[HN Gopher] The Mongol Khans of Medieval France
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The Mongol Khans of Medieval France
Author : Thevet
Score : 93 points
Date : 2026-02-16 22:27 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| jmyeet wrote:
| I honestly had no idea about the French fascination with the
| Mongols. People tend to admire people who have traits they aspire
| to. I wonder if this stems from France, being a major imperial
| power at the time, admiring the Mongols as an imperial power.
|
| This timeline coincides with the Crusades with, which the article
| talks about at length. I find the Crusades fascinating because
| they've shaped the modern world in so many ways.
|
| Dan Carlin (of Hardcore History fame) once said that why he cares
| about military history is it shapes the world. If you look at the
| lightbulb, it doesn't really matter who invented it. Somebody
| would've. But take the Battle of Marathon, which shaped the
| entire history of Western Europe as the Greeks repelled the
| Persians. History would've been completely different. Or how
| Cyrus II (IIRC) essentially saved Judaism by rebuilding the
| Temple. Without that, Judaism may well have died out and, with
| it, all the Abrahamic religions may never have existed.
|
| So the Crusades are fascinating because they've often portrayed
| as a religious war but they were anything but. Religion was
| simply the excuse. Instead medieval powers wanted to control the
| Levant to enrich themselves.
|
| The Crusades essentially created international banking, making
| the Knights Templar incredibly wealthy [1]. One wonders if this
| was a necessary condition to the rise of the mercantile class
| that eventually displaced feudalism and brought on capitalism.
|
| But back to the French. It's interesting that they were
| fascinated with the Mongols with everything else that was going
| on. During this same period, the Eastern Roman Empire still
| existed and the Moors occupied the Iberian peninsula. In many
| ways, the Mongols were more distant whereas the Arab "threat" was
| closer and more real. So why the Mongols?
|
| [1]: https://bigthink.com/the-past/knights-templar-crusades-
| finan...
| gostsamo wrote:
| The arabs were broken into smaller kingdoms for a long time
| when it came to the XIII century. The Eastern Roman Empire had
| been in decline since the fall of Constantinople in 1204 and
| even before that it was only a regional power. Compared to
| those, the mongols managed to build an empire spreading on
| millions of square kilometers. There is no base for comparison.
| It is like comparing the UK and the US 20 years after WWII.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Mongolian empire was so large because it is cheap to run an
| extractive regime
| gostsamo wrote:
| Disliking them doesn't make their empire smaller and
| success is a virtue of its own according to many. They were
| successful and people noticed, the rest is commentary.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So this is a fallacy of seeing historical events through a
| modern lens.
|
| We know how far the Mongols spread and we have accurate maps
| but in no way am I convinced that France could possibly
| conceive of the size and scope of Central Asia in the 11th
| century.
| gostsamo wrote:
| They could conceive that you can go across France in a
| couple of weeks and that you might need a few months to
| reach China. What's more, they could see how rich the khan
| is and that it is much more than their king. And that he
| has much bigger army. Surprisingly, they were not idiots.
| clarionbell wrote:
| France was not a major imperial power at the time. It was much
| smaller than today, lacking Savoy and much of Burgundy for
| start, with Normandy and many other areas only nominally part
| of it and technically under control of English king (who was
| just a duke in France, but that changed only a very little on
| the battlefield).
|
| Crusades in middle east started as an attempt of Eastern Roman
| empire (although they just called it Roman empire / Basileia
| Romaion) to recover from recent advances of Muslim invaders in
| Anatolia (modern Turkey). But turned into an overwhelmingly
| religious effort in the west. The first crusade especially was
| largely ill organized and chaotic affair. Where on one end of
| the spectrum you had nobles arriving with somewhat well
| equipped forces and idea of what to do, and on the other you
| had pilgrims, with whatever they just picked up in their hands
| and not answering commands of anyone, but their priest.
|
| The economic side of things came into play after the process
| started and gradually became dominant. But it didn't start like
| it.
|
| Finally. Interest of France in Mongols can be easily explained
| precisely by the influence crusades had on French and other
| Christian elites in Europe. The initial victory of 1st Crusade
| was followed by a series of setbacks. Muslims gradually begun
| to push crusaders out, the fact that crusaders started to fight
| amongst themselves helped a lot.
|
| And then mongols arrived, almost from nowhere, crushed one of
| most powerful Muslim states at the time, and didn't stop there.
| It did seem like an immense opportunity, and in a way it was.
| If French, or someone else in Christendom, could convince khans
| that some form of cooperation is possible, or even better, if
| Mongols converted to Christianity, there would be a decent
| chance to not only save Jerusalem, but to move on to Egypt
| (still majority Christian).
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > under control of English king (who was just a duke in
| France,
|
| I thought the folks in Normandy were just Nordic people who
| moved there and later to England
| baud147258 wrote:
| yes, but when they moved to England, the Normand duke made
| himself king of England, so he (and his heirs) had the
| crown of England and the ducky of Normandy.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| So he was a Robber Ducky?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Its a mess. Vikings (mostly danes) did "move" there by
| conquering and being given lands as bribes. William
| conquered England but was still a vassal to the king of
| France due to still being the Duke of Normandy. So for
| example when France got a new king the king of England
| would need to go and swear loyalty and such, which would
| become a problem later.
|
| Through marriages and such the Duke of Normandy took over
| large parts of France and it became the Angevin Empire, but
| still just a puny vassal to the King of France.
|
| The 100 year war was fought over this essentially and
| England would end up losing all French land and thus the
| problem was solved forever.
| Bayart wrote:
| By the time of William the Conqueror, which I think is the
| sixth generation of Rollo's line in Normandy, they were
| just French (with a cultural memory of North Sea origins).
| The tapestry of Bayeux, which was made in England, calls
| them that.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Why the Mongols? Because they _were_ distant. You can 't afford
| to admire the people next door; you're either fighting them or
| preparing for when fighting breaks out again.
| forshaper wrote:
| The idea that you can't admire people you're fighting is
| ridiculous. You're forced to admire them. If you don't admire
| where they win, you lose.
| brabel wrote:
| I disagree. It's very hard to admire a direct enemy, even
| if you can see their strengths, you'll rationalize them in
| your head as being the evil sort of strength, which comes
| not from virtue but from their total lack of morality or
| whatever you can conjure up. We see that everywhere in
| history and even in contemporary conflicts.
| forshaper wrote:
| We do?
|
| Where, like Totila and Belisarius?
|
| Richard the Lionheart and Saladin?
|
| The death of Taira no Atsumori?
|
| Byrhtnoth and the Vikings?
|
| The Black Prince and King John II?
|
| The Song dynasty's opinion of the Mongols?
|
| David Hackworth saying that the US Army had to out-G the
| G?
|
| GWOT instructors telling you that when you're out
| partying, the Muj is sharpening his knife?
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| For some reason, the website is down for me. I have always been
| fascinated by the Mongols after reading "Genghis Khan and the
| Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford.
|
| Recently, I stumbled upon the 6:40+ hour YouTube video, "The
| Mongols - Terror of the Steppe." You might like it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFwMDuAnS4
| Hikikomori wrote:
| I guess you already found the hardcore history podcast
| episodes.
|
| EDIT: Didn't pay attention to what channel you linked, didn't
| know they made videos for their podcasts.
| vm wrote:
| I still get weird looks when I rave about 8 hours of podcasts
| on the Mongols. Hard to appreciate without having heard it.
| Dan Carlin is exceptional.
|
| Here's the first episode on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/
| episode/5wuQ7JPneMRJTU9UJrJRNs?si=6...
|
| And link to buy for those who prefer that over streaming
| https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-wrath-
| of-...
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I have turned at least one friend onto history podcasts
| using Mike Duncan's work. Now our wives look at us like
| we're a bunch of two headed goats whenever we meet and talk
| referncing revolutionary figures and events, raving about
| how much more "you feel the history" when visiting Rome and
| Paris and know some of the history. It's great!
| Hikikomori wrote:
| I just finished carlins kings of kings episodes before
| visiting the british museum. Carlin mentioned the
| contrast between what was depicted in the Assyrian and
| Achaemenid empires palace/throne and being able to see it
| in the museum with the added context made me appreciate
| it so much more.
|
| Visited Rome/Pompeii with my GF and she said it was like
| having a private tour guide. I just felt like I knew so
| little and could only add sparse bits of context.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Dan Carlin has a great radio voice, and is an entertaining
| presenter. Hardcore history is really only _okay_ on the
| history front though. Plus they are relatively shallow with
| how short they are.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I think this is a fair take but it works great as a
| gateway drug!
|
| I am curious what are your recommendations though. Always
| eager for expanding my horizon.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Revolutions Podcast is good and well researched
| (Especially later seasons).
|
| The History of the Germans Podcast is really great (100+
| episodes from Ottonians just to Habsburgs, so its pretty
| well in depth).
|
| History of France Podcast is good, its from a University
| professor, but not overly academic but well researched.
|
| History of England Podcast is good as well, starting with
| Anglo Saxon and Post Roman England. He uses a lot of high
| quality and primary sources.
|
| A History of Italy podcast starts with the end of Rome
| and is 200 episodes to get to 1500.
|
| I like in depth, single topic podcasts as you can tell as
| opposed to the podcasts that jump around topics.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Revolutions is my go-to. I also listened to History of
| Rome from Duncan. And because of this History of
| Byzantium is on my to check out list as well. I will try
| the others you mentioned. I'm very eager to find others
| as in depth as revolutions. Thanks!
| Hikikomori wrote:
| I think Carlin himself would be the first to admit that,
| even does so in the intro to many episodes. I think he
| already suffers from the length of some of his series.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Goodreads reviews don't instill confidence in the book.
| soiltype wrote:
| As a rule, "pop history" is full of shit and is probably
| better considered misinformation than anything else. I
| probably don't I know of a single general-audience
| history/anthropology book that doesn't horrify scholars of
| the field.
|
| As unfortunate as it is, studying cause-and-effect is
| extremely complex. If it's even theoretically possible to
| distill it down to easily digestible ideas, that's well
| outside our current technical capabilities.
|
| There's usually going to be some true and interesting
| information in these books, but it will be too deeply
| embedded in a narrative that is misleading.
| astrolx wrote:
| Baudolino from Umberto Eco (an excellent book) is partially about
| that, I recommend the read !
| orwin wrote:
| What's also interesting about the mongols and their inheritors
| (India's mughals especially) was how weird but effective their
| administration was. India knew around no global famines and very
| few local ones (none around the Bengal) in ~300 years of Mughal
| rule. In ~100 years of British rule, you had regular famines all
| around India, and some very harsh ones where millions of people
| died from hunger (which used to be more than extremely rare),
| including one in Bengal which never in its written history had
| ever suffered even a local one.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Western colonialism is a very high bar in terms of damage imo.
|
| This subject really interesting to read, thank you for
| mentioning it!
|
| Found this in case anyone is interested in reading about it
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| I worry Colonialism will come back again. Or at least in a
| different form.
|
| Most International Relations practitioners are followers of
| (Systems) Realism. You might find some minor power with
| Idealists/Instituitonalists, but they only get that privilege
| by being under the umbrella of a great power.
|
| Colonialism was not some greedy merchant/state thing, it was
| an Arms Race. It follows the inevitable forces produced by
| anarchy, there are no police to call so power is the greatest
| form of security. It causes a Tragedy of the Commons
| situation in the form of an Arms Race.
|
| After Colonialism, we had essentially client states, which
| seems similarly brutal.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Um, colonialism never left. It just morphed. The most
| common form is the economic colonialism/imperialism by the
| United States.
|
| The World Bank and IMF are tools of colonialism. We extract
| resources and exploit cheap labor from the Global South. We
| kidnap heads of state and seize that country's oil.
|
| We may not send settlers like we did in the colonial era.
| We've just found a more efficient method.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| You may be right - Russian invasion of Ukraine, the
| genocide in Gaza (most westerners don't even know that
| Israel is a settler-colony -
| https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-fares-abraham-021826
| that has been deliberately oppressing, chasing and killing
| Palestinians for a long time) and Trump demanding Greenland
| - all indicate that certain oligarchs are working to bring
| back imperialism.
| throw3846892 wrote:
| All westerners have heard this claim repeated many times,
| but it's never called a "colony" after gaining
| independence - otherwise every country on earth would be
| a colony.
| mdani wrote:
| There were several great famines during the Mughal reign in
| India, for example, Peter Mundy, the English merchant and
| traveller, describes the great famine of Deccan and Gujrat. The
| Mughal rule was brutal. The European travellers have written
| about the plight of the farmers who rebelled due to excessive
| taxation despite the fear of punishment. The Mughals built
| towers of severed heads outside each village and even they were
| not able to quell the rebellion, such was the state of affairs.
| So I'd say the assumption you're making isn't true.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Mughal rule in India was very inconsistent depending on the
| ruler in power at the time. There was a huge variety in
| quality of governance from Akbar to Aurangzeb.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| The British were shocked when the 1857 rebellion sought to
| restore the last Mughal emperor. It was then they decided to
| resort to a _revisionist history_ of the Mughal rule in
| India, to deliberately create animosity in the Hindus and
| Muslims (which is still lapped up by the right-). By further
| careful grooming of select right-wing Hindus and right-wing
| muslims leaders in India, the British were successful in
| preventing the Indians from politically uniting against the
| British Raj (divide and rule policy) and managed to extend
| their rule over us for nearly a century more, and in
| partitioning the country when they left.
|
| Mughal emperors in India were for the most part, secular, and
| they nurtured an egalitarian society (without disturbing the
| discriminatory Hindu caste structure so as to not intrude on
| Hindu religious beliefs) who used India's wealth to empower
| its growth and made it one of the richest empires in the
| world (during its time). Art, music and culture was
| especially patronised by them. Of course, they weren't
| perfect. Their "brutality" (during war or when suppressing a
| rebellion) was at par to any empire or kingdom of their time,
| in India or abroad. For example, Shivaji's (a Hindu ruler
| revered by the Hindu-right) army used to ransack Hindu
| temples too (which was again something common for its time in
| India, and not unique to Islamic invaders) in the Mysore
| kingdom that then had a Muslim ruler (Tipu Sultan - a ruler
| who, like his father, incidentally also served as an
| inspiration for the American revolutionaries in their fight
| again the British - https://aeon.co/essays/why-american-
| revolutionaries-admired-... and
| https://scroll.in/global/970265/how-tipu-sultan-and-
| haidar-a...). Islamic style raids (amongst other tactics)
| which Shivaji was famous for, was something he learnt from a
| Deccan muslim ruler (who was an African and a slave who rose
| to become a king in India -
| https://indianexpress.com/article/research/malik-ambar-
| auran... !).
| vee-kay wrote:
| Please stop the lies.
|
| You need to read up on history better, especially if you
| are talking of a country whose history has been ravaged by
| holocausts of the worst variety: man-made.
|
| Background: India has been among the most fertile and
| richest lands in the world, since many millenia, due to it
| having some of the world's biggest rivers (most of them
| being Himalayan rivers, as perennial icemelts, pushing out
| fresh alluvial soil, that's very fertile), hence India has
| had advanced agriculture and complex industries for
| thousands of years.
|
| 3 regions of India are among the most fertile (due to the
| geography and climate): the Deccan, Bengal and South region
| (sizeable chunk of it used to be called as Madras during
| British Raj in India). Please note this, as it is important
| context of what I'm explaining next.
|
| India gets 2 monsoons and also the Westerlies winds, so it
| gets a lot of seasonal rainfall. (e.g., Chirrapunji in
| India was the world's wettest place for centuries, till
| climate change in modern era changed the wettest wetspot to
| nearby locations.)
|
| In fact, before the Persian & Turkish invaders (whose
| descendants called themselves Mughals, as a link to their
| supposedly Mongol heritage) and European (including
| British) invaders invaded India, it was India that was the
| richest land in the world and a global economic superpower,
| contributing to 25-30% of the entire world's GDP. e.g,
| Surat was the richest city in the world.
|
| So such immense wealth and fertile lands, and lots of
| women, attracted the worst kind of invaders from across the
| hot deserts and the cold seas.
|
| The Muslim invaders (Persians/Turks) invaded and destroyed
| the world's oldest universities in Nalanda and Takshashila
| in India. They and the colonial Whites who followed,
| aggressively raped and pillaged at will, and enslaved the
| native people, brutally (this lead to further societal
| problems such as Purdah (veil) system and Sati system
| (where the native Hindu women would immolate themselves in
| funeral pure as mass suicide, as the invading barbaric
| Mughals would rape even dead bodies)).
|
| So atrocious was the barbarism and brutality of these
| invaders, that tens of millions of Indians died in
| artificial famines and inhuman tortures.
|
| An entire mountain range begot an evil name - Hindu Kush
| (the Killer of Hindus) - so called because of the tens of
| thousands of Hindus (and other natives) who died on its
| treacherous icy slopes, as part of chain gangs of captured
| slaves dragged to be sold in Persian and Arabia as slaves,
| sex slaves or worse (e.g., little children chained to
| camels for races, many of them died due to
| injuries,starvation, exhaustion, or sheer terror). Now
| mention of all these evils is important because that
| historic information destroys the fallacy that
| Turk/Persian/Mughal or European/British rule in India were
| benevolent and just. The reality was that India was turned
| into living hell.
|
| Within few hundred years of Persian/Turk/Mughal rule and
| European+British rule in India, those captured regions of
| India had become impoverished and wrecked by artificial
| famines induced by deliberate crippling of local industries
| and agriculture by systematic dismantling of those
| industries and agriculture and debilitating taxes (jizya,
| etc.).
|
| India went from being a global industrial & economic
| superpower, to becoming a poor crippled enslaved nation.
|
| Prior to the pre-medieval era, Indians knew how to deal
| with natural famines, because the monsoons could fail or be
| erratic once in a few years (drought years).
|
| One of the earliest treatises on famine relief goes back
| more than 2,000 years. This treatise is commonly attributed
| to Kautilya who was also known as Vishnugupta (Chanakya),
| who recommended that a good king should build new forts and
| water-works and share his provisions with the people, or
| entrust the country to another king. Historically, Indian
| rulers have employed several methods of famine relief. Some
| of these were direct, such as initiating free distribution
| of food grains and throwing open grain stores and kitchens
| to the people. Other measures were monetary policies such
| as remission of revenue, remission of taxes, an increase of
| pay to soldiers, and payment of advances. Yet other
| measures included the construction of public works, canals,
| and embankments, and sinking wells. Migration was
| encouraged. Kautilya advocated raiding the provisions of
| the rich in times of famine to "thin them by exacting
| excess revenue". Famines preserved only in oral tradition
| are the Dvadasavarsha Panjam (Twelve-year Famine) of south
| India and the Durga Devi Famine of the Deccan from 1396 to
| 1407.The Vanjari story of the great Durgadevi famine, which
| lasted from 1396 to 1407, is that it was named from Durga a
| Lad Vanjari woman, who had amassed great wealth and owned a
| million pack bullocks, which she used in bringing grain
| from Nepal, Burmah, and China. She distributed the grain
| among the starving people and gained the honourable title
| of 'Mother of the World', Jagachi Mata.
|
| But under the Muslim and Christian regimes in medieval
| India, tens of millions of Indians starved to death on the
| streets in these artificial famines. Or they became
| cannibals and robbers. Or they perished in epidemics caused
| by forced migrations and unsanitary conditions (because the
| invaders didn't bother to improve civic infrastructure,
| sanitation, etc.). e.g., Bubonic plague was unleashed in
| India, due to infected rats that came in European/British
| ships, and millions of Indians died in such plagues.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
|
| But why should a fertile land struggle due to few seasons
| of lack of rains?
|
| You see, the Muslim and Christian invaders followed the
| "scorched Earth" policy in India and elsewhere. If they
| lost a battle, they would burn all local crops and destroy
| villages during their retreat. They captured women and
| children (to turn them into sex slaves or soldiers), so the
| local population would gradually dwindle. They forced
| remnant populations to migrate, and imposed harshest taxes
| and atrocities on those that stayed. They systematically
| dismantled the local industries (killed or chopped off
| limbs of industry experts and artisans, broke their tools
| of trade, destroyed their schools and books, and banned
| cultural and scientific education). They deliberately
| starved and weakened the enslaved population so they
| wouldn't revolt. They caused caste conflicts and wars (did
| you know - the word "caste" comes from Portuguese word
| "casts", meaning societal class). The result was that these
| most fertile lands in the world, were turned into unlivabke
| hell.
|
| e.g., In 1630, after the monsoon had failed for two years,
| the Deccan famine erupted and lasted two years. Abdul Hamid
| Lahori's Badshahnama recorded that starvation was so rife
| that "life was offered for a loaf". Other desperate forms
| of survival were not unknown: "Men began to devour each
| other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love."
| The English merchant Peter Mundy, travelling near Surat,
| confirmed that parents sold or consumed their own children,
| or sometimes gave them away to anyone who would feed them.
| Ravenous subjects accosted others walking in public to prey
| on them. Given these wretched circumstances, many chose
| migration. As Lahori recalled, "Every man whose dire
| sufferings did not terminate in death and who retained the
| power to move wandered off to the towns and villages of
| other [provinces]."
|
| Drastic famines occurred under the Delhi Sultan, Muhammad
| bin Tughlaq (1290-1351). As described by the thirteenth
| century Indo-Persian historian, Ziauddin Barani
| (1285-1357), the primary reasons behind the emergence of
| famine was the imposition of immense land taxes and the
| exploitation of the peasants at the hands of the
| aristocrats.
|
| Gujarat and Deccan Famine (1630-1632): One of the most
| devastating famines in pre-colonial India occurred during
| the Mughal era. The famine resulted from three consecutive
| crop failures, leading to intense hunger, disease, and
| displacement. Contemporary Dutch records estimate that
| approximately 4 million people died in Gujarat and
| neighbourhood (Deccan region) in the ten months ending in
| October 1631. The overall death toll for the region was
| estimated at 7.4 million by late 1631.
|
| I will probably add more data and links here, but I think
| now you understand how awful and horrible those evil
| regimes of history were.
|
| Modern ndia is slowly rising again, from the ashes of these
| centuries of devastations.
|
| Indiais making good strides in some industries, its economy
| is the fastest growing economy, its UPI is the biggest
| most-successful payments system in the world, and Indian
| government is standing tall and strong against bullies and
| terrorists.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| What's the saying, the Irish famine was caused by a parasite,
| known as the British.
|
| Even if you can argue the British didn't deliberately cause
| famine over their subjects, they almost never took active steps
| to alleviate them.
| skissane wrote:
| > Even if you can argue the British didn't deliberately cause
| famine over their subjects, they almost never took active
| steps to alleviate them.
|
| They sent Protestant missionaries with free food for kids
| (souperism). Private charities, but the government used them
| as an excuse to not provide more government aid.
|
| And a lot of Catholic parents decided they'd rather their
| children be dead than risk them becoming Protestant.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Famines are, with very few exceptions, politico-economic
| actions, often with intentional malice, rather than a complete
| inability to obtain enough food.
| jmyeet wrote:
| You're so close to the point but not quite there.
|
| Famines are political. They happen because one population is
| happy to starve another. The Mughals ruled themselves. The
| British stole harvests for themselves and let the local
| population starve.
|
| The potato famine in Ireland is treated as some kind of
| unavoidable, natural event. No, the British just stole the
| harvest. And this continued right up until Churchill in India.
|
| So the Mughals might've been effective but the big difference
| is they weren't being exploited as an imperial subject.
| vee-kay wrote:
| Persian/Turks/Mughals and Europeans/British/Churchill killed
| more Hindus/natives than the Nazis/Hitler killed Jews.
|
| The centuries of barbaric holocausts done on the natives of
| India by Muslims and Christian invaders, are the untold
| stories that Muslims and Christians never dare to teach their
| kids.
| orwin wrote:
| So, counterpoint: genocide aim to destroy the culture of a
| group, either by killing the women and children alongside
| to fighters during a conquest/repression, or by forcefully
| moving them to make them mix with a new dominant culture
| (Crimean Tatars are an example). This almost always end in
| streamlining the language and destroying language
| diversity, often reducing it to a single one for all the
| survivors/moved. While not even close to the SEA level,
| India is one of the subcontinent with the most different
| spoken languages, which would indicate that it might not
| have been that bad. At least, not genocide-bad.
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| > The Mughals ruled themselves
|
| > So the Mughals might've been effective but the big
| difference is they weren't being exploited as an imperial
| subject.
|
| The Mughals _were_ the imperium, ruling over their subjects.
| They came in to the subcontinent as outsiders, just like the
| British.
| vee-kay wrote:
| You need to read up on history better, especially if you are
| talking of a country whose history has been ravaged by
| holocausts of the worst variety: man-made.
|
| Background: India has been among the most fertile and richest
| lands in the world, since many millenia, due to it having some
| of the world's biggest rivers (most of them being Himalayan
| rivers, as perennial icemelts, pushing out fresh alluvial soil,
| that's very fertile), hence India has had advanced agriculture
| and complex industries for thousands of years.
|
| 3 regions of India are among the most fertile (due to the
| geography and climate): the Deccan, Bengal and South region
| (sizeable chunk of it used to be called as Madras during
| British Raj in India). Please note this, as it is important
| context of what I'm explaining next.
|
| India gets 2 monsoons and also the Westerlies winds, so it gets
| a lot of seasonal rainfall. (e.g., Chirrapunji in India was the
| world's wettest place for centuries, till climate change in
| modern era changed the wettest wetspot to nearby locations.)
|
| In fact, before the Persian & Turkish invaders (whose
| descendants called themselves Mughals, as a link to their
| supposedly Mongol heritage) and European (including British)
| invaders invaded India, it was India that was the richest land
| in the world and a global economic superpower, contributing to
| 25-30% of the entire world's GDP. e.g, Surat was the richest
| city in the world.
|
| So such immense wealth and fertile lands, and lots of women,
| attracted the worst kind of invaders from across the hot
| deserts and the cold seas.
|
| The Muslim invaders (Persians/Turks) invaded and destroyed the
| world's oldest universities in Nalanda and Takshashila in
| India. They and the colonial Whites who followed, aggressively
| raped and pillaged at will, and enslaved the native people,
| brutally (this lead to further societal problems such as Purdah
| (veil) system and Sati system (where the native Hindu women
| would immolate themselves in funeral pure as mass suicide, as
| the invading barbaric Mughals would rape even dead bodies)).
|
| So atrocious was the barbarism and brutality of these invaders,
| that tens of millions of Indians died in artificial famines and
| inhuman tortures.
|
| An entire mountain range begot an evil name - Hindu Kush (the
| Killer of Hindus) - so called because of the tens of thousands
| of Hindus (and other natives) who died on its treacherous icy
| slopes, as part of chain gangs of captured slaves dragged to be
| sold in Persian and Arabia as slaves, sex slaves or worse
| (e.g., little children chained to camels for races, many of
| them died due to injuries,starvation, exhaustion, or sheer
| terror). Now mention of all these evils is important because
| that historic information destroys the fallacy that
| Turk/Persian/Mughal or European/British rule in India were
| benevolent and just. The reality was that India was turned into
| living hell.
|
| Within few hundred years of Persian/Turk/Mughal rule and
| European+British rule in India, those captured regions of India
| had become impoverished and wrecked by artificial famines
| induced by deliberate crippling of local industries and
| agriculture by systematic dismantling of those industries and
| agriculture and debilitating taxes (jizya, etc.).
|
| India went from being a global industrial & economic
| superpower, to becoming a poor crippled enslaved nation.
|
| Prior to the pre-medieval era, Indians knew how to deal with
| natural famines, because the monsoons could fail or be erratic
| once in a few years (drought years).
|
| One of the earliest treatises on famine relief goes back more
| than 2,000 years. This treatise is commonly attributed to
| Kautilya who was also known as Vishnugupta (Chanakya), who
| recommended that a good king should build new forts and water-
| works and share his provisions with the people, or entrust the
| country to another king. Historically, Indian rulers have
| employed several methods of famine relief. Some of these were
| direct, such as initiating free distribution of food grains and
| throwing open grain stores and kitchens to the people. Other
| measures were monetary policies such as remission of revenue,
| remission of taxes, an increase of pay to soldiers, and payment
| of advances. Yet other measures included the construction of
| public works, canals, and embankments, and sinking wells.
| Migration was encouraged. Kautilya advocated raiding the
| provisions of the rich in times of famine to "thin them by
| exacting excess revenue". Famines preserved only in oral
| tradition are the Dvadasavarsha Panjam (Twelve-year Famine) of
| south India and the Durga Devi Famine of the Deccan from 1396
| to 1407.The Vanjari story of the great Durgadevi famine, which
| lasted from 1396 to 1407, is that it was named from Durga a Lad
| Vanjari woman, who had amassed great wealth and owned a million
| pack bullocks, which she used in bringing grain from Nepal,
| Burmah, and China. She distributed the grain among the starving
| people and gained the honourable title of 'Mother of the
| World', Jagachi Mata.
|
| But under the Muslim and Christian regimes in medieval India,
| tens of millions of Indians starved to death on the streets in
| these artificial famines. Or they became cannibals and robbers.
| Or they perished in epidemics caused by forced migrations and
| unsanitary conditions (because the invaders didn't bother to
| improve civic infrastructure, sanitation, etc.). e.g., Bubonic
| plague was unleashed in India, due to infected rats that came
| in European/British ships, and millions of Indians died in such
| plagues.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
|
| But why should a fertile land struggle due to few seasons of
| lack of rains?
|
| You see, the Muslim and Christian invaders followed the
| "scorched Earth" policy in India and elsewhere. If they lost a
| battle, they would burn all local crops and destroy villages
| during their retreat. They captured women and children (to turn
| them into sex slaves or soldiers), so the local population
| would gradually dwindle. They forced remnant populations to
| migrate, and imposed harshest taxes and atrocities on those
| that stayed. They systematically dismantled the local
| industries (killed or chopped off limbs of industry experts and
| artisans, broke their tools of trade, destroyed their schools
| and books, and banned cultural and scientific education). They
| deliberately starved and weakened the enslaved population so
| they wouldn't revolt. They caused caste conflicts and wars (did
| you know - the word "caste" comes from Portuguese word "casts",
| meaning societal class). The result was that these most fertile
| lands in the world, were turned into unlivabke hell.
|
| e.g., In 1630, after the monsoon had failed for two years, the
| Deccan famine erupted and lasted two years. Abdul Hamid
| Lahori's Badshahnama recorded that starvation was so rife that
| "life was offered for a loaf". Other desperate forms of
| survival were not unknown: "Men began to devour each other, and
| the flesh of a son was preferred to his love." The English
| merchant Peter Mundy, travelling near Surat, confirmed that
| parents sold or consumed their own children, or sometimes gave
| them away to anyone who would feed them. Ravenous subjects
| accosted others walking in public to prey on them. Given these
| wretched circumstances, many chose migration. As Lahori
| recalled, "Every man whose dire sufferings did not terminate in
| death and who retained the power to move wandered off to the
| towns and villages of other [provinces]."
|
| Drastic famines occurred under the Delhi Sultan, Muhammad bin
| Tughlaq (1290-1351). As described by the thirteenth century
| Indo-Persian historian, Ziauddin Barani (1285-1357), the
| primary reasons behind the emergence of famine was the
| imposition of immense land taxes and the exploitation of the
| peasants at the hands of the aristocrats.
|
| Gujarat and Deccan Famine (1630-1632): One of the most
| devastating famines in pre-colonial India occurred during the
| Mughal era. The famine resulted from three consecutive crop
| failures, leading to intense hunger, disease, and displacement.
| Contemporary Dutch records estimate that approximately 4
| million people died in Gujarat and neighbourhood (Deccan
| region) in the ten months ending in October 1631. The overall
| death toll for the region was estimated at 7.4 million by late
| 1631.
|
| I will probably add more data and links here, but I think now
| you understand how awful and horrible those evil regimes of
| history were.
|
| Modern ndia is slowly rising again, from the ashes of these
| centuries of devastations.
|
| Indiais making good strides in some industries, its economy is
| the fastest growing economy, its UPI is the biggest most-
| successful payments system in the world, and Indian government
| is standing tall and strong against bullies and terrorists.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| Interesting to not mention Rabban Bar Sauma (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabban_Bar_Sauma ) who was a Mongol
| ambassador to France. He was born a Christian in Beijing and
| walked all the way to Paris in a sort of reverse Marco Polo
| situation.
| AStrangeMorrow wrote:
| Yeah it is easy to imagine the past as a set of very
| disconnected cultures when they were not. I remember hearing
| about people like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_da_Pian_del_Carpine
|
| He was a medieval Italian diplomat. And seems like when he was
| at the court of the Khan, we was trying to make a push of
| Catholicism and was getting into debates with other
| theologians, including one from a Islamic country and one from
| the Byzantine empire.
|
| A bit later in the medieval times, you have
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Rubruck who was an
| envoy from the court of France (Louis XIV) to the Khan. Or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_de_Longjumeau (from
| France too)
|
| Marco Polo is the most well know but far from the first one
| piokoch wrote:
| "The kings of medieval France were fascinated by the Mongols, who
| they saw as great empire builders."
|
| Well, surprising, as they were supporting military actions
| against Mongols, plus medieval France was nothing like Mongols
| empire in terms of social live organization, way of fighting wars
| (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_Truce_of_God).
|
| Later, in XV century, France started to turn into Mongols-like
| regime, but those weren't medieval times.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Real recognizes Real.
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