Most Important Battles Challenge (4)

Thanks again HG.For this round, my battle too will be that of an influential culture, that of the mighty Mongols led by Genghis Khan.I choose a less known battle, that of the Battle of the Badger Mouth (1211), the first major battle of the Mongol-Jin war.Background To fully understand the implications of this battle, some preliminary understanding of the culture of the Mongols before their unification under Genghis Khan is required. For centuries these warriors lived in scattered tribes and clans, similar to a confederation; one people, but divided into several different pieces with different leaders and subcultures. Through clever diplomacy, manipulation, and minor battle, Genghis Khan (then known as Temujin) managed to united these formidable warriors, and led his new empire into its first major military engagement--war with the Jin Dynasty in northern China. Although Genghis later commanded far greater numbers of soldiers, the Mongol forces at this time numbered no more than 100,000, 90% of whom were engaged in the Chinese campaign[1]. A staggering ~15% of Genghis's total forces were engaged in this single battle of Badger Creek. Genghis's victory here foreshadowed his future conquests as well as laying the groundwork for them; its extremely doubtful that the Mongol centralization experiment would have survived a major defeat here. Implications The battle, if Genghis lost, would have changed the course of history to an unimaginable degree. As previously stated, its highly improbable that the Mongol empire would have even existed past the first few years. Defeat would have almost certainly meant death for Genghis and most of his army, meaning that even if the empire survived, nearly 15% of the army would be dead, and the Mongols almost certainly would have lost their Chinese campaign (as it stands, even with their massive numbers in latter years the Mongols still did not defeat the Jin Dynasty until 1234, 23 years later). This means that no Mongol invasion would have occurred. I contend that Mongol invasions were, by far, the single most significant cultural and military event in history. A simple look at the implications of the invasion will confirm this hypothesis. Recall also that defeat at Badger creek= No Genghis Khan and no Mongol invasions. A) The Mongol invasions forever changed the demographic landscape of the world. So much killing occurred during the invasions that some estimates posit over 17% of the Worlds population at the time was massacred[2], and Genghis Khan raped and impregnated so many women that even today an estimated 8% of the male population of the former Mongol empire is a descendant of him according to DNA analysis[3]. Obviously with no Mongol invasions, the entire world would be almost inconceivably different just by looking at the people lost and born due to these wars. B) The Mongol invasions also forever changed the cultural landscape of the conquered areas. Everywhere they rode, the Mongols brought about destruction the of cultures--hundreds if not thousands of unique clans, tribes, and even nations would demolished or altered, cultures forever lost to history. Indeed, many historians posit that the famous Russian xenophobia can be attributed to their experiences at the hands of the Mongols[4], this xenophobia kept Russia from Industrializing fully until post-WW1. Imagine the effects a Russia of the 1800s with the countries vast population and resources combined with industrialization, we would have likely experienced a period of Russian hegemony, not British. One only needs to imagine every country that was under the control of the British (including India, around 1/7th of the worlds population) to see how radically different things would be. Moreover, its effect on the culture of Islam (Muslims currently make up nearly a quarter of the worlds population, so any cultural change for them has incalcuable effects on humanity as a whole) was enourmous. Historian Cecelia Holland explains[5] : "The psychological impact of the invasion was incalcuable. Before the Mongols swept through, the Islamic world...was intellectually vigorous, bold, adventuresome, full of poetry and science and art...after the invasion, the dour conservatism of the fundamentalists darkens it all." The impacts are twofold:1. The destruction of Islamic power (from which they have never recovered) kept the Muslims from asserting their newly won dominance over the Christians after the Crusades, keeping Christian Europe from being under Muslim hegemony. Not only did this allow Christianity to survive strongly in Europe, but also to populate the new world. Everyone who is Christian or Muslim is impacted by this battle. So devastated was the heartland of Islamic world that many modern scholars hypothesize that even today, the regions economy has yet to recover[6]. 2. The development of the world was stunted--the great Arabic scholars and intellectuals of old were killed, their cities and academic centers destroyed, and their culture of intellectual foresight, critical thinking, and science forgotten. The changing of Muslim culture from Progressive to Regressive doomed the only scientic/intellectual culture left in the world. It was not until the enlightenment some ~300 years later that classical and arabic culture was rediscovered. Who knows how far humanity may have advanced had Genghis Khan never risen to power and destroyed the first sparks of science! Sources:1. http://en.wikipedia.org...2. http://en.wikipedia.org...3.http://blogs.discovermagazine.com...4. Holland, Cecelia. "The Death That Saved Europe: The Mongols Turn Back", ." What If: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. Vol. Collected. New York: American Historical Publications, 2001. 101. Print.5. Ibid6. Ibid, 100-101