The role that technology plays in warfare and thus in history fascinates me. The longbow ended knights. Gunpowder ended archery. WWI was really defined (technologically) by the machine gun and, more importantly, artillery. WWII of course featured the tank but the most important (other than the atomic bomb) is air power.
The Mongols too had a technology that completely altered warfare and gave them a huge advantage: the humble stirrup [1].
The other side of the technology coin is organization. The Romans improved on the Greek phalanx (eg maniples, cohorts). In more modern times we have combined arms operation.
Monogol military organization is really interesting. Most were horse archers. The important thing here is that each Mongol horse soldier typically had 2-10 horses. Why so many? Horses would tire and get injured. Troops could switch to a fresh horse several times a day and greatly extend their range and speed. The speed was really devastating. Of course littered in here was a fairly standard military tactic of the false rout. Units would appear to run away and overeager opponents would give chase, overextend and then be drawn into a trap and attacked from all sides.
But the subject of grass is an interesting one. In addition to having fresh horses to ride, those horses also provided milk to the riders. This meant that a Mongol army could extend far without having long supply lines, which are the bane of any military operation (just ask the Russians).
Beyond the grassy steppes I imagine the Mongols were forced to do what other militaries had to do: forage. "Forage" is a really interesting word and a horrible euphemism. It really means to take by force if necessary whatever you needed from wherever you happened to be.
Some points that are more or less pedantic nitpicking, but I think are worth calling out because they illustrate the kind of trouble that technological determinism can run into:
> The longbow ended knights
This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Gunpowder is closer to the mark, but funnily enough armor kept getting heavier longer than many realize. The full plate harnesses that people generally picture when they think of a “knight in shining armor” are really Renaissance/early modern, well after the Middle Ages.
> Gunpowder ended archery
Again, ehh… sure, guns eventually obsoleted archery, but it’s more important that gunpowder ended a social system based on local military elites and enabled a period of rapid state consolidation.
> The Mongols too had a technology that completely altered warfare and gave them a huge advantage: the humble stirrup
Even the article doesn’t really bear this out. The stirrup was far from new, and even before the stirrup both shock and skirmish cavalry got along fine without. Stirrups are cool, no doubt, but far from a secret to the mongols success. Kind of like saying the Polynesians were great sailors because of their boat designs. Like, it helps, but it also really helps to have a culture oriented around sailing.
So again, this is really nitpicking, not arguing against your main point. But I think it’s worth pointing out how Jared Diamond-style stories can sound really sensible, but once you get into the details things often turn out to be much more complex and interesting.
> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt?
Not the OP and there is lots of post-factum rationalisation like "the Crusaders lost because they were sloppy, not because they were cavaliers", but there's also the famous example of the 1393 Battle of Nicopolis which the Ottomans won because they were way lighter compared to the Westerners. Their archers and sharpened stakes against the Crusaders' heavy cavalry can be compared to today's NLAWs against the Russians' tanks. It is true, by the mid 1400s and especially by the start of the 1500s artillery and gunpowder had won the game, that's mostly how Suleiman the Magnificent managed to reach the gates of Vienna.
Also, there's much to be said about the Mongols' excellent administrative skills once they had conquered some land, I think that because of some Western-related bias that doesn't get underlined as much as should do in today's mainstream historiography. As the US (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and the Soviets/Russians (in Afghanistan and partially in Ukraine) have found out at their own expense is not enough to militarily conquer some land, you also have to administer it afterwards, preferably with the help of some of the local population. Because, among other things, of their religious tolerance the Mongols (or Tartars, as they were mostly known here in Eastern Europe) were really good at it, probably there are some good books written about this specific aspect of their rule but to be honest I didn't put my hands on any of them until now.
I guess technological-determinist arguments are generally easy to source, because there's usually abundant archaeological evidence of the kinds of equipment people use to fight wars.
I'm generally pretty skeptical: there are just a ton of cases where an army strong in one category (say, heavy cavalry) have slaughtered enemies strong in other categories, and vice versa.
It seems to me that technologies that dominated entire eras (heavy infantry for the romans, heavy cavalry for medieval europe, horse archers for the steppes, etc) follow naturally from the social models rather than military necessity. A feudal lord wouldn't have the ability to organize or provision a roman legion, for instance, or the raw culture of mobility and horsemanship for horse archers, etc.
In some ways that’s true but it’s important to realize military effectiveness was increasing over time. This was most obvious with naval warfare, but also holds true of land armies.
Professional feudal armies would have crushed Roman armies of equivalent sizes. However, they lacked the scale of true empires.
> Professional feudal armies would have crushed Roman armies of equivalent sizes.
Really? Why?
The other thing is that a feudal state wouldn't be able to field an army that was of an equivalent size to a Roman army. The Romans fielded eight legions at Cannae, which was like 80,000 guys. Agincourt, in comparison, involved about a quarter of that number if you combine both sides.
Even if the roman legionnaire was worse than a feudal soldier, which I see no reason to believe, it's obvious that there was a precipitous decline in organizational and logistical capacity. In a battle, that would count more than the quality of the soldiers involved.
Plus, nit to forget, a Legionnaire was a professional soldier. The majority of feudal armies was part time soldiers. Exceptions were late medieval, early Renaissance mercenaries. And those, e.g. Landsknechts, men-at-arms and the Swiss pikemen, dominated the battlefields in their time.
The Romans build their empire on logistics and organization as much as they did on legions and civil engineering. No feudal kingdom came close to that.
Rome had a huge empire and could therefore field large armies so yes they had a real logistical advantage.
As to feudal soldiers vs legionnaires it was largely a question of equipment. Mounted knights required horse that weren’t available to Rome because selective breeding had yet to produce them. Improvements in metalwork and armor design resulted in far better coverage for the same weight. Knights largely stopped using shields because they didn’t need them as much as they could use a free hand.
That said there was a large variation on both sides. Disease, exhaustion etc could also wreck an otherwise capable army.
>Rome had a huge empire and could therefore field large armies
My feeling is actually that as the empire grew, the armies they could field somewhat declined. When Cannae happened, the Romans were big, but not huge, and they could literally field army after army of professional soldiers. Part of this was demographics (there had been a population boom in Italy) but part of it is economics and state capacity.
I would guess that up until really late (like, 1880's) warfare was not that technical, so stuff like 'elan' and 'will' was typically by far the most important characteristic in a soldier. That's at least what generals right up to the first world war tended to prize. When it comes to sheer discipline, bloodymindedness and martial spirit, I don't think anybody would surpass the Romans until the modern era.
That's already early Rennaissance, stabding mercenary formations started to show up around that time. Feudal armies tended to be passants being called to arms centered around some highly trained knights and professionals. The Mongols were a standing professional army, something that played an important role during their campaigns.
I don’t think there is agreement to when the Middle Ages ended and the Renaissance started, but 1458 could easily fit into both. That said, they started having a professional army in the 1440’s.
The late medieval and early renaissance line is blurry in part because various practices got adopted at different times in different locations.
It truly is, as is the question when the medieval period started. Personally, I think it's fair to see the first "modern" principles from 1400 onwards. What is usually considered being classical feudal middle ages is, IMHO, earlier. That's why I think the 15th century is so damn interesting. It was the turning point after which European powers became the dominant powers. Up to then global domination was up for grabs.
Nope, and thanks a lot for the recommendation, I'll give it a try. I've mostly read Peter Golden's [1] excellent works about that area, but they approximately stop before the Mongol invasions.
Oh, thanks. I wanted to read his Central Asia in World History since a long time. Sometime I'll write a Global History of the Turkic-Mongol mercantile business.
> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Gunpowder is closer to the mark, but funnily enough armor kept getting heavier longer than many realize. The full plate harnesses that people generally picture when they think of a “knight in shining armor” are really Renaissance/early modern, well after the Middle Ages.
Really a combination of weapons (first crossbows - not because they were super effective against knight armor, but because it was cheaper to train crossbowmen, then gunpowder for the same reasons. Knights were reasonably effective well after primitive gunpowder weapons.) and gradual decline of feudalism and thus knights as a class, as Monarchs started transitioning to standing/professional armies.
Also, as manufacturing improved, it became much cheaper to equip soldiers with standardized equipment rather than rely on tailored to the individual hand-made full-plate armor.
As always, the truth is somewhere between economics and cultural/tech shift.
And the difference was massive. It took years and years of dedicated training to become a good archer, something you start from childhood. The average peasant didnt have the time just do this on the side. As a result they were often handsomely paid.
Crossbows on the other hand could be maned by anyone and were usable in a few days. It was such a threat to the existing social order that the catholic church tried to ban its use against Christians for a while.
I would like to highlight the, to me very surprising, observation that medieval crossbows truly aren't more effective than bows. Their impressive draw weights are mostly consumed by inefficiencies in arm weight/elasticity and bowstring weight.
It was very surprising to me also, after watching several videos of crossbow testing against a typical knight's breastplate, that hand-launched missile weapons could really only make dents (best case scenario) in the armor and only when hitting at a nearly perfect angle.
The vast majority of projectiles would have simply bounced off.
The effectiveness of archers then, is mostly in sheer volume (and getting lucky shots on the horse or weak spots in the armor) of projectiles, against less armored targets.
Modern crossbows with 200lb+ draw weights might be different, but that's another story.
Gun powder and social order is very interesting. At one point, under Nobunaga if memory serves, Japan had more, and better, muskets than any other country on earth. Until the social order was inforced by banning those, going into isolation and cementing Samurai rule. In Europe on the other hand gun powder let to nation stated (sort of) and ultimately (along with a ton of other factors, incl. a Chinese withdrawl from the high seas) a colonial rule across the globe.
Japan didn't go into isolation. It's one of the many myths we invented to hide our horrible history. Japan kicked out europeans because they were enslaving japanese and taking them away. The easiest way to debunk the myth of japanese isolation is that japan didn't isolate itself from korea, china and rest of its neighbors. Only the slave trading europeans.
It's funny how we portray japan kicking out barbaric european slavers as isolationism.
Their response was about how it wasn’t the secret to mongol success specifically. The mongols had the double recurved bow and the advantage of a fully nomadic pastoral society in which all adult males were trained to be warriors. That and Genghis Khan’s decimal system is what transformed them into a fearsome conquering machine.
> You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization.
Yeah, but in all likelihood they weren't a mongol invention. The alans and avars probably had them five hundred years earlier, of perhaps the huns beofre them.
The Stirrup would be an unknown inexplicable advantage for about one dead mongol horseman's time above ground, followed by the delay to ask a smithy: "make me 20,000 of these"
More realistically, however long it took to make something in the field from the leather/rope/cloth to hand, and a willingness to understand it's implications.
I think to a large degree technology is overrated. Especially in the long run.
The knight was not beaten by gunpowder or longbows but by vast hordes of peasants with halberds.
Those peasant hordes showed up because changes in society enabled rulers to field these large armies.
In order to conduct in a long lasting war with large armies one needs a society with "backbone".
The ability to lose a battle and still win a war is what makes a true great empire.
Few ancients could to this, like the Roman empire, the Assyrian empire, the Mayans and so on.
Medieval Europe (where the knights ruled) was a largely fragmented bunch of small states, where a lost battle often resulted in a complete defeat.
WW1 style trench warfare emerged in the American Civil war and the Crimean war. Neither machine guns nor barbed wire where deployed in mass.
Those wars where won by the ones who could hold out for longer.
Even WW2 was largely won by infantry and artillery, tanks and aircraft are way overrated.
Here are the German numbers for operation Barbarossa:
3.8 million personnel
3,350–3,795 tanks
3,030–3,072 other AFVs
2,770–5,369 aircraft
7,200–23,435 artillery pieces
17,081 mortars
600,000 horses
600,000 vehicles
There are a couple orders of magnitude between infantry and tanks.
The numbers for the attack on France look similar.
That tanks feature so prominently is due to propaganda (since those things look cool).
In modern societies, warfare is all about logistics, morale and the ability to take a punch.
Even a completely lopsided tech advantage can be negated if you survive the first few attacks.
That is one of the reasons why the Mongolians are gone but the Taliban are still there.
> Even WW2 was largely won by infantry and artillery, tanks and aircraft are way overrated.
You may wish to read Engineers of Victory: The Making of the War Machine That Defeated the Nazis by Paul Kennedy:
> Kennedy recounts the inside stories of the invention of the cavity magnetron, a miniature radar “as small as a soup plate,” and the Hedgehog, a multi-headed grenade launcher that allowed the Allies to overcome the threat to their convoys crossing the Atlantic; the critical decision by engineers to install a super-charged Rolls-Royce engine in the P-51 Mustang, creating a fighter plane more powerful than the Luftwaffe’s; and the innovative use of pontoon bridges (made from rafts strung together) to help Russian troops cross rivers and elude the Nazi blitzkrieg. He takes readers behind the scenes, unveiling exactly how thousands of individual Allied planes and fighting ships were choreographed to collectively pull off the invasion of Normandy, and illuminating how crew chiefs perfected the high-flying and inaccessible B-29 Superfortress that would drop the atomic bombs on Japan.
Certainly you need (to use the probably over-used phrase) "boots on the ground". But air supremacy helped a lot in European campaign, as did many other Allied innovations, and the technologists that put those developments into field:
I wonder when acoup is going to reflect on the relationship between Russia's approach to taking Ukraine, and the Mongol long line of advance, transforming into a crescent and finally an encirclement. It certainly looks as if Russia tried to encircle Ukraine.
Putin has spoken and written about the legacy of the steppe people to the Russians; it seems to almost be a romantic obsession of his. Unfortunately tanks and trucks are not horses, and the gist of the article is about the dependence of steppe horse armies on large amounts of grassland, and the effect that has on their operations.
Russia tried to execute on their normal "Deep Battle" doctrine where they attack from multiple fronts simultaneously and culminate towards the same point.
The problem was execution. Military analysts expected exactly that, but Russia failed in operations. See here on March 4th when it started becoming clear the operation was botched [1]:
"They [Russia] have also continued conducting operations in southern Ukraine along three diverging axes rather than concentrating on one or attempting mutually supporting efforts. These failures of basic operational art—long a strong suit of the Soviet military and heavily studied at Russian military academies—remain inexplicable as does the Russian military’s failure to gain air superiority or at least to ground the Ukrainian Air Force."
A short summary is the British assumption that massive artillery barrage would destroy the German defenses and allow for British troops to walk through easily. Unfortunately they used shrapnel shot which did very little to the defenses and worse, left the barbed wire installations untouched. Advancing troops then got stuck and were mowed down
AFAIK it's the machine gun that really led to entrenched positions because the death toll of charging or advancing on such positions was huge. Early in the war, generals (who are known for fighting the last war) kept trying. This is one of the reasons the casualties were so high (sometimes >100K in a single day).
But the real story of WWI (IMHO) was artillery. Here's a story I heard: at the start of WWI, Russia produced 35,000 artillery shells per month and was using 25,000 a day. By 1917, there were battles on the Western Front where between both sides over a million artillery shells were fired in a matter of hours.
As for tanks, this was clearly a huge development. It really nullified machine guns and small arms fire. But the writing was already on the wall for trench warfare. Artillery accuracy and tactics had improved (eg the creeping barrage became possible) and tactics in trench assault (on both sides) were improving.
> But the real story of WWI (IMHO) was artillery. Here's a story I heard: at the start of WWI, Russia produced 35,000 artillery shells per month and was using 25,000 a day. By 1917, there were battles on the Western Front where between both sides over a million artillery shells were fired in a matter of hours.
Meanwhile more tonnes of oats and hay for horses were shipped from the UK to France than munitions.
On the Western front, and tgat was as much the machine gun, and artillery, as it was field fortifications. WW1 on the Eastern front was very much mobile warfare, including cavalery. Until WW2, for what it's worth.
Horses are great for rough terrain mobility, as are Camels and donkeys.
EDIT: People tend to see the Wehrmacht as this fully mechanized beast of an army. Truth is the vast majority of soldiers walked into battle, with animal drawn carriage for their stuff from food to field guns.
In WWI the horse was far more reliable than any mechanical vehicle. Armor was useful enough that WWI had a few tanks, but they broke down often. WWII was just enough later that mechanical vehicles were reliable enough to use - but only if you had new ones, if you were doing like Russia is in Ukraine now and running anything old you were in for problems.
The British and French did in the Syria-Libanon campaign in '41. A superficial search didn't show an mounted cavalry in the North Africa campaign. All sides did use horse cavalry quite a lot at the Eastern Front, the Polish cavalry managed to stop German panzers for two days, the Poles and Germans even fought a cavalry-vs-cavalry battle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Krasnobr%C3%B3d_(193...). The Soviets did some raiding using cavalry, while the SS used horse mounted troops in their genocide operations.
Quite fascinating topic, horses in WW2. I'll have to some more research on this.
My understanding was that artillery was brutally effective but supply lines couldn’t keep up. So you would blast a trench, and it would be quickly abandoned by the defenders, but when you tried to actually get your guys in to capture it they would just storm it from their backup trench and you would lose because you had no way to support the offensive.
It was really a combination of different technologies, barbed wire and machine guns among them, but by far the most important was long-range indirect fire artillery with explosive shells.
Julius Caesar refers to foraging in his "Gallic Wars". It wasn't easy because the Gauls would systematically destroy all food supplies in the vicinity of the Roman army ("scorched-earth policy"). I wonder what the local peasants thought about that. Do you think the Gaulish soldiers punished peasants who tried to hide their grain supplies rather than let them be destroyed? Bad times for the working peasant!
Isn't "foraging" just euphemism for "looting"? They were not picking wild berries. They were taking that food from peasants. So yes, peasants were in for bad times.
An army that wants the peasants alive (which is by no means all) can only take so much of the food the area produces in a year, if a previous army had already been through that was probably zero.
Of course for Peasants you need to come up with a way to hide most of your food, while having what looks like all your food in what looks like a poorly hidden place where the army can force you to give it up. (good luck)
That demands on the amry's goals. If they want land to settle down and farm then death to the locals. However if they want tribute dead peasants pay no taxes.
I find technology of war to be fascinating but the reality of demographics and geography seem to be historically more important, and interesting in the balance.
Look at Afghanistan or Ukraine and see how geography trumps even modern tech. Aviation units struggle with mountains and mechanized units struggle with wet ground.
Technology doesn’t enable an elderly population to wage war effectively.
Eyesight, fine motor skills, learning and using technology, sure you can find some old people who can function as drone operators but they won’t be as effective as young people.
They won’t be able to ruck into the front lines with a pack of drone equipment to support front line units.
They aren’t doing effective manufacturing of drones.
Old people can shoot an ak47 but they aren’t effective combat soldiers.
Fascinating indeed, i am still looking for a book / timeline of dominant military doctrine throughout history. You tend to have years of evolving efficiency of doctrines and technologies till one day a hard counter shows up that changes everything.
Food and Sex have been the prime motivators for all most everything, and Murder when someone prevents you from either of those. Only relatively recently has Entertainment become an end in itself when the other three are satiated. :)
It doesn't even make economic sense. During a war you're not going to invest as much into R&D (especially basic research), industrial production, etc, because you know, you have to... build the things that kill the other people.
To me war feels more like the thing that publicizes the things we've discovered since the last war, because the way (pop) history is presented, everything is about:
- wars (because they're "interesting", finding out about the slow accretion of inventions that lead to the mass production of iron is less cool)
R&D soars during war, at least for war relevant technologies. Rockets, jet engines, aviation, synthetic fuel, chemistry, smokeless gunpowder, steam powered ships, nuclear fission... You name it. And that is in addition to all the stuff needed to actually build those things.
If you think industrial production isn't invested in during war you should fresh up on any modern war since WW1.
Umm... that's the thing, does anyone have NUMBERS to back these claims up?
What we know is that military budgets SOAR (duh!), but what about washing machines? Transistors? Ballpoint pens? Antibiotics? The gazillion peace time inventions?
There's no part of me that can actually believe that you can ship off hundreds of thousands of folks off to war, you switch 10-20-40% of your economy to make bullets, and somehow research overall still comes ahead, it makes no sense. Let alone those cases where you country is physically under attack (which is most wars, not every country is as privileged as the US, to never have had a foreign power invade it at any serious scale in the last 200 years).
Research is more concentrated during war time, and more visible, frequently. But does war time research actually outpace peace time research? I don't believe that.
Technoligal advances in WW2 that are still valuable today:
Radar, ASDIC, modern massproduction, jet engines, rockets, nuclear fission, operations research, modern aviation ingeneral, pressurized aircraft compartments, synthetic fuel
Just go on wikipedia and look up global production nimbers of war related stuff between 1939 and 1945 for increased industrial output.
You want reliable numbers, look up studies about economic growth during war and peace. Probably nobody will be able to answer that for you around here.
As far as research is concerned, without any numbers, I'd assume the focus shifts from civilian research to defence research. As does production. If it surpasses peace time production depends on the scale of the war. That output so should be measured in production units, war has the habbit of screwing up economic metrics.
There are lots of components of "non-war stuff" that originated from military R&D, and probably would appear much later if it wasn't for the Defense Budget.
And how many "war things" originated from non-military R&D?
After all every country's GDP is much higher than its military spending and for sure non-military research dwarfs military research.
This whole hypothesis seems unsound. It would mean that all civilian research is somehow much, much worse per dollar than military research. I highly doubt that.
I never said that, did I? You said R&D cannot increase during war, history showed otherwise. Now it's about war R&D outranking peace time R&D, which was never the question.
yes, but a lot of those advances were based on R&D that was done before the war. I think war is more a time where newer technologies are put to the test, those that don't fail see widespread usage and that's why we associate that war as the introduction of those technologies
If you think wars don't spur technological changes, I suggest you look at the planes of 1940 vs those of 1945. Inventions in WW2 avaiation include radar and the jet engine. It's planes that ultimately ended the U-boat clockade of the Atlantic as improved technology increased the range of anti-submarine bombers such that the US could cover the entire Atlantic leaving the U-boats nowhere to hide.
I didn't say they wars didn't do anything. I said they probably do <<less>> than the equivalent peacetime.
99% of the examples you and other commenters use are in the military field.
And frankly, I know all of them, I'm a history buff.
Let's compare the washing machines of 1990 with those of 1995, instead. Let's compare Intel CPUs of 1980 with those of 1990. Let's compare desktop publishing in 1995 with that in 2000.
Heck, the more answers I get the more I'm convinced people are also partly influenced (I don't want to say brainwashed), by military R&D propaganda that needs to justify its budgets.
For every radar and jet engine there's a F22 jet fighter.
> And frankly, I know all of them, I'm a history buff.
Then your perspective would be appreciated with facts, not questions. Though I agree that often the questions are more interesting :)
I'm interested in dispelling the notion that war spurs innovation, even though I hold this view I'd love any excuse to demonstrate that we don't "need" wars. What were the specific technologies that led to the change in washing machines from 1990 to 1995? How does that compare to a war-period of development? What drove Intel to improve the CPUs in 1990, as compared to 1980? How does that compare to the previous decade?
Thank you. I'm not quite a "history buff" but the implications of history are of course of interest.
You might want to read about the history of jet engines, the Manhattan project, the V-2 and related (R-series and Redstone) rockets, radar, GPS, and the internet. Just for some recent examples.
While it is not the only driver, a major early driver for integrated circuits was the need for reliability in military electronics. I saw an estimate that at one point 1/4 of all carrier based aircraft were out of service at any time due to avionics malfunctions. And the first major user of ICs, the Minuteman II guidance computer, would not have been possible without them. The Minuteman I computer was smaller and used discrete components, and could only be made sufficiently reliable by enormous testing and retesting at multiple system levels. Doing the same for the larger MM II computer would have been entirely too expensive.
ICs increased reliability by making interconnections far more reliable (being deposited on the chip together so failure is correlated.) Of course they are also smaller and use less power, but reliability was more of a brick wall issue.
I doubt that horse milk was the major source of calories, since horses only produce small amounts of milk and the foals need to be around too. Fermented horse milk (Airag) is a (mildly alcoholic and relatively expensive) specialty beverage in Mongolia today, but certainly not a staple food.
I think it is more likely that they brought dehydrated meat and dairy with them, which are common in Mongolia to this day.
Probably they also added to their diet what they found along their way, at least meat. Maybe they even tried some grain.
Milk would include other dairy than Airag, such as camel, sheep, yak and processed durable dairy, such as butter fat, dried curdles and cheeses. These store for long periods of time. Dairy in many forms indeed is a major source of calories in the traditional Mongolian diet that some rural people eat still today.
As far as I can remember, Airag is only produced during July and August. That would be pretty limiting. It also spoils pretty quickly. After a while in warm weather the smell is unbearable. People save the microbes for the the next run in the following year.
The article mentions that they brought along a couple of sheep and a number of mares per soldier. "...five horses and one sheep per soldier would produce approximately 120 days of meat (at a half pound per day—obviously sharing the sheep among a group of men and then killing another messmate’s sheep and so on) and 280 days of airag." Airaq being fermented horse milk, which could be accumulated when the mare was overproducing.
Kefir, ie. fermented milk (usually from a cow) is something you can buy at the grocery store and is pretty damn tasty. And milk from different animals isn't all that different.
If you've ever shorn sheep they have this weird quasi tonic immobility, I guess its just them giving up or something, but I could absolutely imagine one tied to a pack or the side of a horse as like a bedroll would be tied on, no different than a sack of wool or other material
They did had a technic where they draw blood from their horse in small quantity in order to add more protein. ( I remember that from the Dan Carlin series … he’s usually decent with sources )
Im consistently surprised Mongolia still actually exists.
Surrounding countries in that area have to have generations of festering hate for that country. Im not saying that to be rude - if you’ve never brushed up on the history of Mongolian conquest… it’s just insane. Highly recommend going down the rabbit hole, interesting on another level the span & techniques of that empire.
I’m not much of a fan of continuing to hold grudges against people who weren’t alive when even the oldest of your living ancestors were born, but I’ll never be surprised if China decides they want to wipe them off the map some day. It’s a shame their culture wasn’t privy to much technological advancement regarding long term settlement. Modern borders would likely be much different if they had been.
Mongolia still exists because both of its neighbours, Russia and China, accept that it's a useful buffer between them. In particular, the Soviet Union supported Mongolia staying independent, to prevent PR China from cutting off its access to Eastern Siberia. That's the short story, at least.
It helps that Mongolia is a complete geopolitical non-factor, pretty much at the same level of economic power as North Korea, except without nuclear weapons.
Their territory is also fairly infertile, cold and of little strategic importance, being landlocked and all. I mean, most of the country is Gobi Desert, so yeah.
> Surrounding countries in that area have to have generations of festering hate for that country.
Most surrounding countries don't have festering hate for mongolia. It's only in the west we do. The mongol empire is actually admired in much of asia.
> if you’ve never brushed up on the history of Mongolian conquest… it’s just insane.
I have and almost all of it is exaggerated nonsense.
> but I’ll never be surprised if China decides they want to wipe them off the map some day.
China is more likely to wipe out Britain or Germany or France or anyone else than the mongols. Why would china wipe out the mongols when much of modern china is a mongol creation starting with the yuan dynasty.
> It’s a shame their culture wasn’t privy to much technological advancement regarding long term settlement.
It's not a matter of technological advancement. It's a matter of the nature of empire. The mongol empire, despite the stereotype, was not a genocidal colonizing empire. Most empires throughout history weren't genocidal colonizing empires.
> Modern borders would likely be much different if they had been.
Modern borders are different due to them - from vietnam to hungary, from russia to india and everywhere in between.
One unique first-hand source on the Mongols can be seen in The Story of the Mongols: Whom We Call the Tartars by Friar Giovanni Carpini. (translated by Erik Hildinger) The cover with a picture of a Mongol soldier is itself worth the price of the book ! - https://www.amazon.com/Story-Mongols-Whom-Call-Tartars/dp/08...
One of the most fascinating Mongol-related historical footnotes I'm aware of is what happened to the Khwarazmian Empire. What's that, you say? You never heard of them? Well that's because Genghis Khan literally wiped them off the map after their paranoid leader sent at least 2 of his trade envoys back with everyone but 1 decapitated (and the survivor carrying the heads).
That's interesting. This made me look up the empire's relation to Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī[1], the mathematician whose work influenced the name Algorithm. He is named Al-Khawarzmi after the city he originated from. The same was for the Khawarazmian Empire which started from the same city.
That's funny, I thought the reason why the mongols didn't expand more was the the big K died of alcholism early and they all had to go back to have the big council.
The Muslims greatly suffered under the Mongol Empire's trail of destruction, and the atrocities the latter committed have been well documented. Yet, it is a great page in our history to have dealt the first major blow to them in the Battle of Ain Jalut[1], saving the world from God knows what horrid things they would have continued had they been left unchallenged.
> The battle marked the height of the extent of Mongol conquests, and was the first time a Mongol advance was permanently beaten back in direct combat on the battlefield
> The Muslim Mamluks defeated the Mongols in all battles except one. Beside a victory to the Mamluks in Ain Jalut, the Mongols were defeated in the second Battle of Homs, Elbistan and Marj al-Saffar. After five battles with the Mamluks, the Mongols only won at the Battle of Wadi al-Khaznadar. They never returned to Syria again.
> The Muslims greatly suffered under the Mongol Empire's trail of destruction, and the atrocities the latter committed have been well documented.
Hmmm.... I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate here or achieve with your comment. You're trying to say that the Mongol Empire's trail of destruction is "worse" than the Islamic Empire's trail of destruction?
> it is a great page in our history to have dealt the first major blow to them in the Battle of Ain Jalut[1], saving the world from God knows what horrid things they would have continued had they been left unchallenged.
"our" history? "saving the world from them"? Forgive me, but do you feel entirely comfortable saying such things?
Since you've made the statement "God knows what horrid things they would have continued had they been left unchallenged.", I wonder what's your take on the historian Niall Ferguson's remark that the Islamic Conquest of South Asia was the largest genocide in human history. I wouldn't be surprised if others had the opposite opinion to you and would have wished the Mongols had done more to protect the world. Are you able to see both sides of these equations?
Yeah, conquering peoples that don't need conquering are pretty equal offenders in my book. I'm sure some are more brutal than others, but they're all trying to do the same thing. Subjugate people that don't want it.
The Romans, The Muslims, The Mongols, The British and many other European countries, and the US all are the bad guys in many humans' sad stories. I'm not sure what the comment you're replying to is trying to accomplish either.
I've seen the Mongols described as a necessary evil to halt the Islamic conquest of the world. Khan himself thought he was God's scourge on the world for all our sins.
> The destruction of the libraries of Baghdad was a tragedy for the entire world.
Yes. And I'm sure you'll agree the same for the the multiple genocides, organized mass rape and destruction of numerous non-Islamic universities in South Asia and violent annihilation of indigenous peoples (not just their ethnic groups, but also their original cultures and religions) in South East Asia. It seems to be happening even right now with Indonesian Muslims annihilating and colonizing West Papuan tribal populations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgllbBzZxxM
> I'm saying that the Muslims did the world a favor by saving them from the Mongol destruction.
And I'm forced to repeat my question. Who is saving whom? The world? Because it appears the millions who got raped and genocided by "the Muslims" would be likely to strongly to disagree with you.
I hope you don't think Niall Fergusson's view is an isolated opinion. Most historians appear to share similar viewpoints. Here's a quote from Will Durant.
"
„The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history.“ — Will Durant, book The Story of Civilization Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage page 459. The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), I - Our Oriental Heritage (1935)
"
Interestingly enough, there is written history on this, provided by Islamic historians of the period themselves! Because the Islamic historians were "proudly" chronicling of the conquest.
“The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800 AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by sword during this period.”
Francois Gautier in his book ‘Rewriting Indian History’ (1996) wrote:
“The massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.”
The Muslims saved the rest of the world from the Mongol trail of destruction.
Millions did not get raped or genocided by the Muslims, not sure where you're getting that information from. Muslims have had rules of engagements since the early days of Islam, which included even not destroying trees and plants, let alone prohibition of killing and raping.
Forced conversions are also against Islam.
Those sources you're citing seem quite anti-Islamic and biased, and ludicrous. For example, googling the following phrase:
> The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride the slaughters of Hindus
Results in pro-Hindu, anti-Muslim propaganda websites. Show me which "Islamic historians and scholars" have recorded with glee and pride any slaughters. If those indeed did occur, you'll find the Islamic scholars the first call them out and condone them.
It seems you're just copy pasting false anti-Muslim propaganda.
We know what the British Empire did in India and the surrounding areas, and they want to blame their atrocities on others. Let alone that we know that Europe "proudly" holds the greatest number of deaths and destruction caused by a war by means of WWI and WWII. And now we're seeing the Ukraine-Russia war.
> Millions did not get raped or genocided by the Muslims, not sure where you're getting that information from
I already gave both citations. You presumably accuse them both of being anti-Islamic, and you've accused me of "copy pasting false anti-Muslim propaganda". That's understandable given your position. I recognize that you're unwilling to accept these sources. That makes a further productive discussion untenable.
And I refuted them with my citations. And you did copy paste, don't deny it. A google search will reveal the websites that have the same text you copy pasted.
You didn't even bother to mention who were those supposed scholars who "recorded with glee and pride" the supposed slaughters that took place. I'm still waiting for names.
You've given a link to an image of some comments by Muhamed. That's your "citation to destroy false narratives"? Do you agree this seems inconsistent with documented actions taken by Muhamed's followers, even right now in Daesh/Iraq? I'm sure you'll claim those followers are not Muslim and other such typical arguments made by individuals who have become fully mentally enthralled to a particular belief system. But I hope it is clear that such arguments aren't compelling to others. If you wish to believe "your" "Islamic empire" was somehow "less evil" than the Mongol empire, that's your choice. Just like my choice is to simply to see the data and see pretty horrific things done by both, and choose to avoid identifying with either group or attempting to downplay, hide, or erase the suffering of their victims.
> The Muslims greatly suffered under the Mongol Empire's trail of destruction
Arabs did. The ottoman turks, muslim persians, etc benefited greatly. If the mongol empire was so destructive, we wouldn't have had the ottoman empire - the greatest muslim empire in history.
> and the atrocities the latter committed have been well documented.
It's absurdly exaggerated.
> Yet, it is a great page in our history to have dealt the first major blow to them in the Battle of Ain Jalut[1], saving the world from God knows what horrid things they would have continued had they been left unchallenged.
What horrid things did they do? Other than convert to islam and entrench islam in the places they conquered?
As opposed to the arabs who wiped out non-islamic religions in areas they conquered. All you have to do is look at iran/persia. The arabs conquered persia and wiped out zoraostrians. The mongols conquered persia and didn't wipe out islam. And if it wasn't for the mongols, the islamic world would have been conquered in the 1200s rather than in the 1800s. After all, it was the arrival of the mongols in the middle east than ended the crusades.
> They're all Muslims. Islam establishes that ethnicity does not matter.
Yes I know. That's my point. The arabic domination of the muslim world was ended by the mongols. The mongol empire helped the rise of the ottoman and persian empire. In other words, the mongol empire was bad for arab muslims but great for turkic and persian muslims.
> Arabs did not wipe out local populations, you'd want to look at the Crusades and Zionists for that.
Neither did the mongols. That's my point. But the arabs wiped out local cultures and religions. Which the mongols did not. They actually safeguarded local cultures and religions. It's why so much mongol empire remained so diverse racially, ethnically, culturally, religiously, etc.
> The arabic domination of the muslim world was ended by the mongols.
Islam was never exclusive to the Arabs. One of the main tenants of Islam is that there is no difference between Arab and non-Arab, black and white, etc.
> But the arabs wiped out local cultures and religions
The Mongolians did great on fields and plains until they reached mountains and tougher terrain.
Their tactics were great for open terrain where you could maneuver with horses. Not so great when you have to deal with mountains.
They did great up until they hit Poland and the Balkans, where they faced harsher terrain.
They had to abandon their Central European campaign for political reasons, but even If they kept going, I don’t think they would have been that successful in Europe. It took the Ottomans one century to conquer the Balkans and they were still stopped in Poland.
> They did great up until they hit Poland and the Balkans, where they faced harsher terrain
I keep seeing these historic revisionist takes and it just leaves me... Empty inside, do these people believe that modern Tajikistan is flat? That China is an endless grassland? That Afghanistan, Georgia, the Koreas and East Manchuria, or heck even northern India and Pakistan, are all these places just empty plains? The entirety of you know.... Iran???
Hungary is no more mountainous than the places I mentioned above, I suppose arguing makes no sense here as I feel that these supposed lines or argument are somehow inherently related to a broader sense of "Western excepcionalism"
Yeah... the whole region is dotted with castles.
They did really well on ravaging and ransacking cities that were on plains, or close to larger fields. Hungary and Serbia are part of the the Panioan Plane, which is open terrain and perfect for them.
They couldn't take Dubrovnik (the first well fortified western European city), and also were defeated on mountainous terrain by the Bulgarians. They wouldn't been able to take something more fortified like Constantinople. They actually had clashes at the time, but it was mostly raids by the Mongols.
So, it is pretty clear. In Europe, the Mongolians did great on open terrain, planes, and cities that didn't have great natural defenses. They didn't do that well on cities that were better fortified, and with natural defenses (mountains). They raided and ransacked the areas, and moved on as they couldn't sustain a siege in such terrains.
"The Bulgarian victory can likely be attributed to the mountainous terrain, to which the Mongols were not accustomed.[16]"
Let’s remember that at its height the mongol empire was spanning from the Sea of Japan to modern day Ukraine.
That include the mountainous region of Nepal and Tibet.
From what we know of their administration, their focus was on maintaining control of the rich region around Beijing, Xanadu and Cheng du.
Not so much the Eastern Europe.
> That include the mountainous region of Nepal and Tibet.
I don't believe the Mongols ever dominated Tibet. They may have made inroads into grassy northern regions such as Kham. In fact I believe that Genghis as Emperor of China paid tribute to Tibetan rulers.
I'd like to see a source for Mongols crossing the Himalaya and impacting Nepal.
If the Mongol attacks had reached the west. First time, the Mongols would kill all the peasants outside the castles and city walls. Or the peasants would join the mongols. The absence of peasants meant the cities were starving.
No, he is wrong. Europe was a much harder target. They did well on cities on the Paeonian plains, where it was their natural terrain, but did not do well on European mountainous terrain.
They couldn't even take Dubrovnik, let alone Constantinople. (it took the Ottomans half a century, and the advent of the cannons to finally conquer it).
While they didn't "take" Constantinople, they vassalized the nearby Trebizond Empire and beat the Latin Empire's leader in battle, potentially capturing him leading to unknown concessions. Then the re-emergent Byzantines bought an alliance rather than battle them.
Constantinople was conquered, and pillaged, by Crusaders diverted there by the Doge of Venice as ways to repay their debts to him. Those crusaders just didn't stay, that's all.
Yes. Western crusaders smashed altars and raped nuns. The first Latin Pope to officially apologize to us for this was John Paul II, in Anno Domini 2001, almost eight hundred years after the atrocity took place. This apology was rendered just 2 years after he controversially kissed a Koran.
>"What a beautiful scripture, containing teachings nigh-incompatible with our dogmas!! ちゅ〜 <3"
>"Ohhhhhhhh that one is for year 2099. Okay. I see what happened, I started a century too far into the Novus Ordo playbook. Sorry. Sorry. The pages got stuck together. What was on the start of this page? 2001? Apologizing for the atrocity? Ohhhhkay, right. Back on track."
That was used, apparently, as an excuse by the Crusaders killing Christians. A bunch of scum, even by their own standards. The Doge, 80 and blind, played that bunch like fiddle so. He got a mercenary army to sack one of his biggest economic competitors for free, and he got to keep the plunder.
That quote, "God will know His own" was said at the height of the Albigensian crusades, which was carried out IIRC approximately 100 years later against the Cathars. Because the Catholic Church played such a major part in civil life, competing claims to authentic Christianity in Western Europe distinct from their church was considered an existential threat. I am in no way condoning what they did, but a good way to relate to the context in which they made this decision would be to consider how Sovereign Citizens are looked at by authorities in our contemporary times.
The Cathars were mostly tolerated by the local authorities and nobility in the south of France though. The Albigensian were basically a land grab by the nobles in northern France in expense of their souther brethren and nothing more (why would the catholic king of Aragon and the count of Toulouse fight on the side of the Cathars otherwise?)
You raise a point worth discussing. In our contemporary times there are more traditional political factions and local authorities in the USA who believe in the legitimacy of the United States political process or at least the constitution (many sovereign citizens don't, preferring the articles of confederatin) yet are also more sympathetic to sovereign citizens than their counterparts, and could be interested in temporary alliances with them if trouble broke out. At the end of the day, Aragon remained under Catholic authority either way, but wanted to use tolerance of the Cathars as a wedge to keep hold of territory. Similarly, I could imagine a rural law-abiding United States bloc preferring that, for economic or political reasons, there be a nearby commune of Sovereign Citizens who are strange, under-documented, and sometimes live in potentially hazardous conditions, but are friendly and willing to pitch in to help the broader community out of a shared sense of common "American freedomism" so long as law enforcement and other day-to-day restrictions aren't carried out in ways they consider illogical or intrusive.
Those religious lines, especially during "wars of religion" start to get blurry pretty quick. In the 30 years war France, Catholic, fought with the Swedes, Protestant, against the Habsburgers, Cathloic. Why? Because France didn't like the idea of having a Habsburg empire to its south, Spain, and west, Germany.
It was not due to terrain but to Europe's encastellation. The first two invasions of Poland were devastating because the country's villages lacked stone fortifications and were instead still based around traditional Slavic wooden forts. This was not the case further West and while the Mongols could conduct siege warfare, being so far afield and having to besiege the vast number of castles that dotted the Western European landscape would have completely reversed their momentum.
When the Mongols returned to Poland a third time, in 1287-1288, with an even larger force than before, the invasion completely failed because the country's fortifications had been upgraded. The Mongols suffered significant losses and were turned back. During the first two invasions, Western Europe was significantly better fortified than Poland of 1287, so they would almost certainly have been smashed.
We know they fared pretty well against traditional European knights in Georgia. ( around 1222 )
Those were prepping for a crusade, and got surprised by the mongols arrival.
They lost pretty badly. When the mongols did setup shop and administration, it sound like their focus was China. And not the backwater of Western Europe.
They didn't fare to well against European knights during the second invasion of Hungary. They did much better during the first invasion ~40 years earlier but seemed to had struggled quite a bit against heavily armored cavalry evne then (the problem was that Hungary didn't really have enough of them earlier)
> When the mongols did setup shop and administration, it sound like their focus was China. And not the backwater of Western Europe.
Not really. Genghis Khan's grandsons split the empire apart; only the part of it that was in China was focused in China. Everyone focused on the territory they controlled, for the obvious reasons.
The reason they paid no attention to Western Europe is very straightforward; the Mongols never reached Western Europe. But they reached Eastern Europe and they stayed there for centuries.
We know they had maps reaching as far as britany, France. And they were aware of the Pyrenees.
But what I wanted to highlight was that the most prized territory were in the east.
For instance in the division you linked the supposed ruler on the empire after Gengis Khan dead was a Yuan, sitting in Beijing and holding the Title or khan of khan. ( even if that did not worked out so well )
Anyway; I’m not an expert ,by far. I mostly regurgitate bits from the Dan Carlin show on the subject.
I remember him putting a emphase on how the Mongols were turned East first, culturally and in intends, and only eventually west.
( great in depth série, 10h or so long, even if I can’t stand his bombastic style )
> We know they had maps reaching as far as britany, France. And they were aware of the Pyrenees.
So what? We also know they never reached either of those places. It's easy to have maps.
> For instance in the division you linked the supposed ruler on the empire after Gengis Khan dead was a Yuan, sitting in Beijing
Again, so what? A traditional title of the king of Assyria was "King of the Universe". It coexisted with the much less aspirational title "King of Assyria". But it didn't mean anything. Kublai Khan held a title that implied he held authority over other divisions of the Mongols.[1] And in fact he held no such authority, and nobody believed that he did. And...?
[1] Though that title wasn't just "Khan"... everyone in charge of anything was called Khan. What title do you think the head of the Il-khanate held?
The Mongols too had a technology that completely altered warfare and gave them a huge advantage: the humble stirrup [1].
The other side of the technology coin is organization. The Romans improved on the Greek phalanx (eg maniples, cohorts). In more modern times we have combined arms operation.
Monogol military organization is really interesting. Most were horse archers. The important thing here is that each Mongol horse soldier typically had 2-10 horses. Why so many? Horses would tire and get injured. Troops could switch to a fresh horse several times a day and greatly extend their range and speed. The speed was really devastating. Of course littered in here was a fairly standard military tactic of the false rout. Units would appear to run away and overeager opponents would give chase, overextend and then be drawn into a trap and attacked from all sides.
But the subject of grass is an interesting one. In addition to having fresh horses to ride, those horses also provided milk to the riders. This meant that a Mongol army could extend far without having long supply lines, which are the bane of any military operation (just ask the Russians).
Beyond the grassy steppes I imagine the Mongols were forced to do what other militaries had to do: forage. "Forage" is a really interesting word and a horrible euphemism. It really means to take by force if necessary whatever you needed from wherever you happened to be.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/the-mongols-built-an...