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Why do we glorify horrible people from the distant past?
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Asklemmy
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"...not at all clear other kings would have done any different.."
Is that the standard now? Comparison? He is still unbelievably evil even by comparison to other evil people.
Him and the dynasty he created were one of the most destructive forces in human history and resulted in the horrific deaths of millions of people. By many metrics, they practiced genocide and ethnic cleansing on conquered populations. They destroyed the books of captured people's and places of worship. They're also well known for having destroyed farmland and aqueducts to starve out massive numbers of people. They were butchers. Mass murderers on a skill the world had never seen at that time. He erased entire civilizations from history, ones that we still barely know anything about.
Most of the things you said are true. What is also true is that he and his descendents established a unified, peaceful empire from Korea to Hungary, from southern Russia to Iran. He unified China, then divided by civil war, and brought in economists and doctors from the Islamic World. He promoted Buddhism, Daoism and Islam, and his successors included Confucians and Christians. He guaranteed safe travel and trade across his empire, as well as religious tolerance and a common set of laws.
He killed thousands (the death tolls are inflated by both his enemies and his own followers - as a warning to those who they were going to attack next), but his actions benefitted millions. How can you form any moral judgement about such a figure? All you can do is try to find out the truth, report it, and let people reach their own conclusions.
So the ends justify the means? Inflicting untold suffering on one group of people is fine if it benefits another one?
This is literally ancient history.
Yes, and? Have you not gotten to the part in your schooling where you look at history to see what can be learnt from it?
Ignoring the insult, we're talking about Medieval times. They were famously awful to live in for everyone. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of readers won't think I'm suggesting anything about that period should be replicated in the modern day, unless I explicitly say that.
To be totally clear, I don't want to bring the Mongol empire back in 2024.
You're missing the point entirely. The person I was originally responding too was saying that evan though awful things were done to people it's fine, or justifiable because "millions" benefited from them. If you don't understand how something like that at its base level can be applicable to modern times, that's a you issue.
It's not the specific actions taken or the setting/environment, but the attitude of the ends justifying the means if there's a net positive.
No leader in that period is a good example of the ends justifying the means, all being self-serving feudal lords, but if that's the lesson you draw, I actually do agree with the concept. That's how every military action is justified, unless you're a pacifist.
I chimed in because OP was replying to support what I said, so I figured it was all the same discussion. I suppose I wouldn't go as far as saying you can't judge Genghis Khan, but I would say it's not very useful to use modern standards when that basically makes any historical figure dead by 1950 a bastard one way or the other.
All you can do is try to find out the truth, report it, and let people reach their own conclusions.
I bet you think you're taking some sort high road to the effect of "oh I just state the facts, I'm not telling anyone what to think," while conveniently ignoring the part where the way that you report these facts, or which ones you leave out can very much influence the conclusions people reach.
You stated that Alexander killed many people, but also his actions benefitted millions of people. These two things put together in the way that you did will lead an uninformed person to he conclusion that it's fine that he killed people because it benefited many others. And maybe that could be true in some contexts, but you completely failed to mention the fact that he didn't just kill a bunch of people, he executed defeated peoples and sold a whole bunch of people into slavery, which would naturally influence the conclusions a person could come to.
Any narrative will be biased, both in what it says and what it leaves out. But historians have to at least try to be impartial. I'm not a professional historian, so I can have whatever opinion I want.
Chinggis Khan, not Alexander.
Oops, got my wires crossed with who I was talking about. But my point still stands.
You can have any opinion that you want, I haven't said that you couldn't. I was disagreeing with your opinion and expressing my own, you wombat. That's how discussion works.
I'm starting to think this guy wasn't very nice!
Very well-said!
I feel like you've entirely ignored the context I said that in.
If you actually want to argue pros and cons for academic purposes (they're all long dead remember), the other person gave a good summery of the good sides of the Mongol Empire.
The Nazi's created rocketry as we know it today and made many innovations in medicine and manufacturing.
Are we going to argue the pros and cons of the Nazi party?
This conversation wasn't even about the Mongol empire it was about Genghis Khan
Hmm. I guess it seems hard to separate Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire to me. Pretty much everything we know about him for sure is as the guy in charge of the Mongol empire. There's a few stories about him personally enemy chroniclers put down, but they all have that myth-y Washington and the cherry tree feel to them.