Recap of October 18th Meeting
Posted by Steve Lamon
on Oct 20, 2010
Keynote speaker and world traveler
Bruce Hester treated our club to another fascinating and humorous history lesson, this time covering the twelfth century reign of the Mongol Empire under ruler Genghis Khan. Emperor Khan came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. He then started the Mongol invasions that would ultimately result in the conquest of most of Eurasia. These campaigns were carried out mainly with a relatively small calvary of around 100,000 men, each with 5 horses at their disposal, and were often accompanied by the wholesale massacres of civilian populations. They used the Chinese invention of gun powder to their advantage in their early version of “shock and awe” attacks. Khan’s empire became the largest contiguous empire in history, albeit after Khan’s death circa 1227.
Despite his ruthless war tactics, Khan’s regime developed several innovative new systems and inventions that are carried forward today. They developed the use of printed paper money and even playing cards, long before the ink presses of Europe were invented. They promoted religious tolerance and created a unified empire of previously nomadic tribes. They developed a system analogous to our “pony express,” with stations set up every twenty miles for travelers and messengers. Ironically, it was perhaps the ease of travel throughout the empire that may have facilitated the empire’s demise, due to the spread of bubonic plague in the late 1300’s, which decimated the population all the way to Europe and sent the tribesman of Mongolia back to their semi-nomadic ways.
Our thanks to the brilliant orator and historian Bruce Hester for making us all a bit more learned and for enlivening our afternoon! It was no “Khan” job! Thanks Bruce.