The Mongol Khans of Medieval France
historytoday.com
historytoday.com
This subject really interesting to read, thank you for mentioning it!
Found this in case anyone is interested in reading about it
Most International Relations practitioners are followers of (Systems) Realism. You might find some minor power with Idealists/Instituitonalists, but they only get that privilege by being under the umbrella of a great power.
Colonialism was not some greedy merchant/state thing, it was an Arms Race. It follows the inevitable forces produced by anarchy, there are no police to call so power is the greatest form of security. It causes a Tragedy of the Commons situation in the form of an Arms Race.
After Colonialism, we had essentially client states, which seems similarly brutal.
The World Bank and IMF are tools of colonialism. We extract resources and exploit cheap labor from the Global South. We kidnap heads of state and seize that country’s oil.
We may not send settlers like we did in the colonial era. We’ve just found a more efficient method.
The Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza have also grown exponentially since the Israeli occupation.
None of these facts are even disputed.
Even if you can argue the British didn't deliberately cause famine over their subjects, they almost never took active steps to alleviate them.
They sent Protestant missionaries with free food for kids (souperism). Private charities, but the government used them as an excuse to not provide more government aid.
And a lot of Catholic parents decided they’d rather their children be dead than risk them becoming Protestant.
Famines are political. They happen because one population is happy to starve another. The Mughals ruled themselves. The British stole harvests for themselves and let the local population starve.
The potato famine in Ireland is treated as some kind of unavoidable, natural event. No, the British just stole the harvest. And this continued right up until Churchill in India.
So the Mughals might’ve been effective but the big difference is they weren’t being exploited as an imperial subject.
> So the Mughals might’ve been effective but the big difference is they weren’t being exploited as an imperial subject.
The Mughals were the imperium, ruling over their subjects. They came in to the subcontinent as outsiders, just like the British.
He was a medieval Italian diplomat. And seems like when he was at the court of the Khan, we was trying to make a push of Catholicism and was getting into debates with other theologians, including one from a Islamic country and one from the Byzantine empire.
A bit later in the medieval times, you have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Rubruck who was an envoy from the court of France (Louis XIV) to the Khan. Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_de_Longjumeau (from France too)
Marco Polo is the most well know but far from the first one
Recently, I stumbled upon the 6:40+ hour YouTube video, “The Mongols - Terror of the Steppe.” You might like it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFwMDuAnS4
EDIT: Didn't pay attention to what channel you linked, didn't know they made videos for their podcasts.
Here’s the first episode on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wuQ7JPneMRJTU9UJrJRNs?si=6...
And link to buy for those who prefer that over streaming https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-wrath-of-...
Visited Rome/Pompeii with my GF and she said it was like having a private tour guide. I just felt like I knew so little and could only add sparse bits of context.
I am curious what are your recommendations though. Always eager for expanding my horizon.
The History of the Germans Podcast is really great (100+ episodes from Ottonians just to Habsburgs, so its pretty well in depth).
History of France Podcast is good, its from a University professor, but not overly academic but well researched.
History of England Podcast is good as well, starting with Anglo Saxon and Post Roman England. He uses a lot of high quality and primary sources.
A History of Italy podcast starts with the end of Rome and is 200 episodes to get to 1500.
I like in depth, single topic podcasts as you can tell as opposed to the podcasts that jump around topics.
As unfortunate as it is, studying cause-and-effect is extremely complex. If it's even theoretically possible to distill it down to easily digestible ideas, that's well outside our current technical capabilities.
There's usually going to be some true and interesting information in these books, but it will be too deeply embedded in a narrative that is misleading.
I have already come across books that were a slog to read because of the author's simplistic worldview or obvious contrarian agenda (so I can definitely relate), but I've also read some masterpieces (for example, Kaldellis I believe is solid).
Unfortunately I don't count any historians among my friends, so I'd welcome any recs from you for authors that are the least bad, or a teardown of main antiquity/middle ages historians.
Well, surprising, as they were supporting military actions against Mongols, plus medieval France was nothing like Mongols empire in terms of social live organization, way of fighting wars (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_Truce_of_God).
Later, in XV century, France started to turn into Mongols-like regime, but those weren't medieval times.
The Story Of The Mongols Whom We Call The Tartars by Friar Giovanni DiPlano Carpini (an Account of his embassy to the court of the Mongol Khan in 1245-1247) - https://archive.org/details/the-story-of-the-mongols-whom-we...
The cover; a picture of a Mongol Warrior in full Panopoly, is itself worth the price of the book!
This timeline coincides with the Crusades with, which the article talks about at length. I find the Crusades fascinating because they've shaped the modern world in so many ways.
Dan Carlin (of Hardcore History fame) once said that why he cares about military history is it shapes the world. If you look at the lightbulb, it doesn't really matter who invented it. Somebody would've. But take the Battle of Marathon, which shaped the entire history of Western Europe as the Greeks repelled the Persians. History would've been completely different. Or how Cyrus II (IIRC) essentially saved Judaism by rebuilding the Temple. Without that, Judaism may well have died out and, with it, all the Abrahamic religions may never have existed.
So the Crusades are fascinating because they've often portrayed as a religious war but they were anything but. Religion was simply the excuse. Instead medieval powers wanted to control the Levant to enrich themselves.
The Crusades essentially created international banking, making the Knights Templar incredibly wealthy [1]. One wonders if this was a necessary condition to the rise of the mercantile class that eventually displaced feudalism and brought on capitalism.
But back to the French. It's interesting that they were fascinated with the Mongols with everything else that was going on. During this same period, the Eastern Roman Empire still existed and the Moors occupied the Iberian peninsula. In many ways, the Mongols were more distant whereas the Arab "threat" was closer and more real. So why the Mongols?
[1]: https://bigthink.com/the-past/knights-templar-crusades-finan...
We know how far the Mongols spread and we have accurate maps but in no way am I convinced that France could possibly conceive of the size and scope of Central Asia in the 11th century.
Crusades in middle east started as an attempt of Eastern Roman empire (although they just called it Roman empire / Basileia Romaion) to recover from recent advances of Muslim invaders in Anatolia (modern Turkey). But turned into an overwhelmingly religious effort in the west. The first crusade especially was largely ill organized and chaotic affair. Where on one end of the spectrum you had nobles arriving with somewhat well equipped forces and idea of what to do, and on the other you had pilgrims, with whatever they just picked up in their hands and not answering commands of anyone, but their priest.
The economic side of things came into play after the process started and gradually became dominant. But it didn't start like it.
Finally. Interest of France in Mongols can be easily explained precisely by the influence crusades had on French and other Christian elites in Europe. The initial victory of 1st Crusade was followed by a series of setbacks. Muslims gradually begun to push crusaders out, the fact that crusaders started to fight amongst themselves helped a lot.
And then mongols arrived, almost from nowhere, crushed one of most powerful Muslim states at the time, and didn't stop there. It did seem like an immense opportunity, and in a way it was. If French, or someone else in Christendom, could convince khans that some form of cooperation is possible, or even better, if Mongols converted to Christianity, there would be a decent chance to not only save Jerusalem, but to move on to Egypt (still majority Christian).
I thought the folks in Normandy were just Nordic people who moved there and later to England
Through marriages and such the Duke of Normandy took over large parts of France and it became the Angevin Empire, but still just a puny vassal to the King of France.
The 100 year war was fought over this essentially and England would end up losing all French land and thus the problem was solved forever.
Where, like Totila and Belisarius?
Richard the Lionheart and Saladin?
The death of Taira no Atsumori?
Byrhtnoth and the Vikings?
The Black Prince and King John II?
The Song dynasty's opinion of the Mongols?
David Hackworth saying that the US Army had to out-G the G?
GWOT instructors telling you that when you're out partying, the Muj is sharpening his knife?