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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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The situations were extremely different.

The Justinian plague(s) had devastated both empires for decades and many areas and urban centers were effectively depopulated. There was no corresponding plague in China.

While there had been war between the Jin and Song, neither were devastated and the Song was in a demographic and economic golden age, while the Jin remained a formidable military power with heavy cavalry and fortified cities, far removed from the collapse seen in Persia, despite facing some internal challenges. Furthermore, even though china was 'divided' the Jin alone had more than twice the population of the Byzantines and Sassanids combined. At the same time the Arabs were far more numerous than the Mongols. The Mongols faced a foe in the Jin alone with 50x their population while the Arabs faced a combined foe of 4-5x their population.

In some ways the military conflict in China had made the sides stronger not weaker because it not being that devastating combined with economic strength of both sides gave them both the motivation and ability to extensively fortify their lands and military innovate, unlike the Byzantines and Sassanids where the conflict mostly served to bankrupt the states and destroy their respective armies.

The two above combined had led to a situation where the Byzantines and the Sassanids were borderline failed states, while china was in a period of strength even if the north and south were divided.

This can also be seen in how the conquests unfolded. The Sassanids military power was broken in a single battle and the Byzantine provinces of Syria, Palestine and Egypt fell within ~3-6 years. Once the Arabs got through the provinces that were so hostile against the Byzantines that they might have revolted even without the Arabs invading, they effectively didn't get any further into Byzantine lands despite the extremely poor shape of the Byzantines.

Meanwhile, the Jin fought hard for some 20 years and the Song took 70 years grinding war to conquer.

Furthermore, one can also see it in what happened afterwards. Due to how ravaged and depopulated the lands of the Byzantines and Sassanids were, cultural, religious and demographic replacement was possible with entire tribes moving in and settling; unlike in China where the conquerors were a drop in an ocean and had little cultural or religious impact, because they simply couldn't.

This isn't to say that the Arabs weren't militarily competent but the extent of their conquests was almost certainly only possible due to a perfect storm of military, economic and demographic collapse of those they conquered, while the Mongols took on a strong and militarised China with miniscule resources and still won. Trying to draw broader conclusions about the relative strength of nomadic Vs settled, or hard Vs soft societies from the Arab conquest seems more than a little ill-advised imo. The lessons there are different.

Or to give a tl;dr, normal rules about e.g. historical cycles don't apply to Genghis Khan because he is just that badass. As far as I can see, the only other leaders who came close to unifying that many steppe nomads for that long were Atilla the Hun and Osman the founder of the Ottoman Empire.

IMO, the Mongols were no more badass than the British in 1800. They conquered a massive empire despite lacking numbers because they had superior technology. The fact that their superior technology consisted of high-quality bows and a new system of organizing a cavalry army (rather than rifles and clerks) doesn't change that fact.

I think people underestimate the degree to which the Mongol horse archers would have been every bit as impossible in 1,000 BC as British redcoats. The technology hadn't been invented yet. The composite bow, the new breeds of horses, the Parthian shot, the incredible logistics and social organization that allowed the Mongols to supply their armies in the field - all of these things had to be invented before the Mongols could rise to power.