The Mongol Khans of Medieval France

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.

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

Baudolino from Umberto Eco (an excellent book) is partially about that, I recommend the read !

"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.

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.

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...

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