Happy Genghis Khan Day! (Why is Genghis Khan Day?)

well it's that time of year again happy chenas Khan day uh a year ago I made a video on chenas Khan day talking about a certain aspect of chenas Khan's life and some of the comments on that video were incredulous that there is such a holiday that you know how why you know why would there be such a holiday as chingas Kandi which is a national holiday in Mongolia but you know people in the west and I think people also pretty much everywhere except for Mongolia think of chingas Khan as a brutal conqueror and so it's a little counterintuitive that there would be a holiday for him so in this video I'm going to talk about why why does Mongolia have a holiday honoring chenas Khan let me start by giving you a quick summary of Mongolian history back in the 1100s the Mongols were divided up into lots of little tribes and they would have feuds with each other and then at the beginning of the 1200s chenas Khan United the tribes and then LED them on a series of military campaigns in which they attacked northern China and attacked Central Asia and then after he died leadership of the Mongols passed to his sons and then his grandsons and they continue to expand the Mongol Empire and this is the part of Mongol history that is best known to people outside of Mongolia the Mongol Empire broke apart into four pieces then in the course of the 1300s early 1400s these four pieces all collapsed and ceased to exist and that was the end of the Mongol Empire in China in 136 68 a rebellion of Han Chinese drove out the Mongols and established the Ming Dynasty and then the Mongols continued on within Mongolia first as a continuation of the UN dynasty of the Mongol regime that had ruled China that continued in smaller form in Mongolia but gradually the chasid royal family the the lineage descended from chenas Khan gradually lost effective power over the other tribes and Mongolia ceased to be United Country again then in the 1600s the Manu from anuria conquered Mongolia around the same time that they conquered China and they created a new empire under their rule which is referred to as the Ching dynasty in China so Mongolia the Mongol tribes were part of the Ching Empire then in 1911 the Ching dynasty was overthrown in a revolution in China and then an e within Mongolia began to establish an independent Mongolian state which continued for a decade and then in 1921 Mongolia succeeded in achieving its independence with Soviet help and they created a communist country in Mongolia and the Communist Regime ruled Mongolia from 1921 to 1990 and during the Communist period chenas Khan was not regarded as a national hero agulation of chingas Khan was very much disapproved of by the government for mainly ideological reasons U he was seen as a feudal exploiter uh you know he had been one of the upper class in feudalism exploiting the common people and so he one of the bad guys as far as communism is concerned and then also communism was internationalist in orientation communism typically um kind of deemphasizes the nation state and says is that that's not really what's important what's important is all the workers of the world working together and so holding up someone as a as a national hero is not to be done uh you can hold someone up as a communist hero as a hero of communism because they're a hero of the working class in general also there may have been an element of just Russian influence here the the Soviet Union was very dominant in Mongolia During the period of socialism and the Soviet Union Soviets in general Russians in general had a very negative View and and still have a very negative view of chenas Khan they see him as very destructive force the Mongol Empire is supposed to have held Russia back and so they told the Mongolians not to hold up chenas Khan as a hero so from the 1950s which is really when kind of the official line of deemphasizing jenas Khan really came into force from the 1950s up through the 1980s all official history in Mongolia any book that was published on Mongolian history any textbook any High School University lecture did not talk about jenas Khan very much to the extent it did talk about jenas Khan it talked about him in very negative terms but still a lot of Mongols privately considered chenas Khan a pretty cool guy because he was a Mongol and so on so then after 1990 when multi-party democracy was established there was a rejection of socialism and everything associated with socialism including the official historical narratives that the Socialist regime had promoted and there was a lot of interest among uh the general public in learning more about Mongols mongolia's history and a bunch of new books were published a lot of books about chingas Khan or talking about Mongolian history and then actually emphasizing chingas Khan's role in Mongolian history and you know partly this was just a rejection of socialism's re of jenas Khan so it's a way of rejecting socialism by bringing back this hero that had been rejected by the Socialist government partly it was a way of you know kind of reformulating what it means to be a Mongolian since Mongolia as a as a communist state deemphasized the ethnicity of Mongol Mongols you know being a Mongol is not what's important you know um and and then this new you know in the 1990s there was this Resurgence of nationalist feeling of embracing of Mongol Heritage uh so for those reasons jenas Khan became very popular again and he was now seen as a key figure in Mongolian history but the way Mongolian history was represented in these new books being published in the 1990s was not the same as the way Mongolian history is presented in books in the West and I would assume also in Japan and China although you know you can correct me if you if you're familiar with how the Mongols are written about in Japanese and Chinese correct me on this but I would imagine they also saw in this way where they only talked about the Mongol Empire you know you don't hear anything about Mongolian history except for that period of chenas Khan and his successors creating the Mongol Empire as soon as the Mongol Empire goes away the Mongols disappear from world history as far as most you know world history books are concerned as far as most classes on world history are concerned and so what gets emphasized about the Mongols and about Chas Khan is the conquests that's what's interesting to a western audience to a Chinese audience to a Russian audience and so that's the aspect of chingas Khan that gets all the attention in places like the United States and in Europe but in Mongolia the conquests are not of Interest let me give you a a narrow example Le of how history is written about just to give you kind of a flavor of what this is like in Western writing about the Mongols Kua Khan is a very important figure he's the guy who established the UN dynasty in China he was a Mongol he was the grandson of chingas Khan but he also established un dynasty in China he ruled China for a long time um he represented a kind of um accommodation to Chinese ways of thought because his idea was to uh bring in Chinese ideas uh incorporate a Chinese bureaucracy incorporate um Chinese ideas about what it means to be an emperor what it you know what it means to have an Imperial Dynasty he took a Chinese Imperial dynastic name for his family the Yen Dynasty that's the dynasty that ruled China in the Mongol period he uh created a new capital city along Chinese line according to Chinese principles of urban planning and his general idea was if we get the Chinese to accept the Mongols as a legitimate Chinese dynasty they're more likely to go along with our Rule now he was opposed at the beginning of his Reign by a brother named adak B who had a very different philosophy about how The Empire should function his idea was emphasize traditional Mongol values don't don't live in a Chinese Imperial Palace live on the Mongolian step as their ancestors had done don't pay any attention to what the Chinese care about just be a Mongol and exploit the Chinese sure take whatever you want from the Chinese but don't give up your Mongol way of life you know stay on the step and stay in Mongolia and be a Mongol that was his idea now in Western writing when we write about the Mongol EMP if you find a book about the Mongol Empire and read about it if you take a college class about the Mongol Empire if you watch a documentary about the Mongol Empire they'll talk about KU KH he's a really important figure uh he's famous in the west cuz Marco Polo when he visited China KU khon was the leader of China at the time KU khon figures very prominently in the history of the Mongol Empire from a western perspective but within Mongolia Kua Khan is hard L mentioned he's a bit player in the history of the Mongols but adct Booka gets a lot more attention because he was the guy who was going to stay in Mongolia and be a Mongolian and if you think about it this kind of makes sense because the purpose of this modern Mongolian history writing is to talk about the Mongolian nation state the history of the nation state you know you look at the map the boundaries of Mongolia that's the subject of interest the Mongolian Empire is not the subject of Interest what was happening in Mongolia was of is of interest to Modern Mongolians so adak bua is considered part of the mainstream of Mongolian history because he was the guy who was staying in Mongolia whereas for westerners kuon is considered the mainstream of Mongolian history because he was part of the continued expansion of the Mongol Empire and it was the fact that the Mongol Empire was expanding which is the thing of interest to westerners so um that's you know I I I use that example as kind of a minor a small encapsulation of this larger idea which is that for Mongolians within Mongolia the parts of Mongol history they care about are not the same as the parts of Mongol history that we care about and this thing about narrative the way you can think about it it's kind of like in US history we have a core narrative that everyone in the US is supposed to learn in our you know Elementary and high school education you're supposed to learn certain things about US History there's this idea that there is this core Narrative of US history that everyone's supposed to know and then there are other aspects of US history that are you know kind of interesting you can know it it's optional but it's not part of the core story and so when you're learning about us history you learn about uh Westward Expansion you learn about the sectional crisis which led to the Civil War you learn about the Gilded Age the Industrial Revolution World War I World War II the Progressive Movement those are all things that are considered part of the core of the US historical narrative US foreign policy and Latin America is not so whereas for Latin Americans they might think us and involv in Latin America is a pretty big deal Americans tend not to pay any attent U you know people in the US tend not not to pay any attention to the involvement the that the US has had in Latin America they seem they're completely unaware of the military uh interventions that the US has done in Latin America over the years because that's not part of the core narrative as far as Americans are concerned now how you construct a core narrative is arbitrary it's just a matter of what people decide to do whether they decide to put some stuff in the core narrative or put it as part of the optional side stuff and it so happens that Americans have collectively decided that us interventions in Latin America are not part of the core narrative they're they're a sideshow that you there's an optional thing you can learn about if you're really into that particular thing you might learn about it but you're not going to learn about it in general and that's what Mongol history is like there's a core narrative in Mongolian history that you see in the Mongol books where they emphasize what was going on within Mongolia and there are certain things in Mongolian history that get a lot of attention like the introduction of Buddhism and the Communist Revolution and and before that the 1911 Revolution and the struggle for Independence things like that get a lot of attention but what doesn't get attention is the Mongol conquest they're considered a sideshow they're considered an optional extra thing they're not part of the core narrative that every Mongolian should know they're an extra thing and it's always treated as Foreign Affairs so they you'll learn about what was going on within Mongolia and then you'll learn about you might if you want you can also learn about what was going on in foreign affairs in Mongolia in the 1200s which includes the conquests but the core events as far as M as far as Mongolian historiography is concerned in other words Mongolian history writing the way history is written in Mongolia the core events going on in the 1200s was chenas Khan creating the Mongol Nation bringing the tribes together they're establishing as a single nation giving them a body of laws called the yasak um giving them a writing system to give them greater Unity everything he was doing was directed toward creating a Unity for the Mongolian people forging a nation creating the nation state that now exists um and and so that's why Mongolians hold him up as a hero because they see him as the man who created the Mongol Nation took people who were Mongol but were disunited politically disunited and forged a political union among them to make them a single country and so this is a good reminder that there is not a single objective version of historical narrative that exists out there to be discovered rather what we do is we take the massive the millions literally millions of historical fact IDs that exist and we as a society collectively choose certain ones of those as the important ones the ones to focus on and say that is what creates the narrative that explains who we are whoever we is the nation state the socioeconomic Group whatever it is whatever your group is that you're creating a narrative a historical narrative for to explain you pick and choose by necessity because you can't use all of the historical data you pick and choose certain historical data and you say those parts are important they're the ones that show us how we came to be who we are and it so happens that in Mongolia the aspects of chenas Khan that are focused on are the ones that relate to how modern Mongolians think of themselves as a nation state and the Mongol Empire is not relevant to the nation state it there's it doesn't matter to that um and we all do this and it's easy for us to look at a foreign country to look at a place like Mongolia and be like you know you guys are ignoring a really important thing that happened uh it's easy for us to do that it's harder for us to look at ourselves to look at the plank in our own eye and be like wait are we doing that are there things about our own history that we're deliberately ignoring because it doesn't suit our narrative but the important thing to keep in mind is it's not a matter of picking the one right narrative that is objectively correct rather it's a matter of what decisions are we making what principles are we going with what bases are we basing our decisions on by which we decide which historic events and processes we're going to highlight in constructing our narrative you can't help a narrative can't help but be constructed it's impossible for a narrative not to be constructed every historical narrative is constructed um it's it's not a matter of being like well they have a constructed narrative therefore their narrative is wrong my narrative is correct because it represents actual reality that's not how it works everybody's narrative is constructed okay I hope that made sense uh if you are celebrating ch K Day this year happy chenas kande if you offended by chenas K day I apologize for saying happy chenas kand day I just really like Mongolian history and this day each year in November gives me an excuse to make at least one video a year about it that's all I'm doing uh thanks for joining me

Channel: Premodernist

Views: 127,591

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Id: uWsY8HsuahY

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2023