[swombat]

For anyone interested, I highly recommend George Carlin (not the comedian)'s podcast series (4 episodes iirc) about the Mongolian conquests. Really interesting.

Also, on the "almost conquered Europe", I always find it quite mindblowing that they almost conquered Europe - with their light reconnaissance force. The main army was waiting while the lighter 10k horse force did some recon. While doing their recon they wiped out the Georgian army which had been preparing for war for years and so was probably the best prepared army in Europe at the time. The rest of Europe was totally unprepared even for that small 10k force.

Luckily for us, soon after, Genghis Khan died and the entire army turned back. Otherwise Europe would for sure have been conquered with no challenge. Luck of the dice.

[FrustratedMonky]

Yes. Luck. There are a few other posters in this thread that objected to Diamond because he seemed too Euro Centric apologist, the argument being "well why didn't the East win". But sometimes it does turn on a flip of a coin. The Mongols (eastern power) could have won, and dominated, and colonized the world. And we would all be studying how horrible Mongol Colonialism was. Sometimes history does swing on singular events.

[bryanrasmussen]

>And we would all be studying how horrible Mongol Colonialism was.

that presumes that human culture would have developed the ideas regarding colonialism which we have and which after all are a late developed critique that would probably not have been possible without the ideas of humanism and similar intellectual branches, and the exposure of those ideas to people who were being oppressed by forces that claimed to espouse the same.

[jyscao]

You mean Dan Carlin, and his Hardcore History podcast.

[swombat]

Oh yes, sorry, thank you, good correction!