The Mongols ! (Debate help)

The Mongolian Empire has for centuries been portrayed as little more than an overly successful group of horse riding warlords. While their abilities in mounted warfare are well documented and helped create their military success, they were far more than an empire on wheels. In fact Kublai Khan, the  grandson of the empire founder and architect Genghis, established the Yuan dynasty. During his time Kublai and his successors established an effective state with administrators, taxes and laws.

The Mongolian people as a whole have been lumped together with their history of nomadic warriors. In truth, just one name really evokes thoughts of Mongolia. That is, Genghis Khan who established an empire by way of conquest that was the envy and the fear of the world. However, he also left behind a legacy of total war that employed not only a sack heavy with scorched earth tactics, but brutal near genocidal actions against the losing side. These brutal actions such as massacres, mass war, rape, and genocide, were all employed as tactics by the Mongols. This reinforced their “surrender or die” policy that promised a painful horrific death to those who opposed Mongol rule. In one case the tiny Kingdom of Xi Xia and all its inhabitants were systematically destroyed.  In other words, the Mongols employed a form of terrorism. He developed a successful form of terrorism that was able to secure capitulations without an arrow fired in some cases.

In a cruel twist of irony, it seems the most brutal actions of the Mongol Empire, in fact, were the very reason blood was not spilled in other cases. The Mongols terrorised many places into submission, which prevented further loss of life. For example razing and decimating a nation's capital, so the rest of the country surrenders. It further supports the idea that the Mongols were far more than an empire on wheels. Instead it was clearly a complex administrative juggernaut with advanced military logistics, and intricate geo-political goals. How else would an Empire stretching from China to modern day Iraq to modern day Ukraine operate? In truth, the question of the efficacy or ability of this empire’s intellectual powers can be reduced down to historical bias towards empires of non white origin.

Julius Cesar, one of the “founders of western civilization” is responsible for en estimated 250,000 civilian casualties from his own military campaigns, along with Alexander and Cyrus the Great who were both great oppressors and Liberators in their own right.  So the remembrance of Genghis Khan as a “barbarian” or cruel king, is likely due to the fear he caused in Europe, and the source from which most English history draws its basis.

This fear of “the horde” caused resentment and chaos all over Europe as “the horde” crept closer. It also caused a historical bias that looked at the Mongols as warlords and not as an underdog culture that bucked many western trends. The Mongols had a much less gender biased system, including women serving in military and administrative roles.  They also afforded those who lived and served within their empire greater religious tolerance than experienced throughout most of Europe at that time.