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I honestly had no idea about the French fascination with the Mongols. People tend to admire people who have traits they aspire to. I wonder if this stems from F
by jmyeet 9mo ago
I honestly had no idea about the French fascination with the Mongols. People tend to admire people who have traits they aspire to. I wonder if this stems from France, being a major imperial power at the time, admiring the Mongols as an imperial power.
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-finance/ https://bigthink.com/the-past/knights-templar-crusades-finan...
- gostsamo 9mo agoThe arabs were broken into smaller kingdoms for a long time when it came to the XIII century. The Eastern Roman Empire had been in decline since the fall of Constantinople in 1204 and even before that it was only a regional power. Compared to those, the mongols managed to build an empire spreading on millions of square kilometers. There is no base for comparison. It is like comparing the UK and the US 20 years after WWII.
- sleepyguy 9mo ago[flagged]
- gostsamo 9mo agoThey also smelled and had a big rich empire. What I can say? Won't bother you with the guy who supposedly planted trees so that merchants can travel and rest in their shadows, nor should I tell you stories how those extractive people facilitated trade between Europe and China. PS: The russians got lots of things from the eastern roman empire, just not the humanistic renaissance, but let's not go there.
- cm2012 9mo agoMongolian empire was so large because it is cheap to run an extractive regime
- gostsamo 9mo agoDisliking them doesn't make their empire smaller and success is a virtue of its own according to many. They were successful and people noticed, the rest is commentary.
- jmyeet 9mo agoSo this is a fallacy of seeing historical events through a modern lens. 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.
- gostsamo 9mo agoThey could conceive that you can go across France in a couple of weeks and that you might need a few months to reach China. What's more, they could see how rich the khan is and that it is much more than their king. And that he has much bigger army. Surprisingly, they were not idiots.
- clarionbell 9mo agoFrance was not a major imperial power at the time. It was much smaller than today, lacking Savoy and much of Burgundy for start, with Normandy and many other areas only nominally part of it and technically under control of English king (who was just a duke in France, but that changed only a very little on the battlefield). 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).
- bossyTeacher 9mo ago> under control of English king (who was just a duke in France, I thought the folks in Normandy were just Nordic people who moved there and later to England
- baud147258 9mo agoyes, but when they moved to England, the Normand duke made himself king of England, so he (and his heirs) had the crown of England and the ducky of Normandy.
- paojans 9mo ago[dead]
- AnimalMuppet 9mo agoWhy the Mongols? Because they were distant. You can't afford to admire the people next door; you're either fighting them or preparing for when fighting breaks out again.
- forshaper 9mo agoThe idea that you can't admire people you're fighting is ridiculous. You're forced to admire them. If you don't admire where they win, you lose.
- brabel 9mo agoI disagree. It's very hard to admire a direct enemy, even if you can see their strengths, you'll rationalize them in your head as being the evil sort of strength, which comes not from virtue but from their total lack of morality or whatever you can conjure up. We see that everywhere in history and even in contemporary conflicts.
- forshaper 9mo agoWe do? 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?