| Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Jack Weatherford |
| Illustrator | S.Badral |
| Cover artist | Stapleton collection/Corbis |
| Country | United States of America |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | History/ Biography |
| Publisher | Crown publisher and Three Rivers press |
| Publication date | 2004 |
| Pages | 312 |
| ISBN | 0-609-80964-4 |
| Preceded by | The History of Money |
| Followed by | The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire |
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (ISBN 0-609-80964-4) is a 2004 New York Times Best Seller book by Jack Weatherford, Dewitt Wallace Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College. It is a narrative of the rise and impact of Genghis Khan, and of his successors. In addition to various accounts in English, it refers to three major non-Western sources: The Secret History of the Mongols, the Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā of Juvayni and the Jami al-Tawarikh of Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. Weatherford has the ambition to present Genghis Khan in a far more positive light than traditional Western historiography. The last section of the book deals with historiography of Genghis Khan in the West and argues that his earlier image as an "excellent, noble king" was converted into that of a bloodthirsty pagan during the Age of Enlightenment.
The book is a revisionist work more sympathetic to the Mongols. It has also been seen as a part of a number of other re-estimations of Genghis Khan, as in the work of Ratchnevsky, who focuses on his knack for forging alliances, his fairness in dividing the spoils, and his patronage of the sciences.[1] Similarly, Saunders and H.H.Howorth have argued that the Mongol empire contributed to opening up intellectual interactions between China, the Middle East, and Europe.[2]
Contents |
This book highlights the military brilliance of Genghis Khan; while the Roman empire took 200 years to reach its fullest extent, Temüjin's conquests covered an empire nearly four times its area between 1206 and 1227. Eventually, by the 1270s, the Mongol Empire would cover an area "considerably larger than [all of] North America" (p. xviii).[3]
The book suggests that the western depiction of the Mongols as terrible savages that destroyed all civilization was due to the Mongol's dealings with the opposing hereditary aristocracies. In battle, the book claims, the Mongols always annihilated these ruling classes in order to better subdue the general population. Since, according to the book, it was these aristocratic classes that could write, their treatment at the hands of the Mongols was what was recorded throughout history. However, still following the book's line of argument, what was less well known was the treatment of the general population (peasants, tradesmen, merchants) under Mongol rule. The book states that in general Mongol rule was less burdensome on the masses due to lighter taxes, tolerance of local customs & religions, less capricious administration, and universal education for all.
These benefits were only enjoyed by populations that surrendered immediately to the Mongol invaders. Those populations that resisted in any way could be annihilated in a massacre as a warning to other towns/cities. These massacres were a method of psychological warfare that was used on populations not yet conquered. The resulting terror helped color the historical portrayal of the Mongols.
Since the Mongols were horsemen of the steppes and didn't possess any arts or crafts of their own, they were dependent on taxes from the subjugated peoples for wealth and luxury goods. Weatherford's book claims that the Mongols sought to increase that wealth by encouraging their subjects to be more productive and enterprising instead of increasing the tax burden on them. They did this by sponsoring lucrative international trade, and it is alleged that they also encouraged scientific advances and improved agriculture and production methods. Many innovations came from the combination of technologies from different cultures within their huge empire.
The book puts particular emphasis on what it perceives as Genghis Khan's legacy; it attributes many aspects of the Renaissance such as the spread of paper and printing, the compass, gunpowder and musical instruments such as the violin, to the impact of trade that was enabled by Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. In a 2005 review, Timothy May[4] comments that passages such as
are "without question, controversial. Many would scoff at the notion that a horde of illiterate nomads from Mongolia created the Renaissance. There is something to be said about Weatherford's view"... "presents his case very eloquently and with an abundance of evidence demonstrating not only the indirect influence of the Mongols in Europe but also the transformation of the Mongols from agents of innovation in the Renaissance into agents of destruction in the European mind during Enlightenment."
However, the most controversial statement in the book is possibly the statement that the European Renaissance was a rebirth, not of Greece or Rome, but of ideas from the Mongol Empire:
Some of the points mentioned are:
The book argues that the Mongol Empire was the impetus for the European Age of Discovery. Europeans two centuries later were trying to reclaim the lucrative global trade that was lost when the Mongol Empire collapsed.
A brief list of some of the ways in which Mongol influence, according to Weatherford's claims, helped shape Renaissance Europe:
The book "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for two weeks in 2004.[5]
Kirkus Reviews summarize "Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongol’s reputation, and it takes wonderful learned detours. . . . Well written and full of surprises.”[6] Washington Post applauded “Reads like the Iliad. Part travelogue, part epic narrative.”. "There is very little time for reading in my new job. But of the few books I've read, my favourite is Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford (Crown Publishers, New York). It's a fascinating book portraying Genghis Khan in a totally new light. It shows that he was a great secular leader, among other things.", Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India said.[7]
For the first time in tournament history of audiobooks by Audible.com, the book was honored along with its final competitor, Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn, as 2011 Champion of the 4th tournament.[8] It was the book of the week by CNN in 2011.[9]
Timothy May concluded that the book is well-written, despite some errors according to his findings.[10]
Chapter 10 of the book traces the record on Genghis Khan in European texts. In the very initial phases certain writers appear impressed with him, but in the following centuries, Genghis is seen as a barbarian, particularly, it is stated, with scientists claiming that the oriental race was biologically inferior.
During the late Mongol Empire, most European nations had established different degrees of trade relations, and the image of the Mongols in Europe was, according to Weatherford, largely positive, as evidenced by the reaction to Mongol envoys such as Rabban Bar Sawma, (p. 218-219), who was received by the crowned heads of Europe. Weatherford refers to the writings of Bar Sawma to focus on his surprise at the lack of religious freedom in Europe; no religion other than Christianity was tolerated, which was far from the heterogeneity of the Mongol empire.
Geoffrey Chaucer, who had travelled widely in Europe, writing in the Canterbury Tales (14th c.), the tale of the squire: "This noble king was known as Cambinskan / noble king of great renown / That there was nowhere in the wide world known / So excellent a lord in everything".[11] However, the exactitude of Chaucer's knowledge can be challenged since the poem states that the great ruler resided in Old Sarai, which was not under Mongolian control in Genghis Khan's day, was not called Old Sarai at the time and was furthermore situated in Russia, which Genghis Khan never visited.[12]
According to the books' narrative, the view of Genghis Khan changed during the 18th century:
Montesquieu writes disparagingly of the Mongols, as having "destroyed Asia, from India even to the Mediterranean; and all the country which forms the east of Persia they have rendered a desert." (The spirit of the Laws, 1748)
Voltaire, in adapting a Mongol dynasty play as an allegory on the present French king, described the Mongols as "wild sons of rapine, who live in tents, in chariots, and in the fields." They "detest our arts, our customs, and our laws; and therefore mean to change them all; to make this splendid seat of empire one vast desert, like their own."
Soon, the Asian inferiority model came to be regarded as the scientific view. The widely influential French naturalist Comte de Buffon, in his encyclopedia of natural history after many remarks disparaging the Mongol physique, described them as "alike strangers to religion, morality, and decency. They are robbers by profession." Translated from French into many European languages, his work became one of the classic sources of information during the 18th/19th centuries.
The Scottish scientist Robert Chambers wrote in a widely-read book:
Soon it became clear that the Mongoloid race exhibited a close relationship to the orangutan, not only in facial traits but also in posture; both like to sit with folded legs in the "Buddha" position.
Mongolian features were linked to retarded people (as "arrested children"). [14]
One of the first to re-evaluate Genghis Khan was "an unlikely candidate", the Indian statesman Jawaharlal Nehru. In a series of letters on world history written to his daughter from British jails in the 1930s, he wrote "Chengiz is, without doubt, the greatest military genius and leader in history.... Alexander and Caesar seem petty before him."[15]
According to Weatherford, during World War II Russian and German military tacticians looked to Mongol models for cavalry strategy for managing their mobile artillery units. After great effort, a German translation of the Secret History of the Mongols was prepared in 1941, but it could not be distributed because the stored copies of the books were destroyed during an Allied air raid. However, the idea of blitzkrieg is claimed to be loosely modelled on highly mobile Mongol tactics. Even the Russian strategy of letting the Germans penetrate deep into Russia where they became too thinly spread, is claimed to be based on Subutai's tactics at the Battle of the Kalka River, though the scales involved are utterly different (p. 263). Stalin in particular, is said to have entertained a particular fascination for Timur and Genghis Khan.