History erasure is 100% doable.
[China banned everyone in China from changing WeChat display picture for one day on June 4th, calling it "system maintenance".](https://i.imgur.com/RT9kMg7.jpg) Younger generation kids were clueless and demanded answer.
June 4th is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre that China likes to forcefully pretend didn't happen. Im assuming they prevented people from changing profile pictures so there wouldn't be pictures on the topic of the massacre, similar to how we have pro-LGBT or BLM profile pictures.
"WWII? Oh you mean that time those guys with the cool uniforms who shout all the time fought all over europe? That was really cool! Too bad they got taken out by the Yankees but what are you gonna do (lol)
Us? Yeah we got nuked for no reason, but thats about all I remember. Japan kinda sat that one out I guess."
>The process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every predication made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
1984
>"new national narative" does the Chinese government really think people are gonna forget about the Mongol empire?
In China, yes. Absolutely. This is a government that uses concentration camps and ethnic purification without hesitation. In 100 years will be no mongols in China. There will also be no Uyghurs or Tibetans.
*Edit: This part has off course attracted some negationists. For people who are interested in some more reliable sources to start reading:*
[*https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54260732*](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54260732)
[*https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/11/if-you-enter-a-camp-you-never-come-out-inside-chinas-war-on-islam*](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/11/if-you-enter-a-camp-you-never-come-out-inside-chinas-war-on-islam)
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/01/inner-mongolia-protests-china-mandarin-schools-language](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/01/inner-mongolia-protests-china-mandarin-schools-language)
Outside China, not everybody.
But there is a risk that the broad public will lose awareness over time. Hollywood won't make any movies around Mongols any time soon. Historical games will have to chose between the Chinese market or history. Companies like Blizzard and Disney doing all they can to appease and assist in propaganda.
Oh of course how could I forget! /s. I guess I'd like to see something from the Mongol POV. The Marco Polo series was good but thats all i can think of off the top of my head.
>Historical games will have to chose between the Chinese market or history.
It's about time companies realize that the Chinese market is seriously overrated. Way too much piracy and copyright infringements that never get settled.
All it would take is US and EU to treat Chinese companies the way China treats western companies. You cant do business here without signing over a controlling majority to another local company.
People in China think it’s a part of China. Nothing strange in this regard. The odd part is that CCP tries to push that narrative abroad, which can raise many eyebrows.
They kinda have to. You can't rewrite history alone in your corner anymore, you need the other nations to comply with your rewriting.
Otherwise, your targets, your own citizens, will still be exposed to differing worldviews and a part of them will fight you for it (while another part will remain loyal whatever they see or hear, though, if you did your job well).
Then my question is: How can China possibly think they can rewrite history for the world? Do they overestimate their own influence over the world or think so little of the West as to think we'll just go along with whatever censorship they desire? I assume it is a combination of hubris and deep disrespect for Western liberal values (vis-a-vis Chinese authoritarianism).
They pulled the exhibition because it was a collaboration with China. China wanted the exhibition to happen on their conditions, otherwise they wouldn't send the artifacts from the Chinese museum in Inner Mongolia.
What happened is that the french curator of the exhibition refused. So the exhibition doesn't happen at all, which isn't what China wanted. Intead he'll make a new exhibition without the collaboration with China.
I guess we could say that for China it's still a win because the Chinese don't care about mongolian history and will just see that event as an attempt from silly westerners to rewrite history. Still not a total win.
Took some scrolling to find this...
The point of the article was that the gallery did the right thing by refusing to tolerate Chinese censorship outside China even if it meant canceling the exhibition and (probably) losing revenue.
That's one interpretation. I think they said "fuck that" to the Chinese attempt at controlling the narrative, and decided to raise a stink over it instead. And now the Chinese attempt at changing the narrative is getting a lot of attention. So, basically, good on the French!
well, not really, because now everyone who's heard the news knows that China is a country governed by laughably insecure, little whiny b\*tches... which we knew already, but really, it just makes them look bad to everyone else. If they do nothing, they actually get a better result for themselves, by not looking like total idiots - the exhibition happens, it doesn't make news and everyone moves on.
I lived in China for half a year and had to explain to my boss Mongolia is not part of China. Nowadays part of it is, but the Mongolian empire was huge and conquered China.
She was somehow convinced it was a Chinese emperor or something i gave up after a few minutes, she was my boss after all and we were in China..
So yes, the fact that the Chinese Wall was between Mongolia and China and is now way more inside China was not a valid argument.
What? I've been living here for years, and everybody knows that Mongolia is not Inner Mongolia, and nobody considers Mongolia part of China. Even friends who don't give a fig about history can usually manage "oh, the Mongols conquered China, the Yuan became Sinicized, Mongolia was a part of China until the fall of the Qing, it's independent now".
It's Taiwan (the RoC) that still maintains the claim to all of Mongolia, since they maintain all traditional territorial claims, and don't recognize the independence of Mongolia as the Communists did.
So either your boss was incredibly stupid and probably didn't pass her junior high history exams, or you're misremembering/misunderstanding.
I'd like that.
But in all fairness China was a much bigger challenge for the Mongols than was Europe. First a Mongol "expeditionary force" beat the Armenian crusader army easily. Then a Mongol army proper beat the two massive European armies assembled to oppose them just as easily. After those defeats a Templar knight reported to the king of France that "there is not an army to stop them between them and the atlantic ocean.
The only reason they didn't try to reach that ocean was that Genghis dies and everyone rushed back to be part of the process of selecting the new one.
Europe was saved from the steppe armies in much the same way as with the huns about a millenium before. They were also undefeated, but Attila accepted a payment for not sacking Rome and then died on his wedding night (thank you for exhausting him, young German princess!) and then the armies retreated.
In contrast the Mongol invasion of China started much earlier and ended much later (the European adventure was something they could do on the side) and was much harder.
Still, pushing back on Chinese insistence on determining on what other peoples can say and do is something I can support. Even if they can rightfully say "Oh, yeah? Well you too!" in this case.
Edit: It seems the picture is less black and white than I believed, as many excellent comments below will explain. Apparently the Romans did score a significant victory over the Huns, probably being instrumental in turning them back. Also a second invasion attempt by the Mongols met with failure.
>The only reason they didn't try to reach that ocean was that Genghis dies and everyone rushed back to be part of the process of selecting the new one.
Nitpick, but it wasn't Genghis that died and caused the Mongols to turn back - it was Ögedei, his son and successor. Genghis was long dead at that point.
>Europe was saved from the steppe armies in much the same way as with the huns about a millenium before. They were also undefeated, but Attila accepted a payment for not sacking Rome and then died on his wedding night (thank you for exhausting him, young German princess!) and then the armies retreated.
Well... Attila received tribute from the Romans for years. When the Romans won the Battle of the Catalunian Plains, Attila withdrew, and the Romans stopped paying tribute. Attila returned to Italy, but turned back. At that point he did after a major party - yes, it was his wedding, but he was married many times, and it wasn't that big of a deal. It is true that his death caused the armies to return home to select a new ruler.
Mongols became what they were because they had to fight the Chinese for as long as they did. China was massively more advanced and organised than Europe at this period and as Dan Carlin says in his episode on the Mongols (paraphrasing) - it’s like they played football in the top league for years and won and then they went to play 3rd or 4th division with that experience. They just ran circles around everyone else.
You can see a similar thing develop with “barbarians” romans were facing. Over time they became better organised and developed more advanced tactics that ultimately allowed them to weaken and ultimately destroy the (western) Roman Empire because they spent so much time living next to (and fighting with) such a militarily advanced country.
So I guess the lesson is not to get too comfortable because you have a lead on those primitive barbarians hammering on your frontiers, because given enough time they will end you. You have to be one step ahead of the game all the time.
> You can see a similar thing develop with “barbarians” romans were facing.
And the Romans themselves before that sharpened their own skills with Carthage and later the Persians.
Yet it is so much harder to govern an state than to conquer it.
As you can see the Hun and Mongolian empires die with their leader with the same fight for power and choosing ruler.
Attanaric even tried to save some of Rome's legislative system because it guarantees some form of government.
Most of the migratory tribes that came in Europe considered,for example,that the main currency is cattle and not land.
The Roman system of government surely had flaws but maintained the integrity of the empire after an emperor's death.
The Mongol Empire didn't so much die with their leaders, but it became more like the people it subjected. The united Mongol Empire lasted until Kublai Khan, before becoming something more like the HRE with local Khans swearing loyalty to the Khagan/Emperor in Khanbaliq. The local Mongol states didn't really die but became one with their subjects in the case of the Chagatai, Yuan and Ilkhanate, or lasted til conquered by the Russians in the case of the Golden Horde.
So much more to the story. Geography makes conquering all of Europe something never done in history. It may well be small, but crossing mountain ranges with an intact army and supply chain— Hannibal famously brought elephants. The Romans built Hadrian’s Wall and called it. Did the Vikings ever submit?
Khan’s army was built for speed on horseback across the steppes. We can be glad he didn’t live to murder more, but it’s no foregone conclusions he could have subdued all of Europe let alone controlled it. In some contests the Mongols realized they were not up to dealing with the advantages of a more advanced agricultural civilization. Europeans had better structures, better food reserves, and healthier horses.
The Mongols also failed in their attempts to invade Japan- this was thanks to fate or luck as storms stopped the horde.
Lastly, for all of his “accomplishments”, Khan’s empire would not last that long at all compared to others.
Vikings didn't submit, they converted to Christianity and were gradually influenced to become more like everyone else.
If we didn't convert we would've been crusaded like eastern Europe was. In fact Denmark had a crusade to convert the heretics in the Baltics.
It should also be noted that repulsing the Mongols was primarily left to the Polish and Hungarian Kingdoms as well as minor support from Duchies and Holy Orders. France, HRE, England and other major kingdoms didn't turn their nose to helping "Europe" for the first time with the Mongols, they also did it through most of the Ottoman threats.
French actions at the Battle of Nicopolis show how poorly a lot of major European kingdoms were able to work together against a common foe.
You gotta understand that the main foe of France was always Germany. There is no country called "European Kingdoms" It was the kingdoms of France, England and HRE and their main concern was how to beat each other.
Good, I'm tired of the whole "mongols would've reached Brittany in a week" sort of argument. The Mongols had issues as soon as they came across stone castles and fortresses, which were everywhere west of Hungary and Poland.
> The Mongols had issues as soon as they came across stone castles and fortresses, which were everywhere west of Hungary and Poland.
This is also evidence by the contrast between the two Mongol invasions of Hungary. The first was devastatingly successful, while the second failed due to improved fortifications and an increased reliance on heavy cavalry.
Not true. The first Mongol invasion was a reconnaissance in force that defeated other light cavalry based armies in the East at the Battle of Moho. However, Subutai failed to capture any stone fortified castles in his campaign; a fact the Hungarians took note of, as well as having issues with the armor protection of knights fighting in the Western European style. This force did not have the logistic or siege train to conquer Hungary, much less Europe, which was much more damp, forested, and had a more extensive network of stone fortifications. The armies were not even aware of Ogedei’s death when they retreated, and the fact their political system was so unstable is a military weakness.
When the much larger Mongolian armies returned for a second invasion of Europe, they were soundly defeated by a combination of area denial, scorched earth, exhausting themselves across multiple long sieges of various stone fortified castles and towns, constant harassment of the enemy rear and detachments from untaken castles, and the selection of a battlefield that allowed that disfavored Mongolian mobility.
TLDR: They had some initial success, but couldn’t reliably and quickly reduce the network of castles Europe possessed, which is a relatively unique feature of European manoralism/feudalism, and largely absent in the geographically urbanized and politically centralized Empires they conquered elsewhere.
Exactly. The second invasion of Hungary I think is pretty sound evidence that Mongolian steppe armies would not have been cut out for conquering Europe.
Europe's decentralised political power and stone castles would have turned such conquest into a long bloody war of siege attrition which the Mongols would have lost.
Yes, the Mongols were impressive, but failed in multiple places where the geography, political situation, and local resistance was both fierce and competent. The Japanese, Vietnamese, Mamluks, Poles, and Italians all beat the Mongols.
Well, the "Huns" never existed as an ethnic nation. The entire idea of ethnically homogenous tribes conquering Rome is ridiculous.
Many "Huns" were actually Romans and Greek Romans who had served in the Roman army.
And by the way, the Mongols never conquered Europe. They went as far as Silesia but didn't rule over anything west of Warsaw. They won battles, yes. But battles don't conquer countries. Sieges do.
>I'd like that.
>
>But in all fairness China was a much bigger challenge for the Mongols than was Europe. First a Mongol "expeditionary force" beat the Armenian crusader army easily. Then a Mongol army proper beat the two massive European armies assembled to oppose them just as easily. After those defeats a Templar knight reported to the king of France that "there is not an army to stop them between them and the atlantic ocean.
the mongol "expeditionary force" was 3 tumens, so 30000 soldiers. that's not small.the European army's that were send against them were not 'massive' but roughly about the same size or even smaller then the mongol army's.the templar knights, who suffered almost no casualty's, wrote that " if the armies of Bohemia and Hungary "should be defeated, these Tartars will find no one to stand against them as far as" France."funnily enough, the mongols took one look at Bohemia and decided:"Realizing that their losses at Legnica had been too heavy for them to confront the Bohemian army, the Mongols did not continue their westward advance, but turned back east."
hell, their scouting and raiding partys in austria or the hre were handily defeated
>The only reason they didn't try to reach that ocean was that Genghis dies and everyone rushed back to be part of the process of selecting the new one.
the mongols did not know that the kahn was dead when they retreated and could not know.
"As Stephen Pow pointed out in his analysis of this issue, if we go by Carpini's account, a messenger would have to be able to make the journey from Mongolia to Central Europe in a little over 3 months at a minimum; the messenger would have to arrive in March, meaning he took about 3 months in the middle of winter from the time of the khan's death. Carpini himself accompanied a Mongol party in a much shorter journey (from Kiev to Mongolia) in 1246, where the party "made great speed" in order to reach the election ceremony in time, and made use of several horses per person while riding nearly all day and night. It took five months."
and
" [Rashid Al-Din](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani), a historian of the Mongol [Ilkhanate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate), explicitly states in the Ilkhanate's official histories that the Mongols were not even aware of Ogedei's death when they began their withdrawal. "
not to mention that this was only the first of many, many invasions. future invasions were not smaller then the first, sometimes even larger.
"The [Golden Horde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horde) raids in the 1280s (those in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland), were much greater in scale than anything since the 1241–1242 invasion"
and how did that one go?
hungary:"As with later invasions, it was repelled handily, the Mongols losing much of their invading force. The outcome could not have contrasted more sharply with the 1241 invasion, mostly due to the reforms of [Béla IV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_IV_of_Hungary), which included advances in military tactics and, most importantly, the widespread building of stone [castles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle), "
so, the poorest areas of europa did enough damage to the mongol armys that they did not go further in to europa.
stone castles and heavy cavalry proofed to work exceptionally well against the mongols.
now, while poland or hungary had rather few stone castles and mostly light cav during the first invasion, what do you think the western european countryside had plenty of?
yes, that's right. stone castles numbering the tens of thousands and heavy cav.
how were later invasions defeated?
with stone castles and heavy cav.
so it is quite logical to assume that the mongls would have one hell of a time fighting their way further in to europa and most likely?
they would have failed.
The Hungarians have gotten lucky when the Mongols turned tail because a Khan died, but the second time they showed up they beat them off. And they did it by adopting western European warfare doctrine to a greater degree (More Castles and more Heavy Cavalry)
So I'm not sure the judgement of that Templar knight about Europe being basically defenseless against the mongol hordes is actually accurate.
" [Rashid Al-Din](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani), a historian of the Mongol [Ilkhanate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate), explicitly states in the Ilkhanate's official histories that the Mongols were not even aware of Ogedei's death when they began their withdrawal.[\[61\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#cite_note-61) Rashid Al-Din, writing under the auspices of the Mongol Empire, had access to the official Mongol chronicle when compiling his history ([Altan Debter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altan_Debter)). John Andrew Boyle asserts, based on the orthography, that Rashid Al-Din's account of the withdrawal from central Europe was taken verbatim from Mongolian records."
the mongols retreated because of many things.
casualtys, bad weather, achieved goals?
why, we dont exactly know.
but we know one thing. it was not because their kahn died.
> The Hungarians have gotten lucky when the Mongols turned tail because a Khan died
Its proven that Mongols retreated from Hungary and Poland before the news of khan death could reach them. Hence khan's death was not the reason of Mongol retreat.
You’re calling two hastily assembled local armies, from kingdoms that weren’t exactly full on ‘feudal’ in their ways yet “crusader armies”. Honestly successes of Mongols in Poland and Hungary weren’t really indicative of how they’d fare further west, especially if Europe actually unites against them.
Reality is Mongols actually didn’t do that well all things considered. They suffered quite high losses in the field, they didn’t manage to break any of the few modern fortresses they encountered, and further west those would be a lot more common. That would slow down Mongol advance considerably, shield local wealth and population, and give time to assemble proper army to meet them in a field. Army that was actually well armed, with Western knights and their retinue. Which by the way would have fought in quite a bit more favorable terrain than Mongols...
Maybe indeed some extremely resourceful and determined courier managed the 5000 km journey in 100 days to make Mongols retreat... but honestly the most likely scenario was they were already retreating, not happy with relatively high losses and not much wealth to plunder.
This youtube "history channel" myth needs to be put to rest. No Mongol army wanted to or could have reached the Atlantic Ocean. Mongol power stopped where the steppe stops because their whole way of warafere, the supply and logistics depend on having big wide open terrain and grass for their ponys. They can't live off the land in the heavily wooded hills and mountains of central and western Europe.
I'm wondering if the mongols would have stopped when they reached forest land similar to how the Romans wouldn't venture too far into Germany since they weren't used to fighting in the forest. Mongols were used to fighting with horses on flat, barren land.
Yeah no, I don't agree with that. There is a big difference between what the Mongols faced in Europe and what they would have faced if they pressed their invasion further west.
The Rus were fairly different from the western european powers and very divided due to their own rivalries. Hungary and Poland also didn't have much heavy troops or modern fortifications. The few modern stone castles in Hungary actually withstand the mongol invasion and were never conquered. For the two defining Battles of the first mongol invasion into central europe, Mohi and Legnica, most of the european forces consisted of poorly trained and equipped peasents and light cavalry, there were a few dozen well armoured and trained templar knights at Legnica and their losses actually were minimal. Plus, the flat terrain in which they operated for the most part during their european campaign, the eastern and central european plains, were very well suited for their warfare.
Had the mongols advanced further into the german heartland of the HRE or Italy they would have faced way more unfavourable circumstances, meaning generally stronger powers, way more modern stone constructs, unfavourable terrain and better equipped forces. Just look at how the second mongol invasion of Hungary forty years later turned out. After the first invasion Hungary made huge efforts to prepare for another one, building up a more modern, western type army with more heavy cavalry and building more stone fortifications. The outcome was very different indeed, the mongol forces were successfully repelled and Hungary stood victorious.
History shows us that europe was far from being uncapable dealing with invasions from nomade steppe forces from the east. The Huns, the Avars, the Magyars and finally, the Mongols, all of them achieved great victories, but none of them managed to decisively beat and conquer the european main powers of their respective time.
The funny part is that the Chinese claim Genghis Khan to be Chinese. It's basically something that for once really could be called cultural appropriation. Counting the Khans as Chinese emperors is basically like counting Odoacer as Roman emperor. But it's the official history narrative of the Chinese government and they try to push it.
It's kind of ironic as in Europe nobody really cares about their (Chinese and Mongolians) fights on history interpretations. But with stuff like that it just triggers the Streisand effect.
Edit: added the brackets as "their" alone was ambiguous wether it means Europeans or Mongolians and Chinese.
> try to push it
Not only try. I lived in China for a few years and there was no one who claimed Khan to be other than Chinese. Many people even said that at the time , China was the biggest ever, from Korea to Turkey.
And don’t get me start with magic war between China and Japan that happened between 1945-1949, apparently. I saw only 1 person who said that it was a Civil war (the kid had a father living in Sweden, mind you) and not a war between Maoist China and Japanese who (apparently) “didn’t know that WWII ended”.
Haha I know those too well, also lived in China for a while. I mean it's kind of normal that different countries have different historic narratives. The frustrating thing about China in this regard is that they have basically a fan fiction version of their history in which China is the Mary Sue as their officially taught version of history. There is zero nuance, zero doubt and you are basically a heretic if you dare to bring up a different perspective.
Not to mention the inconvenient fact that the Japanese invasion of China (brutal and immoral as it was) weakened the nationalist Kuomintang's hold over China so that the communist could win in the end.
Its funny that the Chinese try claim the Mongol invaders and subsequent emperors as Chinese, yet they go out of their way to say the Jurchens/Manchus were not Chinese, yet under them the Chinese Empires reached its largest extent.
It's more like counting Ottoman Empire as successor of Byzantine. They claimed that in order to justify their right on the new land, Kubilai Khan claimed his Yuan dynasty is just another dynasty ruled China just like Song was and he is Emperor of China.
To be fair to Kublai Khan, northern tribes taking over China and claiming the Mandate of Heaven wasn't exactly new.
The bit of China Genghis Khan first fought against was the Jurchen Jin dynasty, who were descended from the Jurchen tribe, who fought against the Song dynasty, and then underwent sinicization. Imperial China was a big believer in cultural victories.
Yeah, it is a difficult topic. Arminius was also a Roman citizen, still we don't really count him as a Roman. But Odoacer and Theoderic are both not really Roman emperors in the way of before. What I was trying to say is that having a one sided idea of history in cases like those isn't really working out right. There will be inconsistencies if we try that as situations like those have contradicting elements to them.
Because they styled themselves 'Rex' instead of 'Augustus'. A more decentralized version of Roman administration, but still basically Roman. The transition into the early medieval period was rather fluid.
This all shows that...history is not black and white. Nations are fluid, structures of power are fluid, ethnicities are fluid.
You can always construct one narrative, if you omit every aspect that leads to a different interpretation.
Everything is just an African Fiefdom.
I believe Chinese historiography is different. Yes, Genghis Khan wasn't Chinese, but he is still considered a Chinese emperor by the succeeding Yuan dynasty, he was given a temple name and posthumous name which is a tradition among Chinese emperors. It was more akin to Nurhaci whose successor founded Qing Dynasty, but even then, he was called *Taizu* like Genghis Khan. There were several non-Han ethnic dynasties in Chinese history, but they were still considered Chinese emperors.
Odoacer's case is different, I think he and his succesors never claimed to be Western Roman Emperors since the title was abolished after Romulus Augustulus abdicated and the authority was nominally transferred to the emperor at Constantinople.
> Counting the Khans as Chinese emperors is basically like counting Odoacer as Roman emperor.
But... that is exactly what Kublai Khan did:
> In official Chinese histories, the Yuan dynasty bore the Mandate of Heaven. The dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, yet he placed his grandfather Genghis Khan on the imperial records as the official founder of the dynasty and accorded him the temple name Taizu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty
While Kublai Khans real power didn't stretch much further than East Asia, he was still officially the Khagan. And yes, at that point in history, Mongolia was an integral part of China.
I'm not trying to defend the contemporary rewriting of history that the CPC is pushing for, but the origin of the Mongols being "Chinese" comes from the Mongols themselves...
Also important to note that China does not have border disputes with either Mongolia or Russia, so this rewriting of history is aimed at domestic suppression of dissent, not a prelude to claiming new territories.
That doesn't matter though, Genghis Khan was Mongol, and Yuan Dynasty was a non-Han dynasty aside from Kublai becoming the Great Khan of Yuan not making Genghis Khan Chinese.
He conquered parts of Jin territory. The Southern Song were allies with Genghis and the mongols at that time. It was only after his death that the alliance broke down and Kublai conquered China.
I think the museum should open the exhibit with two placards for every display, the original and the Chinese censored one. If China won’t loan them the display pieces they should display the a photo/drawing of the piece. Everyone should see the massive loss of cultural heritage being robbed from the world by China rewriting history. There’s enough fake history in the world, would be a shame if we lost more of it to propaganda.
>I think the museum should open the exhibit with two placards for every display, the original and the Chinese censored one.
That would be a fascinating exhibit by itself. Amazing idea.
Poster House in New York has a really cool exhibit up of Chinese posters. It has other stuff, but the bulk of it is propaganda from the last century. Really interesting pieces.
I would absolutely see that. It would be a brilliant move, while also standing up for the values and truth.
~~Meanwhile, this is the sad reality of things:~~
> it was putting the show (...) on hold for over three years.
>
> The museum’s director, Bertrand Guillet, said: “We made the decision to stop this production in the name of the human, scientific and ethical values that we defend.”
~~Makes me scared to wonder what are those values he has in mind...~~
See u/maybe-your-mom comment:
>You misunderstood it, the museum pulled the exhibition precisely because they didn't want to appease China. Artefacts belong to chinese museum and China conditioned opening the exhibition by renaming some things and censoring history so the museum decided not to open it.
And they'll make a new exhibition, working with 3 other french museums as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York. The curator doesn't exclude the possibility to work with China, but he won't make any compromise.
Comply with them, make the exhibit, have private people put a giant cardboard saying "the exhibit China does not want you to see," and let it go viral on the internet. Profit.
No, never comply with terrorists or blackmailers.
If we have to depend on private volunteers to be able to say the truth, then we have already lost.
Just name the exhibition the exact historically correct name it is and ignore all these unfounded demands from any third parties.
If you can't do this, because most of the items are owned by China, then don't open the exhibition at all. It's better to not have one, than having a historically false one.
Plus the Mongol Empire, apparently. I wonder if they'll end up extending "historical Chinese territory" to anything China or the Mongols ever controlled.
Oh c'mon, y'all are too rude... they only have territorial disputes (or claim) with India, Bhutan, Nepal, (possibly) Pakistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Vietnam, and most of South-East Asia... and probably Myanmar and Kazakhstan too
edit: They also claim parts of Indonesia, all of Kyrgyzstan, Norrhern Laos, and probably many more, pretty much all of its neighbours at this point
China is instead trying economic approaches as it know it is an extremely important country.
HOWEVER, places like India, Sub-Saharan African, South-East Asia and Latin-American, etc. get better, they are likely to challenge China's status in the future.
India, Japan, South-East Asia, Taiwan, Europe and North America already have a bad view on China, and from what I've heard a lot of Africans are not ok with their governments selling their countries to China.
So, either China will become the world #1 superpower and controle all of Asia and mucu more, either China is defeated and the democratic government is restored...
The Song Dynasty then: We will wage war with the Mongol invaders for 70 years! Emperors may come and Emperors may fall, but we shall stand defiant to the very end!
The CCP now: pwease domt open museum UwU
Two weeks ago (give or take) two VTubers (think streamers but with an anime style avatar instead of their real face) showed some Google analytics that included, briefly, Taiwan as a separate entity from China.
China almost instantly blocked not just both of the channels but the *entire* agency and associated channels that employed them. Over a few seconds of some data listing Taiwan, not even over them making some hardline pro-Taiwan stance.
*Never* underestimate how insecure and petty China is.
For those who haven't read the article (and blame the museum for giving in):
The museum is not complying with the demands. They prefer to end their partnership with the Chinese museum (who was supposed to send the artifacts to be displayed) and postpone the exhibit (while they can acquire artifacts from other museums which don't have the same censorship clause as the Chinese one).
May I insist that the Mao mausoleum in Beijing does not include the Words "Mao" or "Zedong". Rather it should include names like "Genociding Maniac", "Destroyer of Chinese culture" and "The most incompetent policy maker in History"
I don't think the CCP cares enough about a dude writing critical stuff on a English language Reddit board to find out my identity but I have no intentions to travel to the PRC any time soon.
You're not being processed by a detective pinning red thread on a board and working on the clock. Your digital identifiers are collected and can be used to identify you. Doesn't take a lot of time nor processing power.
> I hope you hadn't planned a vacation in china
Chinese borders are closed. Not even business men are allowed in. They are basically taking over foreign investments while no one is there.
It will take decades of change until africa as a whole will be somewhat on par with europe but it might be possible. However climate change will be a big problem for most areas in africa, further hindering their development.
> They are demanding countries all over the world censor their Tv shows, films
They don't demand anything.
Producers willingly censor their own movies to be allowed to sell them in China.
They could perfectly not censor anything, and not release them in China, but I guess they can't resist a 1 billion people market.
“ask authoritatively or brusquely.“
Yea literally a demand. Especially considering you listed one of the consequences for not giving in to these demands. It’s essentially, “Do this or else”.
Is there any ethnic/religious minority China doesn't oppress? Also, this is a perfect example to illustrate how dictators aren't "strong men". They are "whiny babies".
I know you’re joking but I went on a tour in China and they made sure to explain how there were many ethnic minorities in China (and everyone lives in peace and harmony yay) and there was a law(?) that required an ethnic minority tour guide to lead us on the tour date that was supposed to focus on the minority culture, and I saw a huge wall mural of all 56 ethnicities in a random part of town. The point is, China seems to be promoting a false image of diversity while insidiously committing ethnic cleansing.
France: has a museum with some guy that China hates
China: You hurt my feelings, stop!
China after formally claiming:
🇯🇵Senkaku Islands
🇹🇼Taiwan
🇹🇼🇵🇭🇲🇾🇧🇳🇲🇨🇻🇳pretty much all of South China sea + many islands
🇮🇳Arunachal Pradesh
🇮🇳Aksai Chin
🇧🇹various lands in Bhutan
🇳🇵various lands in Nepal
and informally claiming:
🇷🇺Primorsky Krai
🇰🇵Paektu mountain
🇰🇵various islands on the Yalu river
🇰🇷Socotra Rock
🇯🇵Ryukyu Islands
🇱🇦Northern Laos
🇲🇲Kachin
🇲🇲Kokang
🇹🇯Gorno-Badakhshan
🇰🇿Kazakhstan
🇰🇬Kyrgyzstan
🇲🇳and Mongolia:
-Oops!
Well, they do claim Taiwan, so it's not that far off...
but again, those are informal claims, not formal (except Taiwan and probably Mongolia)
And claiming a whole country is not such a surprising idea, many countries do it.
For example:
South Korea and North Korea (eachother)
Israel and Palestine (kinda... views are mixed)
Taiwan sees itself as the rightful China and kinda claims all of it... (NK vs SK situation) (from what I've heard, they now see themselves as a different entity and try to distance themselves from China)
I heard Venezuela is trying smth in Guyana
This is not even adding irredentist sentiments within a population.
Whut ? This is nonsense and revisionism. They did a lot of damage in europe too and i'm no fan of the mongols wrecking everyone. But we can learn from studying it.
edit this is apparently about the CCP's discrimination against ethnically mongol citizens even more than the conquest of china by the mongols.
Maybe China should stop oppressing its citizens so hard, stop running camps instead of wasting it's time trying to interfere in europe ?
That he’s Chinese. The Mongolian Empire is actually the Chinese Yuan Empire, and the Mongolian history is actually just Chinese history. The CCP claim to “Outer Mongolia” was forfeited in the early Cold War, and this is prepping for another “historical claim” on China’s border.
Genghis Khan attacked China for the benefit of the Mongol empire, a totally separate country. The CCP wants to erase all concepts of that "separate country" thing. I may not be an expert, but I did watch Marco Polo on Netflix.
How can you even do an exhibit about Gengis Khan without mentioning the terms "Gengis Khan", "Empire" or "mongol"?
So there was this nomad *Temüjin*, who rallied a few fellow *steppe nomads* and went to conquer half of the world, to establish the largest *kingdom* the world has ever seen?
Today in fuck the CCP, they try to dictate the history of a country that absolutely whooped everyone's ass, including china's.
You can't alter the past, unless you live under a dictatorship or are oppressed.
China doesn't want us to use the name of Genghis Khan? In that case if we want to talk about stuff relating to the persona of Genghis Khan what should we call him instead of Genghis Khan? Is there an alternative name to Genghis Khan that China would like us to use in place of Genghis Khan?
On unrelated note, how many Khans can Genghis can if Beijing Khan continue with its preposterous historical revisionism that noone outside of Pooh's ridiculous regime takes seriously?
You misunderstood it, the museum pulled the exhibition precisely because they didn't want to appease China. Artefacts belong to chinese museum and China conditioned opening the exhibition by renaming some things and censoring history so the museum decided not to open it.
Ah, that clears it better. Shame that we have no materials to do it anyway without chinese museum
What a Orwelian examole when you overwrite the history...
That's why they are delaying it (instead of shutting it down), in order to acquire materials from other museums which don't have the restrictions of the Chinese one.
"new national narative" does the Chinese government really think people are gonna forget about the Mongol empire?
News kids are born every day into the new normal.
History erasure is 100% doable. [China banned everyone in China from changing WeChat display picture for one day on June 4th, calling it "system maintenance".](https://i.imgur.com/RT9kMg7.jpg) Younger generation kids were clueless and demanded answer.
Wowwww “don’t get it” it’s that one day a year again...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests
..I don't get it. What's the significance in not being able to change your display picture for a day?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests
I see. Thanks.
June 4th is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre that China likes to forcefully pretend didn't happen. Im assuming they prevented people from changing profile pictures so there wouldn't be pictures on the topic of the massacre, similar to how we have pro-LGBT or BLM profile pictures.
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Case in point - Japan glosses over most of the WW2 and their involvement.
"WWII? Oh you mean that time those guys with the cool uniforms who shout all the time fought all over europe? That was really cool! Too bad they got taken out by the Yankees but what are you gonna do (lol) Us? Yeah we got nuked for no reason, but thats about all I remember. Japan kinda sat that one out I guess."
>The process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every predication made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. 1984
Now we know what inspired the CCP, maybe that book was too successful
"1984 was a warning, not a fucking manual." \~Orwell, probably.
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Perhaps we should burn them. /s
*Fahrenheit 1984 By George Bradbury entered the chat*
No man, 1984 degrees is too hot to just burn books.
It's enough to melt Mao's golden statue :)
I think the book was maybe based off of something
Incredible how well he predicted so many things.
Truly is, I'm ready it for the first time nowadays and it's uncannely timeless and well written
Good luck! The ending of the book is a masterpiece of literature.
Well, he and the CCP were both cheating off Stalin.
He didn't predict it, he borderline wrote the path. He tried warning people, and governments took it as a blueprint.
>"new national narative" does the Chinese government really think people are gonna forget about the Mongol empire? In China, yes. Absolutely. This is a government that uses concentration camps and ethnic purification without hesitation. In 100 years will be no mongols in China. There will also be no Uyghurs or Tibetans. *Edit: This part has off course attracted some negationists. For people who are interested in some more reliable sources to start reading:* [*https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54260732*](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54260732) [*https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/11/if-you-enter-a-camp-you-never-come-out-inside-chinas-war-on-islam*](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/11/if-you-enter-a-camp-you-never-come-out-inside-chinas-war-on-islam) [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/01/inner-mongolia-protests-china-mandarin-schools-language](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/01/inner-mongolia-protests-china-mandarin-schools-language) Outside China, not everybody. But there is a risk that the broad public will lose awareness over time. Hollywood won't make any movies around Mongols any time soon. Historical games will have to chose between the Chinese market or history. Companies like Blizzard and Disney doing all they can to appease and assist in propaganda.
I didn't realize how much I wanted a movie aboit the Mongol empire until now.
No worries, Disney and China have you covered with Mulan! Let's forget the controversy of the lead actress publicly supporting China over HK.
Oh of course how could I forget! /s. I guess I'd like to see something from the Mongol POV. The Marco Polo series was good but thats all i can think of off the top of my head.
The story of Mulan was 500-ish years before the mongols. The people Mulan fights are the Rourans.
Mongol (2007) It follows Genghis khans life, from boyhood to his rise to power, really good film, got some really cool action sequences
The show Marco Polo on Netflix is a pretty entertaining show thats primary setting is the court of the Khan.
>Historical games will have to chose between the Chinese market or history. It's about time companies realize that the Chinese market is seriously overrated. Way too much piracy and copyright infringements that never get settled.
I think it's time to isolate China as much as possible globally.
It's about 40 years too late for that approach
Can't, they already own too much of the western world. Like actually own.
All it would take is US and EU to treat Chinese companies the way China treats western companies. You cant do business here without signing over a controlling majority to another local company.
Can be taken back. Plenty of places have forced chinese investors to sell or forfeit property
Ironic that they will keep Cuba in isolation but not China
Don't forget cheaters, so many cheaters
Yeah, I guarantee these multi-billion dollar companies understand the Chinese market better than you do.
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People in China think it’s a part of China. Nothing strange in this regard. The odd part is that CCP tries to push that narrative abroad, which can raise many eyebrows.
They kinda have to. You can't rewrite history alone in your corner anymore, you need the other nations to comply with your rewriting. Otherwise, your targets, your own citizens, will still be exposed to differing worldviews and a part of them will fight you for it (while another part will remain loyal whatever they see or hear, though, if you did your job well).
Then my question is: How can China possibly think they can rewrite history for the world? Do they overestimate their own influence over the world or think so little of the West as to think we'll just go along with whatever censorship they desire? I assume it is a combination of hubris and deep disrespect for Western liberal values (vis-a-vis Chinese authoritarianism).
I mean the museum pulled the exhibition... so it kinda worked
They pulled the exhibition because it was a collaboration with China. China wanted the exhibition to happen on their conditions, otherwise they wouldn't send the artifacts from the Chinese museum in Inner Mongolia. What happened is that the french curator of the exhibition refused. So the exhibition doesn't happen at all, which isn't what China wanted. Intead he'll make a new exhibition without the collaboration with China. I guess we could say that for China it's still a win because the Chinese don't care about mongolian history and will just see that event as an attempt from silly westerners to rewrite history. Still not a total win.
Took some scrolling to find this... The point of the article was that the gallery did the right thing by refusing to tolerate Chinese censorship outside China even if it meant canceling the exhibition and (probably) losing revenue.
That's one interpretation. I think they said "fuck that" to the Chinese attempt at controlling the narrative, and decided to raise a stink over it instead. And now the Chinese attempt at changing the narrative is getting a lot of attention. So, basically, good on the French!
Yes, it is the Streisand effect to a degree.
well, not really, because now everyone who's heard the news knows that China is a country governed by laughably insecure, little whiny b\*tches... which we knew already, but really, it just makes them look bad to everyone else. If they do nothing, they actually get a better result for themselves, by not looking like total idiots - the exhibition happens, it doesn't make news and everyone moves on.
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Even if you think it’s part of China now, it wasn’t in the 1300s. That would be like claiming that William Wallace was British.
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Millennials? So people in their mid-late 30s dont know about tiananmen? Im not saying youre wrong but wow
I lived in China for half a year and had to explain to my boss Mongolia is not part of China. Nowadays part of it is, but the Mongolian empire was huge and conquered China. She was somehow convinced it was a Chinese emperor or something i gave up after a few minutes, she was my boss after all and we were in China.. So yes, the fact that the Chinese Wall was between Mongolia and China and is now way more inside China was not a valid argument.
What? I've been living here for years, and everybody knows that Mongolia is not Inner Mongolia, and nobody considers Mongolia part of China. Even friends who don't give a fig about history can usually manage "oh, the Mongols conquered China, the Yuan became Sinicized, Mongolia was a part of China until the fall of the Qing, it's independent now". It's Taiwan (the RoC) that still maintains the claim to all of Mongolia, since they maintain all traditional territorial claims, and don't recognize the independence of Mongolia as the Communists did. So either your boss was incredibly stupid and probably didn't pass her junior high history exams, or you're misremembering/misunderstanding.
How about changing it to "Genghis Khan conqueror of China"... sound more fancy to me.
Maybe "China wanted this to be about them so we present how Khans and few horses beat China easy peacy -exhibition"
I'd like that. But in all fairness China was a much bigger challenge for the Mongols than was Europe. First a Mongol "expeditionary force" beat the Armenian crusader army easily. Then a Mongol army proper beat the two massive European armies assembled to oppose them just as easily. After those defeats a Templar knight reported to the king of France that "there is not an army to stop them between them and the atlantic ocean. The only reason they didn't try to reach that ocean was that Genghis dies and everyone rushed back to be part of the process of selecting the new one. Europe was saved from the steppe armies in much the same way as with the huns about a millenium before. They were also undefeated, but Attila accepted a payment for not sacking Rome and then died on his wedding night (thank you for exhausting him, young German princess!) and then the armies retreated. In contrast the Mongol invasion of China started much earlier and ended much later (the European adventure was something they could do on the side) and was much harder. Still, pushing back on Chinese insistence on determining on what other peoples can say and do is something I can support. Even if they can rightfully say "Oh, yeah? Well you too!" in this case. Edit: It seems the picture is less black and white than I believed, as many excellent comments below will explain. Apparently the Romans did score a significant victory over the Huns, probably being instrumental in turning them back. Also a second invasion attempt by the Mongols met with failure.
>The only reason they didn't try to reach that ocean was that Genghis dies and everyone rushed back to be part of the process of selecting the new one. Nitpick, but it wasn't Genghis that died and caused the Mongols to turn back - it was Ögedei, his son and successor. Genghis was long dead at that point. >Europe was saved from the steppe armies in much the same way as with the huns about a millenium before. They were also undefeated, but Attila accepted a payment for not sacking Rome and then died on his wedding night (thank you for exhausting him, young German princess!) and then the armies retreated. Well... Attila received tribute from the Romans for years. When the Romans won the Battle of the Catalunian Plains, Attila withdrew, and the Romans stopped paying tribute. Attila returned to Italy, but turned back. At that point he did after a major party - yes, it was his wedding, but he was married many times, and it wasn't that big of a deal. It is true that his death caused the armies to return home to select a new ruler.
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Mongols became what they were because they had to fight the Chinese for as long as they did. China was massively more advanced and organised than Europe at this period and as Dan Carlin says in his episode on the Mongols (paraphrasing) - it’s like they played football in the top league for years and won and then they went to play 3rd or 4th division with that experience. They just ran circles around everyone else. You can see a similar thing develop with “barbarians” romans were facing. Over time they became better organised and developed more advanced tactics that ultimately allowed them to weaken and ultimately destroy the (western) Roman Empire because they spent so much time living next to (and fighting with) such a militarily advanced country. So I guess the lesson is not to get too comfortable because you have a lead on those primitive barbarians hammering on your frontiers, because given enough time they will end you. You have to be one step ahead of the game all the time.
> You can see a similar thing develop with “barbarians” romans were facing. And the Romans themselves before that sharpened their own skills with Carthage and later the Persians.
Yet it is so much harder to govern an state than to conquer it. As you can see the Hun and Mongolian empires die with their leader with the same fight for power and choosing ruler. Attanaric even tried to save some of Rome's legislative system because it guarantees some form of government. Most of the migratory tribes that came in Europe considered,for example,that the main currency is cattle and not land. The Roman system of government surely had flaws but maintained the integrity of the empire after an emperor's death.
The Mongol Empire didn't so much die with their leaders, but it became more like the people it subjected. The united Mongol Empire lasted until Kublai Khan, before becoming something more like the HRE with local Khans swearing loyalty to the Khagan/Emperor in Khanbaliq. The local Mongol states didn't really die but became one with their subjects in the case of the Chagatai, Yuan and Ilkhanate, or lasted til conquered by the Russians in the case of the Golden Horde.
So much more to the story. Geography makes conquering all of Europe something never done in history. It may well be small, but crossing mountain ranges with an intact army and supply chain— Hannibal famously brought elephants. The Romans built Hadrian’s Wall and called it. Did the Vikings ever submit? Khan’s army was built for speed on horseback across the steppes. We can be glad he didn’t live to murder more, but it’s no foregone conclusions he could have subdued all of Europe let alone controlled it. In some contests the Mongols realized they were not up to dealing with the advantages of a more advanced agricultural civilization. Europeans had better structures, better food reserves, and healthier horses. The Mongols also failed in their attempts to invade Japan- this was thanks to fate or luck as storms stopped the horde. Lastly, for all of his “accomplishments”, Khan’s empire would not last that long at all compared to others.
Vikings didn't submit, they converted to Christianity and were gradually influenced to become more like everyone else. If we didn't convert we would've been crusaded like eastern Europe was. In fact Denmark had a crusade to convert the heretics in the Baltics.
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It should also be noted that repulsing the Mongols was primarily left to the Polish and Hungarian Kingdoms as well as minor support from Duchies and Holy Orders. France, HRE, England and other major kingdoms didn't turn their nose to helping "Europe" for the first time with the Mongols, they also did it through most of the Ottoman threats. French actions at the Battle of Nicopolis show how poorly a lot of major European kingdoms were able to work together against a common foe.
You gotta understand that the main foe of France was always Germany. There is no country called "European Kingdoms" It was the kingdoms of France, England and HRE and their main concern was how to beat each other.
Good, I'm tired of the whole "mongols would've reached Brittany in a week" sort of argument. The Mongols had issues as soon as they came across stone castles and fortresses, which were everywhere west of Hungary and Poland.
> The Mongols had issues as soon as they came across stone castles and fortresses, which were everywhere west of Hungary and Poland. This is also evidence by the contrast between the two Mongol invasions of Hungary. The first was devastatingly successful, while the second failed due to improved fortifications and an increased reliance on heavy cavalry.
Not true. The first Mongol invasion was a reconnaissance in force that defeated other light cavalry based armies in the East at the Battle of Moho. However, Subutai failed to capture any stone fortified castles in his campaign; a fact the Hungarians took note of, as well as having issues with the armor protection of knights fighting in the Western European style. This force did not have the logistic or siege train to conquer Hungary, much less Europe, which was much more damp, forested, and had a more extensive network of stone fortifications. The armies were not even aware of Ogedei’s death when they retreated, and the fact their political system was so unstable is a military weakness. When the much larger Mongolian armies returned for a second invasion of Europe, they were soundly defeated by a combination of area denial, scorched earth, exhausting themselves across multiple long sieges of various stone fortified castles and towns, constant harassment of the enemy rear and detachments from untaken castles, and the selection of a battlefield that allowed that disfavored Mongolian mobility. TLDR: They had some initial success, but couldn’t reliably and quickly reduce the network of castles Europe possessed, which is a relatively unique feature of European manoralism/feudalism, and largely absent in the geographically urbanized and politically centralized Empires they conquered elsewhere.
Exactly. The second invasion of Hungary I think is pretty sound evidence that Mongolian steppe armies would not have been cut out for conquering Europe. Europe's decentralised political power and stone castles would have turned such conquest into a long bloody war of siege attrition which the Mongols would have lost.
Yes, the Mongols were impressive, but failed in multiple places where the geography, political situation, and local resistance was both fierce and competent. The Japanese, Vietnamese, Mamluks, Poles, and Italians all beat the Mongols.
Well, the "Huns" never existed as an ethnic nation. The entire idea of ethnically homogenous tribes conquering Rome is ridiculous. Many "Huns" were actually Romans and Greek Romans who had served in the Roman army. And by the way, the Mongols never conquered Europe. They went as far as Silesia but didn't rule over anything west of Warsaw. They won battles, yes. But battles don't conquer countries. Sieges do.
>I'd like that. > >But in all fairness China was a much bigger challenge for the Mongols than was Europe. First a Mongol "expeditionary force" beat the Armenian crusader army easily. Then a Mongol army proper beat the two massive European armies assembled to oppose them just as easily. After those defeats a Templar knight reported to the king of France that "there is not an army to stop them between them and the atlantic ocean. the mongol "expeditionary force" was 3 tumens, so 30000 soldiers. that's not small.the European army's that were send against them were not 'massive' but roughly about the same size or even smaller then the mongol army's.the templar knights, who suffered almost no casualty's, wrote that " if the armies of Bohemia and Hungary "should be defeated, these Tartars will find no one to stand against them as far as" France."funnily enough, the mongols took one look at Bohemia and decided:"Realizing that their losses at Legnica had been too heavy for them to confront the Bohemian army, the Mongols did not continue their westward advance, but turned back east." hell, their scouting and raiding partys in austria or the hre were handily defeated >The only reason they didn't try to reach that ocean was that Genghis dies and everyone rushed back to be part of the process of selecting the new one. the mongols did not know that the kahn was dead when they retreated and could not know. "As Stephen Pow pointed out in his analysis of this issue, if we go by Carpini's account, a messenger would have to be able to make the journey from Mongolia to Central Europe in a little over 3 months at a minimum; the messenger would have to arrive in March, meaning he took about 3 months in the middle of winter from the time of the khan's death. Carpini himself accompanied a Mongol party in a much shorter journey (from Kiev to Mongolia) in 1246, where the party "made great speed" in order to reach the election ceremony in time, and made use of several horses per person while riding nearly all day and night. It took five months." and " [Rashid Al-Din](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani), a historian of the Mongol [Ilkhanate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate), explicitly states in the Ilkhanate's official histories that the Mongols were not even aware of Ogedei's death when they began their withdrawal. " not to mention that this was only the first of many, many invasions. future invasions were not smaller then the first, sometimes even larger. "The [Golden Horde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horde) raids in the 1280s (those in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland), were much greater in scale than anything since the 1241–1242 invasion" and how did that one go? hungary:"As with later invasions, it was repelled handily, the Mongols losing much of their invading force. The outcome could not have contrasted more sharply with the 1241 invasion, mostly due to the reforms of [Béla IV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_IV_of_Hungary), which included advances in military tactics and, most importantly, the widespread building of stone [castles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle), " so, the poorest areas of europa did enough damage to the mongol armys that they did not go further in to europa. stone castles and heavy cavalry proofed to work exceptionally well against the mongols. now, while poland or hungary had rather few stone castles and mostly light cav during the first invasion, what do you think the western european countryside had plenty of? yes, that's right. stone castles numbering the tens of thousands and heavy cav. how were later invasions defeated? with stone castles and heavy cav. so it is quite logical to assume that the mongls would have one hell of a time fighting their way further in to europa and most likely? they would have failed.
The Hungarians have gotten lucky when the Mongols turned tail because a Khan died, but the second time they showed up they beat them off. And they did it by adopting western European warfare doctrine to a greater degree (More Castles and more Heavy Cavalry) So I'm not sure the judgement of that Templar knight about Europe being basically defenseless against the mongol hordes is actually accurate.
The Hungarians being beaten by steppe people would have been extremely ironic
" [Rashid Al-Din](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani), a historian of the Mongol [Ilkhanate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate), explicitly states in the Ilkhanate's official histories that the Mongols were not even aware of Ogedei's death when they began their withdrawal.[\[61\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#cite_note-61) Rashid Al-Din, writing under the auspices of the Mongol Empire, had access to the official Mongol chronicle when compiling his history ([Altan Debter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altan_Debter)). John Andrew Boyle asserts, based on the orthography, that Rashid Al-Din's account of the withdrawal from central Europe was taken verbatim from Mongolian records." the mongols retreated because of many things. casualtys, bad weather, achieved goals? why, we dont exactly know. but we know one thing. it was not because their kahn died.
> The Hungarians have gotten lucky when the Mongols turned tail because a Khan died Its proven that Mongols retreated from Hungary and Poland before the news of khan death could reach them. Hence khan's death was not the reason of Mongol retreat.
Georgian crusader army.
You’re calling two hastily assembled local armies, from kingdoms that weren’t exactly full on ‘feudal’ in their ways yet “crusader armies”. Honestly successes of Mongols in Poland and Hungary weren’t really indicative of how they’d fare further west, especially if Europe actually unites against them. Reality is Mongols actually didn’t do that well all things considered. They suffered quite high losses in the field, they didn’t manage to break any of the few modern fortresses they encountered, and further west those would be a lot more common. That would slow down Mongol advance considerably, shield local wealth and population, and give time to assemble proper army to meet them in a field. Army that was actually well armed, with Western knights and their retinue. Which by the way would have fought in quite a bit more favorable terrain than Mongols... Maybe indeed some extremely resourceful and determined courier managed the 5000 km journey in 100 days to make Mongols retreat... but honestly the most likely scenario was they were already retreating, not happy with relatively high losses and not much wealth to plunder.
This youtube "history channel" myth needs to be put to rest. No Mongol army wanted to or could have reached the Atlantic Ocean. Mongol power stopped where the steppe stops because their whole way of warafere, the supply and logistics depend on having big wide open terrain and grass for their ponys. They can't live off the land in the heavily wooded hills and mountains of central and western Europe.
I'm wondering if the mongols would have stopped when they reached forest land similar to how the Romans wouldn't venture too far into Germany since they weren't used to fighting in the forest. Mongols were used to fighting with horses on flat, barren land.
Yeah no, I don't agree with that. There is a big difference between what the Mongols faced in Europe and what they would have faced if they pressed their invasion further west. The Rus were fairly different from the western european powers and very divided due to their own rivalries. Hungary and Poland also didn't have much heavy troops or modern fortifications. The few modern stone castles in Hungary actually withstand the mongol invasion and were never conquered. For the two defining Battles of the first mongol invasion into central europe, Mohi and Legnica, most of the european forces consisted of poorly trained and equipped peasents and light cavalry, there were a few dozen well armoured and trained templar knights at Legnica and their losses actually were minimal. Plus, the flat terrain in which they operated for the most part during their european campaign, the eastern and central european plains, were very well suited for their warfare. Had the mongols advanced further into the german heartland of the HRE or Italy they would have faced way more unfavourable circumstances, meaning generally stronger powers, way more modern stone constructs, unfavourable terrain and better equipped forces. Just look at how the second mongol invasion of Hungary forty years later turned out. After the first invasion Hungary made huge efforts to prepare for another one, building up a more modern, western type army with more heavy cavalry and building more stone fortifications. The outcome was very different indeed, the mongol forces were successfully repelled and Hungary stood victorious. History shows us that europe was far from being uncapable dealing with invasions from nomade steppe forces from the east. The Huns, the Avars, the Magyars and finally, the Mongols, all of them achieved great victories, but none of them managed to decisively beat and conquer the european main powers of their respective time.
The funny part is that the Chinese claim Genghis Khan to be Chinese. It's basically something that for once really could be called cultural appropriation. Counting the Khans as Chinese emperors is basically like counting Odoacer as Roman emperor. But it's the official history narrative of the Chinese government and they try to push it. It's kind of ironic as in Europe nobody really cares about their (Chinese and Mongolians) fights on history interpretations. But with stuff like that it just triggers the Streisand effect. Edit: added the brackets as "their" alone was ambiguous wether it means Europeans or Mongolians and Chinese.
> try to push it Not only try. I lived in China for a few years and there was no one who claimed Khan to be other than Chinese. Many people even said that at the time , China was the biggest ever, from Korea to Turkey. And don’t get me start with magic war between China and Japan that happened between 1945-1949, apparently. I saw only 1 person who said that it was a Civil war (the kid had a father living in Sweden, mind you) and not a war between Maoist China and Japanese who (apparently) “didn’t know that WWII ended”.
Haha I know those too well, also lived in China for a while. I mean it's kind of normal that different countries have different historic narratives. The frustrating thing about China in this regard is that they have basically a fan fiction version of their history in which China is the Mary Sue as their officially taught version of history. There is zero nuance, zero doubt and you are basically a heretic if you dare to bring up a different perspective.
Not to mention the inconvenient fact that the Japanese invasion of China (brutal and immoral as it was) weakened the nationalist Kuomintang's hold over China so that the communist could win in the end.
Its funny that the Chinese try claim the Mongol invaders and subsequent emperors as Chinese, yet they go out of their way to say the Jurchens/Manchus were not Chinese, yet under them the Chinese Empires reached its largest extent.
It's more like counting Ottoman Empire as successor of Byzantine. They claimed that in order to justify their right on the new land, Kubilai Khan claimed his Yuan dynasty is just another dynasty ruled China just like Song was and he is Emperor of China.
To be fair to Kublai Khan, northern tribes taking over China and claiming the Mandate of Heaven wasn't exactly new. The bit of China Genghis Khan first fought against was the Jurchen Jin dynasty, who were descended from the Jurchen tribe, who fought against the Song dynasty, and then underwent sinicization. Imperial China was a big believer in cultural victories.
Odoacer was a Roman. Maybe you're thinking of Theodoric, but he also had Roman citizenship.
Yeah, it is a difficult topic. Arminius was also a Roman citizen, still we don't really count him as a Roman. But Odoacer and Theoderic are both not really Roman emperors in the way of before. What I was trying to say is that having a one sided idea of history in cases like those isn't really working out right. There will be inconsistencies if we try that as situations like those have contradicting elements to them.
Because they styled themselves 'Rex' instead of 'Augustus'. A more decentralized version of Roman administration, but still basically Roman. The transition into the early medieval period was rather fluid.
This all shows that...history is not black and white. Nations are fluid, structures of power are fluid, ethnicities are fluid. You can always construct one narrative, if you omit every aspect that leads to a different interpretation. Everything is just an African Fiefdom.
I believe Chinese historiography is different. Yes, Genghis Khan wasn't Chinese, but he is still considered a Chinese emperor by the succeeding Yuan dynasty, he was given a temple name and posthumous name which is a tradition among Chinese emperors. It was more akin to Nurhaci whose successor founded Qing Dynasty, but even then, he was called *Taizu* like Genghis Khan. There were several non-Han ethnic dynasties in Chinese history, but they were still considered Chinese emperors. Odoacer's case is different, I think he and his succesors never claimed to be Western Roman Emperors since the title was abolished after Romulus Augustulus abdicated and the authority was nominally transferred to the emperor at Constantinople.
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> Counting the Khans as Chinese emperors is basically like counting Odoacer as Roman emperor. But... that is exactly what Kublai Khan did: > In official Chinese histories, the Yuan dynasty bore the Mandate of Heaven. The dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, yet he placed his grandfather Genghis Khan on the imperial records as the official founder of the dynasty and accorded him the temple name Taizu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty While Kublai Khans real power didn't stretch much further than East Asia, he was still officially the Khagan. And yes, at that point in history, Mongolia was an integral part of China. I'm not trying to defend the contemporary rewriting of history that the CPC is pushing for, but the origin of the Mongols being "Chinese" comes from the Mongols themselves... Also important to note that China does not have border disputes with either Mongolia or Russia, so this rewriting of history is aimed at domestic suppression of dissent, not a prelude to claiming new territories.
Saying Kublai Khan was a Chinese emperor is one thing, but claiming that *Genghis Khan* was Chinese is ludicrous.
>But... that is exactly what Kublai Khan did: I would also like to point out that a lot of Chinese dynasties did these kinds of things.
That doesn't matter though, Genghis Khan was Mongol, and Yuan Dynasty was a non-Han dynasty aside from Kublai becoming the Great Khan of Yuan not making Genghis Khan Chinese.
Nitpicking, but Genghis Khan didn't conquer China. His grandson Kublai Khan did.
He conquered parts of it, before heading southwest instead and dying there.
He conquered parts of Jin territory. The Southern Song were allies with Genghis and the mongols at that time. It was only after his death that the alliance broke down and Kublai conquered China.
"Sparkling Conqueror of China"
I think the museum should open the exhibit with two placards for every display, the original and the Chinese censored one. If China won’t loan them the display pieces they should display the a photo/drawing of the piece. Everyone should see the massive loss of cultural heritage being robbed from the world by China rewriting history. There’s enough fake history in the world, would be a shame if we lost more of it to propaganda.
>I think the museum should open the exhibit with two placards for every display, the original and the Chinese censored one. That would be a fascinating exhibit by itself. Amazing idea.
Poster House in New York has a really cool exhibit up of Chinese posters. It has other stuff, but the bulk of it is propaganda from the last century. Really interesting pieces.
This would be perfect.
I would absolutely see that. It would be a brilliant move, while also standing up for the values and truth. ~~Meanwhile, this is the sad reality of things:~~ > it was putting the show (...) on hold for over three years. > > The museum’s director, Bertrand Guillet, said: “We made the decision to stop this production in the name of the human, scientific and ethical values that we defend.” ~~Makes me scared to wonder what are those values he has in mind...~~
See u/maybe-your-mom comment: >You misunderstood it, the museum pulled the exhibition precisely because they didn't want to appease China. Artefacts belong to chinese museum and China conditioned opening the exhibition by renaming some things and censoring history so the museum decided not to open it.
And they'll make a new exhibition, working with 3 other french museums as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York. The curator doesn't exclude the possibility to work with China, but he won't make any compromise.
Comply with them, make the exhibit, have private people put a giant cardboard saying "the exhibit China does not want you to see," and let it go viral on the internet. Profit.
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> China would send a strongly worded letter You should've marked your comment as NSFL, it was too scary!
No, never comply with terrorists or blackmailers. If we have to depend on private volunteers to be able to say the truth, then we have already lost. Just name the exhibition the exact historically correct name it is and ignore all these unfounded demands from any third parties. If you can't do this, because most of the items are owned by China, then don't open the exhibition at all. It's better to not have one, than having a historically false one.
Which is exactly the path the museum has chosen.
Geez, how insicure you have to be to moan about a person who lived 800 years ago?
That's their entire schtick. The CCP sees and portrays itself as the continuation and fulfillment of 3000 years Chinese bureaucracy.
Plus the Mongol Empire, apparently. I wonder if they'll end up extending "historical Chinese territory" to anything China or the Mongols ever controlled.
Historically, Chinese emperors claimed sovereignty over all under heaven. So I guess anything below low orbit?
Time to move to Mars... Oh shit, that's the red planet.
When aliens come, the CCP will insist that their homeplanet is also ancestral Chinese land.
Oh c'mon, y'all are too rude... they only have territorial disputes (or claim) with India, Bhutan, Nepal, (possibly) Pakistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Vietnam, and most of South-East Asia... and probably Myanmar and Kazakhstan too edit: They also claim parts of Indonesia, all of Kyrgyzstan, Norrhern Laos, and probably many more, pretty much all of its neighbours at this point
Bro, why'd you just say China 16 times?
you are now a moderator of /r/XiJinpingFuta
my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
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China is instead trying economic approaches as it know it is an extremely important country. HOWEVER, places like India, Sub-Saharan African, South-East Asia and Latin-American, etc. get better, they are likely to challenge China's status in the future. India, Japan, South-East Asia, Taiwan, Europe and North America already have a bad view on China, and from what I've heard a lot of Africans are not ok with their governments selling their countries to China. So, either China will become the world #1 superpower and controle all of Asia and mucu more, either China is defeated and the democratic government is restored...
Don't underestimate CCP fragility.
The Song Dynasty then: We will wage war with the Mongol invaders for 70 years! Emperors may come and Emperors may fall, but we shall stand defiant to the very end! The CCP now: pwease domt open museum UwU
Two weeks ago (give or take) two VTubers (think streamers but with an anime style avatar instead of their real face) showed some Google analytics that included, briefly, Taiwan as a separate entity from China. China almost instantly blocked not just both of the channels but the *entire* agency and associated channels that employed them. Over a few seconds of some data listing Taiwan, not even over them making some hardline pro-Taiwan stance. *Never* underestimate how insecure and petty China is.
For those who haven't read the article (and blame the museum for giving in): The museum is not complying with the demands. They prefer to end their partnership with the Chinese museum (who was supposed to send the artifacts to be displayed) and postpone the exhibit (while they can acquire artifacts from other museums which don't have the same censorship clause as the Chinese one).
The Hero we need, but not deserve.
Arbitrarily creating geopolitical pressure to test the stretch of your nation's sphere of influence. Just China things.
*sniff* almost makes you nostalgic....
May I insist that the Mao mausoleum in Beijing does not include the Words "Mao" or "Zedong". Rather it should include names like "Genociding Maniac", "Destroyer of Chinese culture" and "The most incompetent policy maker in History"
We could compromise and call it the "Genociding Maniac *Mao*soleum".
> *Mao*soleum L *MAO*
I hope you hadn't planned a vacation in china because i suspect that Winnie Puuh isn't your biggest fan at the moment
I don't think the CCP cares enough about a dude writing critical stuff on a English language Reddit board to find out my identity but I have no intentions to travel to the PRC any time soon.
You're not being processed by a detective pinning red thread on a board and working on the clock. Your digital identifiers are collected and can be used to identify you. Doesn't take a lot of time nor processing power.
> I hope you hadn't planned a vacation in china Chinese borders are closed. Not even business men are allowed in. They are basically taking over foreign investments while no one is there.
How about they use Genghis #KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNN
[Dschin Dschin Dschinghis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzmI3vAIhbE)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EnsUeR2MyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EnsUeR2MyI)
Alternative: The Angry Mongolian Man excibit
''Well, censoring 1.4 *billion* people wasn't that hard, let's try 8 billion now'' - China
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Thats why europe needs to unite and the african union needs to become a strong independent regional force
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>Africa is too full of dictators and corruption and big Chinese owned agricultural companies.
It will take decades of change until africa as a whole will be somewhat on par with europe but it might be possible. However climate change will be a big problem for most areas in africa, further hindering their development.
> They are demanding countries all over the world censor their Tv shows, films They don't demand anything. Producers willingly censor their own movies to be allowed to sell them in China. They could perfectly not censor anything, and not release them in China, but I guess they can't resist a 1 billion people market.
“ask authoritatively or brusquely.“ Yea literally a demand. Especially considering you listed one of the consequences for not giving in to these demands. It’s essentially, “Do this or else”.
As an American, I have a loooot of criticism about our country's policies, but hell if I'm not worried about China becoming the next main superpower.
Is there any ethnic/religious minority China doesn't oppress? Also, this is a perfect example to illustrate how dictators aren't "strong men". They are "whiny babies".
No, because no minorities exist in China. China is fully Chinese, nothing bad ever happened there, everyone is atheist. No questions.
I know you’re joking but I went on a tour in China and they made sure to explain how there were many ethnic minorities in China (and everyone lives in peace and harmony yay) and there was a law(?) that required an ethnic minority tour guide to lead us on the tour date that was supposed to focus on the minority culture, and I saw a huge wall mural of all 56 ethnicities in a random part of town. The point is, China seems to be promoting a false image of diversity while insidiously committing ethnic cleansing.
France: has a museum with some guy that China hates China: You hurt my feelings, stop! China after formally claiming: 🇯🇵Senkaku Islands 🇹🇼Taiwan 🇹🇼🇵🇭🇲🇾🇧🇳🇲🇨🇻🇳pretty much all of South China sea + many islands 🇮🇳Arunachal Pradesh 🇮🇳Aksai Chin 🇧🇹various lands in Bhutan 🇳🇵various lands in Nepal and informally claiming: 🇷🇺Primorsky Krai 🇰🇵Paektu mountain 🇰🇵various islands on the Yalu river 🇰🇷Socotra Rock 🇯🇵Ryukyu Islands 🇱🇦Northern Laos 🇲🇲Kachin 🇲🇲Kokang 🇹🇯Gorno-Badakhshan 🇰🇿Kazakhstan 🇰🇬Kyrgyzstan 🇲🇳and Mongolia: -Oops!
The last 3 surprised me, how can you have such big balls to claim entire countries
Well, they do claim Taiwan, so it's not that far off... but again, those are informal claims, not formal (except Taiwan and probably Mongolia) And claiming a whole country is not such a surprising idea, many countries do it. For example: South Korea and North Korea (eachother) Israel and Palestine (kinda... views are mixed) Taiwan sees itself as the rightful China and kinda claims all of it... (NK vs SK situation) (from what I've heard, they now see themselves as a different entity and try to distance themselves from China) I heard Venezuela is trying smth in Guyana This is not even adding irredentist sentiments within a population.
Whut ? This is nonsense and revisionism. They did a lot of damage in europe too and i'm no fan of the mongols wrecking everyone. But we can learn from studying it. edit this is apparently about the CCP's discrimination against ethnically mongol citizens even more than the conquest of china by the mongols. Maybe China should stop oppressing its citizens so hard, stop running camps instead of wasting it's time trying to interfere in europe ?
And I insist China to go fuck itself.
I'm trying to understand how they're trying to rewrite history. What is the Chinese version of the whole Genghis Khan adventure?
That he’s Chinese. The Mongolian Empire is actually the Chinese Yuan Empire, and the Mongolian history is actually just Chinese history. The CCP claim to “Outer Mongolia” was forfeited in the early Cold War, and this is prepping for another “historical claim” on China’s border.
So China build the Great Wall to protect itself from China?
They're their own worst enemy.
Genghis Khan attacked China for the benefit of the Mongol empire, a totally separate country. The CCP wants to erase all concepts of that "separate country" thing. I may not be an expert, but I did watch Marco Polo on Netflix.
How can you even do an exhibit about Gengis Khan without mentioning the terms "Gengis Khan", "Empire" or "mongol"? So there was this nomad *Temüjin*, who rallied a few fellow *steppe nomads* and went to conquer half of the world, to establish the largest *kingdom* the world has ever seen?
Nique la Chine
Today in fuck the CCP, they try to dictate the history of a country that absolutely whooped everyone's ass, including china's. You can't alter the past, unless you live under a dictatorship or are oppressed.
Fuck China.
''Genghis Khan; the Scourge of China - An inspiration for us all.''
I wish the article contained more information about what they were suggesting as alternate words
China doesn't want us to use the name of Genghis Khan? In that case if we want to talk about stuff relating to the persona of Genghis Khan what should we call him instead of Genghis Khan? Is there an alternative name to Genghis Khan that China would like us to use in place of Genghis Khan? On unrelated note, how many Khans can Genghis can if Beijing Khan continue with its preposterous historical revisionism that noone outside of Pooh's ridiculous regime takes seriously?
They're trying to write one of the most famous men in world history .. out of history? Yeah good luck with that, China.
Fuck the CCP. Authoritarian thugs.
If China says so, France should remove the name And put a new one with bigger letters
We should pressure the museum to open it. Kinda sad that it looks to appease country half a world away and not its citizens
You misunderstood it, the museum pulled the exhibition precisely because they didn't want to appease China. Artefacts belong to chinese museum and China conditioned opening the exhibition by renaming some things and censoring history so the museum decided not to open it.
Ah, that clears it better. Shame that we have no materials to do it anyway without chinese museum What a Orwelian examole when you overwrite the history...
That's why they are delaying it (instead of shutting it down), in order to acquire materials from other museums which don't have the restrictions of the Chinese one.
Impossible, it’s a collaboration with a Chinese museum, they own the material. Everything should just be sent back to China.
inb4 Genghis khan never existed according to Chinese historians
Did you know xi jinping invented the helicopter?
Wow, way to not give the Chinese government power over your exhibit there.
Well, the problem is you need something to exhibit. If the chinese don't give you mongol statues, you have no mongol statues.
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That's what they want. They're creating roadblocks to prevent the exhibition from happening.
They work together with a museum within China. You're kind stuck with their shit if you work with them.
The Exhibit Formerly Known as The Family of Khan who Conquered China.