YouTube and the Mongols

It’s rare for me to sing the praises of a video on YouTube. In fact, I can’t recall a single instance. But I now feel compelled to do so.

It’s a video about the Mongols. And it stands above the usual tendentious, thrown-together streaming garbage as the new Freedom Tower (successor to the toppled Twin Towers of the World Trade Center) stands over lower Manhattan. (It may be hard to find among several similar videos; this one sports an apparently ancient painting of an arrayed army’s ranks, overlaid with this simple caption: “THE MONGOLS, 1206-1368 AD.”)

Why does it stand out? Three reasons. First, it’s brilliantly substantive, and at just the right level of detail. It fascinated me, who groused at having to study history during my entire primary education. Its British-accented narrator tells the tale in complex but manageable sentences—without any of the endless repetition of the same thought that many YouTube videos appear to have picked up from advertisers.

Second, the video is a surprisingly stunning work of visual art. I don’t know whether the authors visited all the global museums with ancient paintings of the Mongol leaders and armies and their many conquests, or whether they used AI to simulate them. But they didn’t make the grave mistake of trying to reenact ancient history. They told it visually through a series of what looks like ancient paintings that might have hung in the palaces of the conquerors. The video is thus a stunning and convincingly authentic work of visual art.

But what makes it important is something else entirely. The Mongol Empire, which lasted just 162 years, arose from the greatest military conquest in human history. What’s less well known is that, as it expanded, it also involved what may have been the greatest feat of widespread, thoughtful and successful multi-cultural administration.

At its height, the Empire spanned the entire Eurasian continent, from much of modern China up to the gates of Vienna, Austria, including many Islamic regions. Only the death of Kublai Khan, which by Mongol law required all leaders and their troops to convene and select a successor, saved Vienna, and likely most of what is now Europe, from almost certain conquest and occupation.

Think about that. If the previous paragraph surprises you, you aren’t alone.

Most Westerners, especially we Americans, know nothing about the Mongols. I had a great education, from a special “advanced” grammar school (University Elementary School at UCLA), through leading public junior-high and high schools, to the University of California (at Berkeley for undergrad and UCSD for grad school). But I can’t remember spending even a single day learning about the Mongols.

I first heard of them after my Fulbright Fellowship in Moscow in 1993, at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the feeder school for the KGB and Russian foreign service. I was then 48.

Among other things, I learned that the Soviets had kept the Mongol chronicles almost as secret as their work on atomic weapons, for fear the Mongols would rise again. I later read a superbly written and mercifully short account, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2005), by Jack Weatherford, which tells the Mongols’ story succinctly and vividly. (The short YouTube video confirmed the book’s views and expanded on several.)

What makes the Mongols’ tale important is not just that they conquered most of the known, “civilized” world and held such a broad empire for over a century and a half. It’s that, although their conquests were often savagely genocidal (especially at the beginning), their governance was miraculously enlightened, especially for their time.

Genghis and the other Khans introduced numerous social and legal innovations across their continent-spanning empire. Among them were: rudimentary, codified criminal law, legal protection for women and children, absolute freedom of religion, respect for science and learning (especially astronomy), paper money, and a pony-express like postal service. They developed these innovations through trial and error, apparently out of desire to improve not just their military effectiveness but also their governance and civil administration.

The Mongols were thus thoughtful and innovative in both war and peace. This makes their history especially important for us Americans today.

The notion that proper, logical and humane government began with the Western Enlightenment and reached its apex at our American Constitutional Convention (with that wonderful painting of Washington, standing and presiding), has been drummed into our American brains like the most fervid religious dogma. Even when we recognize that slavery distorted our democracy and planted a seed whose poisonous plant still grows, we still think that democracy and effective governance (or most of it) began with us.

That just ain’t so. Knowing the story of the greatest empire in human history, and how it rose and fell, can give us Americans a sense of perspective, as we experience the most precipitous decline in our now-longer history. Maybe, just maybe, it might also give us a small dose of humility, cause to introspect, a ray of hope, and a lust to change our now-seemingly-dismal future.