for modern constitutions and societies.
But I think they were the first to kill their king „in the name of the people“ (1649)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I
And then not much later deposed another king in 1688.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution
While the country was not a republic right away these revolutionary events lead to a de facto rule by parliament and earlier I think than any other country I can think of (though how that parliament was voted for and who got to vote is another story)
I suppose Tarquinius Superbus was exiled instead of executed, but 509 BC (in the traditional chronology, anyway) for the overthrow of the Roman kingdom sounds a little earlier than 1649.
Don't forget about modern industry, scientific advancements, personal freedom and other privileges we enjoy today
The British made most of their capital(that financed industrialisation) from slavery trade and piracy in the Atlantic. It made huge profits and industrialisation paid off giving multiples of the inputs for the first time in History.
That also financed the "colonising of half of the world". But this colonisation came very late.
>dispensing with Catholicism early and inventing modern capitalism came precisely because our society was so hierarchical.
I am reading a book that argues that Europe's success comes from all the competence of different powers fighting each other and none of them taking over the others. The Muslims and later the Ottoman empire tried to take over Europe. The Spanish or Napoleon tried to take over Europe and UK, but they could not, because the others joined against them. Napoleon tried to conquer Russia. Then the British tried to take over as well. Austria, Bismarck and Hitler tried to conquer Europe. Then the Soviet Union.
Even the Roman Empire could not take over the British islands and Germany.
This is different from China, where different groups take over of everything. Centralisation and stagnation happens as a consequence.
I nearly qualified the original sentence with a reference to Dutch trading companies who built stock exchanges to fund colonies alongside us and apparently used the word "capitalist" to describe the sort of person that invested in them before us, and obviously the basic concept of markets and trade goes back long before the Venetian republic. But the Industrial Revolution and economic growth going exponential - the modern bit of capitalism - was definitely a British quirk
Interesting. Do you have any sources on that?
What is interesting is that this East to West movement of gunpowder is what did in the horse archers. Previously it was very hard to counter horse archers. Gunpowder based artillery and muskets were a perfect counter to the horse archer. Bullets and cannonballs can go faster than a horse, and it is fairly easy to train masses of soldiers to use them thus giving advantage to the centenary civilizations who had both the population and manufacturing ability to be able to exploit gunpowder weapons.
They also destroyed proto-democratic cities like Novgorod in the proto-Russian territory, creating a culture of 'might is right' strongmen with absolute power.
Why are we trying to rehabilitate their image, exactly?
Is that rehabilitating their image? Is your assumption that modern humans are inherently better? World War II was caused by (what I would argue are) modern humans. I believe we could see wars of similar horror in the future.
Historians don't (consciously, openly) reproduce this view of history though. We didn't earn our place in this story, nor did our ancestors earn it for us. We are simply here, and may attempt to explain how using the tools available to us. As new information is uncovered or understood, we need to update the artifact "History" to reflect our understanding.
I honestly suspect more in the current world would be willing to destroy cultural artifacts than many modern perspectives would believe. Not just outside of "the west," either. Though, I can't but feel that it is heightened there.
Reading that, I suspect my guess was fairly accurate? They were somewhat more effective than a lot of others we discuss on not just killing people, but effectively erasing their existence in the process.
Still I think it gets into a history vs historiography thing. If something makes it hard to reconstruct what happened around it in history, was that thing necessarily bad? It certainly makes life harder for historians.
My understanding of history as a professional discipline is that historians mostly try to excise value judgements like this from their practice. Individuals are free to feel how they feel about past events, but historians trying to understand and accurately place those events into context are not. To a historian the question of rehabilitating the mongol khanates should have no meaning, because they were never "dehabilitated" in the first place. They were simply a thing that we used to know slightly less about (partly because of their own actions!), and now can see a little more clearly.
Now, granted, this does seem to largely be a "western" thing? We are more than willing to criticize our roots and ancestors. It does seem that this is getting silly where our willingness to discuss "bad" things in our history has blinded a lot of people into thinking that other cultures do not have similar items they needed to grow from. As an easy example, it is baffling to me how slavery and minority oppression is largely viewed as a US thing.
Edit: Consider, we would accurately call the practices described as genocidal. You can say that neutrally, sure, but I don't think any modern person should aspire for a genocidal society?
Nothing is "inherently correct" in this domain, historians subscribe to this model because it is most generally useful for their purposes. Ideological history is most useful for purposes other than strict historiography. Notably and notoriously propaganda lol. What are you getting at here?
I have a hard time believing it wasn't like that when they got there.
But it's not like conquest was missing from the behavior of most other pre-modern societies.
To the khanate's credit, there were periods of relatively exemplary tolerance towards conquered people - if and only if they were fortunate enough to have local leaders who immediately, unconditionally, and pro-actively offered surrender with tribute during those gracious moods. Otherwise, you know, skull pyramids and whatnot.
Their atrocities were brutal and ruthless, but not indiscriminate because they were designed to achieve certain goals.
Many historians today dispute the hypothesis that the sacking of Baghdad was the main factor in ending the Islamic Golden Age.
> The steppe restoration typifies what historians call the global turn, a larger project of shifting histories away from nation-states and colonialist defamation and toward the peoples and processes that have knotted us together. It’s a survey of shadows, a tracing of negative space. It focusses on peoples who, in Sattin’s words, “have long been confined to the anecdotes and afterthoughts of our writers and histories.” These are some of the most maligned groups in historical chronicles: the uncivilized; the barbarians at the gate; the tribes who seem to appear from some demonic portal, destroy everything in sight, and then recede back into darkness. The steppe restoration repositions them. It treats them as subjects in their own right—as peoples who have their own histories, who formed societies no less complex than the sedentary states they confronted, and who helped craft the world we inhabit.
> The emerging discipline had to overcome centuries of historiographic hubris. Writing about other peoples has long been in service of self-glorification.
I think the term "architect" is probably better phrased as "major influencer". Yes - they did have major influence. No - they certainly weren't the brutal orks that the losers (us) said they were, they just won. Do we secretly celebrate the Roman empire, Alexander the Great, etc? What must the "other guys' texts say about them?".
The mongol's resulting state must certainly have had intelligent, diligent, and benevolent leaders, so I think this is more of a "One of us!" type push.
But honestly, horses and wheels? Yeah, that's a pretty big contribution, and that's the first few paragraphs of TFA.
> More than the Greeks, the Romans, or the Chinese, it’s the nomadic Yamnaya whose legacy survives in our words and our bodies [70% of us have this DNA]
Another good quote:
> It was through the Mongol Empire, Harl writes, that papermaking, block printing, and gunpowder moved from the East to the West, hastening the spread of knowledge and catalyzing Europe’s conquest of the seas. “The global economy of the modern age was thus born thanks to the Mongol legacy,” he declares.
https://www.livescience.com/11739-wars-plagues-carbon-climat...