Why were nomadic tribes (like the Mongols) from the Eurasian steppes a much reduced threat from the 15th century onwards?

Question

Tribesmen from the Eurasian steppes found significant success in their conquests between the 13th and 15th centuries. Beginning with the Mongol invasions between the 13th and 14th centuries, nomadic tribesmen conquered much of Russia, Europe and China at their greatest extent. Timur the Lame would later reprise their success using similar tactics (cavalry-based armies with bows) and forged an empire stretching from Turkey to India.

By 1368AD China had expelled the Mongols, in 1480AD the Battle of Ugra marked the end of the Golden Horde's threat to Russia. Tamerlane, who died in 1405AD, soon saw his Empire crumble and today he is sometimes known as the Last Great Nomad Conqueror.

Why were nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes a much reduced threat across Europe, Russia and China after the 15th century?

Answer 1

My source for this answer is mostly Devereaux's discussion of "the Fremen Mirage" and other writing on his site about steppe nomads, which goes in-depth into what made the Mongols so powerful for their time - and why that time came to an end.

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The answer has remarkably little to do with weaponry. The steppe nomad composite bow is an incredibly powerful weapon that strikes at long range, especially combined with Mongol skirmish doctrine that could break up formations. There's a reason that the major firearm users of this time period were Western European, rather than the people fighting the steppe nomads, and it's not because Western Europeans were smarter.

Gun-wielding armies had the same big weakness as bow-wielding armies: logistics.

Mongol armies could move many times faster than military formations organized by agrarian states - up to 60 miles per day compared to 10 miles for infantry armies. This is not only explained by their horses but also by their source of subsistence - soldiers could drink mare's milk from their mount, and when moving together with their herds, slaughter sheep to stay on the move for months. Meanwhile, an agrarian army can only carry about 10-20 days worth of rations for soldiers and animals. The steppe pony can survive on just grass; the larger European horse (to give one example) must be stall-fed. If you want to use firearms, you have to bring wagons of gunpowder and spare parts (it's much harder to fix a damaged musket than an axe in the field) further reducing your range.

So a Mongol army seemed like it could appear anywhere, while to attack the Mongols (either to chase their armies or to strike their civilian population and resource base) required taking an army into a steppe that could not sustain it for more than a handful of days. Mongols could therefore engage in battle pretty much on their own terms, and if they ever lost they could retreat, come back and try again with most of their strength intact (battles were won or lost based on morale and cohesion, rather than killing everyone, and wars were won through sieges and holding ground). The agrarians' slow-moving armies could not follow the Mongols into the steppe, and could not pull the same trick off with their own assets (farms and towns) for obvious reasons.

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The Mongols were defeated when that logistical advantage was overcome. Partly this was due to the development of an Early Modern centralized state that could organize supply dumps, long-distance transportation, and more effective mobilization & training of its soldiers rather than relying on vassals to ride out with whoever they happened to have on hand. The firearm becomes useful only in this context - in the hands of a state able to organize manufacture, issue, doctrine development, training, and logistical support. But such a state does not need guns in order to win battles because its troops are already much higher quality. Its superior organization also means that it can hold ground in the steppe, and eventually settle it, to deny the Mongols pasture land in the long term and therefore win strategic victories that can meaningfully add up over time, which is how Muscovy was able to turn the stalemate at Ugra into eventual domination of former Mongol lands.

Meanwhile the Mongol pastoral way of life was about as optimized as it could be for their circumstances. Their bottleneck was not logistics or equipment, but population: every adult male is already a soldier, and already using the best weapon available. Even if they could increase their population, you can only graze so many horses (and sheep) on one plot of grassland before they eat all the grass (consider that every mounted rider needs several horses). The Mongols could not innovate their system to overcome the loss of their logistical advantage.

Answer 2

After a day of thought, I think the real answer is that nomadic people from the Steppe continued to be a major threat until at least 1700.

For example, the Mughal Empire was founded in 1526 by Babur, a warrior chieftain from what is today Uzbekistan.

In an even more important example, the Jurchen people from Manchuria conquered China from 1618-1683. They continued to rule China as the Qing until 1912 - thus, one could say that "steppe nomads" played an important geopolitical role until very recently.

FWIW, the Qing and Mughal empires were two of the largest, most "successful" empires in history.

In the 1700's, Russian expansion met the borders of the Qing, and the Qing Empire and the Russian Empire subsequently dominated the region until industrialization made the concept of a nomadic empire not feasible.

Edit: Comment from Jan says we shouldn't forget that the Qajars also came from the steppe to control Iran in 1789, and ruled Iran until the 1900's.

Answer 3

My discussion follows the presentation in "Johan Söderberg, 2020", "Vår världs ekonomiska historia, den förindustriella tiden" used as course material in Stockholm University (as well as other Swedish universities).

The "late phases" of the conquests describes a number of reasons for the declined influence of the Mongols: over time they moved from plundering and imposing impossibly large taxation to becoming settlers. As settlers they became involved in the local economy. Examples include the invasion of China (completed in 1279) where the first Mongol emperor in China, Khubilai Khan, settled and unified the country into a period of peace and prosperity. The Mongols could not sustainably exploit the farming parts of the world outside the steppes without leaving their traditional lifestyle.

Add to this the plague that swept over large parts of the world in the middle of the 14th century which reduced the farmer populations that the Mongol hordes had thrived on. Large areas of farming were abandoned, and sensitive watering systems came into disuse. The Mongols was assimilated into varying local settlements. The remaining nomadic tribes whereas well divided and not held together by any central force.

Answer 4

Once it became possible to field large armies with gunpowder weapons, nomads got into a disadvantage because the nomadic lifestyle only allows for artisanal production of weaponry, not for the complex industrial-scale production that settled societies with cities could afford.

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Above is the more long-term answer. In the short term after the 14th century other factors may be more important, which can be described as adaption to the threat from beyond the border. E.g. China was a unified state and remained very aware of the continued Mongol threat. They constructed the Great Wall as we can see it today, they kept the capital very close to the northern border, and they maintained a very active diplomacy north of the border.