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Comment by mikhael28 | Hacker News Reader

The Mongol Khanates were indiscriminate murderers who burned the library of Baghdad and ended the Islamic Golden Age.

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?

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They aren't "destructive to" human history, merely a part of it. In an ideological view of history, constructed to position our place in it as correct or at least inevitable, yes they would be bad, representing a challenge or setback on the way to us.

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 am not clear where you got "destructive to," but I would guess that meant more that they are a large part of why we don't know the history of some places. They didn't leave survivors and were more than willing to destroy cultural artifacts that we would find valuable today.

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.

From their clarifying response to their own comment : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38930441

Ah, I wasn't expecting to read down then up. :D This thread would have made more sense under that clarifying response.

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.

I see what you mean, and maybe that's what they were getting at after all.

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.

I think there is a subtlety there. Historians would not necessarily hold ancient people to modern standards. That said, they do not have to ignore their impact on others and can take aim at not holding some practices in good terms. Consider, do we look neutrally on infanticide?

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?

That's only the case if an ideological view of history is wrong; which is certainly one way to approach history. However, there's nothing to say that approach is inherently correct.

Yes I am assuming an ideological view of history is "wrong," as do almost all working historians.

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?

Given that ideology can be quite corrosive to truth (selection effects on transmission of information will distort things and that's just one of the effects), an approach that tries to avoid ideology is likely to get a more accurate view of the past.

For all that, they were arguably more tolerant than other social groups/societies of their time period and ran their empire, short lived as it was, like a sort of shared commercial enterprise, which tends to appear weirdly modern. And arguably, many of their conquests, as violent as they were, descend from said conquests' previous leadership acting like utter morons, regardless of our modern perspective of distaste on demands for tribute. That said, most of their societal potential for "modernity" started devolving the moment Genghis died.

But it's not like conquest was missing from the behavior of most other pre-modern societies.

I don’t know if anyone is trying to rehabilitate them, more like understand their significance. The Mongols weren’t bloodthirsty lunatics; they were pretty advanced in terms of warfare tactics, religious tolerance, and a bunch of other things. They also had a direct historical influence on a million other things (the Black Death, the Mughals in India, etc.)

Mongols never reached Novgorod, and it survived as a republic that paid tribute to them. After the decline of the Golden Horde, they were involved in power struggles with other regional powers, such as Muscovy, Tver, and (Poland-)Lithuania. After a century of shifting alliances, Muscovy became dominant and took over both Novgorod and Tver.

Parent here, thank you for responsing. Based on the history books I’ve read, your answer contradicts some of my pre-supposed views - I am very open to having been misled and misinformed. Would you mind sharing some foundational sources/books that specifically talk about the history of Novgorod, and in the aftermath of the Golden Hordes, information about the regional power struggles you alluded to? If you even have a single book to reccomend as a starting point, I would greatly appreciate it!

Perhaps you are confusing Nizhny Novgorod (on the Volga, east of Muscovy) and Veliky Novgorod (with the historic Republic, south of Saint Petersburg, west of Muscovy).

> The Mongol Hordes: They’re Just Like Us

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.

Pedantically, modern humans have been around for a few hundred thousand years, so all recorded (ie within the last five thousand years) wars have been caused by us.

I don’t think it makes sense to use any more expansive definitions of modern (even if they are more common) than the one used in the context of the article.

If by modern humans you mean modern human society, then definitely. I'm not saying that every modern society is better than every ancient society or that there's no aspect where a given ancient society is better than a given modern society, but taken as a whole modern liberal democracy is dramatically better than previous types of society. Even capitalism, one of the worst parts of modern society, is a lot better than the feudalism that it replaced.

They were not indiscriminate in the murders. The leaders are always given a choice of paying tribute before hand. And they do stay true to their word if tributes were paid. It’s one of the major reasons why the mongol empire was so successful.

The idea that being forced to pay tribute or die is not murder is laughable. The idea that the Mongol empire was successful is also laughable. It could not even last 100 years before falling to infighting. And how do you even measure success? They killed 11% of the entire world population. Why would you want to remember anyone like that in a positive light?

The first states on the territory of Russia were established by steppe nomads, similar to the Mongols - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_Khaganate

Many historians today dispute the hypothesis that the sacking of Baghdad was the main factor in ending the Islamic Golden Age.

Would you mind elaborating on your understanding of the primary causal factors for the end of the Islamic Golden Age?

Not trying to be facetious or anything, but this civilization was profoundly destructive to human history.

>The Mongol Khanates were indiscriminate murderers

Their atrocities were brutal and ruthless, but not indiscriminate because they were designed to achieve certain goals.

> creating a culture of 'might is right' strongmen with absolute power.

I have a hard time believing it wasn't like that when they got there.

It's the next candidate of charitable nuanced study of how imperialism created paradigm shifts toward modernity, now that the charitable nuanced study of later empires immediately preceding global modernity has been categorically discarded and demonized.

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.

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