Horse and bow where the Mongol warriors’ strength – and it the end their weakness.
Speed and efficiency in conquest were their trademark, and the source of the fear they struck in the enemy. Thoroughly disciplined and highly mobile – infantry was unknown – it could execute complex tactical manoeuvres in silence upon orders from centralised command. It was built on a rational structure (based, like the Roman legion, on units in the multiple of tens) and promotion was strictly on merit. Europe continued its trajectory as a bunch of warring micro-states vying among each other for hegemony in the region – an issue settled only at the end of WW II. As a result the centre of power in the region shifted to the north, and czarist Russia eventually emerged.Įastern Europe was laid waste, but the remainder of the sub-continent was spared – possibly because the plunder was judged not to be worth the bother. The Mongols of the Golden Horde first moved north towards Novgorod in Russia, then veered sharply south and destroyed Kiev and its Viking civilisation – some say at the behest of the Venetians, who schemed to achieve a monopoly of the slave trade. The Abbasid Caliphate centred on Baghdad was replaced by the Ilkhanate, which eventually became the heart of Persia. The Moghul Empire of India emerged from the Chagatai Khanate of Genghis’ second son. Thereafter, China was able to maintain its geographic and political integrity despite the succession of dynasties. China, which after the Tang had broken up into separate kingdoms – the Jin and the Song – was unified politically and administratively by Khubilai Khan, one of Genghis’ grandchildren. Even so, Eurasia’s main contemporary centres of power have all their roots in the Mongol empire. The unity could not be preserved, however, and the individual khanates drifted apart. Genghis divided his empire among his four children, while investing one of them with supreme paramountship. The Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors ruled Eurasia from China to the Middle East and Russia. African Digital Diplomacy and GovernanceĬome again, the Mongols? Those blood-thirsty brutish sods so close to animals that we named a major genetic deficiency after them?.
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