Genghis Khan and others like him are frequently talked about in world history. While he improved the lives of his people, often incorporating others outside his domain into his empire by their merit, he was also brutally efficient in dispatching those he saw as a threat, not to mention ruthless to those who showed resistance.

The reason we remember people like him, conquerors, comes from a place ranging from admiration to horror. Alexander the Great’s armies won impressive battles, but they served a man who kept naming cities after himself, pushing them for over a decade from Greece to the doorstep of India. Julius and Augustus Caesar, achieved great feats and brought glory to Rome, but they also perpetuated a culture of violence, where the domination of your foe was the order of the day. The British established an empire where the sun never set, but in the process used and abused its authority over native peoples, consuming their lands for all that was of monetary value. Napoleon was a brilliant commander, but his arrogance, his dissatisfaction with “enough” led him to fight for nearly 2 decades, conquer vast swaths of Europe, but lose hundreds of thousands of men in quests not of security, but likely vanity. Hitler wanted a world where his version of perfect could be achieved, and only at the expense of tens of millions were he and his Axis associates halted and crushed before the world saw the slaughter and subjugation of all that did not belong according to his mad vision.

We who learn remember people like these because they shaped how we view the wider world. We would not cherish civil rights or functioning democracy/republicanism without the warnings Rome gave by example. The world saw war as less glamorous when the writings of common soldiers became prevalent, and the missing limbs and damaged minds returned alongside their words. The way men convinced whole nations that the world was theirs to conquer for their people alone, it forced other nations that had existing issues, across the world, to band together to save not just themselves, but by extension each other. We remember conquerors because to forget them means to forget just how costly the lives we now live were to our ancestors. Let us not seek to dominate each other, but instead conquer the perils of our world together, as many, as one.