Were steppe peoples the villains of history?

Central Asians explored, marked and maintained the Silk Routes that facilitated Eurasian trade and technological exchange.

The Mongols were brutal beyond belief, but a lot of steppe peoples were not so bad. Ironically, some of the steppe empires in China during periods of disorder were better than native Chinese ones. Ouyang Xiu for example had to acknowledge that the Shatuo Turks were virtuous saints compared to the founder of Liang. The Manchu Kangxi is considered one of the best Emperors in all of Chinese history.

Central Asia was also called as such...because it was central. While that seems like an obvious point to make, there is some importance there because it often served as the conduit for trade between the East and West, particularly before the world shifted to a littoral system. Commodities, ideas and technologies flowed overland for hundreds of years, with the Central Asian peoples often serving as the middle men, translators, guides and security for this cultural exchange.

I would caution against thinking the steppe peoples were the villains of history as well. The sown peoples were often just as aggressive toward Central Asia. For example, warring states lords, the Qin and the Han dynasty frequently launched punitive or outright conquest expeditions into Central Asia. Moreover, as bad as the Mongol massacres were, the eventual reprisals could be just as severe. The Russians would sometimes flay the people of Central Asia and Inner Asia alive and hang them from meat hooks. The Qing dynasty under Qianlong massacred the Dzungarians as Chinese armies swept through the region. Of course the history is often slanted, though, sometimes providing a biased picture which paints the agriculturalists are mere victims and the Central Asians purely as raiders. Certainly there were examples of that, but history is also a bit more nuanced.

All I know is that sweet karma came around and fucked those horseniggers in the anus, so I'm not even mad. Mongols? Literal shit people in a literal shit country with a literal shit future. Literal niggers who drink booze and beat women all day. Literal retards who spent billions building a giant Genghis Khan statue out in the middle of nowhere, when they could've used that money to feed hundreds of thousands of homeless children wandering the streets of Ulaanbaatar. Manchus? Literal cucks with a dead culture and a dead language and a dead heritage. Literally extinct. Literally no better than the dodo bird. I know for a fact that they're crying and sobbing on the inside whenever they watch those shitty Qing-period dramas because that's literally all they'll ever have until the end of time.

rude

>destroyed Islamic Civilization
>destroyed China
>not net good for humanity

also continuing off this, some books I recommend:

Empires of the Silk Road by Beckwith (I think)

Ancient China and Its Enemies by Nicola Di Cosmo (well known authority on Central/Inner Asia)

>Huns
>White Huns
>Turks
>Mongols
>Timurids

I'd say they are a net negative in terms of contribution to civilization.

>tfw the eternal Slav BTFO of steppeniggers permanently

More like the eternal mongol continues to shit up civilization every where

What are they doing now?

> bunch of fanatical murderers, rapists, slavers, and imperialists got wrecked
But the Mongols won?

>so I'm not even mad

Posted from my iYurt

Of course Veeky Forums will defend steppeniggers; they also think aboriginals are the pinnacle of civilization and it's fallacious to compare progress because muh feels.

Kek

Considering we are all descendants of the Great Khan, everything

I live in Mongolia now and I cracked up at this. Rude, desu, but still kek'd.

>Of course the history is often slanted
Is this an anti-chinese pun?

I appreciate the banter.

I dunno. On one hand this On the other hand, OP, the Steppeniggers were the best Muslims as unlike the bonkers Arabs (or their leaders at least), they were tempered by secular concerns. It was a good thing, in my opinion, that Turkic rulers wrested control of the Middle East from the Abbasids and kept a lid on the shittiest aspects of Arabic tendency for religious extremism.

I wouldn't call Manchus Steppe People really. Semi-Nomadic probably but they were a civilization.

Also consider Manchu History. From Jin to Yuan, and Ming rule, they were stewing in Chinese civilization & culture for close to five hundred years. The Jurchen then revolted in the mid/late 16th Century and became their own thing.

So the case of the Manchus isn't a Steppe Nomad invasion. It was more of an Ex-Chinese province of Non-Han Minority gone independent only to stake a claim & win the Mandate of Heaven.

To make an apt analogy: the Manchu Dynasty wasn't the case of Mongols Invading China, but the case of if Vietnam in the 900's, after its independence, suddenly thought it was a good idea to become Emperors of China.

Mongols are a literaly shit stain in human story
They gave literaly nothing to humanity and only took, I am still amazed they exist nowadays and aren't treated Nazi tier.

Brutal.

Yes because the modern places are so much better now after getting BTFO

>shitty Qing-period dramas

fuck you nigger wong fei hung was god tier

China is doing ok

>

Not him but I'm sick and tired of Qing court dramas.

1800-1980 was like hell on earth

That was no fault of the Central Asian peoples.

I want to impgrenate her

Literally?

You're right. It was the fault of the North Asian steppe people.

Nah, the Manchus did not do anything that bad. You can point to Cixi or particularly effete Emperors, but Imperial China did not fall because of the Manchus in particular. A native Chinese dynasty would have been rekt by the British and other Euros too. The problems were more longstanding than something you can simply blame on the conquerors who founded the dynasty.

>Were steppe peoples the villains of history?
They were people like anyone else. I'm sure if any other culture had been born in similar circumstances they probably would have done the same. People like to spread and are warlike for much of history. Can we really blame them? Other cultures idolize their warriors for conquering large swaths of land. They're just feared because they did the conquering of other "great powers" of Christendom and China.

That may or may not be the case, but we'll never know because the Manchu's conquered China, and their rule, particularly during the period of European imperialism, was such a fucking disaster that it's hard to imagine a worse result. Also doesn't change the fact that the Chinese became second-class citizens in their own country and forced to cuck themselves by abandoning the hanfu and wearing queues. That degradation of the aesthetic spirit of old China by itself constitutes a national humiliation that ruined Chinese civilization, ignoring every other catastrophe that occurred on the Manchus' watch.

>Nah, the Manchus did not do anything that bad

>Also doesn't change the fact that the Chinese became second-class citizens
This is false.

Qing Dynasty =/= Yuan Dynasty.

If anything it's the Manchus that lost their culture. But they wanted that to happen anyway.

WE WUZ QINGZ N SHET

Ethnic Manchus got vastly preferential treatment from the Qing government under the law, in the imperial examination system, in official appointments, and many other areas. And the Manchus didn't lose their culture. They simply forced their culture on the Chinese. Chinese culture today--what remains of it, anyway--is Manchu culture in a Chinese linguistic garb. Some recent historians, such as Mark Elliott, have done interesting work arguing that China under the Manchus was a Manchu Empire of which China was a part, rather than a Chinese Empire.

WE
WUZ
QINGZ
N
SHET

>Ethnic Manchus got vastly preferential treatment from the Qing government under the law
This is why the Banner System was ethnically divided right? Oh wait, it wasn't. This also doesnt explain the shitloads of Han Chinese/Mongol Field Marshals in the Qing Armies or Chancellors in the Administration.
>And the Manchus didn't lose their culture.
>Language is a dying mess.
>Called their Empire "China."
>Used Mandarin & Classical Chinese as court languages.
Sure. While everyone love pointing out the dress and the queue, this is largely the full extent of Manchu Influence to the Chinese.

> Some recent historians, such as Mark Elliott, have done interesting work arguing that China under the Manchus was a Manchu Empire of which China was a part, rather than a Chinese Empire.
Well he's up versus primary sources then.
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongzheng_Emperor#Identification_of_Qing_with_China

Han Chinese banners were culturally Manchus. It doesn't make sense to limit your military and political officers to Manchus when they're a tiny minority and there are many more talented and capable men among the majority population. The fact that there were many prominent Jews in Germany and Russia doesn't mean that Jews weren't oppressed and massacred. And the Manchus didn't call their country China. The official name was Da Qing, and the Manchus' identification of their empire with China was a propaganda ploy designed to coax acceptance of their rule among the Chinese, and included a radical redefinition of China to include many ethnic groups that were never historically considered Chinese. Also, the Vietnamese literally identified their country as China, calling it China and referring to themselves as Han people, so just calling yourselves Chinese doesn't make you Chinese.

>Han Chinese banners were culturally Manchus
There were no Han Chinese bannders. they're all fucking mixed by the time the Qing Dynasty got under way.
>Also, the Vietnamese literally identified their country as China, calling it China and referring to themselves as Han people, so just calling yourselves Chinese doesn't make you Chinese.
Calling yourself Chinese and living under a Monarch who has the Mandate of Heaven, and living in China makes you Chinese. To say nothing about being acculturated.

Vid related: Qing China's Anthem. Veeeery Manchu.
>youtube.com/watch?v=Wc9PEJMFeR4

>Islamic
>Civilization

>Calling yourself Chinese and living under a Monarch who has the Mandate of Heaven, and living in China makes you Chinese. To say nothing about being acculturated.

Thousands of years of Chinese political and social thought before the Qing Dynasty would disagree, unless you want to argue that Turkic, Korean, and Sino-Tibetan steppe tribes living under Chinese rule were historically considered part of the Chinese nation.

Also, lmao, a national anthem, nice. I guess every country with a European-style national anthem is Western, huh?

>Mongols
>strong
Their legacy lasted a few decades and got btfo throughout the world by every culture back to their steppes never being significant ever again. Now reduced to a million in Mongolia and a small ethnic minority in northern China.
"""""""""strong"""""""""

>Chinese
>Nation
This is where you fucked up, tremendously.

Historically Chineseness was a cultural phenomena. Sure, that culture was based off Han shit, but you can be some redheaded white as fuck Sogdian and still be considered Chinese at the end of the day under the Empire if you thought Chinkshit is the best shit, or subscribed yourself to Chinese ideals, philosophy, language, etc.

If Chineseness was ethnic/nation-based, it will never explain why the Chinese accepted the likes of foreigners as emperors. And they were accepted, the fuckers did not rule purely based on right of conquest alone. The Chinese considered them as legit Imperial Dynasties with the Mandate of Heaven due to the Sinicization of these Non-Han peoples. They brought peace and prosperity to tumultous times and order in the country. They leaned to the tenets of Chinese philosophy & mores. Cool, they check out.

They only fell due to the same way all Chinese dynasties fell: by fucking up and putting their claims of Mandate into question. Of course the difference between these dynasties and others is that they were foreign/known to be of foreign origin. So people against the dynasty shilled the fuck out the foreign aspect, ignoring the fact that the latest emperor of the dynasty was Sinicized as fuck, he knew little of the lifestyles of his nomadshit ancestors.

Of course there were differences though. Turkic, Jurchen, and Manchu dynasties were into the Sinic identity almost 100%. Mongols tried being Chinese Empire and Mongol Khanate at the same time, complete with their race based caste system. Due to their partial assimilation to the cultural Chinese identity, the Mongol Yuan dynasty was built on a house of cards. Meaning that the slightest fuckup saw the Mongol dynasty collapsing earlier than regular-ass Chinese dynasties.

>was there anything they did right?
They did war amazingly right.

>Central Asian peoples often serving as the middle men, translators, guides and security for this cultural exchange.

which Central Asian people? the native tocharian, bactrians, sogdians, scythians or the invading paleo-siberians (mongols, turks)?

mongols raped Central Asia only 800 yrs ago, the silk road was not a mongol or a chinese phenomenon, it existed eons before and connected cultures all over eurasia, not just to link to china

pre-mongol Central Asia was a cultural and technological powerhouse that was not merely a conduit between china and europe. pre-mongol and even pre-islamic Central Asia

The tocharians, bactrians, soghdians were all city based, and highly developed ciliizations. The Han dynasty refers to greek bactira, and chinese travellers highly praised their cities and products, and the prosperous, industrious and peaceful inhabitants. The silk road was created to trade with DaYuan.

>I wouldn't call Manchus Steppe People

neither were mongols or turks (originally)
mongols, turks, manchus are all Paleo-Siberian and originally lived like and are related to Evenks, Chukchi, Eskimos, Yakuts. They were reindeer herders or hunters.

They met horse riding Scythians and Tocharians, and learned the horse-riding steppe culture from them.
With the newly adopted steppe-lifestyle based on the horse (taken originally from Scythians), Mongolids gradually grew and expanded to mongolia. From there they eradicated the original Scythians/Tocharians and continued genociding Scythians/Tocharians who were indigenous to Central Asia.

paleo-siberian is a term to be applied to machnus, mongol, turks to differentiate the native central asian people with the current

Post your top Steppe people:
Genghis Khan
Attila the Hun
Subutai
Kublai Khan
Tamurlane
Batu Khan
Babur

You're attacking a strawman. Point out where I asserted that Chineseness was an inherent ethnic or racial property (although it did take on such a character during many periods in Chinese history). I merely pointed out that your criterion fails the test by allowing, say, the Koreans of Joseon to be Chinese. It's very late, so I'll keep this short, but the Manchus, unlike any other foreign ruler in history, made a concerted attempt to destroy the Hua-Yi distinction that was crucial to Chinese identity, asserting that Hua and Yi were one. Thus, there would be no difference between Chinese and barbarian, and a barbarian nation like the Manchus (or Tibetans and Mongols), despite trampling over the most visible aspects of Chinese life and ritual, were as natural a part of Chinese civilization as any Han group. If the overthrow of a core component of the Chinese identity dating back at least to Zhou times isn't a radical alteration of Chinese culture to suit the political needs of a foreign conqueror, I don't know what is.

Atleast the mongols could win some battles away from their country borders, the chinese couldn't, see Battle of Talin.

>so I'm not even mad

>Pax Mongolia

>muh religious tolerance

They were, and have always been the heros that will save us, we have to return to the way we were, like them if we are to survive the storm.

>Atleast the mongols could win some battles away from their country borders
You mean like how Ming China invaded and subjugated what is now Inner Mongolia?

There were settled people in central asia and those were the ones that contributed to make the silk road prosperous. The nomads were mafiosi at best and bandits at worst.

>There is a horsefucker defense force
How low can a man fall

Nomads in general were the villains of history. Nomads and hill/mountain people.

That is, if we consider civilization to be the good guy. Which is kind of doubtful.

t. Qianlong

Harsh living conditions create harsh people.

1911 "Manchus" =\= 17th 18th century Manchu

Post-1911 Manchus = "WE WUZ QINGZ" Han Mans

I am a Manchu of Tokarian descent living in the US. I have green eyes like my father and my grandfather had hazel eyes and brown reddish hair. Tokarians along with Proto-Turks migrated to Manchuria and mixed with Tungusic tribes to create the Jurchen/Manchu people. My ancestral clan is Proto-Turkic of Tabgach line and I am in no way Chinese. We Central Asian steppe peoples have always been different from the Chinese. I know clearly we are not Asiatic Han Chinese and Caucasoid Indo-European blood that flows through my veins is a testament to that.

WE

>living in the US

You're just a muh heritage yank, friend. Go back home or start shouting "USA, USA, USA" for Trump.

>Qingz
That's pretty funny. You get an upboat from me.

...

WUZ

QINGZ

>islamic
>>>>>>>>>>>>civilization

Damn, Qiang. Calm the FUCK down.

HE WUZ QIANG N SHET

I don't get this thread: Manchus *were* Qingz n shiet.

Monarchs & Excrement meme only applies to outlandish claims by groups over some perceived historical ancestor.

>made a concerted attempt to destroy the Hua-Yi distinction that was crucial to Chinese identity, asserting that Hua and Yi were one.
This is patently false, they tried that only to themselves.

But holy shit were they imposing the discourse of barbarism on the likes of the Mongols, Dzungars, Viets, and other Non-Han peoples.

You forgot
>destroying Old Europe
>destroying the Indus Valley civilization

Manchu culture is basically and thoroughly Chinese now

They have been thoroughly mixed with Han Chinese, hence "Han Mans."

The joke is about some ragtag Han Chinese living somewhere in China claiming 1/2 Manchu ancestry and how the Qing and every single minority group in China was and is now Chinese

This all leads up to the perfect meme

Dude, the Manchus are ethnically still alive. It's the culture that is ded&dying.

Yea. Along with the desert nomads.

Reminder that the Ashkenazi Jews are a steppe nomad (Turkic Khazar) and desert nomad (Hebrew) hybrid race.

>thinking Ashkenazis have anything to do with Khazars

basically since the CCP designated a manchu minority when in fact many han chinese fabricated manchu descent in the 80s and 70s to get past the one child policy, also half manchus are considered manchus and twice as man han chinese were enrolled in the banners compared to the original jurchens

Is mongolian beef authentic or some sanfran azn creation?
Mongolian beef justifies a lot.

Since they ar rook the same culture the the only thing that matters.

>thinking they don't
Oh boy...

>"So when I turned 17 I moved to the United States to familiarize myself with the family business there," she says, "and carried many of my family's hopes when I chose to be a finance major at Weber State University of Utah

>finance major at Weber State University at Utah

>Weber State University in Utah

WE WUZ QINGZ

Those sweet sweet Nordsinid aesthetic though

>you will never look this badass

>Were steppe peoples the villains of history?
Yes, except PIE peoples who were literally superhumans