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If you rule by military force, it's the military that rules, not you. You have no reason to assume that the military will remain loyal to you and especially to

If you rule by military force, it's the military that rules, not you. You have no reason to assume that the military will remain loyal to you and especially to your successors. Sooner or later, local warlords will decide that they are the real Mongols nobody dares to resist, and then the empire will fragment. If you want to keep the empire unified, you need a civilian government and civilian institutions to keep the military under control.

lazide 2y ago
Then you just end up with fragmented bureaucracies, with local politicians doing the same thing instead of local warlords.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
There wasn't the same division of civil and military government in the mongol system, or even civilian institutions as we'd understand them today. The mongol empire ran in large part on "loyalty networks", where subordinates would be personally loyal to their patron specifically, not any office they held [1]. Powerful people wouldn't assume loyalty, they'd be constantly engaged in building and maintaining the loyalty of their subordinates in order to maintain their own power. If this sounds like it'd lead to dynamic systems of government full of infighting, indeed it did. That was part of the enduring success of Central Asian polities and broadly similar to e.g. Europe. [1] Small caveat on this in that royal families held something akin to the mandate of heaven by virtue of their heredity. This mandate did not necessarily follow lineal descent and regularly transferred to siblings, family, or even close vassals that outshone than the original line.
- fuzztester 2y ago
  >[1] Small caveat on this in that royal families held something akin to the mandate of heaven by virtue of their heredity. They pretended that they did have such a divine right: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings Events like the French Revolution proved them wrong: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    > Events like the French Revolution proved them wrong: To be fair nobody took it that seriously before either. Cities, regions, nobles etc. were constantly trying to challenge the king and his/her authority and protect/expand their rights and privileges. It’s just that before the French Revolution they usually just wanted to extract additional privileges from the monarch or limit his powers (or in the worst case replace). The same thing happened in the French Regime before it got slightly out of hand.. e.g. even Louis XIV constantly had to fight the courts to force through his new laws (and was almost deposed in quasi-revolution(similar to the English civil war just without the religious element) at the beginning of his reign)
    - fuzztester 2y ago
      >To be fair nobody took it that seriously before either. Cities, regions, nobles etc. were constantly trying to challenge the king and his/her authority and protect/expand their rights and privileges. Okay. Also, similarly, the Magna Carta in England. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
science4sail 2y ago
To be fair, the Mongol empire did end up disintegrating in a few generations. Kublai Khan was the de jure ruler of a united empire, but in practice the western periphery of the empire was drifting away. > If you want to keep the empire unified, you need a civilian government and civilian institutions to keep the military under control. But then you run into another classic political science problem: how do civilian institutions keep the military under control? Why can't the military simply shoot the civilians and institute a junta?
- jltsiren 2y ago
  The usual answer is legitimacy. The military can't seize power, if it's not loyal to its commanders. If people serve in the military due to personal loyalty and the promise of glory and loot, the military is a threat to the society. But institutions can create other purposes to serve, and then military commanders only have power if their actions are consistent with those purposes.
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    But there wasn’t any clear boundary between the civil and military power. If we must discuss it in these terms “the military” had seized the power from the very beginning of the empire and never let it go.

lazide 2y ago

Then you just end up with fragmented bureaucracies, with local politicians doing the same thing instead of local warlords.

AlotOfReading 2y ago

There wasn't the same division of civil and military government in the mongol system, or even civilian institutions as we'd understand them today. The mongol empire ran in large part on "loyalty networks", where subordinates would be personally loyal to their patron specifically, not any office they held [1]. Powerful people wouldn't assume loyalty, they'd be constantly engaged in building and maintaining the loyalty of their subordinates in order to maintain their own power. If this sounds like it'd lead to dynamic systems of government full of infighting, indeed it did. That was part of the enduring success of Central Asian polities and broadly similar to e.g. Europe. [1] Small caveat on this in that royal families held something akin to the mandate of heaven by virtue of their heredity. This mandate did not necessarily follow lineal descent and regularly transferred to siblings, family, or even close vassals that outshone than the original line.

fuzztester 2y ago
>[1] Small caveat on this in that royal families held something akin to the mandate of heaven by virtue of their heredity. They pretended that they did have such a divine right: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings Events like the French Revolution proved them wrong: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  > Events like the French Revolution proved them wrong: To be fair nobody took it that seriously before either. Cities, regions, nobles etc. were constantly trying to challenge the king and his/her authority and protect/expand their rights and privileges. It’s just that before the French Revolution they usually just wanted to extract additional privileges from the monarch or limit his powers (or in the worst case replace). The same thing happened in the French Regime before it got slightly out of hand.. e.g. even Louis XIV constantly had to fight the courts to force through his new laws (and was almost deposed in quasi-revolution(similar to the English civil war just without the religious element) at the beginning of his reign)
  - fuzztester 2y ago
    >To be fair nobody took it that seriously before either. Cities, regions, nobles etc. were constantly trying to challenge the king and his/her authority and protect/expand their rights and privileges. Okay. Also, similarly, the Magna Carta in England. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

science4sail 2y ago

To be fair, the Mongol empire did end up disintegrating in a few generations. Kublai Khan was the de jure ruler of a united empire, but in practice the western periphery of the empire was drifting away. > If you want to keep the empire unified, you need a civilian government and civilian institutions to keep the military under control. But then you run into another classic political science problem: how do civilian institutions keep the military under control? Why can't the military simply shoot the civilians and institute a junta?

jltsiren 2y ago
The usual answer is legitimacy. The military can't seize power, if it's not loyal to its commanders. If people serve in the military due to personal loyalty and the promise of glory and loot, the military is a threat to the society. But institutions can create other purposes to serve, and then military commanders only have power if their actions are consistent with those purposes.
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  But there wasn’t any clear boundary between the civil and military power. If we must discuss it in these terms “the military” had seized the power from the very beginning of the empire and never let it go.