Weekend What-if: A Mongol Invasion

On weekends, I'll endeavor to present a "what-if". I love alternate history...the attempt to extrapolate what would have happened if such-and-such had unfolded differently in history. Less alliterative but more to the point is the idea of a "near-miss". Despite the best attempts of the history education industry to present history as a procession of inevitable events, so much of what happened turned on surprising moments of fate.

This week's what-if: What If the Mongols Had Proceeded With Their Planned Invasion of Europe?

"What happened: 1242 -- the Mongols had brought the Muslim world (mainly Turks and Persians) to its knees, and pointed toward Europe. Whereas the Mongols were initially regarded by some Christians as allies in the struggle against Islamic states, this less tame Horde now became symbols of the devil. Under the leadership of the master strategist and general Sabutai (pictured here, from a Chinese print), the forces of the Mongol army streamed into Europe through Polish armies and were setting up outside of Vienna. When word of the khan's death arrived, however, the army turned, and raced back to the homeland, leaving destruction in its wake. The Mongols never returned. Christians naturally chalked it up to the intervention of God.

What would have happened?

First, leave behind any notion that anyone save the Mongols could have stopped the Mongols. Every single member of the army was mounted on horses that had raced through the steppes, and the typical Mongol boy received his first bow at 3. The European armed forces would have done little to stop the Mongols had they all been combined. Furthermore, a network of informants had given Sabutai a sense of the ragged relations in this appendage of Asia, and experience in Russia showed that the Mongols were quite able to turn possible allies against each other.

Following the typical image of Mongols in history, most people would theorize thusly: "horrible pillage and destruction by these crazed barbarians. Needless slaughter would have ruled Europe, and civilization would grind to a halt until the Mongols overextending themselves and being killed in turn."

Wrong. First off, the Mongols would occasionally destroy an entire city. They had little use for cities -- our best sources indicate that Chinggis (Genghis) Khan entered a building once in his lifetime. However, sacking a city was intended largely as a message. Sacking one city thoroughly could cause the next five to surrender, perhaps causing less bloodshed overall. Europe was pushing the limits of Mongol (Arctic, Egypt, Vietnam, and Japan) and it is unlikely that the Mongols would have gone much further than the Germanic states and Northern Italy.

Positives: By this stage in their history, the Mongols had adopted a form of vassalism and, as happened in China, often permitted the life in the towns and cities to continue provided they got their cut. So we could anticipate a break in the centuries of internecine Christian struggles would have been paused for a while. Furthermore, the unbroken exchange of culture and learning through Europe, the Muslim World, and China would have accelerated Europe's technological advance. The Mongols would likely have been assimilated eventually as happened de facto with the rulers of China and the "Golden Horde" in Russia.

Negatives: Mongols would have sucked up a lot of the riches that historically went to European scientific and cultural advance. Progress on these fronts would have stilled, particularly given the lack of Mongol tradition in the arts.

Possibles: Regarding religion, Chinggis Khan had started a tradition of religious tolerance -- mainly to avoid the loss of treasure caused by wars over religion. A tribe uninterested in the Catholic Church's spiritual authority would have hurt that institution's power, particularly in Germany. With a willingness to tolerate Christian "heresy" and disinterest in allowing a Catholic Church to stamp it out, the Reformation could have unfolded sooner, more rapidly, and with less bloodshed.