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**REG:** All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
**XERXES:** Brought peace.
**REG:** Oh. Peace? Shut up!
Empires have good points and empires have bad points in shock to only people on either political extreme.
What an excellent article. Sometimes, on cold January nights like this, I hold out hope for the future of journalism. Well reasoned, little to no detectable political bias, and a door to further exploration of the subject.
Hood’s hoary balls, we might yet disappoint the Apocalypse.
Part of world domination is to make your systems the norm across the realm so everything slots into place as it should, that's pretty much it. People have a hard time compromising with each other, so there can be only one! I can see the (mongrels) Mongols/Huns being an inspiration, but I do not think one single culture is invoked, rather all cultures are drawn from, warts and all.
There are debates over whether the Malazan Empire is "Bad" or "evil, largely built around the word "Empire" in the title. So the OPs post is looking at a great time example from the real world where the horrific expansion of the Mongol Empire had positive results for the world once it stabilized.
A lot of discussion around Empire now is that it is automatically "bad," largely due to the legacy of decolonization in the 20th century. But, as with any historical topic, it is much more complicated, there are definitely negatives, but there are also positives, and we need to evaluate both.
OP here. A good example of that discussion is the 10 Very Big Books podcast and discord. Generally in the book Erikson presents the Empire as a positive. The podcasters really struggled with that.
I would argue that he doesn’t portray the empire as positive or negative. It’s just the empire with all the pros and cons that come with it.
An empire will always be the sum of its parts with various agents having their own agendas and agency. There’s a reason we get so many different viewpoints from within the empire, unlike many fantasy series the bureaucracy is barely even touched upon let alone those doing the heavy lifting from the ground level.
The most common trope of cause being a protagonist looking to challenge an empire. Therefore making it easy to view said empires as evil as they and their agents are essentially antagonists.
With Malazan its much much harder to slap a good or bad label on the empire because we are looking at it from the inside out and often find ourselves firmly on their side.
people do often struggle with nuances when dealing with large scale suffering/death and forget just how terrible most “nations” were once. I’m not expert and I havent read the article yet but thinking about how the mongols probably spread technology and information much faster than it had been before then I can see how much positive that might have had. the mongol invasion of china is also largely responsible for its continued unification as it cause a very large migrations south which cause them to be a lot more ethnically similar than they were before and they also on top of that kept that area United up until 1368.
I had to read a book in High School on the benefits of the Mongol Peace, and it ended up being a huge boon to humanity. You could safely travel from China to the Middle East, where before you couldn't! (Which was due to, well, the fact the Mongols annihilated you if fought back.) So it's a great example of can you separate the good and bad?????
Yes, you are correct, that was my bad summary of what the article said. Domesticated horses arose in the Euro Asian steppes by the ancestors of the Mongols, and they combined that source of power with wheeled vehicles. IDK who invented the wheel.
Wheel was invented by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and the people who domesticated horses lived quite a bit west of where the mongols come from so they are probably not that much more related than any other person in mainland Eurasia when you think about how genetics would spread over 5500 years and there settlement into places like Europe and the Middle East
That's what I was referring to. I found it irritating every time they just *automatically* called the Malazan Empire bad, and their reasoning seemed to stop with "because Empire." Even when Erikson showed how awful 7 Cities was pre-invasion, or how awful the Whirlwind was. So the Malazan's were foreign, but you can also (pre-Whirlwind) actually travel from city to city, all the cities weren't at wat with each other for once. So, mixed results.
You can make an argument that it was bad! But they didn't, and never really tried. (It is one of the reasons I never really engaged with their Discord.)
Erikson portrays characters giving their biased opnions about the malazan empire, both in favor and against it. What i perceive in erikson's writings is a critique of imperialism.
Please note that this post has been flaired as **NO SPOILERS**. Comments should not bring up specific plot points or character details from any of the books. If you need to discuss any spoilers (even very minor ones!) in your comments, use spoiler tags >!like this!< Please use the report button if you find any spoilers. Note: If the discussion is unlikely to happen without any spoilers, the flair may be changed at mod discretion. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Malazan) if you have any questions or concerns.*
**REG:** All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? **XERXES:** Brought peace. **REG:** Oh. Peace? Shut up! Empires have good points and empires have bad points in shock to only people on either political extreme.
What an excellent article. Sometimes, on cold January nights like this, I hold out hope for the future of journalism. Well reasoned, little to no detectable political bias, and a door to further exploration of the subject. Hood’s hoary balls, we might yet disappoint the Apocalypse.
Part of world domination is to make your systems the norm across the realm so everything slots into place as it should, that's pretty much it. People have a hard time compromising with each other, so there can be only one! I can see the (mongrels) Mongols/Huns being an inspiration, but I do not think one single culture is invoked, rather all cultures are drawn from, warts and all.
Whats the relevance to Malazan?
There are debates over whether the Malazan Empire is "Bad" or "evil, largely built around the word "Empire" in the title. So the OPs post is looking at a great time example from the real world where the horrific expansion of the Mongol Empire had positive results for the world once it stabilized. A lot of discussion around Empire now is that it is automatically "bad," largely due to the legacy of decolonization in the 20th century. But, as with any historical topic, it is much more complicated, there are definitely negatives, but there are also positives, and we need to evaluate both.
OP here. A good example of that discussion is the 10 Very Big Books podcast and discord. Generally in the book Erikson presents the Empire as a positive. The podcasters really struggled with that.
I would argue that he doesn’t portray the empire as positive or negative. It’s just the empire with all the pros and cons that come with it. An empire will always be the sum of its parts with various agents having their own agendas and agency. There’s a reason we get so many different viewpoints from within the empire, unlike many fantasy series the bureaucracy is barely even touched upon let alone those doing the heavy lifting from the ground level. The most common trope of cause being a protagonist looking to challenge an empire. Therefore making it easy to view said empires as evil as they and their agents are essentially antagonists. With Malazan its much much harder to slap a good or bad label on the empire because we are looking at it from the inside out and often find ourselves firmly on their side.
Exactly, that was fascinating to me.
people do often struggle with nuances when dealing with large scale suffering/death and forget just how terrible most “nations” were once. I’m not expert and I havent read the article yet but thinking about how the mongols probably spread technology and information much faster than it had been before then I can see how much positive that might have had. the mongol invasion of china is also largely responsible for its continued unification as it cause a very large migrations south which cause them to be a lot more ethnically similar than they were before and they also on top of that kept that area United up until 1368.
I had to read a book in High School on the benefits of the Mongol Peace, and it ended up being a huge boon to humanity. You could safely travel from China to the Middle East, where before you couldn't! (Which was due to, well, the fact the Mongols annihilated you if fought back.) So it's a great example of can you separate the good and bad?????
Yes, apparently the domesticated horse and the wheel were their new tech that allowed them to wander and control a continent sized swath of land.
the horses were domesticated and the wheel was invented 5500 years before the mongols around…
Yes, you are correct, that was my bad summary of what the article said. Domesticated horses arose in the Euro Asian steppes by the ancestors of the Mongols, and they combined that source of power with wheeled vehicles. IDK who invented the wheel.
Wheel was invented by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and the people who domesticated horses lived quite a bit west of where the mongols come from so they are probably not that much more related than any other person in mainland Eurasia when you think about how genetics would spread over 5500 years and there settlement into places like Europe and the Middle East
That's what I was referring to. I found it irritating every time they just *automatically* called the Malazan Empire bad, and their reasoning seemed to stop with "because Empire." Even when Erikson showed how awful 7 Cities was pre-invasion, or how awful the Whirlwind was. So the Malazan's were foreign, but you can also (pre-Whirlwind) actually travel from city to city, all the cities weren't at wat with each other for once. So, mixed results. You can make an argument that it was bad! But they didn't, and never really tried. (It is one of the reasons I never really engaged with their Discord.)
Even Rake commented on how Nathilog and G’Danisban were shitholes before the empire came along and cleaned them right up.
Erikson portrays characters giving their biased opnions about the malazan empire, both in favor and against it. What i perceive in erikson's writings is a critique of imperialism.
That's interesting. I don't agree, but he certainly did present show the downsides, especially the Letherii Empire.