The Mongol Empire a product of Circumstance?

Alright, so I'm having this debate with someone about the Mongol Empire.

They proclaim that Genghis Khan's empire wasn't created out of his own skill or genius, but by the opportune deployment of technologies their enemies had not faced before. I guess he thinks composite bows were something the Mongols invented? :inquisitive: Grasping at straws, then stating that the combination of composite bows on horseback and the disciplined manner in which the army was run was the reason for the empire.

I was allowing him to just be ignorant until he compared the Mongols to the Spanish when they fought the Aztecs... :no:

I mean, I've read loads on the Mongol Empire from the beginnings to the end, but books can't really be cited when I don't have them in my hands besides saying "i've read books" which sounds kind of phony.

Well, everything is a product of circumstance. Problem solved. Genghis happened to live in the right time and place, with the right geopolitical, cultural, military, whatever factors playing in him his hans - just like the Romans were able to create an empire thanks to them being in the right time and place, with the right surrounding factors, doing the right thing.

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I was allowing him to just be ignorant until he compared the Mongols to the Spanish when they fought the Aztecs...

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Ignorant? This person has obviously reached a higher level of understanding for history and... well, everything, since he realizes that no single person is enough to change the course of history. We're all just tiny pieces in a much larger mechanic.

That still doesn't change the fact that Chinggis Khan united a set of disparate tribes into a well-oiled whole, gave it law, and then proceeded to conquer a gigantic swath of Eurasia with it before he died. Acknowledging circumstance is nice, but ignoring the human element (without which history itself doesn't exist) altogether is simply impossible.

The big question is Why? Why Chinggis and why the 13th century? Perhaps there were plenty of other Mongol tribal chiefs just as capable, or even more so, than Chinggis, but who never came to power and who never united any tribes. Why not?

Of course you can't ignore the human element (did I ever insinuate you could?), but dealing only with it gets you stuck in the nasty bog that is the Great man theory, which became outdated sometime during the 19th century.

... and historical materialism became outdated a little while later. The trick is finding the balance between the two.

Who said anything about historical materialism? There are hundreds of ways to interpret history, reducing yourself to just two theories on history - or the balance between two - would be plain ignorant. If anything, I'd analyze the Mongol Empire from the Annales School to get a good overview, but then again, that's just one way to do it.

Oh, come on. Did you see how Tolstoy tried to justify his loony view of how history is predetermined? A complete, utter mess that makes no sense whatsoever. A blight upon an otherwise brilliant novel.

What Colovion's opponent is apparently saying is that the Mongols were just, well, lucky. Bullcrap. Everybody from the edge of Byzantium to China knew about the composite bow; heck, everybody from the edge of Byzantium to China also knew how to fight hordes of horse archers. It's not like the Mongols were stormtroopers stumbling upon a primitive planet of unarmed wookies, or the Spanish with their guns, cold steel, and horses upon obsidian-armed tribes.

That the Mongols were disciplined and united is only a testament to Genghis' importance I'd think.

I realize that the circumstances of the day is a large factor of happenings. It's the dismissing of someone who inspired and united warring tribes into a world-conquering machine because he trained his troops and disciplined them into such a force.

I've heard arguments that Alexander was a buffoon because his enemies were largely composed of mercenaries who fled at the slightest sign of defeat and his troops were much more disciplined. Something like "well he used his Cavalry in an Overpowered way, of course he won. That would be like proclaiming that Hannibal won at Cannae simply because the Roman troops were largely green recruits and over-confident. It's a factor, but it's a small part of the reasons for victory when put into context of successive battles and campaigns won and spectacularly inspired decisions both Militarily and Socially. I don't buy into the assumption that people just so happened to become shakers of the world because they lucked out to be born at the right time and got lucky.

Think of any historical figure who rose from obscurity to gain near immortal status as a conquerer and leader of people. To dismiss their victories and entire life accomplishments as products of their times seems like a dismissal of all great accomplishments as impressive because people don't like to believe that greatness is self-made. Any shaper of historical events requires a steadfastness and inspiration which any factor of the times cannot create; they didn't just happen to stumble into a wonderful series of events and happen to have the ambition and luck to pull it off.

Maybe it's that I find it way too depressing to dismiss the accomplishments of those in the past as mere coincidence and convenient happenstance with a dash of making the right choices. As I said, until he compared the Mongol Empire's expansion to the slaughter of the Aztecs by the Spanish, I was just going to allow him to think that Composite Bows and Horse Archers were invented by the Mongols and were, for some reason, the equivalent of an Abrams Tank in Waterloo.

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Originally Posted by Colovion

Alright, so I'm having this debate with someone about the Mongol Empire.

They proclaim that Genghis Khan's empire wasn't created out of his own skill or genius, but by the opportune deployment of technologies their enemies had not faced before. I guess he thinks composite bows were something the Mongols invented? :inquisitive: Grasping at straws, then stating that the combination of composite bows on horseback and the disciplined manner in which the army was run was the reason for the empire.

I was allowing him to just be ignorant until he compared the Mongols to the Spanish when they fought the Aztecs... :no:

I mean, I've read loads on the Mongol Empire from the beginnings to the end, but books can't really be cited when I don't have them in my hands besides saying "i've read books" which sounds kind of phony.

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The mongol empire is one of the large empires that can't be explained away by mere luck. Of course, many other factors than the military skills and organization contributed:
1. the relative calmness and lack of unity of steppe tribes prior to Genghis Khan meant that most neighboring countries hadn't invested in better defenses against an invasion from the steppes. The sudden transition into an organized, united force must certainly have come as a lightning from a clear sky. This extreme transition is probably a bit unique in history for the mongol empire.
2. the Baghdad khaliphate and Khwarazm were probably declining at the time of the mongol attacks, but were still tough opponents with much greater resources available than the mongols had. But similar situations have occured fr many other empires. Let's take Rome for instance: both Macedon, Pontos, the Seleucid Empire, the Ptolemies and Gaul were lands of falling or fallen empires at the time of roman conquest.
3. the first mongol expansion happened so fast that there wasn't enough time to provoke a more united opposition against the first few conquests (a common theme for empires). By the time they reached Bohemia, Poland and HRE there were some signs of increasing cooperation against them between different nations, however, as well as the knight orders. As it turned out, the death of the khan removed the necessity for such a development towards cooperation in Europe from continuing, as the expansions into Europe pretty much stopped at that point. Also in southeast Asia, there were instances of rising cooperation against the mongol expansions, quite some time after the beginning of the expansions. Indonesia and India proved extremely difficult for the mongols to hold, with frequent revolts at crucial times threatneing to spread to China and rolling up their flank while they carried out military actions to the southwest. This is not unique to the mongols, but probably has existed for every empire in history. The rise of greater cooperation takes time - divide et impera strikes back when enough time passes, making most gains achieved through dividing the enemies temporary. But before such cooperation among opponents arises, it is much easier to make large gains, than fighting all the opponents at once from start. This is not unique to the mongol empire, but its always worth remembering when considering the military skills of an empire, compared to the military skills of its opponents: amount of land is not a good way of measuring military skills. In Genghis Khan's case, there are other testimonies to his skills, including his military organization, his sieges in China, his capability of building out the naturally great logistical capabilities of nomads to work also for larger armies, and a great number of his field battle results.

The empire of the Khwarezmshah declining? It had only become an empire and come into control of Greater Iran under the same ruler that executed the Mongol envoys, if memory serves. I'd say the Mongols crushed it at the height of its powers.

You may be right

The key thing is China, and more specifically that it was in one of those splinter-state interregnum periods. That allowed a major nomad power to coalesce in its vicinity without getting scuppered by the usual combination of deft "let you and them fight" divide-and-conquer foreign policy and punitive expeditions any such rising stars otherwise tended to attract; the Chinese, after all, had long experience in specifically forestalling the birth of just such steppe powers. Nomads could only ever make any headway against it when it was busy playing civil wars and otherwise preoccupied (or already crumbling internally, as with the Manchu invasion).

And AFAIK siege engineers picked up in China then played a rather central part in the fall of Khwarimzam, when the Shah didn't quickly enough grasp this bunch of nomadic invaders was rather better equipped to deal with fortresses than most. I understand by the point he caught up with the program he'd already lost rather considerable territorial and military assets.

So, yes, the short-lived (which is normal for nomad empires) Mongol realm came to being chiefly through a sum of circumstances which actually enabled a strong leader to forge himself the requisite power base and snowball from there. This tends to be the case of empires in general, and steppe-nomad ones in particular.

Hadn't you heard? The Mongols came from outer space, they had ray guns, what chance did anyone have against them?

To be honest, neither Chinggis Khan nor the Mongol Empire will be considered great when viewed with bigotted opinions. Why, he came from the east, he was responsible for untold attrocities....so now let us find ways of dismissing his achievements. I would venture that most of the western leaders at the time would have jumped at the chance to be as powerful. I would also venture that 'history' would have a very different view of them, had they been able to achieve.
There are those who study this subject objectively, accepting that times were quite different back then. Even so, there are a great number of these people who play down his role, instead, giving the credit to his commanders, one commander in particular.
Mongols used Chinese seigecraft (and later Moslem)....and the point is?
It seems like a good idea to add such things to your army.
Mongols had composite bows.....yes so the point is?
Hardly something new considering how far back its existence can be traced.

Most of all, let's not forget that all his victories were over crumbling states, at their weakest point in time and all their leaders were oh so inept.

Of course, it didn't half help having all those space ships to transport his troops

......Orda

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

To be honest, neither Chinggis Khan nor the Mongol Empire will be considered great when viewed with bigotted opinions. Why, he came from the east, he was responsible for untold attrocities....so now let us find ways of dismissing his achievements. I would venture that most of the western leaders at the time would have jumped at the chance to be as powerful. I would also venture that 'history' would have a very different view of them, had they been able to achieve.

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Wait, wait, wait. Are you actually saying people who try to diminish the efforts of Chinggis Khan are jealous and bigoted? Besides, I don't think Chinggis being "non-western" does much in this debate. If you recognize that the Mongol Empire was a product of circumstances, you pretty much automatically recognize that every empire ever was a product of circumstance (I've already mentioned the Romans).

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

There are those who study this subject objectively,

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Isn't one of the most important things to remember when dealing with history that there can be no true objectivity? Besides, you are clearly biased in your views on Chinggis, so don't try to claim that from an objective perspective, Chinggis Khan really was a superheroninja.

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

Mongols used Chinese seigecraft (and later Moslem)....and the point is?
It seems like a good idea to add such things to your army.
Mongols had composite bows.....yes so the point is?
Hardly something new considering how far back its existence can be traced.

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The point is that Chinggis Khan was a man who knew how to exploit the weaknesses and strenghts of others at his time. He didn't conquer much of Eurasia by his own, and certainly would have fared less well had the circumstances been different (or had he not been as smart as he was).

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

The point is that Chinggis Khan was a man who knew how to exploit the weaknesses and strenghts of others at his time. He didn't conquer much of Eurasia by his own, and certainly would have fared less well had the circumstances been different (or had he not been as smart as he was).

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Hmm, taking advantage of weaknesses... Isn't that one of the major marks of a great general/commander? Exploiting weakness while avoiding strengths?

Now certainly, circumstances DO play a PART in everything. However, to use that as an excuse to discredit/dismiss every single major achievement and accomplishment is foolish, imo.

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Wait, wait, wait. Are you actually saying people who try to diminish the efforts of Chinggis Khan are jealous and bigoted? Besides, I don't think Chinggis being "non-western" does much in this debate.

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Now really, who are you trying to convince here? If Chinggis was western, he would be practically on par with a war deity in terms of how much coverage he would get in comparison to other, far less accomplished generals. Just look at Alexander. Practically everybody LOVES Alexander, even though few of his military tactics and formations were his own, instead borrowed from his father. Alexander was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, while Chinggis lived in poverty with his mother for years following his father's death, eventually proving his worth to become leader of his father's clan. Chinggis took on many different opponents, while Alexander took on a decayed Persian Empire and rebels in Afghanistan. At the least, Chinggis was on par with Alexander. And yet, if you ask the average western(especially American) high schooler about Chinggis' actual achievements, you'd probably get a blank stare and "I don't know" from most individuals, whereas most of those same people could at least tell you about some of the basics regarding Alexander beating Persia. But what really bites me is that every time an American child is told about Marco Polo, its always about how he visited the "courts of China", even though he actually visited the court of Kublai Khaan(alegedly, but whatever, that's a discussion for later), who was, of course, the Great Khaan of the Mongol Empire. People just don't like to give the Mongol Empire, and especially Chinggis, their proper dues.

People revering Genghis sort of tend to forget to mention a couple of things. Like the little detail that when the man died in 1227, the Mongols for the most part still mainly ruled what had always been something of "nomad country" - the Inner Asian steppes as far west as the Caspian, northern China (which had always been rather suspectible to nomadic incursions and influences), and a decent chunk of Central Asia. While that's a lot of landmass large swathes of it were nothing more than empty wasteland populated by nomadic herdsmen, desert, or mountains inhabited by poor, warlike and functionally ungovernable highland tribes (the Afghan ones are doing a fine job maintaining that venerable tradition to this very day). The Southern Song would hold the Mongols off several decades longer, and the far-flung empire began fragmenting under the irresistible pressures of sheer distance and diverging interest within a decade or two of the Gret Khan's demise.

@Watchman: I'm perfectly aware of basic Mongol history, thank you very much. :stare:

However, what you're not pointing out is that the Mongol population, if we are including inner Mongolia and all else in the modern Mongolian area, was about one million people, in comparison to the vast numbers available to many of his opponents. The whole concept of a "mongol horde" is rather ficticious, in the western sense of the word. He was taking on several people with much larger native manpower than he had, and won so handily he was able to continue campaigns. Plus, a lot of it is not just his actions, but the legacy of said actions(like the eventual unification of China, bringing together the east and the west, etc...

Plus, tell me how anyone could have prevented an eventual collapse of such a gigantic empire given the technology available? As for 'fragmenting', Chinggis actually had divised that himself, because he realized none of his sons could manage the empire by himself. Thus, the four Khanates were formed. Bear in mind that the three smaller Khanates still owed allegiance to the Great Khan. And yet, the Mongol Empire continued to expand under Ogadei and Kublai, as a whole. None would have been achievable without the groundwork layed by Chinggis and, of course, his Orlocks.

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Originally Posted by kamikhaan

Hmm, taking advantage of weaknesses... Isn't that one of the major marks of a great general/commander? Exploiting weakness while avoiding strengths?

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Yes, and I don't think anyone has spoken against that in this thread.

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Originally Posted by kamikhaan

Now certainly, circumstances DO play a PART in everything. However, to use that as an excuse to discredit/dismiss every single major achievement and accomplishment is foolish, imo.

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And to do the opposite is equally foolish. However, what matters most is to put all these "major achievments" in a greater perspective, and to realise what had happened before, when it happened, how and why. And then you can get on to think about what effects this "major achievement" really had on the world. Was it that major, or was it just part of something bigger?

Again, use the Annales School, to get a basic overview on things.

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Originally Posted by kamikhaan

Now really, who are you trying to convince here? If Chinggis was western, he would be practically on par with a war deity in terms of how much coverage he would get in comparison to other, far less accomplished generals. Just look at Alexander. Practically everybody LOVES Alexander, even though few of his military tactics and formations were his own, instead borrowed from his father. Alexander was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, while Chinggis lived in poverty with his mother for years following his father's death, eventually proving his worth to become leader of his father's clan. Chinggis took on many different opponents, while Alexander took on a decayed Persian Empire and rebels in Afghanistan. At the least, Chinggis was on par with Alexander. And yet, if you ask the average western(especially American) high schooler about Chinggis' actual achievements, you'd probably get a blank stare and "I don't know" from most individuals, whereas most of those same people could at least tell you about some of the basics regarding Alexander beating Persia. But what really bites me is that every time an American child is told about Marco Polo, its always about how he visited the "courts of China", even though he actually visited the court of Kublai Khaan(alegedly, but whatever, that's a discussion for later), who was, of course, the Great Khaan of the Mongol Empire. People just don't like to give the Mongol Empire, and especially Chinggis, their proper dues.

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On this one, I think you might be entirely correct. I think the reason I thought of it the way I did was that I really don't care much for great generals, and thus rarely discuss and compare them. I've never udnerstood what people find so interesting in Alexander really. Perhaps I know too little about him, but IMO, he was alive some 300+ years before history got really interesting.

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Originally Posted by kamikhaan

The whole concept of a "mongol horde" is rather ficticious, in the western sense of the word.

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I'm not aware of the origins of the term "Mongol horde", but if actually dates from the medieval period, it certainly fits. Two tumen, which from what I can tell wasn't too big a force to the Mongols, was far more than any western king could muster in the mid 13th century (well, technically most kingdoms could, but never needed such vast armies).

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

I'm not aware of the origins of the term "Mongol horde", but if actually dates from the medieval period, it certainly fits. Two tumen, which from what I can tell wasn't too big a force to the Mongols, was far more than any western king could muster in the mid 13th century (well, technically most kingdoms could, but never needed such vast armies).

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The remnants of two Tumen did a remarkable job of destroying an army considerably larger at Kalka.
Any bias toward the Mongol Empire that you think I have is not so much bias as accepting their achievements based on the facts and without trying to put forward excuses, however scant, in order to diminish them.
I stand by what I said regarding bigotry because I've actually seen it written down that Chinggis, regardless of his obvious talent as a commander, cannot be considered great because he was responsible for mass slaughter.

Using 'circumstance' as a means of arguing a point is quite fruitless and, I have often found, is just a way of arguing for the sake of it. After all, if you breathed out and never breathed in again you would soon be dead....but circumstance suggests that you are still breathing in

.......Orda

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

The remnants of two Tumen did a remarkable job of destroying an army considerably larger at Kalka.

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I already knew that. You don't have to take every chance to point out the greatness of the Mongols.

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

Any bias toward the Mongol Empire that you think I have is not so much bias as accepting their achievements based on the facts and without trying to put forward excuses, however scant, in order to diminish them.
I stand by what I said regarding bigotry because I've actually seen it written down that Chinggis, regardless of his obvious talent as a commander, cannot be considered great because he was responsible for mass slaughter.

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That's just a nicer way of saying: "I have no bias. I know the truth and accept it. The trugh is Chinggis Khan was awesome, and your attempts to disprove the truth are futile." That makes you biased and stubborn.

And I can't recall that anyone but you has brought up the mass slaughters conducted by the Mongols on the orders of Chinggis other than you, so I don't see the point? Are we supposed to be convinced that there were no mass slaughters or is this some way for you to humorize the "other side's" arguments?

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

Using 'circumstance' as a means of arguing a point is quite fruitless and, I have often found, is just a way of arguing for the sake of it. After all, if you breathed out and never breathed in again you would soon be dead....but circumstance suggests that you are still breathing in

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With that statement, I can only pray you'll never become a professor in history and/or write a book about anything even closely related to history; but it's up to each and everyone to take their own view on history - no matter how out-dated, biased and stubborn it might be.

There is certainly some truth in what Innocentius says. A new Hitler is not able to get powers in todays Germany; even less use them.

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Ignorant? This person has obviously reached a higher level of understanding for history and... well, everything, since he realizes that no single person is enough to change the course of history. We're all just tiny pieces in a much larger mechanic.

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Which is a paradox since the larger mechanic consists of individuals. Some people are "born to command", while the average person follow the norms and the masses. Those who follow the masses are nothing but oil in the machinery since they do not take their own decisions.

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

I already knew that. You don't have to take every chance to point out the greatness of the Mongols.

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Your previous comment led me to doubt it.
Every chance?

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That's just a nicer way of saying: "I have no bias. I know the truth and accept it. The trugh is Chinggis Khan was awesome, and your attempts to disprove the truth are futile." That makes you biased and stubborn.

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The facts speak for themselves.

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And I can't recall that anyone but you has brought up the mass slaughters conducted by the Mongols on the orders of Chinggis other than you, so I don't see the point? Are we supposed to be convinced that there were no mass slaughters or is this some way for you to humorize the "other side's" arguments?

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If you don't understand my point I can't help you.

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

I stand by what I said regarding bigotry because I've actually seen it written down that Chinggis, regardless of his obvious talent as a commander, cannot be considered great because he was responsible for mass slaughter.

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.......Orda

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

And to do the opposite is equally foolish. However, what matters most is to put all these "major achievments" in a greater perspective, and to realise what had happened before, when it happened, how and why. And then you can get on to think about what effects this "major achievement" really had on the world. Was it that major, or was it just part of something bigger?

Again, use the Annales School, to get a basic overview on things.

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:laugh4: I'm sorry, not laughing at you, just the irony. This here is EXACTLY why I think Chinggis and the Mongol Empire were important. It was Chinggis who realized the value of the then-decrepit silk road, and reopened trade between the west and east. Now, remind me again why Columbus wanted to sail the Atlantic?:beam: And going with that general direction, Chinggis and his succcessors ultimately succeeded in what resulted in the unification of China from their previous splinter states. Not to mention the eventual conversion of the Ilkhaans and Timurlane to Islam led to the expansion of Islam through the various 'Stans and India, whether you view that as good, bad, or neither regardless. Not to mention creation of the Mughal empire in India, founded on descendants of the Mongol Empire. Now of course, there were many instances where the Mongol Empire committed atrocious acts which I don't agree with, but their impact on the world is, imo, undeniable.

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I'm not aware of the origins of the term "Mongol horde", but if actually dates from the medieval period, it certainly fits. Two tumen, which from what I can tell wasn't too big a force to the Mongols, was far more than any western king could muster in the mid 13th century (well, technically most kingdoms could, but never needed such vast armies).

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Hmm, I'm pretty sure that in the medieval age, horde meant something along the lines of "army". However, I am speaking of the image that the average western person gets when they think of "horde", which was, imo, epitomized in 300, when the Persians are referred to as a "barbarian horde", indicating what the average western person's image is of a horde. The Mongol army certainly wasn't a "horde" by those standards, and I think its a misperception to apply the word to mongol armies in today's times.

the Mongols came along at just the right time. China was divided, the Islamic world was distracted by the last throes of the Crusades, and none of the European princes could even begin to match the capabilities of the Mongol war machine. Chingiis was a great commander, but even the greats need a little bit of luck to win.

The execution of the Mongol envoys by Kwarazham was probably the stupidist diplomatic move in world history. The Mongols were nice to people who surrendered willingly. Those who resisted were annahilated.

'Circumstance' set up Temujin for grave impact on the world, he was intelligent enough to take every oppurtunity he could. His unification of the Mongolian tribes really serves as a good example-- treating allies and friends as he did family? Unheard of, especially in such a tribe-oriented culture but he made it work.
The guy was a genius and a bastard.

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Originally Posted by IrishArmenian

The guy was a genius and a bastard...

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...who had the right circumstances to become one of the great names in history.

Imagine how many people just like Chinggis there must have been throughout history, who never had the right circumstances to do what they did best. The same goes for all the potential authors, painters and musicians that were/are born in the wrong place at the wrong time to fully use their talent.

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

...who had the right circumstances to become one of the great names in history.

Imagine how many people just like Chinggis there must have been throughout history, who never had the right circumstances to do what they did best. The same goes for all the potential authors, painters and musicians that were/are born in the wrong place at the wrong time to fully use their talent.

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And imagine how many people who had the right cirumstances just didn't have the ability, talent or knowledge to take full advantage of them...

It still takes a very capable man to do what he did, circumstances or no...

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Originally Posted by Sarmatian

And imagine how many people who had the right cirumstances just didn't have the ability, talent or knowledge to take full advantage of them...

It still takes a very capable man to do what he did, circumstances or no...

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Which pretty much everyone in this thread has already agreed on:clown:

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

The same goes for all the potential authors, painters and musicians that were/are born in the wrong place at the wrong time to fully use their talent.

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Like those in a city that didn't capitulate right away to a Mongol Horde.

=][=

Full marks to Genghis Khan for unifying the tribes even at the expense of family members who threatened to splinter the unity.

Full marks to creating a fighting force that could first take out China (and China much like Japan would unite against an external threat) and then debating to keep it as a rice paddy or turn it into a steppe. The first PETA groups were Mongols they would debate the worth of humans vs horses and almost wiped out most of China's agrarian society to replace them with a horse range. ~;)

Full marks for then going on to conquer the vast majority of the most advanced and largest populated continent during that time period.

Full marks for setting up the rule of law and protecting the people once conquered... something more modern states could have learned from. Mind you the IEDs of the 13th century were just a cow with bloat and a fire cracker up its rectum.

Now like sex, size of the empire and technique of the empire aren't everything. An empire really has to go the time, multi generational. As far as empire conception was concerned it was a bit premature compared with the high point it promised early on. It fractured and made a few mini empires. It certainly changed the face of the world during that time period. And its fracturing certainly helped others rise. It's components did continue to expand and certainly the economy had a huge bonus with the silk road being under their sway.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

Full marks for then going on to conquer the vast majority of the most advanced and largest populated continent during that time period.

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A somewhat unfair description. While China was indeed the most advanced and most densely populated geographical area of the world at the time, the same could hardly be said about most of the Mongol empire, which consisted of steppes, sparsely inhabitated by nomad horse people.

And since saying anything negative or deragatory about Chinggis or Mongols in this thread seems to attract the attention of some fanboys: No, I did not try to diminish the efforts of the Mongols, I only pointed out something that has already been said in this thread.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

Full marks to creating a fighting force that could first take out China (and China much like Japan would unite against an external threat)

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Actually, the reality is quite the opposite.

Neither the Jin nor the Western Xia ("Xi Xia") helped each other when the Mongols attacked. The Song even went so far as to take advantage of chaos in the Jin Empire to invade their lands. To be fair, the Song probably rightly viewed the Jin as barbarian conquerors in the first place (them being Jurchens who displaced the Song and all) but that doesn't change the fact that the various Chinese states of the time did nothing for each other when each faced the Steppe threat.

By the time Kublai was ready to invade the Southern Song they had no Chinese allies to call upon.

But taking on the relatively mighty Jin Empire and win deserves full marks, yes, especially considering all the sieges they have to go through.

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

A somewhat unfair description. While China was indeed the most advanced and most densely populated geographical area of the world at the time, the same could hardly be said about most of the Mongol empire, which consisted of steppes, sparsely inhabitated by nomad horse people.

And since saying anything negative or deragatory about Chinggis or Mongols in this thread seems to attract the attention of some fanboys: No, I did not try to diminish the efforts of the Mongols, I only pointed out something that has already been said in this thread.

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My reply to you finished with the =][=, the rest of it was in genral to the rest of the thread, but even then I think you might have missed what I was saying.

I started with the tribes and moved out with each point. By the point you are referring to I'm referring to Eurasia.

First I talked about the Mongols being united.

Then I mentioned the restructuring of the tribes into a more effective military force that could take China quickly enough before it could unite. If the military campaign had taken too long the rivalries would have been put aside and a united China repelling the invasion could have been the result as it happened in other periods. The restructuring would be an indicator of Genghis's intelligence, that and putting the right guys in charge and giving them free rein.

Third I talked about the Mongols taking over the majority of the largest and most populated continent.

Now if you can prove that there is a larger continent then Eurasia or that there was a larger population in another continent then Eurasia or indeed a larger military technology base then existed in Eurasia I'd like to see that proof. Taking over the majority of Eurasia in the 13th century would have been considerably harder then the Conquistadors added by 'guns, germs and steel'. There was the possibilities of the plague and other germs but not on the scale of what happened in the Americas, but no real technological weapon advantage. The Mongols were fighting more opponents of a more equal technological level. I don't think in the 13th century you can find a more populous region then Eurasia.

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Originally Posted by AntiochusIII

Actually, the reality is quite the opposite.

Neither the Jin nor the Western Xia ("Xi Xia") helped each other when the Mongols attacked. The Song even went so far as to take advantage of chaos in the Jin Empire to invade their lands. To be fair, the Song probably rightly viewed the Jin as barbarian conquerors in the first place (them being Jurchens who displaced the Song and all) but that doesn't change the fact that the various Chinese states of the time did nothing for each other when each faced the Steppe threat.

By the time Kublai was ready to invade the Southern Song they had no Chinese allies to call upon.

But taking on the relatively mighty Jin Empire and win deserves full marks, yes, especially considering all the sieges they have to go through.

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Agreed, but if the Mongols had been a large slow moving threat they would've have seen more united resistance. Diplomatic alliances take time, a well oiled military organisation can clean up all resistance before people figure out that they should ally. My contention is if Genghis hadn't made the military into such a good well organised fighting force the Chinese would have had the time (if not the will or desire) to fight, as it was they didn't even have the luxuary of time to get over there relatively internal differences.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

My reply to you finished with the =][=, the rest of it was in genral to the rest of the thread, but even then I think you might have missed what I was saying.

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Well, I understood that; I just didn't have much to add.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

Third I talked about the Mongols taking over the majority of the largest and most populated continent.

Now if you can prove that there is a larger continent then Eurasia or that there was a larger population in another continent then Eurasia or indeed a larger military technology base then existed in Eurasia I'd like to see that proof. Taking over the majority of Eurasia in the 13th century would have been considerably harder then the Conquistadors added by 'guns, germs and steel'. There was the possibilities of the plague and other germs but not on the scale of what happened in the Americas, but no real technological weapon advantage. The Mongols were fighting more opponents of a more equal technological level. I don't think in the 13th century you can find a more populous region then Eurasia.

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What I meant was, that is seemed as if you meant that the Mongols only invaded densely populated and technologically advanced lands:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"Full marks for then going on to conquer the vast majority of the most advanced and largest populated continent during that time period."

So, I pointed out that the quoted sentence could probably be misinterpreted, since most of the Mongol empire was in fact not very densely populated or technologically advanced. That's all.

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

And since saying anything negative or deragatory about Chinggis or Mongols in this thread seems to attract the attention of some fanboys: No, I did not try to diminish the efforts of the Mongols, I only pointed out something that has already been said in this thread.

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Yes, all two of us. Pity you. Dontcha hate it when people gang up on you? :clown:

Meh, its kind of an in-ground reflex by now, there's simply waaay too many who dismiss the Mongol influence and achievements without actually studying them. Plus, there's not usually a whole lot of people defending them anyways, so I's gots to speaks up since usually, few others will.

Anyways, sorry if I was appearing hostile, I was merely attempting to point out reasons why the Mongols deserve special mention in the annals of history. Note that I never disagreed with your statement that circumstances play a role. Although I'd have to say that Chinggis had it pretty rough to start out with, he made himself a world conqueror, unlike Alexander, who inherited wealth, power, and a disciplined standing army.

It took decades for the Mongols and then the Yuan dynasty to conquer China. During that whole time the Southern Song was not merely fighting other Chinese states but having to deal with its own armies and generals changing over to their northern enemies. Frankly I think the conquest of China had more to do with a perennial crisis of confidence in the state than just a speedy assault; the whole process, which involved commandeering and developing the structure of the Chinese state and using it to raise native armies and build enormous river navies, was anything but speedy. Kublai Khan obviously knew it; that is why he adopted Chinese mannerisms and declared a new dynasty in the first place.

It's the same issues raised every time.
'They took decades to defeat the Song'.
The consolidation of the Khwarazmian conquest, Invasion of Russia, Invasion of Europe, Invasion of middle east, purge of conspirators, civil war, Qaidu and the Chagadaid Princes, rather than Song resilience are some of the reasons

.......Orda

I didn't say anything about "Song resilience". I said the Song couldn't even keep their own and other Chinese generals on their side, which is pathetic, although as I said adapting to warfare in China still took time, as did undertaking countless sieges and so on. The point is that the conquest of China can't just be put down to a speedy offensive that overcame a divided country before it could unite. It was a long term political and military project. The truth of this is shown by the fact that ultimately the Yuan dynasty did not do much better than the Southern Song in gaining the confidence of the populus, that large swathes of territory within China soon became internal frontier regions which forced the government to concentrate its armies away from the borders, and after one of the shortest reigns in Chinese history the Yuan were replaced. Rather than assuming that everyone must be bashing Mongols and recycling some response from another time and place, why don't you bother to read what people are posting?

You are jumping to conclusions by thinking I was answering your post and there is no need for the hostile tone either as I did read this and all the other posts (yours is not the only one to mention the Song). This is not the first time you have responded in this manner to something I have written, so I assume you just have something against me.
Likewise, it is not the first time the 'Fanboy' slur has been used

.....Orda

You paraphrased my post at the start of yours. I don't consider that any conclusions have been jumped to, seems to me that you are simply back-pedalling, but whatever. Frankly you have a condescending and dismissive manner and a tendency to go off at tangents rather than addressing what was actually said. If you don't want to be called a fanboy I would suggest not making a graceless debut in a thread by declaring that people who don't share your view of a historical figure must be motivated by some prejudice. I know the thread you are talking about and it was even more in evidence then. I couldn't care less though, about ancient forum history, what you are claiming now or what you think of some post. I posted to make a point about how China was conquered and it's been made.

To backtrack a bit to the term "horde", yes, it is perfectly appropriate to use of the Mongols. :book: About any other Inner Asian steppe people for that matter. Folks just sort of seem to forget it's a loan-word which originally meant something quite a bit different than it does in everyday English use nowadays. Allow me to quote an online dictionary:

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Main Entry: horde
Pronunciation: \ˈhȯrd\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, German, & Polish; Middle French & German, from Polish horda, from Ukrainian dialect gorda, alteration of Ukrainian orda, from Old Russian, from Turkic orda, ordu khan's residence
Date: 1555
1 a: a political subdivision of central Asian nomads b: a people or tribe of nomadic life
2: a teeming crowd or throng : swarm

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What puzzles me is a) people here speaking up for them mustachioed horsemen seem to be unaware of this b) didn't check it out (took about three minutes with Google).

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

You paraphrased my post at the start of yours. I don't consider that any conclusions have been jumped to, seems to me that you are simply back-pedalling, but whatever. Frankly you have a condescending and dismissive manner and a tendency to go off at tangents rather than addressing what was actually said. If you don't want to be called a fanboy I would suggest not making a graceless debut in a thread by declaring that people who don't share your view of a historical figure must be motivated by some prejudice. I know the thread you are talking about and it was even more in evidence then. I couldn't care less though, about ancient forum history, what you are claiming now or what you think of some post. I posted to make a point about how China was conquered and it's been made.

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You know the thread? Don't you mean threads? I was thinking plural but there, it just confirms what I already suspected. Same hostile response,your user name suits you.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

The Southern Song would hold the Mongols off several decades longer

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No back pedalling. This is frequently stated in just about every debate about the Mongol Empire

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What puzzles me is a) people here speaking up for them mustachioed horsemen seem to be unaware of this b) didn't check it out (took about three minutes with Google).

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Or maybe (c) were fully aware and simply didn't comment?

.....Orda

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Originally Posted by Watchman

To backtrack a bit to the term "horde", yes, it is perfectly appropriate to use of the Mongols. :book: About any other Inner Asian steppe people for that matter. Folks just sort of seem to forget it's a loan-word which originally meant something quite a bit different than it does in everyday English use nowadays. Allow me to quote an online dictionary:What puzzles me is a) people here speaking up for them mustachioed horsemen seem to be unaware of this b) didn't check it out (took about three minutes with Google).

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:rolleyes:
Did you even read what I posted earlier? I'd already admitted there was a more sensible definition of 'horde' which is quite applicable. HOWEVER, most people are quite unaware that this definition even exists for the word. Instead, most people are only familiar with the second definition of 'horde' which doesn't really apply to the Mongols, considering that they were more often than not outnumbered by their opponents, and I have never heard mention to a "Russian horde" or "Chinese horde" going back to the middle ages. My point was, since you seemed to have missed it earlier, was that it is, in general discussion, not the best word to use, since it most commonly summons an image in the other person's mind which is a misnomer.

In my answer to the opening question: yes, I do believe it was a product of circumstance. As I believe everything is, although that should in no way be taken as believing history to be pre-defined and personal contributions irrelevant. Often phrases crop up such as ...Genghis made great use of his enemies strengths and weaknesses, which makes him a great commander..., which is true and without him history couldn't have taken place as it did, but one must acknowledge that those strengths and weaknesses are a product of circumstances outside a great person's control.

In no way would I disagree with how great his abilities were, since indeed the facts do speak for themselves, but to deny that he was granted the opportunity to make use of those extraordinary abilities on a large scale by historical circumstances far beyond his control speaks of ignorance of larger historical processes.

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Originally Posted by Bismarck

A statesman must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.

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Hostility is the normal reward for making an irrelevant and dismissive reply to someone's post. Get over it already- it and your apparent list of past grievances.

On to something actually relevant- the reason why Marco Polo's accounts refer to him visiting the "courts of China" is that that is where he went and spent most of his time, or at least claimed to have gone- to the center of Kublai's realm in Dadu. There are medieval accounts of Europeans actually going to the steppes, e.g. to Batu's court. But for whatever reason they never became famous, then or now, probably, I would guess, because there is not much about the steppes to capture the popular imagination. Even the accounts of persons who actually went there are focused chiefly on how Khans created a royal spectacle, on an arid plain. By the same token Ibn Battuta's account of Yuan China and indeed all his other destinations was generally focused on the relative piety of impiety of people he met, because that was his chief interest and the chief interest of other Muslim theologians. Parochialism and sensationalism are pretty standard fare in medieval documents.

While I wouldn't go as far as saying that the Mongol Empire was a product of crcumstance, they were also lucky. I quote John Man in his biography of Genghis Khan:

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Originally Posted by John Man

"[....] they lived in obscurity, until Genghis came along. Lucky for them he did: the late twelfth century was the last moment at which a conqueror could have emerged, A few decades later, advances in gunpowder technology made the nomads' traditional fighting skills obsolete. As it was, Genghis was just in time to gather the Mongols' inherent forces, like an archer drawing a recurved bow, and release them with devastating effect."

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I disagree with that thesis. It is certain that within a few decades of Genghis Khan's birth firearms were developed (in fact there may already have been pot-de-fers or handguns at the time), but I don't see that that would have made much difference because:
- It took much longer for arquebuses and field artillery to develop, and until then, they could not really replace bows in all respects.
- Horse archers remained the lords of the plains even after gunpowder had proliferated in many more agrarian or urban countries. In many places (Persia, Poland, China, India) they simply started carrying longarms and/or pistols as well as bows to take advantage of the new technology. Nor did gunpowder necessarily stop horse archers off the plains. Gunpowder arrows, rocket launchers, bombs thrown by hand or launched by artillery, fire-lances, flamethrowers and quite possibly pot-de-fers, handguns, or bombards were already in use in China by the time of the Mongol invasion and China was still conquered. Much the same goes for Middle Eastern states too in all likelihood.
- Horse archers could be used in combination with gunners and artillery. Timur did it, so did Babur, so, in fact did Kublai Khan. The Yuan military contained a specialist division called the Pao Jun, literally "Gun Army", and the oldest extant handgun in the world is from early Yuan China (and its fairly advanced design suggests alot of prior development). This and other respects in which Mongol leaders adapted to the circumstances is part of why they ultimately conquered China and of course many other places.

I would say that if there was any circumstance which helped the Mongols it was that northern China was divided amongst the Jin and Xi Xia and the native dynasty in the south was dysfunctional and would never recover. As people have pointed out, a Chinese dynasty at the height of its power could have obstructed Genghis Khan's unification of his people and made a much better effort at defending its borders, which might have made the Mongol empire a non-starter in the first place.

The Jin were already experiancing a decline by that time, I think the Song had little to do with their fall (well, except the fact that they defeated them, but you get my point). As for the Mongol Invasions on Kyushu, it didn't take an experianced ruler to assemble his fleet and charge at an island that was weakly defended, the Mongols could not have won the second time as the shogun managed to build up Kyushu's defenses pretty well within the ten years.

Though an experienced naval commander would realise that shallow keeled ships were not suited to the open sea.
Qubilai made some poor decisions and wasting what he obviously considered as limitless manpower was one of them

......Orda

I can't really refute you here, as I'm not particularly familiar with medieval history. You are quite possibly right. There is one thing though, that I would like to emphasise: look at how John Man phrased it: "advances in gunpowder technology", meaning, I imagine, not that gunpowder had just been utilised for military purposes, but that they were becoming more efficient. Were there, by any chance, any significant advances of gunpowder technology in the early- to mid-thirteenth century?

Well, the oldest extant handgun is from early Yuan China (1280's) and it is fairly advanced; the Chinese had evidently cottoned on that the best way to manipulate guns was with a wooden tiller, and the fact that the actual barrel is fairly wide but only slightly bulbous at the back shows both that it was probably intended to shoot bullets (not darts) and that casting was beyond its infant stages. That is much better than the pot-de-fer type guns in Walter de Milamete's illustrations in 1326 (of which sort the Chinese may already have been using in the early 12th century). However, even if Chinese guns were evolving steadily that didn't stop the Mongols (and in any case they just started using the technology themselves), and it was a fairly long time before the matchlock and then the arquebus were developed, and even when they were they just used alongside of horse archers by leaders like Timur and Babur. Some horse archers incorporated guns into their panoply also.

Chinese matchlock rifles were also used by the Japanese around the 1500's.

As far as I can tell the debate has settled down, in a very caricatured fashion: into 'Gengis Khan was great' because he took a small, disparte nation, united them and beat nearly all-comers with them, and those who say that: 'Genghis Khan was lucky' because he beat all-comers with superior weaponry/tactics when the rest of the world was weak/divided.

In essence, did Genghis make history, or did history make him?

It is not denying his effectiveness as a commander to say that history made him. In the same way that a poker player with a good hand, no matter how well he plays it, is not considered skilled then all achievements that Genghis had must be tempered with the knowledge that the circumstances were correct to achieve them.

If he was born in any other time period and led a Mongol Army against the world, he would lose, regardless of his talent, because the circumstances weren't right. Genghis Khan may have been a great leader of men, but to deny the role of circumstance in his rise is just folly.

Actually I don't think anyone is saying Genghis Khan's success was based solely on superior technology or pure luck. But most people are saying that the state of the world at the time was a big help to and perhaps a precondition for his success.

People, you seem to forget that the Jin and the Xi'Xia did try and play divide and conquer with the tribes living in what is now Mongolia and southern Siberia to try and stop any from gaining the upper hand and creating a dangerous repeat of the Xiongnu, Uyghur or Göktürk confederations. Ong Khan, anybody? Kara Khitai ring a bell? The Jin weren't stupid, you know. IIRC Chinggis' first excursion into China proper was in reply to the Jin's attempts to try and subvert his authority, vassalize him, or otherwise somehow stop him from becoming a new powerful steppe lord.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

To backtrack a bit to the term "horde", yes, it is perfectly appropriate to use of the Mongols. :book: About any other Inner Asian steppe people for that matter. Folks just sort of seem to forget it's a loan-word which originally meant something quite a bit different than it does in everyday English use nowadays.

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Doesn't matter jack. When you read any chronicler of any enemy of the Mongols, from Khwarezmia to France, it's always a giant force of unstoppable demonic superbeings, and every time you kill one, two jump into his place to replace him, until every glorious divinely blessed mujahedeen/Christian knight is exterminated despite killing huge numbers of the devils.

What we understand in this modern day and age under "horde" -- the third meaning in your quote, i.e. a giant, badly organized, but quite clearly still unstoppable mass of people (of which the Mongols were none) -- is exactly what Mongol forces were seen as (or presented as!) by the men who wrote about them (and often suffered at their hands).

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Originally Posted by John Man

A few decades later, advances in gunpowder technology made the nomads' traditional fighting skills obsolete

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Oh, wow. Guns didn't outrange or overpower the composite recurved bow until the seventeenth century.

Yeah we know. The point is that both of them were nowhere near as strong as unified Chinese dynasties in their heyday. The Yong Le emperor sent armies numbering in the tens of thousands to wreck the remnants of the Yuan, prevent the rise of the Oirats, and generally enforce Chinese suzerainty, the goal ultimately being to make them economically dependent. Even though his inept successors undid his work the Oirats still ultimately secured little from their military success under Esen Khan, because they had come to subsist on trade with China, essentially vindicating the policy.

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Originally Posted by Baba Ga'on

Doesn't matter jack. When you read any chronicler of any enemy of the Mongols, from Khwarezmia to France, it's always a giant force of unstoppable demonic superbeings, and every time you kill one, two jump into his place to replace him, until every glorious divinely blessed mujahedeen/Christian knight is exterminated despite killing huge numbers of the devils.

What we understand in this modern day and age under "horde" -- the third meaning in your quote, i.e. a giant, badly organized, but quite clearly still unstoppable mass of people (of which the Mongols were none) -- is exactly what Mongol forces were seen as (or presented as!) by the men who wrote about them (and often suffered at their hands).

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Yeah well, show me a chronicler who didn't grossly inflate the numbers of the enemy. It was pretty much an universal practice everywhere, the obvious point being to excuse a defeat or make a victory seem that much more heroic. Nevermind now that the actual witnesses tended to have been too busy to count anyway, so the writers generally just had to "wing it" with impressive-looking figures that communicated the idea of whatever now amounted to a large army in the context.

Moreover, the Mongols were no worse at psychological warfare than anyone else - indeed they seem to have been unusually fond of calculated terror tactics alla Romani (or Assyria). Aside from their merry habit of consistently thoroughly obliterating captured settlements that failed to surrender in time in order to make a point to others, all steppe peoples had always made use of their vast herds of remounts to deliberately make their armies seem larger than they were; in the best case the enemy would be so intimidated he sued for terms rather than opt to fight, in the second best he'd at least be unnerved on the battlefield, and even in the worst he would derive no particular advantage from not falling to the trick.

Basic strategy really. Most people found it preferable to "win without fighting" if possible and took some measures to that end, and the Mongols could actively spread rumours of being an unstoppable vastness of hellspawned devils with the best of them.

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...

Oh, wow. Guns didn't outrange or overpower the composite recurved bow until the seventeenth century.

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For the record 17th century is still pretty early in the gun's march to wholesale military dominance - not that it hadn't proved very useful for, say, the Muscovites for dealing with their pesky steppe neighbours already in the previous century. The pike didn't disappear from European armies before the nigh-universal adoption of the bayonet around the end of the 1600s... one effect of which seems to have been the cavalry proper in turn increasingly focusing on "cold arms", in a direct reversal of the trend of the pike-and-shot period.

Actually once they got past the "handgonne" stage the guns' armour-penetrating power was better from the start - right up there with the steel-stave heavy crossbow. Rifles, although not widely used due to certain shortcomings that would not be solved before the advent of breechloading small arms, were known very early on and in skilled hands had an accurate range as good as any bow - and a superior killing range, especially against an armoured opponent.

You are however missing the main point of the impact of gunpowder, at least in the European context, which as others have already mentioned are presumably what John was referring to. The adoption of guns ushered in an entirely new way of mass warfare and an organisational infrastructure to support it, and the steppe nomads really had very little to pit against that. Ultimately essentially irregular and/or feudal horsemen with bows and lances against drilled regiments and squadrons of highly disciplined infantry and cavalry backed up with increasingly lethal and potent artillery, and the economic and adminstrative organisations to wield such in the first place ?
No dice. Up-to-date gun-toting European-style cavalry could generally handily take on and see off nomadic horsemen by the mid-1600s - and they were still stuck with wheellocks then. The husaria of Early Modern Poland seem to have done right well with just judicious cold-steel charges... they apparently didn't even bother to use their trademark five-meter lances when facing nomads.
And the nomads themselves increasingly "embraced the gun" as a personal weapon, for that matter; no doubt partly because for most intents and purposes the composite bow was already at its design limits - there wasn't anymore a possibility of improving its design to try to maintain some degree of parity. The Qin had to deal with units of mounted arquebusieurs when squabbling with the Central Asian princedoms for example - although in the early 1800s the Bannermen horse-archers apparently still had enough sand left to be victorious in the encounters.

"The adoption of guns ushered in an entirely new way of mass warfare and an organisational infrastructure to support it, and the steppe nomads really had very little to pit against that. Ultimately essentially irregular and/or feudal horsemen with bows and lances against drilled regiments and squadrons of highly disciplined infantry and cavalry backed up with increasingly lethal and potent artillery, and the economic and adminstrative organisations to wield such in the first place ?"

Well stated; people often miss the point completely with gunpowder warfare. The most important thing about it was what the English advocates of ditching the longbow referred to as "The New Discipline".

"as others have already mentioned are presumably what John was referring to."

But I don't think that is what John is referring to. John claims that withins a few decades of the Mongol expansion gunpowder warfare ushered in changes in warfare that would have negated the Mongol's effectiveness. As I've said above, I think that's incorrect, for many reasons. But I don't believe he can be referring to early modern pike and shot armies, tercios and so on because they were not in evidence until the end of the Middle Ages/ start of the Renaissance. Within a few decades of the Mongol Expansion gunpowder weapons still weren't even in use in Europe (as far as anybody knows) and in places where they were in use they hadn't yet created some new military paradigm. For instance, the first time we actually hear about massed formations of professional pistoleers wiping out medieval cavalry on European battlefields is in the mid-16th century.

Hm. In that case I would certainly have to agree on Jon being mistaken, as at least in Europe man-portable firearms didn't really begin to "pull their weight", as it were, before around the 1500s.

The dates may be slightly different elsewhere though. I've been under the impression the Chinese and Koreans had gotten pretty sophisticated with firearms and cannon, nevermind experimenting with rocketry, soon after the demise of the Yuan already and even earlier in some fields. But granted, the gunpowder weapons didn't play a very central part in their repulsing assorted excessively ambitious nomads AFAIK.

Yes I think the Chinese were reasonably advanced in terms of gunpowder warfare and developed the arquebus sometime in the 14th century and the bayonet shortly thereafter, but their military organisation didn't change fundamentally as a result.

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You are however missing the main point of the impact of gunpowder, at least in the European context, which as others have already mentioned are presumably what John was referring to. The adoption of guns ushered in an entirely new way of mass warfare and an organisational infrastructure to support it, and the steppe nomads really had very little to pit against that.

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I wasn't talking about that, actually. Rather, I was referring to the Ottoman imperial military's (hardly a steppe force) heavy reliance on the composite recurved bow, and how this weapon's eventual eclipsing by the gun meant the effective demise of the Muslim superpower's ability to defend its borders against aggressive Western armies (and also how the Ottomans' original advantage in the area of firearms eventually turned into a state of perpetually lagging behind the latest developments).

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Yes I think the Chinese were reasonably advanced in terms of gunpowder warfare and developed the arquebus sometime in the 14th century and the bayonet shortly thereafter, but their military organisation didn't change fundamentally as a result.

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Bayonet ?
:inquisitive:
First time I ever hear that claimed, and I've never ever seen it mentioned in any sources before the gradual adoption of Western methods in the late 1800s. You sure you're not confusing it with the fire-lance, the precursor of a true gun ? You know, those "roman candles" strapped to spears, which Mongol troops among others apparently found very unpleasant to assault against ?

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Originally Posted by Baba Ga'on

I wasn't talking about that, actually. Rather, I was referring to the Ottoman imperial military's (hardly a steppe force) heavy reliance on the composite recurved bow, and how this weapon's eventual eclipsing by the gun meant the effective demise of the Muslim superpower's ability to defend its borders against aggressive Western armies (and also how the Ottomans' original advantage in the area of firearms eventually turned into a state of perpetually lagging behind the latest developments).

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The Ottoman Janissaries eventually became almost purely musketeers capable of acting as close-combat infantry, and were for a while famous for the speed and accuracy of their fire (it sort of helped they actually trained, unlike most of their opponents' musketeers). The composite bow remained in use alongside the firearms as an auxiliary support weapon useful for its comparatively very rapid rate of fire, and for example in naval battles it could inflict nasty damage.

But the only parts of the Ottoman military that actually relied on the bow were irregular auxiliary nomadic light cavalry; pretty much everyone else who now used a ranged weapon in the first place soon switched over to a gun.

The reasons for the Ottoman decline were primarily structural and stemming from certain unfortunate inherent flaws in the empire's adminstrative and economic systems - although in all fairness similar patterns of decay hobbled pretty much the entire Mediterranean area plus much of East and Central Europe to boot. They were, however, in fact surprisingly well able to fend off the predations of their neighbours - as badly as their military tended to lag behind in many respects, they were pretty good at building and defending fortresses and the assorted tribal irregular forces that largely made up their frontier garrisons were actually pretty good at their job.

And their military backwardness by and large was directly the fault of the Janissaries, who were (literally) violently opposed to anything which even looked like infringing on their accumulated class privileges... such as military reforms. The Sultan who finally managed to get some progress going started off by first obliterating the Janissary corps in a day-long fight right in the capital, so he could actually get to work.

There are illustrations from Ming dynasty China of blades on the ends of arquebuses and muskets. That is a bayonet. It's not surprising- after all Chinese guns trace their ancestry back to spears. I don't think it ever occurred to them to then make guns with bayonets universal though.

I think I know the ones you mean, but IIRC the guns involved tend to be those rotary-barrel mostrosities the Ming seem to have had a thing for. Given the weight and bulk of such arrangements, the central shaft terminating in a spearhead strikes me as more comparable to the points and blades affixed to the front of various short-range light artillery pieces like organ guns also in Europe, rather than bayonets whose purpose is to convert the gun into a battleworthy enough spear.

I'm talking about a matchlock arquebus or musket (notable only in that the particular gun which is illustrated was breech-loading), with what looks like a knife to be attached to it. For all intents and purposes the same as a European bayonet. It looks to have been detachable but I don't know it was attached.

A different one from the ones I've seen then. (I must say a breeach-loading arquebus seems like a rather peculiar contraption, not that the Chinese didn't show a remarkable willingness to experiment with such, given the limitations of the seal that could be achieved.) I must admit I cannot then out of hand think of any logically tenable explanation as to why such an obviously useful device as a pointy object attached to a gun's barrel was not pursued further - as the Ming certainly used diverse handheld firearms commonly enough, and simple-and-effective developements normally have a habit of proliferating rather rapidly once stumbled upon.

Well, the Manchus and their hots for mounted archery spring to mind as a possibility, but that would require the proto-bayonet to have turned up only relatively shortly before they took over. You wouldn't happen to know from when the illustrations concerned date from ?

Sometime in the Ming dynasty, but they were pictures in some sort of manual. I've never seen a depiction of a battle or a parade with lots of soldiers carrying bayonets, so I assume they didn't realise what a great idea it was.