![Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by [Weatherford, Jack]]({"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51wMpWiO4BL.jpg":[325,500],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51wMpWiO4BL._SY346_.jpg":[225,346]})
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I was very excited for this book and the ambitiousness of its scope, but found myself underwhelmed. It's entertaining and educational, I found myself wanting more in multiple respects. More details, more evidence, more expansive coverage.
The book can't quite seem to decide what it wants to be. Is it a thesis of how the Mongol empire provided foundational technologies and practices of the modern age? Is it a biography of Genghis Khan? Is it a history of the Mongol empire? It turns out to be a haphazard mix of all three, with major shortcomings on all fronts.
As a broader anthropological thesis about the impact of Genghis Khan, Weatherford makes a very compelling case that the Mongol empire contained some then-innovative ASPECTS of modern ideals (e.g. religious tolerance, meritocracy, globalization of commerce, public schooling, paper currency, among others). He convincingly argues that the Mongols spread good ideas from one region of the empire to another, and combined those ideas in novel ways. He doesn't do a very good job of arguing that these innovations formed the basis of the modernity, spread into the broader world, and continued into today. Much of his focus is also on developments after the death of Genghis, particularly on Kubalai. While this makes sense from a historical narrative perspective, it's harder to tie the achievements of Kubalai back to Genghis, when the former took power 33 years after the latter's death, following the reign of three other Great Khans. Weatherford also mostly ignores developments in the other Khan lineages upon Kubalai taking the (disputed) title of Great Khan. He makes some ambitious and expansive claims, but doesn't provide compelling evidence. A few that caught my eyes are that Mongol culture was a foundational precursor to the European Renaissance or that the Nazi's blitzkrieg strategy was based on the study of Mongolian battle tactics. He could well be right, but I wasn't convinced of his conclusions on the basis of the evidence he presented.
As a biography, I didn't get much of a feel for Genghis Khan man outside of his tactical brilliance and shrewdness for exploiting public sentiment. I felt I had a much better sense of the character of Ogodei and Kubalai Khan than Genghis himself. Granted, much of that is probably due to lack of good contemporaneous primary sources due to historical reasons, and Weatherford seems to feel that the main source of truth is The Secret History of the Mongols, a history written either late in Temujin's life or shortly after his death. But much of the Secret History seems like after the fact mythmaking, such as when it claims that Temujin was born with a blood clot in his fist, portending great leadership. Broadly there's a lot of projection and conjecture about how he must have felt and thought. For example Weatherford sometimes posits that perhaps Khan was just trying to protect his family, his tribe, and his way of life, rather than conquer the known world. I don't know. Given the lack of good primary sources, I'd rather he leaned more on secondary sources with the necessary qualifications, or kept it more concise and stuck to the facts. As is, the biographical portions awkwardly straddles the line between idle conjecture and dry "and then this happened".
Finally as far as the broader Mongol empire is concerned, the focus is surprisingly narrow and cursory on the broader conquest. It has a pretty good discussion of broader strategy, tactics, and specific applications, but Weatherford mostly focuses on a couple campaigns (European campaigns of Ogodei Khan, Kubalai's campaigns into Sung China, and Genghis' campaigns in Mongolia, against the Jurched, and against the Khwarizm). Meanwhile he'll casually drop "And by this point the Mongols had dominion over Korea" without explaining how the Mongols adapted their steppe calvary tactics to the mountains and monsoons of Korea, while claiming the Mongols were stopped cold going out of their steppe comfort zone into the tropics of southern India or the forests of Western Europe. He sets up an epic conflict in Egypt an army of with former slav slaves, but kind of cursorily refers to it while suddenly jumping 20 years in to the future before jumping back. And as stated above, he has a pretty heavy focus on Kubalai, only briefly touching on the Ilkhanate in Persia and the Golden Horde in Eastern Europe.
In all, I enjoyed the book and I'm not swayed by other criticism I've seen about whitewashing the character of a despot. I appreciate Weatherford trying to bring more nuance to a much caricatured man and culture. But couldn't help but think that the book is less than the sum of its parts, and could have been much more.
- File Size: 3400 KB
- Print Length: 352 pages
- Publisher: Broadway Books (March 22, 2005)
- Publication Date: March 22, 2005
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000FCK206
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Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#21,970 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #3 in Historical Asian Biographies (Kindle Store)
- #11 in History of Anthropology
- #7 in History of Medieval Europe
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