Texto: por que Gengis Khan expandiu seu império, e teria ele sido provocado?

 Texto autoral, originalmente publicado na plataforma Quora (em inglês). Como não é uma publicação acadêmica, linguagem coloquial e humorística foi utilizada, porém fundamentada em fatos históricos.

link para acesso à publicação original aqui.

texto:

They did nothing to provoke him, nor was it necessary.

The Mongols invaded pretty much everything everywhere they could, just because they could. Think about a guy with financial knowledge, ambition and much, much spare money. Does he someday says something along the lines of: “Money? nah, I got enough of that, do not want more”. No, he keeps investing his money and trying to earn even more.

That was the reason they expanded. Gengis Khan was a conqueror in the same way as Ralph, our rich guy in the example above, was an investor. That was the reason. Now as to how it was possible:

• The Mongol’s were just unified under Gengis Khan’s leadership. Now they could stop, for a while, killing each other and look for more valuable targets.
• They were a nomadic people in a civilized world. And everywhere in history when we have this combo we end with the nomads raiding/pillaging/destroying/conquering (or at least trying to) the civilized nations. They are poor people, lacking pretty much everything except manpower. Battle hardened, vicious, sometimes even disciplined manpower. And horses. And they look across the lake/valley/whatever and see a rich city with rich people fattening with rich food. You can see how this ends.
• A proven method of uniting your people is to give them a common enemy. That method was well employed by many important people in the history of mankind, like Mao so skillfully used that tactic to unify China. Also, that silly-looking guy on the Watchmen did that as well, as to stop the cold war and protect the future of mankind, by means of exploding atomic bombs everywhere and releasing a gigantic and ugly blob of organic matter that looked like a mixture of a meatball and a Lovecraftian lesser monster (no kidding on this one, that is how this clever classic graphic novel ends). Well, since the mongols were just unified, it was logical to expand beyond their homeland.

Picture: A legit painting showing a Mongol proudly flashing his newest acquisition

Keep in mind that the mongol’s were illiterate and produced nothing, unless you count horse milk or dried meat (both used for consumption). So the only way for them to get cool stuff was to get from those weaklings that had them. After that was done they could sometimes trade, if they wanted to. But the primary way of acquiring very important and essential stuff like silk dresses, non-stinky-food, fancy pointed hats, xbox’s and Ps4’s was to borrow those from the dead civilized people. You could get slaves and people to rape as well. It is even estimated that X% of the world population is descended from Gengis Khan, being “X” both a really huge number I am too lazy to google and a number no human being should have normally achieved. And that also makes us wonder if “G. Khan” isn’t a great name for a porn actor and producer.

To be fair, there were some cases were a provocation was involved, such as the time when the ruler to the Khwarezmian empire refused to acknowledge the Khan’s emissaries as good looking enough to warrant a response other than execution. The official version is that they have been executed on the grounds of being spies, but we know better: They simply lacked the handsomeness necessary in order to enchant the Khwarezmian governor.

Gengis Khan took offense at that slight, minor insult. To G. Khan, murder was an insult, but less so than putting the milk before the cereal. Which, to be fair, remains a capital offense to this day and age. After mourning his lost men for 0.1 second, Gengis Khan did what every normal human being does in such situations, meaning he invaded the Khwarezmia and killed or slaved every human being there, and destroyed everything as to literally wipe this empire from history. I am pretty sure lots of raping were involved as well.

So no, if you wanted to be invaded by G. Khan all you had to was to exist, but to offend him could move you up in the line, if you could not wait for the thrill.