Wait For It...The Mongols! #17 Wartet nur...die Mongolen! #17 Espera... ¡Los mongoles! #17 待ってくれ...モンゴル人！#17 Espera... Os Mongóis! #17 等等……蒙古人！ #17

Hi I'm John Green; this is Crash Course World History and today we're gonna discuss…

wait for it… THE MONGOLS.

So you probably have a picture of the Mongols in your head. Yes, that's the picture: brutal,

bloodthirsty, swarthy, humorously mustachioed warriors riding the plains, wearing fur, eating |||||||Ebenen||| bloodthirsty|||with a mustache|fighters||||||feasting |||ひげを生やした||||||| sanguinarios|moreno|humorosamente|bigotudo||||llanos||piel|

meat directly off the bone, saying, "Bar bar bar bar bar bar bar". In short, we imagine

the Mongol empire as stereotypically barbarian. And that's not entirely wrong.

But if you've been reading recent world history textbooks like we here at Crash Course

have, you might have a different view of the Mongols, one that emphasizes the amazing speed ||||||||||||betont|||

and success of their conquests — how they conquered more land in 25 years than the Romans ||||Eroberungen||||||||||

did in 400. How they controlled more than 11 million contiguous square miles. And you ||||||||zusammenhängend|||| ||||||||contiguas||||

may even have read that the Mongols basically created nations like Russia and even Korea.

One historian has even claimed that the Mongols, “smashed the feudal system” and created ||||behauptet||||||||| ||||||||||feudal system||| ||||||||destruyeron|||||

international law. Renowned for their religious tolerance, the Mongols, in this view, created ||renombrados||||||||||

the first great free trade zone, like a crazy medieval Eurasian NAFTA. And that's not

entirely wrong either. Stupid truth, always resisting simplicity.

[theme music]

So remember herders? We talked about them back in episode one as an alternative to hunting ||shepherds or livestock tenders||||||||||||| ||pastores|||||||||||||

and gathering or agriculture. Here are the key things to remember: |Versammlung||||||||| en verzamelen of landbouw. Dit zijn de belangrijkste dingen om te onthouden:

1\. Nomads aren't Jack Kerouac: They don't just go on like random road trips. They migrate |||Jack Kerouac|||||||willkürlichen|||| ||Jack|||||||||||| according to climate conditions so they can feed their flocks. |||||||||Herde |||||||||rebaños afhankelijk van de klimatologische omstandigheden, zodat ze hun kudden kunnen voeren.

2\. Nomads don't generally produce manufactured goods which means they need to trade, so they almost always live near settled people.

And 3. Because they live in generally live close to nature and in harsh conditions, pastoralists ||||||||||||||Hirtenvölker ||||||||||||||牧畜民 ||||||||||||duras||

tend to be tougher than diamond-plated differential calculus. Like, think of the Huns, or the ||||||||微分積分学||||||| hebben de neiging om taaier te zijn dan gediamanteerde differentiaalrekening. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan de Hunnen, of de

Xiongnu. Or the Mongols. Okay, Stan. That's enough. Back to me. Stan. I AM THE STAR OF

THIS SHOW NOT THE MONGOLS!!! Hi. Sorry about that.

Right, so one last thing: pastoral people also tend to be more egalitarian, especially ||||||||||||igualitarios|

where women are concerned. Paradoxically, when there's less to go around, humans tend

to share more, and when both men and women must work for the social order to survive,

there tends to be less patriarchal domination of women. Although Mongol women rarely went

to war. I can't tell your gender. I mean you've got the pants, but then you also naar oorlog. Ik kan je geslacht niet zeggen. Ik bedoel, je hebt de broek, maar jij ook

have the floopity flop, so… That's the technical term, by the way. I'm a historian. ||Floopity flop|Flop||||||||||| ||floopity|||||||||||| heb de floopity-flop, dus... Dat is trouwens de technische term. Ik ben historicus.

If you had to choose a pastoral nomadic group to come out of central Asia and dominate the

world, you probably wouldn't have chosen the Mongols. Because for most of the history

we've been discussing, they just hung out in the foothills bordering the Siberian forest, |||||||||estribaciones||||

mixing herding and hunting, quietly getting really good at archery and riding horses. |||||||||Bogenschießen||| ||||silenciosamente|||||tiro con arco|||

Also, the Mongols were much smaller than other pastoral groups like the Tatars or the Uyghurs. Ook waren de Mongolen veel kleiner dan andere pastorale groepen zoals de Tataren of de Oeigoeren.

And not to get like all Great Man History on you or anything, but the reason the Mongols

came to dominate the world really started with one guy, Genghis Khan. Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

The story goes that Genghis or Chingus Khan was born around 1162 with the name Temüjin

to a lowly clan. His father was poisoned to death, leaving Temüjin under the control ||baja|clan||||envenenado|||||||

of his older brothers, one of whom he soon killed during an argument. By 19 he was married

to his first and most important wife, Börte, who was later kidnapped. This was pretty common |||||||||||secuestrada||||

among the Mongols, Temüjin's mom had also been kidnapped. In rescuing his wife, Temüjin

proved his military mettle and he soon became a leader of his tribe, but uniting the Mongol |||temple|||||||||||uniendo||

confederations required a civil war, which he won, largely thanks to two innovations.

First, he promoted people based on merit rather than family position, and second, he brought

lower classes of conquered people into his own tribe while dispossessing the leaders ||||||||||despojando||

of the conquered clans. Thus he made the peasants love him. The rich hated him — but they

didn't matter anymore, because they were no longer rich.

With these two building block policies, Temüjin was able to win the loyalty of more and more

people and in 1206 he was declared the Great Khan, the leader of all the Mongols. How?

Well, the Mongols chose their rulers in a really cool way. A prospective ruler would

call a general council called a kurultai, and anyone who supported his candidacy for

leadership would show up on their horses, literally voting with their feet.

Past John: Mr. Green, Mr. Green! But horses don't have feet they have hooves. |||||||||||||Hufe |||||||||||||cascos

I hate you, Me From the Past. Also, NO INTERRUPTING THE THOUGHT BUBBLE!

After uniting the Mongols, Genghis Khan went on to conquer a lot of territory. By the time

he died in his sleep in 1227, his empire stretched from the Mongol homeland in Mongolia all the

way to the Caspian Sea. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

So that's a pretty good looking empire, and sure a lot of it was pasture or mountains

or desert, but the Mongols did conquer a lot of people, too. And in some ways with Genghis'

death, the empire was just getting started. His son Ögedei Khan expanded the empire even

more. And Genghis' grandson Möngke was the Great Khan in 1258 when Baghdad, the capitol

of the Abbasid Empire, fell to the Mongols. And another of Genghis' grandsons, Kublai

Khan, conquered the Song Dynasty in China in 1279. And if the Mamluks hadn't stopped

another of Genghis' grandsons at the battle of Ain Jalut, they probably would have taken

all of North Africa. Genghis Khan sure had a lot of grandkids… It must be time for the open letter.

An Open Letter To Genghis Khan's Descendants. But first, let's check what's in the secret

compartment today. Oh. A noisemaker and champagne poppers? Stan, you know I suck at these. What's ||||matraca||||||||soy malo|||

all this for? Ohhh, it's because it's a BIRTHDAY PARTY!! YAY. Happy birthday to Genghis Khan's descendants. ||||||||||||||||Nachkommen

How do I know it's your birthday, Genghis Khan's descendants? Because every day is

your birthday. Because right now on the planet Earth, there are 16 million direct descendants

of Genghis Khan, meaning that every day is the birthday of 43,000 of them. So, good news,

Genghis Khan: Your empire might be gone, but your progeny lives on. And on, and on, and |||||||||Nachkommen||||||| |||||||||descendencia|||||||

on. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Best wishes, John Green

Unfortunately for the Mongols, those guys weren't always working together, because Leider||||||||||

Genghis Khan failed to create a single political unit out of his conquests. Instead, after

Genghis' death, the Mongols were left with four really important Empires called Khanates:

The Yuan Dynasty in China, the Il-Khanate in Persia, the Chagatai Khanate in Central

Asia, and the Khanate of the Golden Horde in Russia.

If you remember all the way back to the Hellenistic period, this is similar to what happened to

another good general who wasn't much for administration, Alexander the Great. Also,

neither of them ever conquered India.

The Mongols succeeded primarily because of their military skill. Genghis Khan's army,

which never numbered more than 130,000 was built on speed and archery. Just like this

guy. Mongol mounted archers were like super fast tanks, compared to the foot soldiers

and knights they were up against.

But wait, all the military history nerds are saying, once people knew that the Mongols

were coming, why didn't they just hole up in castles and forts? It's not like the

Mongols had flying horses. EXCEPT THEY DID. They didn't? Stan, why are you always making history boring?

So the Mongols apparently didn't have flying horses, but they were uncommonly adaptable.

So even though they'd never seen a castle before they started raiding, they became experts |||||||||||saqueando|||

at siege warfare by interrogating prisoners. And they also adopted gunpowder, probably |Belagerung|Belagerungskrieg||||||||| |sitio|||||||||pólvora|

introducing it to Europeans, and they even built ships so they could attack Japan. That

might have worked, too except there happened to be a typhoon. ||||||||||tifón

Also, people were terrified of the Mongols. Often cities would surrender the moment the

Mongols arrived, just to escape slaughter. But of course, that only happened because Mongolen arriveerden, gewoon om te ontsnappen aan de slachting. Maar dat gebeurde natuurlijk alleen omdat

there were occasions when the Mongols, did, you know, slaughter entire towns.

So with all that background, let us return to the question of Mongol awesomeness. First,

five arguments for awesome. 1. The Mongols really did reinvigorate cross-Eurasian ||||||||reinvigoraron|| vijf argumenten voor geweldig. 1. De Mongolen hebben het Euraziatische echt nieuw leven ingeblazen

trade. The Silk Road trading routes that had existed for about 1000 years by the time the ||Ruta de la Seda|||||||||||||

Mongols made the scene had fallen into disuse, but the Mongols valued trade because they |||||||desuso|||||||

could tax it, and they did a great job of keeping their empire safe. It was said that

a man could walk from one end of the Mongol empire to the other with a gold plate on his

head without ever fearing being robbed. 2. The Mongols increased communication throughout

Eurasia by developing this pony express-like system of way stations with horses and riders

that could quickly relay information. It was called the yam system and also included these |||||||||yam||||| die snel informatie kunnen doorgeven. Het heette het yam-systeem en omvatte ook deze

amazing bronze passports, which facilitated travel.

3\. Another thing that travelled along the Mongol trade routes was cuisine. For example, it was because of the Mongols that rice became a staple of the Persian diet. Which I mention ||||||||||básico|||||||

entirely because I happen to like Persian food.

4\. The Mongols forcibly relocated people who were useful to them, like artists and musicians ||forzosamente||||||||||| and, especially administrators. As you can imagine, the Mongols weren't much for administrative

tasks like keeping records, so they found people were good at that stuff and just moved

them around the empire. This created the kind of cross-cultural pollination that world historians |||||||||||polinización|||

these days get really excited about. And 5. The Mongols were almost unprecedentedly

tolerant of different religions. They themselves were shamanists, believing in nature spirits,

but since their religion was tied to the land from which they came, they didn't expect |||||atado||||||||||

new people to adopt it and they didn't ask them to. So you could find Muslims and Buddhists

and Christians and people of any other religion you can think of prospering throughout the

Mongol empire. And it's that kind of openness that has led some historians to go back and

re-evaluate the Mongols, seeing them as kind of a precursor to modernity.

But there's another side to the story that we should not forget, so, here are five reasons

why the Mongols might not be so great. 1. Here is Genghis Khan's definition of

happiness: “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before ||||||vencer||||persigue||

you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to ||||||||||queridos|||bañados||||abrazar|

your bosom their wives and daughters." Off-topic, but if that quote rings a bell, it might be |seno||esposas||||||||||||||

because Oliver Stone blatantly plagiarized Genghis Khan in the movie Conan the Barbarian. |||de manera evidente|||||||||

2\. Is an extension of one. The Mongols were seriously brutal conquerors. I mean, not uniquely brutal, but still: the Mongols destroyed entire cities, and most historians estimate the numbers

they killed to be in the millions. 3. Their empire didn't last. Within 80 years

they'd left China and been replaced by a new dynasty, the Ming. And in Persia they

blended in so completely that by the 15th century they were totally unrecognizable.

I mean, they'd even taken up agriculture! Agriculture, the last refuge for scoundrels ||||||||||||canallas

who want to devote their lives to working instead of skoodilypooping. |||widmen|||||||

4\. They also weren't particularly interested in artistic patronage or architecture. I mean, |||||||patrocinio|||| your palace may last forever, but my yurt can go anywhere. |||||||Jurte||| |||||||yurta||| je paleis kan eeuwig duren, maar mijn yurt kan overal komen.

5\. The Mongols were probably responsible for the Black Death. By opening up trade they also opened up vectors for disease to travel, in the case of the Plague via fleas infected |||||||||||||||pulgas|

with Yersinia pestis. And at least according to one story, the Mongols intentionally spread

the plague by catapulting their plague-ridden cadavers over the walls of Caffa in the Crimea. ||||||afligida|||||||||

While this primitive act of biological warfare might have happened, it's unlikely to be

what actually spread the plague. More likely it was the fleas on the rats in the holds

of Black Sea ships that were trading with Europe. But that trade only existed because of the Mongols.

All right Stan, one last time- cue the Mongol-tage. |||||||||tage Oke Stan, nog een laatste keer - cue de Mongol-tage.

So the Mongols promoted trade, diversity, and tolerance, and they also promoted slaughter Dus de Mongolen promootten handel, diversiteit en tolerantie, en ze promootten ook het slachten

and senseless destruction. And what you think about the Mongols ends up saying a lot about

you: Do you value artistic output over religious diversity? Is imperialism that doesn't last jij: Vind je artistieke output belangrijker dan religieuze diversiteit? Is imperialisme dat niet standhoudt?

better or worse than imperialism that does? And are certain kinds of warfare inherently

wrong? If you think those are easy questions to answer, than I haven't been doing my job.

Regardless, I look forward to reading your answers in comments. Thanks for watching and I'll see you

next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson.

The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself, and our Graphics

Team is Thought Bubble. Last week's Phrase Of The Week was "Hawaiian Pizza". If you want

to suggest future phrases of the week or guess at this week's, you can do so in comments, |vorschlagen||||||||||||||||

where you can also ask questions about today's video that can be answered by our team of

historians. By the way, if you want to wear your love for Crash Course there's a Mongols

shirt, link in the video info.

Thanks for watching Crash Course. Nobody can beat Crash Course viewers. Well, except for the Mongols.