[HN Gopher] Women Who Ran Genghis Khan's Empire
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Women Who Ran Genghis Khan's Empire
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 43 points
Date : 2022-06-06 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| friedman23 wrote:
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Victerius wrote:
| There's no point in grinding one's teeth and squeezing one's
| fist at an ancient construct that predates your birth by nearly
| a millenium. At some point you'll want to let the steam out of
| your ears, sit down, and hit the books. And the same will be
| true of the Third Reich in a couple centuries, when anyone even
| remotely associated to anyone else even remotely associated
| with the atrocities committed by Germany will be long since
| dead. And the 1933-1945 period in Germany will become more of a
| subject of historical curiosity than a source of outrage.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| This part sounds very similar to the traditional role of women,
| and it is quite dishonest to frame it as "Running Genghis Khan's
| Empire":
|
| > Chinggis Khan's senior wife, Borte, is responsible for a camp.
| She's responsible for their home, the yurt or ger that they live
| in. She's responsible for the kids. If merchants come through,
| she's going to talk to them about economic activity. She is going
| to oversee or perform the typical daily herding activities.
| There's food preparation. There's clothing preparation. There are
| religious rituals. There's entertainment. It's often a woman's
| job to be the hospitable partner, to bring in food and welcome
| guests.
| nixlim wrote:
| The thing to remember is that a "camp" comprised thousands of
| people, livestock and other moving parts. She was essentially
| project and logistics manager of a massive project, with no
| automation tools or modern mechanical equipment. The logistics
| of it would have been mind boggling. Not sure what you mean by
| "traditional role of women", as that would differ between
| cultures, but her job would be no mean feat, in my opinion.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Traditional role doesn't mean the role is not hard to
| fullfil.
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| which is a fair point, but its a far cry from the claim of
| running the empire.
|
| The wives of many leaders tend to be important politically
| and have a hand in the nation's affairs, but its a large leap
| to claim that means they ran it.
|
| She was important absolutely, but the article was just using
| too much hyperbole.
|
| also the army stat was complete bs, we know they were not in
| need of resorting to female soldiers due to their large
| enough population.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >but its a large leap to claim that means they ran it
|
| I don't think it is, not just women in particular but also
| bureaucrats and diplomats in general is what actually ran
| and does still run empires and nations. Today you'd call it
| the administrative state. Both historically as well as
| today people vastly overstate the importance of visible
| leaders and vastly underestimate the role that
| administrators, managers, and so on play.
| thevardanian wrote:
| Household economics were often controlled by women, as well
| as structuring/securing social alliances or solidify social
| status. So it isn't hyperbole, so much as this aspect is
| entirely lost with more "modern" ideas about gender roles,
| rather the lack thereof.
|
| In older societies it was common to view women as playing a
| central role in bringing great ruin or great fortune to
| men, and by extension "their" empires, for this very
| reason.
| yorwba wrote:
| "The traditional role of women" and "running an empire" are not
| mutually exclusive. What did you expect the day-to-day business
| of keeping the Mongol empire running to look like?
| [deleted]
| HeroOfAges wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted for pointing this out. She
| was responsible for "their" home. Not the tens of thousands of
| households across the empire. There was also a sentence where
| the scholar being interviewed estimates that women made up to
| 20% of Mongolian armies of that era. That just seems flatout
| unbelievable.
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| he is being downvoted for the same reason this article
| exists, pc culture doesn't like being corrected. There is a
| war against historical accuracy for the sake of adding in
| women or random races that wouldn't be there.
|
| The annoying thing is that it makes no sense to do this
| because there are plenty of non-male or non-white leaders to
| pick from anyway.
|
| My favorite empire is the Ajuuran sultanate that was a very
| powerful african sultanate in modern day somalia. It traded
| as far as china and it had many victories over great powers
| like portugal.
|
| A great female leader that actually existed was queen
| boudica, one of the greatest celtic anti-roman rebels. She
| led her people and dealt a lot of damage to the roman
| invaders before she inevitably lost to the chads that are the
| roman legions.
|
| Rather than blackwash or add in random women we can just look
| to the parts of history that already contain that.
| kevinh wrote:
| What portion of this article do you believe is inaccurate?
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| the main claim that borte ran the mongol empire, she
| didn't. She was a great help and most great leaders had
| amazing wives who helped them.
|
| Despite this her actions were greatly inflated by the
| title and main claim.
| foobarian wrote:
| Running an empire is a lot different than leading it.
| It's like COO and CEO, Sandberg and Zuck.
| jterrys wrote:
| Too bad that in reality her role would be more of
| executive assistant by those standards.
| Archelaos wrote:
| And what about "Toregene, who became regent of the entire
| Mongol Empire after the death of Chinggis Khan's son Ogedei"?
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| IMO we should not look at Genghis Kahn's Empire fondly. After
| listening to Hardcore History's Wrath of the Khans, I think they
| have been the most evil group humanity has produced so far. Time
| seems to heal all wounds but Genghis Khan sure seemed to have
| made a lot of wounds.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Who looks at the Mongol empire fondly?
| evv555 wrote:
| Whoever wrote this article? Obviously, are you asking a
| rhetorical question?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Not an rhetorical question at all.
|
| I didn't see any wholistic judgment of the Mongol empire in
| the article.
|
| The Mongols did tons of amazing, fascinating, and great
| things. They also did terrible and atrocious things.
|
| The later should not preclude curiosity and appreciation of
| the former.
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| some mongol people to this day.
|
| People tend to ignore their ancestor's warcrimes. Even if
| they admit they were evil they can't bring themselves to hate
| them.
|
| This applies to most old empires, many people can't bring
| themselves to hate the entire empire despite their barbarity.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| People should absolutely cultivate a balanced and accurate
| understanding of the past. I don't think anyone should
| cultivate hate.
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| I don't know if we can call them the most evil. There are
| plenty of contenders, even if the death rates don't match up.
|
| If we go purely by deathrates then we should pick communist
| china or the soviet union.
|
| If we go by barbarity the mongol empire, the timurids, and the
| japanese empire (talking the one from ww2) are all good
| contenders.
|
| Imperial japan was so bad that the nazi ambassador to china in
| nanking did his best to save as many civilians as he could out
| of sheer disgust for their behavior.
|
| imperial japanese soldiers used to bayonet babies and do
| beheading contests for fun.
|
| literally, their newspapers had them even keeping score over
| who could do more beheadings.
|
| they melted people, literally ate people on one occupied
| island, they did multiple genocides, they tested gasses.
|
| Imperial japan is what I consider the worst by barbarity.
| wizwit999 wrote:
| I mean Mongols depopulated entire large cities. E.g. the
| entire population of Merv, which was one of the world's
| largest cities at the time, was killed.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Or Baghdad which maybe was the largest city in the world at
| the time it was sacked.
| samatman wrote:
| Raw death toll and percentage of total world population
| slaughtered seem like the two most objective measures. The
| Horde win the dubious blue ribbon for the latter.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Mongol conquests were roughly comparable to the European
| conquest of the Americas. Both toppled great empires and
| may have killed ~10% of world population in a few
| generations. And both were more noteworthy due to their
| large-scale success than their brutality. While both waves
| of conquest were brutal even by contemporary standards,
| they were not extraordinary brutal. Being an absolute
| monster is a part of the job description of a conqueror.
| evv555 wrote:
| Looking forward to the feel-good girl power articles about Nazi
| Germany.
| [deleted]
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Sounds interesting, I would read that.
|
| There is a lot of fascinating literature about differences in
| gender roles between western and eastern Germany behind the
| iron curtain.
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