The Mongol Empire was famous for its vastness and brutality.
At its height in the year 1279,
the Empire took up 16% of all of the land on Earth and
was home to about one in every 4
humans on the planet.
Like all empires the Mongols came and went but what if
suddenly the Empire was recreated
tomorrow.
This is an exploration of what this
hypothetically would look like if we can
suspend disbelief that this could ever ever happen.
So this is a map of the
current world and this is a map of the
Mongol Empire circa 1279 placed on top.
The Empire would stretch all the way
from South Korea to modern-day Poland
but it could have been even bigger if a
few more things have gone right for the Mongols.
They tried invading Japan twice
but we're twice smacked down by some
angry weather who didn't think that it
was quite fair for the Mongols to be using boats.
And speaking of boats they
also tried invading Indonesia once, but
guerrilla fighting in the jungle in the
13th century wasn't exactly the biggest
strength of the Mongol Empire.
They also pushed west as far as Gaza in Palestine
and raided into Austria and northern
Italy in Europe before being pushed back.
So, this map is the maximum amount of
land they ever controlled at one time in 1279
So this would be the borders of the
modern-day Mongol Empire recreated today.
28 different countries would lose all or
some of their territory to this
monstrosity and the total population of this beast
would be around 1,900,459,000
making it by far the largest country in the world in
terms of both size and population just
like the old Mongol Empire was.
About one out of every four people in the modern
world would be a citizen of this Empire
just like in the 13th century.
And out of the 15 biggest cities in the Empire,
11 out of them would all be located in China,
in fact only 1 of the 15 biggest
cities would even be located outside of Asia, Moscow in Europe.
the 3 biggest cities would be Moscow, Beijing & Shanghai
And we would need to decide on
a capital for the country to get behind.
You may think that a logical choice
would be Ulaanbaatar which is the
current capital of Mongolia,
but Ulaanbaatar wasn't even
founded until 1693 long after the Mongol
Empire had already collapsed and only
has a population of 1.3 million people today,
or about half of all of Mongolia's
modern population.
The city is surrounded by extremely sparsely populated land and is
is very far away from the rest of the Empire,
so the most logical choice of a capital
would probably be Beijing instead
which not only is the current
Capital of China but was actually a
historical capital of the Mongol Empire
under this guy, Kublai Khan.
Back when it was known as Khanbaliq.
Beijing would be the second
biggest city in the Empire and has
enormous infrastructure already in place
since it is already the Capital of China
and we would of course have to rename
the city back to Khanbaliq.
*whispering* Sorry Beijing.
As for the actual people that would make up this Empire.
66% or two-thirds of the population would be
ethnic Han Chinese which would likely dominate the country
The next two biggest ethnic groups would be the
Russians & Koreans who would account
for 6% and 4% of the
population respectively.
And the remaining 28% would be
a mix of dozens of different groups.
Hilariously in the modern Mongol Empire,
ethnic Mongols themselves would only
account for 0.16% of the total population.
As for languages, about
51% of everybody in this country
would be speaking or able to understand
Mandarin Chinese, which would likely
become the official or one of the official languages.
Russian would be understood by around 11% of
the country and would be the
second-largest language.
A combination of
three other Chinese languages known as
Wu, Yue and Min combined would be
understood by 10.5% of everybody
and the next two biggest languages would
be Korean and Urdu.
The Empire would also
be extremely religiously diverse and
surely everybody living inside would
think that that's going to be just fine.
About 58.5% of everybody would
adhere to Traditional Chinese Folk Religions
while Sunni Islam would be the
2nd largest belief system at 12.1% of the population
Buddhism would be next at 5.3% followed by
Orthodox Christianity at 4.6%.
Shia Islam at 4.5%.
Protestants at 2.2% and Catholics at 0.8%
Atheist and non-religious
persons would account for the remaining
12% of the population.
This also means that the modern Mongol
Empire would be the world's largest Muslim country,
largest Atheist country
and 3rd largest Christian country by numbers of people.
The Mongol Empire would also have a very powerful economy
with a nominal GDP of 17.778 trillion U.S. dollars
which means that
despite having all of this land.
It would still only be the world's second-largest
economy remaining behind the United States.
The GDP per capita would be $9355
meaning the citizens of the
country would be ranked with the 62nd
best living standards in the world,
slightly behind the conditions in Malaysia and Mexico.
Finally the modern
Mongol Empire would also have an
estimated military size of 6,131,000 active soldiers
making the Mongol military by far the largest in the world.
It's fascinating to think what this
country would actually look like, what
would his government look like, how would
conduct its diplomacy with the rest of
the world and could it actually survive
for very long?
These are questions for another time so
please feel free to leave any answers
or questions that you may have below.
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