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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World |  | Author: Jack Weatherford
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Seller: safriendsofthelibrary
Rating:  161 reviews
Sales Rank: 3695
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0609809644
Dewey Decimal Number: 950.21092
EAN: 9780609809648
ASIN: 0609809644
Publication Date: March 22, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-?ve years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege. From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 161
 Simply the best book on Genghis Khan and his Empire January 16, 2005
Jeffery Steele (Taipei, Taiwan)
162 out of 171 found this review helpful
When Genghis Khan and his armies exploded out of the steppe in the early thirteenth century, no one on the Eurasian continent was prepared for his innovative style of warfare. Through years of what was essentially civil war, the Mongols of that period, as well as the surrounding tribes, had already refined various elements of shock warfare. But Temujin - Genghis Khan's birth name - added much to the Mongols' arsenal that was previously missing. He integrated surrounding tribes into his Mongol army; he ensured looting was strictly controlled and that shares of it were divided on a pre-assigned basis; he killed off the aristocracies of the tribes, cities, and empires he defeated, thereby ensuring they would not rally their people to turn on him at a later time; he organized his armies, and even his society, through a decimal system that smoothed the functioning of his eventual empire; he instituted laws that even he, a great khan, must obey.
What resulted from these innovations was unprecedented: an army with the same benefits of speed and maneuver that had always been a part of the traditional tactics of the tribes of the steppe melded together with an effective bureaucratic leadership that was very different from the typical kin-based and ad hoc tribal relationships. This was Temujin's creation, and he perfected it in numerous battles to unify Mongolia under his leadership. In 1206, two years after the final battle to assume control of all Mongolia, he took the name Genghis Khan, and prepared to take his army out into the world.
Jack Weatherford's remarkable narrative of these events captures the creativity of Genghis Khan and the Mongols in a way that no book I've read before ever has. Whereas most histories of the Mongols have long emphasized their unprecedented success in war, Weatherford builds a solid case that shows the social and economic achievements of the Mongols may have been even more remarkable than their adaptations to warfare. The author makes the argument that the Mongols were fairly civilized by the standards of the thirteenth century, almost never engaging in torture, mutilation, or maiming. While they were quick to kill, and left an unprecedented path of destruction in their path, especially to those who resisted their rule, conquest and loot were their goals, not gratuitous death and injury.
After making himself the undisputed ruler of the steppes, an area about the size of Western Europe, Genghis Khan began moving south and west, conquering the Jurched (Manchurian) tribes ruling Northern China and the kingdom of Khwarizm, an empire under the rule of a Turkic sultan that stretched from what is modern Afghanistan to the Black Sea. Khwarizm was an important catch, as the Muslims there were noted for their steel- and glass-making, as well as numerous exotic commodities. As each conquest was assimilated, Genghis Khan took what was special and distinctive about the place and employed it productively. Craftsmen, miners, artisans, interpreters, and specialists in warfare were all absorbed into the Mongol Empire and tasked according to their specialty. The Mongols were nomads, but the genius of Genghis Khan was to recognize the value of even the smallest and most foreign of civilized talents and to use it to his empire's advantage.
Genghis Khan died in 1227 - a mere sixteen years after he began his world conquest. With the exception of India and China, he had conquered everything he set his mind to. It would now be up to his sons and their children to finish what in the shortness of time he could not. (Genghis Khan dies about halfway through Weatherford's book, leaving plenty of space to write about the continued expansion of the empire.) Interestingly, the empire seems to have expanded more by the momentum of its founder's achievements, even after his death, than by the skill of his heirs. Genghis Khan had always been careful not to give his children too much power, as he sought to break away from the traditional kin-based ties of the steppe in order to more smoothly run his empire. In mediating disputes involving his sons, he sometimes took the side of non-kin against them. Until late in his life, he neglected their training as leaders. The consequences of this became immediately apparent in the actions of his son and first heir to the empire, Ogodei.
But, even with sub par and occasionally strife-ridden leadership, the empire continued to expand. Some of the Mongol leaders to follow Genghis Khan were exceptional leaders, while others were not, but the combination of unbeatable virtues in the empire was fixed in a way that it hardly mattered in the first few decades after his death. Nothing outside of the empire could stop it, only enduring struggles from within. As Weatherford details, even as the empire began to split into four quadrants, trade and other imperial activities continued. Two Mongol rulers from separate quadrants could be at war with each other and still allow trade and investments between the sides to continue unmolested. Eventually this relationship would break down, and when it did, it would spell the end of the empire. The Mongols did not create anything. They conquered and looted. And the trade routes needed to move their loot from one part of the empire to another were necessary to keep the empire strong. When those trade routes began to close down, and the economy contracted, the Mongol rulers in each area needed to depend on their local political skills to survive. Some did, but others never made the transition.
Weatherford's book is a marvel - the best of more than half-a-dozen histories I have read on the subject. Writing about the Mongols has always been a complex task for two seemingly contradictory reasons. On the one hand, their widespread empire requires a scholar to dig through a variety of source material written by those conquered by the Mongols, which many find daunting; on the other hand, the Mongols themselves were illiterate and secretive, and so their own literature was almost nonexistent and, when found, difficult to understand. Given these odd circumstances, histories on the Mongols are usually hit-and-miss affairs. Scholars tend to be great at explaining some part of the Mongols, but fail to maintain that quality in other areas. Weatherford's extensive experience in Mongolia, researching Genghis Khan and his empire, makes up for what he loses by not going to the source material outside of English; his accomplishment is a narrative of the highest order.
A Singular Man, Shaping History April 9, 2004
Donald B. Siano (Westfield, NJ USA)
156 out of 171 found this review helpful
This is a revisionist history (isn't it all?) of a truly remarkable figure, who created an empire greater even than the Romans, and he did it from scratch in just a few decades. He was a law-giver who essentially outlawed the culture he came from--transforming it from a Scots-like clan of cattle rustlers and raiders, to a monolithic, highly disciplined cavalry of conquerers. He devised entirely new military tactics that were as successful against the cities of the Chinese as against the armored knights of the West. And they started out as a people, he claims, who did not even know how to weave cloth!Weatherford here takes up the challenge of accenting the positive impact of his brutal conquests. Among other things he makes the case for his setting the West up for the Renaissance, the introduction of paper money, the postal system, Religious tolerance, and new vegetables. He bases much of this on new scholarship, rather than the hysterical propaganda of the aristocrats whom he threatened. Partly based on the mysterious "Secret History of the Mongols," the author's own travels in Mongolia, and contacts with Mongolian revivalists, he makes this bit of history accessible even to the most prejudiced reader. Strangely omitted, though, is the fascinating tale that the geneticists have discovered about his Y chromosome, which appears to show that he might just have been the most prolific lover in the last couple of millennia! Too recent, maybe. One of the remarkable features of his style was that he hated the elite and the aristocrats, and slaughtered as many as he could. He loved the professional men, the teachers and doctors, and especially the craftsmen and engineers, and did not even tax them. My kinda guy! Weatherford's style of writing is lively and easy to read. The maps are just detailed enough to be informative without overburdening the reader in detail. This is not an exhaustive account of every battle, every city destroyed, which would be mind-numbing history as usually written, but rather a wide survey of events and their impact on the world to come. And I especially enjoyed his description of the military tactics employed by the cavalry, and his use of siege engines and gunpowder, which would be new to most readers. Perhaps one of his greatest inventions, though, is that of diplomatic immunity. Any city, and there were several, who murdered or mutilated his envoys as a method of rejecting his terms of surrender, would be ruthlessly razed and the inhabitants slaughtered. Even in those days, the word got around... This is quite a tale, well told.
Genghis Khan and the modern world March 28, 2004
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
Jack Weatherford's book is written as if he himself was a Mongol, but he was not.He takes a close look at the impact of Genghis Khan without the distortion of the western or middle eastern eyes and views. Every other book on the Mongols view them as a destructive force with no influence to the history of mankind. However, the author proves this wrong. If you can be objective about history and do your due deligence and accept another's viewpoint, this is a must read. He presents Genghis Khan's legacy as it should be presented. Influences of Genghis Khan: (military: only force to defeat the Russians in winter, something Napoloean and the German could not do; fought the German Knights, the Assasins in the Middle East and the Japanese. All of the 3 did not even know that the other countries existed. Succeeded where the Crusaders could not. Developed the lightning attack at multiple fronts, used psychological warfare, and implemented new military technologies and was quick to adapt to different terrains of the countries he fought in. He promoted officers for their deeds and not for their heritage. (not just military) - he was tolerent of all religions, his sons began a system of free education, he abhorred tortue, recognized international immunity, separated the church from the state, established paper currency, promoted free trade by exchanging ideas and goods across his empire, pushed for the creation of cartograpghy, developed a postal system, and his son's encouraged trade across his empire via sea routes. Some words used today - Hooray and Satin are of Mongol origin. Yes, some of Genghis Khan's impact was cruel but he lived in times of harsh cruelty, even Princes, Kings, Sultan's, Caliph's of his time exhibited even more harsh judgements. For all readers - Mongols to really identify with your heritage and not to forget, and those who are not mongol but who are interested in this lost treasure of history that the author rediscovered in an unabiased and simple explanations, this book is highly worth reading.
Mongols Rule! August 12, 2007
Anne Parker (Rockford, IL USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is the tale of Temujin (1162 - 1227 AD), later known as Chinggis or Genghis Khan, a poverty-stricken outcast who became the leader of one of the greatest empires in history. At its height, under Temujin's grandson Khubilai Khan, the Mongol empire ranged from Baghdad to Peking and included all of modern China, most of modern Russia, Turkey and northern India. The conquest and command of such a vast amount of territory by a nomadic, largely illiterate people is a remarkable feat in itself; that the Mongols governed well and introduced numerous innovations across their huge empire is extraordinary.
The first half of the book is a biography of Genghis Khan; after that it's the history of the empire he established and its ultimate dissolution in the plague years of the14th century. It's also the story of the many innovations pioneered by the Mongols: paper currency, a unified monetary system, trade on a grand scale across thousands of miles, a universal language, religious freedom, and a consistent and humane legal code, to name only a few. It's true the empire eventually disintegrated in the aftermath of the plague, which effectively halted commerce across Eurasia, but not before East and West had exchanged numerous goods and knowledge.
The book also clarifies how the Mongols acquired the outrageous reputation they have had as barbarians up to the present day. This portion of the story is an excellent lesson in the misuse of history and the role of prejudice in the absence of facts.
I found the book readable and enlightening; for me, it was an antidote to ignorance, illuminating a shadowy corner of world history often missed in both Western (Europe and the new world) and Eastern (India, China, Japan) civilization courses.
Genghis Khan September 20, 2007
Bouldermike (Boulder CO)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I read quite a few books, and few really alter my world view. This book changed my perception of Genghis Khan and the times in which he lived in a fundamental way. I had always thought of Genghis Khan as the ultimate military campaigner gone wild. Yes he was that but so much else in addition. His use of diplomacy, propaganda, his establishment of the concept of diplomatic immunity, his open-minded acceptance of all religions, his utter lack of personal greed and his vision of unifying the world mark him as an historical character worthy of much more attention and respect.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 161
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