Immanuel Kant
Very rarely stable.
Lovely little thinker
The Mongols ... Only the Mongols see the Mongols as heroes.
Recently I was reading the rise of the Mongols and the end of the Mongol empire, had it not for the death of Kublai Khan (5th Khan and Grandson of Genghis Khan) and internal power struggle they would have conquered the world. Well at least up to France I guess as crossing the English channel might be a bit slow.
In the Mongol history they practically won all battles and wars and at one point there were already near Italy (Roman empire in their last leg) having conquered the Baltic region, East Europe Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria. Non of the European knights etc were able to hold back the Mongols. They even defeated the Egyptian and most of the Middle east empire but they did not conquered Egypt but moved on to the Wester Europe.
The Mongols used the same strategy most of the time to win battles but for whatever reasons nobody managed to break their war strategy. I know they are good at riding horses and arrows ...
Anyway, they killed the most people in history ...
Cougar
Subscriber
We revere people like Columbus and Cook today, but a lot of our glorious empire builders were rapey murderous bastards with a side order of turning indigenous peoples into raging alcoholics (a problem which still persists to this day I believe).
I think we're already well past revering them tbh.
I have a pet theory that the one thing that's mostly stopped the UK from developing fascist demagogues was first the exploration/colonisation of the world, and later the empire- anyone that was inclined to go that way could go and do it in, well, Rhodesia just feraxample.
had it not for the death of Kublai Khan
On the upside, he did erect a pleasure dome in Xanadu.
one thing that’s mostly stopped the UK from developing fascist demagogues
And yet, here we are in brexit-land anyway so that was a bit of a waste of time.
Owain Glyndwr.
A heroic freedom fighter to many in Wales. Or a petulant looser who started a rebellion for his own ends, costing thousands of lives, totally ruining Anglo Welsh relationships and ushering in years of punative anti Welsh laws.
On the upside, he did erect a pleasure dome in Xanadu.
😃 Yes, indeed they did erect a pleasure dome in Xanadu. The location I think is in the modern day Peking and I bet they were having a swell of good times there.
How on earth can their enemies not managed to break their horseback arrow shooting strategy I don't know. One thing that the Mongols were good at was their "sucker punch" strategy and nobody saw them coming ... 😑
I need to do more research into their horseback strategy ... 🤔
The Romans would be a sitting duck for the Mongols in those days. Funny thing is that they never invaded India apart from few pockets in the North where the Iranian King retreated.
I need to do more research into their horseback strategy … 🤔
A quick google suggests that the mongols were decent enough against the bickering eastern/central europeans and their light armour, but soon as they stopped bickering amoung themselves, learned fortification and particularly how to buy in heavy armoured knights the mongols didn't really get much further.
Does seem worth some further reading tbf.
Funny thing is that they never invaded India
I'll take a stab at the Himalayas might have been an issue there! (not googled that!)
The Romans would be a sitting duck for the Mongols in those days.
Did google this, I always knew the romans split into 2, east and west empires, never knew that the eastern empire turned into the byzantines, and lasted up till about 1400ad.
Seems that's worth some more googling too! 😆
Didn't Harold Wilson's Labour government close more pits than Maggie Thatcher? Possibly a Tory urban myth.
Nothing and no one is black and white. Everything and everyone is nuanced. But people like to pick and choose their heroes and villains. And people can be both over the course of their lifetime.
Subscriber
So that’s the reason Thatcher closed all those coal mines. I did wonder.
No. She closed them for many reasons but no for the environment.
Certainly not as it meant that we started importing polish coal that was a lot more polluting
Shrouded in mystery?
Like.
Thanks Eddie.
I worried that one was flying too low. 😉
I need to do more research into their horseback strategy
Large independent commands with a minimal baggage train. So very fast moving and combined with very effective bows allowing them to just pick away at the enemy.
and particularly how to buy in heavy armoured knights the mongols didn’t really get much further.
Mongols destroyed heavy knights on several occasions. Fortifications were useful but terrain in general was also important. The further into Europe they got with heavy woodland the less effective they would be. The Mongols were mostly diverted from Europe though by infighting.
I’ll take a stab at the Himalayas might have been an issue there!
The Romans? They had plenty of other things to keep themselves amused and the Partians would have got in the way.
It's difficult to be objective about peoples motivations etc when you only use 2019 morals and ethics.
The world , in the past, was a very different place. The British Empire was a brutal regime ... but at the same time help develop the infrastrusture in many countries.
Churchill - Maybe, in view of what he was facing, and his country, the good he did ourweighs the bad. And he was a product of his time ...
Interestingly, when I was in Russia about 9 months ago, we had a talk about Stalin. Here is a guys, who reputedly killed 20 million of his own countrymen & women. He is no longer seen as a villian.
Many have held fascist /anti-semitic/ eugenic/racist views in the past ... but unfortunately they were of their time. You can criticise them now ... but you can't walk in their shoes. History is have a great value in that we should learn from it.
The problem is that we don't.
thats not to denigrate Churchills very real leadership during the wa
and the first opportunity the electorate got to give a view on that...?
elvis was a hero to many
but he never meant shit to me
We revere people like Columbus and Cook today, but a lot of our glorious empire builders were rapey murderous bastards with a side order of turning indigenous peoples into raging alcoholics (a problem which still persists to this day I believe).
I think the Americans make the explorers look like amateurs. Andrew Jackson being a good example for this thread. He was a very bad man yet is given hero status by many. But then, the whole American project has a great many skeletons in its closet, and even today relies on cultism to preserve its current shape.
Aung San Suu Kyi is a pretty good modern example.
I endured being patronised by Bono about her at Wembley, and then saw her speak when she was being celebrated as the saviour-in-waiting of Myanmar.
Now..... hmmmm
I agree that one has to judge peoples actions in the context of their place/time/culture, and nothing is ever black and white. But I also support taking down statues, removing names from buildings etc. One can rationalise why people were celebrated through statues etc contemporaneously, but also think it's ok to take the statue down (ie: stop celebrating them) today.
chewkw
The Romans would be a sitting duck for the Mongols in those days.
I'm not so sure about that. The Romans were quick learners and if they couldn't adopt their tactics to overcome anyone who beat them, they would adopt the enemy tactics and armour.
They faced something far more dangerous than the Mongols with the Parthians and Sassanids, also master of the horse bow, and their heavily armoured cataphracts. They suffered some severe defeats, wipeouts.
But they adapted their tactics, defeated them, plundered their lands, and adopted their tactics. The late Roman army's cataphracti equites were a direct copy of the system that had defeated them, and probably the foundation for the heavily armoured European knights.
