Jack Weatherford, professor of anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota, has written a highly readable mainstream book on a historic figure greatly misreprented in the Western canons: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. In it we learn that Temujin, the man’s given name, was not the barbarian monster we were taught (because 18th and 19th century European academics wrote of him as such) but instead the last great nomadic empire builder.
(Academic review by Timothy May claims that the book is riddled with technical errors, though none singled out IMO discredit the core claims.)
Weatherford spent a great deal of time in Mongolia with a native team revisiting many of the locations where key events occured and bringing out previously obscure and hidden documentation. I considered myself extremely well educated on world history but this book filled in a huge gap.
Ghenghis Khan (the Persian form of his title, more likely Chinggis or Chinggiz Khan in the Mongolian of his times) was born the second son of an outcast impoverished family; he became primary provider at age nine when his father was killed, and he spent several of his teen years as the slave of a nearby clan. These early experiences drove him throughout his long life to seek safety by striking first against external threats. Indeed, he was in his mid-20s before taking any sort of leadership role beyond his immediate family and past 50 before launching his first attack beyond Mongolian lands.
Yet from then until his death in 1227, and continuing for several decades after, this man–with nothing resembling an education in anything except traditional hunting methods–built an army and government that captured more territory and people then anyone before or since. If not for petty academics anxious for any lever to prove the superiority of their culture kids would undoubtedly hear him counted in the rightful company of Alexander, Caesar and other great conquerors of the past.
Coming from a people who worshipped the Great Blue Sky and scratched only a meager existence from the Asian steppes, Temujin was a pragmatic who used what worked rather than rules handed down by an elite and thus was free to adapt his strategies to changing physical and cultural conditions. He also learned early in life to judge and trust people on their deeds rather than familial relationships, breaking one strong tradition of his people.
Weatherford surfaces a key aspect of the Mongol Empire’s strength rarely mentioned in the West: that it was sustained as much by an innovative and protected commercial framework as by military might. Which is not to downplay the incredible military success but to give the birth of modern multinational trading its proper regard. Even as the empire broke apart into four still sizable separate, ocassionally warring kingdoms when the great Khan’s grandsons refused to respect his wishes–Kublai Khan’s China, the Persian Ilkhanate, the Golden Horde of Russia and Mongolia itself–the family preserved the hugely valuable economic interconnections.
It was only when the Black Death decimated Asia before following the Mongolian trade trails into Europe that the system fell apart completely. Even after the plague passed through an area, fear and lack of tradable excess production prevented the system from rebooting. Still, across all the centuries, our mutual conversation reverberates with the echoes of Ghenghis Khan’s development of globalization and religious tolerance.
Making of the Modern World is not a textbook, not a dense compilation of dates and facts. If anything, the author’s lack of solid dating throughout is my biggest complaint. At only 300 pages including end notes and glossary Weatherford delivers an exciting, well-told story of a great man.
recommended
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