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Jan de Vos (historian)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jan de Vos during an interview on Prodesis in 2007

Jan de Vos van Gerven (1936 – 24 July 2011) was a Belgian historian, who lived in Mexico from 1973 until his death in 2011. In 1995 he became guest advisor to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) during the peace talks between the EZLN and the Mexican Government.

YouTube Encyclopedic

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  • Wait For It...The Mongols!: Crash Course World History #17
  • Conflict in Israel and Palestine: Crash Course World History 223
  • Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant: Crash Course World History #40

Transcription

Hi I’m John Green, this is crash course world history and today we’re gonna discuss… wait for it… THE MONGOLS. So you probably have a picture of the Mongols in your head. Yes, that’s the picture: brutal bloodthirsty, swarthy, humorously mustachioed warriors riding the plains, wearing fur, eating meat directly off the bone, saying bar bar bar. In short, we imagine the Mongol empire as stereotypically barbarian. And that’s not entirely wrong. But if you’ve been reading recent world history textbooks like we here at Crash Course have, you might have a different view of the Mongols, one that emphasizes the amazing speed and success of their conquests— how they conquered more land in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. How they controlled more than 11 million contiguous square miles. And you may have even read that the Mongols basically created nations like Russia and even Korea. One historian has even claimed that the Mongols “smashed the feudal system” and created international law. Renowned for their religious tolerance , the Mongols, in this view, created the first great free trade zone, like a crazy medieval Eurasian NAFTA. And that’s not entirely wrong either. Stupid truth, always resisting simplicity. [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] So remember herders? We talked about them way back in episode one as an alternative to hunting and gathering or agriculture. Here are the key things to remember: 1. Nomads aren’t Jack Kerouac: They don’t just go on like random road trips. They migrate according to climate conditions so they can feed their flocks. 2. Nomads don’t generally produce manufactured goods which means they need to trade, so they almost always live near settled people. And 3. Because they live in generally live close to nature and in harsh conditions, pastoralists tend to be tougher than diamond-plated differential calculus. Like, think of the Huns, or the Xiongnu. Or the Mongols. [sweet, familiar horns of the Mongol-tage blare] Okay, Stan. That’s enough. Back to me. Stan. I AM THE STAR OF THIS SHOW NOT THE MONGOLS!!! Hi. Sorry about that. Right, so one last thing: Pastoral people also tend to be more egalitarian, especially where women are concerned. Paradoxically, when there’s less to go around, humans tend to share more, and when both men and women must work for the social order to survive, there tends to be less patriarchal domination of women. Although Mongol women rarely went to war. I can’t tell your gender. I mean you’ve got the pants, but then you also have the floopity flop, so... That’s the technical term, by the way. I’m a historian. [suspiciously lacking a mustache] If you had to choose a pastoral nomadic group to come out of central Asia and dominate the world, you probably wouldn’t have chosen the Mongols. Because for most of the history we’ve been discussing, they just hung out in the foothills bordering the Siberian forest, mixing herding and hunting, quietly getting really good at archery and riding horses. Also the Mongols were much smaller than other pastoral groups like the Tatars or the Uighurs. And not to get like all Great Man History on you or anything, but the reason the Mongols came to dominate the world really started with one guy, Genghis Khan. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. The story goes that Genghis or Chingus [?] Khan was born around 1162 with the name Temujin to a lowly clan. His father was poisoned to death, leaving Temujin under the control of his older brothers, one of whom he soon killed during an argument. By 19 he was married to his first and most important wife, Borte, who was later kidnapped. This was pretty common among the Mongols, Temujin’s mom had also been kidnapped. In rescuing his wife, Temujin proved his military mettle and he soon became a leader of his tribe, but uniting the Mongol confederations required a civil war, which he won, largely thanks to two innovations: He promoted people based on merit rather than family position, and second he brought lower classes of conquered people into his own tribe while dispossessing the leaders of conquered clans. Thus he made the peasants love him. The rich hated him— but they didn’t matter anymore, because they were no longer rich. With these two building block policies, Temujin was able to win the loyalty of more and more people and in 1206 he was declared Great Khan, the leader of all the Mongols. How? Well, the Mongols chose their rulers in a really cool way. A prospective ruler would call a general council called a khuriltai, and anyone who supported his candidacy for leadership would show up on their horses, literally voting with their feet. Mr. Green, Mr. Green! Horses don’t have feet they have hooves. I hate you, Me From the Past. Also, NO INTERRUPTING THE THOUGHT BUBBLE!! After uniting the Mongols, Genghis Khan went on to conquer a lot of territory. By the time he died in his sleep in 1227, his empire stretched from the Mongol homeland in Mongolia all the way to the Caspian Sea. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So that’s a pretty good looking empire, and sure a lot of it was pasture or mountains or desert, but the Mongols did conquer a lot of people, too. And in some ways with Genghis’ death the empire was just getting started. His son Ogedei Khan expanded the empire even more. And Genghis’ grandson Mongke was the Great Khan in 1258 when Baghdad, the capitol of the Abbasid Empire, fell to the Mongols. And another of Genghis’ grandsons, Kublai Khan, conquered the Song Dynasty in China in 1279. And if the Mamluks hadn’t stopped another of Genghis’ grandsons at the battle of Ain Jalut, they probably would have taken all of North Africa. Genghis Khan sure had a lot of grandkids... It must be time for the open letter. [gladly glides gracefully to faux glow] An Open Letter To Genghis Khan’s Descendants: But first, let’s check what’s in the secret compartment today. Oh. A noisemaker and champagne poppers? Stan, you know I suck at these. Ohhh, it’s because it’s a BIRTHDAY PARTY!! YAY. Happy birthday to Genghis Khan’s descendants. How do I know it’s your birthday, Genghis Khan’s descendants? Because every day is your birthday. Because right now on the planet Earth, there are 16 million direct descendants of Genghis Khan, meaning that every day is the birthday of 43,000 of them. So, good news, Genghis Khan; Your empire might be gone, but your progeny lives on. And on, and on, and on. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Best Wishes, John Green Unfortunately for the Mongols, those guys weren’t always working together, because Genghis Khan failed to create a single political unit out of his conquests. Instead after Genghis’ death, the Mongols were left with four really important Empires called Khanates: 1. The Yuan Dynasty in China 2. The Il-Khanate in Persia 3. The Chagadai Khanate in Central Asia and 4. The Khanate of the Golden Horde in Russia. If you remember all the way back to the Hellenistic period, this is similar to what happened to another good general who wasn’t much for administration, Alexander the Great. Also, neither of them ever conquered India. The Mongols succeeded primarily because of their military skill. Genghis Khan’s army, which never numbered more than 130,000 was built on speed and archery. Just like this guy. [No arrows on the pitch, please.] Mongol mounted archers were like super fast tanks, compared to the foot soldiers and knights they were up against. But wait, all the military history nerds are saying: once people knew that the Mongols were coming, why didn’t they just hole up in their castles and forts? It’s not like the Mongols had flying horses. EXCEPT THEY DID. They didn’t? Stan, why are you always making history boring?? So the Mongols apparently didn’t have flying horses, but they were uncommonly adaptable. So even though they’d never seen a castle before they started raiding, they became experts at siege warfare by interrogating prisoners. And also adopted gunpowder, probably introducing it to Europeans, and they even built ships so they could attack Japan. That might have worked, too except there happened to be a typhoon. Also, people were terrified of the Mongols. Often cities would surrender the moment the Mongols arrived, just to escape slaughter. But of course, that only happened because there were occasions when the Mongols, did, you know, slaughter entire towns. So with all that background, let us return to the question of Mongol awesomeness. First, Five arguments for awesome: 1. The Mongols really did reinvigorate cross-Eurasian trade. The Silk Road trading routes that had existed for about 1000 years by the time the Mongols made the scene had fallen into disuse, but the Mongols valued trade because they could tax it, and they did a great job of keeping their empire safe. It was said that a man could walk from one end of the Mongol empire to the other with a gold plate on his head without fear of being robbed. 2. The Mongols increased communication throughout Eurasia by developing this pony express-like system of weigh stations with horses and riders that could quickly relay information. It was called the yam system and also included these amazing bronze passports, which facilitated travel. 3. Another thing that travelled along the Mongol trade routes was cuisine. For example, it was because of the Mongols that rice became a staple of the Persian diet. Which I mention entirely because I happen to like Persian food. 4. The Mongols forcibly relocated people who were useful to them, like artists and musicians and, especially administrators. As you can imagine, the Mongols were not much for administrative tasks like keeping records so they found people were good at that stuff and just moved them around the empire. This created the kind of cross-cultural pollination that world historians these days get really excited about. And 5. The Mongols were almost unprecedentedly tolerant of different religions. They themselves were shamanists, believing in nature spirits, but since their religion was tied to the land from which they came, they didn’t expect new people to adopt it and they didn’t ask them to. So you could find Muslims and Buddhists and Christians and people of any other religion you can think of prospering throughout the Mongol empire. And it’s that kind of openness that has led some historians to re-evaluate the Mongols- Seeing them as kind of a precursor to modernity. But there’s another side to the story that we should not forget, so, here are five reasons why the Mongols might not be so great: 1. Here is Genghis Khan’s definition of happiness: “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters." Off-topic, but if that quote rings a bell, it might be because Oliver Stone blatantly plagiarized Genghis Khan in the movie Conan the Barbarian. 2. Is an extension of one. The Mongols were seriously brutal conquerors. I mean, not uniquely brutal, but still: The Mongols destroyed entire cities, and most historians estimate the numbers they killed to be in the millions. 3. Their empire didn’t last. Within 80 years they’d left China and been replaced by a new dynasty, the Ming. And in Persia they blended in so completely that by the 15th century they were totally unrecognizable. I mean, they’d even taken up agriculture! Agriculture, the last refuge for scroundrels who want to devote their lives to working instead of skoodilypooping. 4. They also weren’t particularly interested in artistic patronage or architecture. I mean, your palace may last forever, but my yurt can go anywhere. 5. The Mongols were probably responsible for the Black Death. By opening up trade they also opened up vectors for disease to travel, in the case of the Plague via fleas infected with Yersinia pestis. And at least according to one story, the Mongols intentionally spread the plague by catapulting their plague-ridden cadavers over the walls of Caffa in the Crimea. [grody to the max] While this primitive act of biological warfare might’ve happened, it’s unlikely to be what actually spread the plague. More likely it was the fleas on the rats in the holds of Black Sea ships that were trading with Europe. But that trade only existed because of the Mongols. Alright Stan, one last time; Cue the Mongol-tage [oh, sweet thundering melody of carnage] So the Mongols promoted trade, diversity, and tolerance. And they also promoted slaughter and senseless destruction. What you think about the Mongols ends up saying a lot about you: Do you value artistic output over religious diversity? Is imperialism that doesn’t last better or worse than imperialism that does? And are certain kinds of warfare inherently wrong? If you think those are easy questions to answer, than I haven’t been doing my job. [Darn you, FIFA '11!] Regardless, I look forward to reading your answers in comments. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week. CrashCourse is produced and directed by Stan Muller, Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson, The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself And our Graphics Team is ThoughtBubble [More awesome than maple syrple] Last week's Phrase Of The Week was Hawaiian Pizza If you want to suggest future phrases of the week or guess at this week's, you can do so in comments Where you can also ask questions about today's video that can be answered by our team of historians. By the way, if you want to wear your love for CrashCourse there's a Mongols shirt, link in the video info. [No exceptions!] Thanks for watching CrashCourse. Nobody can beat CrashCourse viewers. Well, except for the Mongols. [when the Mongol-tage rolls, we all win] [outro music] [outro music] [outro music] [Scratch the last, Nyan-Mongol FTW!!!] [outro] [outro]

Career

Jan de Vos was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1936. He grew up bilingual in Dutch and French. He achieved his PhD in the humanities at the University of Leuven, Belgium.

In 1973 he came to Chiapas, Mexico, as a missionary priest. Over time, and in relationships with the indigenous Maya of the Lacandon region, he adopted an outlook influenced by liberation theology.

"I came to Chiapas to bring the Mayan people the Word of God, but they converted me instead".[1]

During his life in Chiapas he did research and wrote many books on the history of the Lacandon region and processes that led to the Chiapas conflict.

In 1986, he received an academic prize (the Premio Chiapas) and in 1992 he received the national Juchimán de Plata prize.

Having made a reputation by writing on the Lacandon Jungle, he was invited as a permanent guest advisor by the EZLN during the negotiations between the government and the EZLN in San Andrés Larráinzar in 1995. (see also the San Andrés Accords)

As a distinguished person in the region he entered the Consejo Consultivo (Consultative Council) of the EU/Chiapas development project Prodesis around 2004.[2]

In her answer to a question in the European Parliament, Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner referred to Jan de Vos to underline the transparent and democratic character of the project:

"From an institutional point of view, major emphasis has been put on inclusive participation and control by civil society within PRODESIS' Consultative Council, whose "civil society college" currently includes 30 members of regional and national civil society organisations. The renowned Chiapas expert and EZLN’s external consultant during the negotiation of the San Andres Agreement, Professor Jan de Vos, is also a member of that Consultative Council."

During an interview in 2007, however, de Vos was very critical of Prodesis's way of operating, and sceptical about the possible results. In his opinion, the people in the Lacandon region have been betrayed too often (which is a strong sentiment in the region) and Prodesis is making the same mistakes as predecessor-projects like PIDDS and the Cañadas programme.

In the last years of his life, de Vos worked at CIESAS (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social[3]) resided mainly in Mexico City, but he often returned to San Cristobal de las Casas.

Selected works

Among several indispensable works on the history of Chiapas, he wrote Fray Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada and The Battle of The Sumidero.

He became most known however for his trilogy on the Lacandon Jungle:

  • La Paz de Dios y del Rey: la Conquista de la Selva Lacandona, 1525–1821 (The Peace of God and the King: the Conquest of the Lacandon Jungle)
  • Oro verde: la Conquista de la Selva Lacandona por los Madereros Tabasqueños, 1822–1949 (Green Gold: the Conquest of the Lacandon Jungle by the Tabasco's Timber Dealers)
  • Una Tierra Para Sembrar Sueños: Historia Reciente de la Selva Lacandona, 1950–2000 (A Land for Sowing Dreams: Recent History of the Lacandon Jungle)

An excerpt from the introduction to The Peace of God and the King; The Conquest of the Lacandon Jungle, 1525–1821:

"For Western Civilization, violent and oppressive by nature, the Indigenous cultures continue to be a nuisance which has to be eliminated. Today, several South American countries keep exterminating in cold blood the last free indigenous tribes of the Amazon Rain Forest. Other nations limit themselves to destroying the autochthonous cultures and forcing the indigenous people to enter national society, only to turn them into uprooted second-class citizens. In other countries they are enclosed, for dubious philanthropic reasons, in reservations (sometimes territorial, sometimes subtly cultural), in which the indigenous people are condemned to live like museum pieces, without being able to participate freely in the life of the nation they belong to. And there is not a single country in the American continent where Indians are not economically exploited and socially oppressed by their white and mestizo brothers." (La Paz de Dios y del Rey; La conquista de la Selva Lacandona. 1525-1821; Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993)

References

  1. ^ Meulen, Dik van der; Huerta, Marta Durán de (22 June 2005). Oude & nieuwe Maya's: een reisverslag. SUN. ISBN 9789058751669 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ "PRODESIS - Consejo Consultivo". 1 April 2008. Archived from the original on 1 April 2008.
  3. ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20080818081129/http://www.ciesas.edu.mx/index.htmland[dead link]
This page was last edited on 22 December 2023, at 12:59
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