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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World Paperback – March 22, 2005
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The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five 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.
- Print length312 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateMarch 22, 2005
- Dimensions5.15 x 0.7 x 7.95 inches
- ISBN-100609809644
- ISBN-13978-0609809648
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India
“Reads like the Iliad. . . Part travelogue, part epic narrative.”
—Washington Post
“It’s hard to think of anyone else who rose from such inauspicious beginnings to something so awesome, except maybe Jesus.”
—Harper’s
“Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongol’s reputation, and it takes wonderful learned detours. . . . Well written and full of suprises.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Weatherford is a fantastic storyteller. . . . [His] portrait of Khan is drawn with sufficiently self-complicating depth. . . . Weatherford’s account gives a generous view of the Mongol conqueror at his best and worst.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There is fire in his eyes and light in his face.
The Secret History of the Mongols
Of the thousands of cities conquered by the Mongols, history only mentions one that Genghis Khan deigned to enter. Usually, when victory became assured, he withdrew with his court to a distant and more pleasant camp while his warriors completed their tasks. On a March day in 1220, the Year of the Dragon, the Mongol conqueror broke with his peculiar tradition by leading his cavalry into the center of the newly conquered city of Bukhara, one of the most important cities belonging to the sultan of Khwarizm in what is now Uzbekistan. Although neither the capital nor the major commercial city, Bukhara occupied an exalted emotional position throughout the Muslim world as Noble Bukhara, the center of religious piety known by the epithet "the ornament and delight to all Islam." Knowing fully the propaganda value of his actions by conquering and entering the city, Genghis Khan rode triumphantly through the city gates, past the warren of wooden houses and vendors' stalls, to the large cluster of stone and brick buildings at the center of the city.
His entry into Bukhara followed the successful conclusion of possibly the most audacious surprise attack in military history. While one part of his army took the direct route from Mongolia to attack the sultan's border cities head-on, he had secretly pulled and pushed another division of warriors over a distance longer than any other army had ever covered--two thousand miles of desert, mountains, and steppe--to appear deep behind enemy lines, where least expected. Even trade caravans avoided the Kyzyl Kum, the fabled Red Desert, by detouring hundreds of miles to avoid it; and that fact, of course, was precisely why Genghis Khan chose to attack from that direction. By befriending the nomads of the area, he was able to lead his army on a hitherto unknown track through the stone and sand desert.
His targeted city of Bukhara stood at the center of a fertile oasis astride one of the tributaries of the Amu Darya inhabited mostly by Tajik or Persian people, but ruled by Turkic tribesmen in the newly created empire of Khwarizm, one of the many transitory empires of the era. The sultan of Khwarizm had, in a grievously fatal mistake, provoked the enmity of Genghis Khan by looting a Mongol trade caravan and disfiguring the faces of Mongol ambassadors sent to negotiate peaceful commerce. Although nearly sixty years old, when Genghis Khan heard of the attack on his men, he did not hesitate to summon his disciplined and experienced army once again to their mounts and to charge down the road of war.
In contrast to almost every major army in history, the Mongols traveled lightly, without a supply train. By waiting until the coldest months to make the desert crossing, men and horses required less water. Dew also formed during this season, thereby stimulating the growth of some grass that provided grazing for horses and attracted game that the men eagerly hunted for their own sustenance. Instead of transporting slow-moving siege engines and heavy equipment with them, the Mongols carried a faster-moving engineer corps that could build whatever was needed on the spot from available materials. When the Mongols came to the first trees after crossing the vast desert, they cut them down and made them into ladders, siege engines, and other instruments for their attack.
When the advance guard spotted the first small settlement after leaving the desert, the rapidly moving detachment immediately changed pace, moving now in a slow, lumbering procession, as though they were merchants coming to trade, rather than with the speed of warriors on the attack. The hostile force nonchalantly ambled up to the gates of the town before the residents realized who they were and sounded an alarm.
Upon emerging unexpectedly from the desert, Genghis Khan did not race to attack Bukhara immediately. He knew that no reinforcements could leave the border cities under attack by his army, and he therefore had time to play on the surprise in a tortured manipulation of public fear and hope. The objective of such tactics was simple and always the same: to frighten the enemy into surrendering before an actual battle began. By first capturing several small towns in the vicinity, Genghis Khan's army set many local people to flight toward Bukhara as refugees who not only filled the city but greatly increased the level of terror in it. By striking deeply behind the enemy lines, the Mongols immediately created havoc and panic throughout the kingdom. As the Persian chronicler Ata-Malik Juvaini described his approach, when the people saw the countryside all around them "choked with horsemen and the air black as night with the dust of cavalry, fright and panic overcame then, and fear and dread prevailed." In preparing the psychological attack on a city, Genghis Khan began with two examples of what awaited the people. He offered generous terms of surrender to the outlying communities, and the ones that accepted the terms and joined the Mongols received great leniency. In the words of the Persian chronicler, "whoever yields and submits to them is safe and free from the terror and disgrace of their severity." Those that refused received exceptionally harsh treatment, as the Mongols herded the captives before them to be used as cannon fodder in the next attack.
The tactic panicked the Turkic defenders of Bukhara. Leaving only about five hundred soldiers behind to man the citadel of Bukhara, the remaining army of twenty thousand soldiers fled in what they thought was still time before the main Mongol army arrived. By abandoning their fortress and dispersing in flight, they sprung Genghis Khan's trap, and the Mongol warriors, who were already stationed in wait for the fleeing soldiers, cut them down at a nearly leisurely pace.
The civilian population of Bukhara surrendered and opened the city gates, but the small contingent of defiant soldiers remained in their citadel, where they hoped that the massive walls would allow them to hold out indefinitely against any siege. To more carefully assess the overall situation, Genghis Khan made his unprecedented decision to enter the city. One of his first acts on reaching the center of Bukhara, or upon accepting the surrender of any people, was to summon them to bring fodder for his horses. Feeding the Mongol warriors and their horses was taken as a sign of submission by the conquered; more important, by receiving the food and fodder, Genghis Khan signaled his acceptance of the people as vassals entitled to Mongol protection as well as subject to his command.
From the time of his central Asian conquests, we have one of the few written descriptions of Genghis Khan, who was about sixty years old. The Persian chronicler Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani, who was far less kindly disposed toward the Mongols than the chronicler Juvaini, described him as "a man of tall stature, of vigorous build, robust in body, the hair on his face scanty and turned white, with cats' eyes, possessed of dedicated energy, discernment, genius, and understanding, awe-striking, a butcher, just, resolute, an overthrower of enemies, intrepid, sanguinary, and cruel." Because of his uncanny ability to destroy cities and conquer armies many times the size of his own, the chronicler also goes on to declare that Genghis Khan was "adept at magic and deception, and some of the devils were his friends."
Eyewitnesses reported that upon reaching the center of Bukhara, Genghis Khan rode up to the large mosque and asked if, since it was the largest building in the city, it was the home of the sultan. When informed that it was the house of God, not the sultan, he said nothing. For the Mongols, the one God was the Eternal Blue Sky that stretched from horizon to horizon in all four directions. God presided over the whole earth; he could not be cooped up in a house of stone like a prisoner or a caged animal, nor, as the city people claimed, could his words be captured and confined inside the covers of a book. In his own experience, Genghis Khan had often felt the presence and heard the voice of God speaking directly to him in the vast open air of the mountains in his homeland, and by following those words, he had become the conqueror of great cities and huge nations.
Genghis Khan dismounted from his horse in order to walk into the great mosque, the only such building he is known to have ever entered in his life. Upon entering, he ordered that the scholars and clerics feed his horses, freeing them from further danger and placing them under his protection, as he did with almost all religious personnel who came under his control. Next, he summoned the 280 richest men of the city to the mosque. Despite his limited experience inside city walls, Genghis Khan still had a keen grasp of the working of human emotion and sentiment. Before the assembled men in the mosque, Genghis Khan took a few steps up the pulpit stairs, then turned to face the elite of Bukhara. Through interpreters, he lectured them sternly on the sins and misdeeds of their sultan and themselves. It was not the common people who were to blame for these failures; rather, "it is the great ones among you who have committed these sins. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you." He then gave each rich man into the control of one of his Mongol warriors, who would go with him and collect his treasure. He admonished his rich prisoners not to bother showing them the wealth above the ground; the Mongols could find that without assistance. He wanted them to guide them only to their hidden or buried treasure.
Product details
- Publisher : Crown; First Edition (March 22, 2005)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 312 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0609809644
- ISBN-13 : 978-0609809648
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.15 x 0.7 x 7.95 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Historical China Biographies
- #3 in Chinese History (Books)
- #23 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jack Weatherford is the New York Times bestselling author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed The world The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, Genghis Khan and the Quest for God, and The History of Money. His books have been published in more than thirty languages.
In 2006 he spoke at the United Nations at the invitation of Russia and India to honor the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Mongol nation by Genghis Khan. In 2007 President Enkhbayar of Mongolia awarded him the Order of the Polar Star. In 2022 on the 860th anniversary of the birth of Genghis Khan, President Khurelsukh made him the first foreigner to receive Mongolia’s highest honor the Order of Chinggis Khan which had only been awarded fifteen times in Mongolian history.
Although the original Spanish edition of Indian Givers was banned in some parts of Latin America, nearly a quarter of a century later in 2014 Bolivia honored him for this work on the indigenous people of the Americas with the Order of the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho, Antonio José Sucre and named him Honorary Cultural Ambassador of Bolivia’s Casa de Libertad in the Constitutional Capital Sucre, and honorary citizen of Potosí.
In 1964 he graduated from Dreher High School with Walker Pearce to whom he was married from 1970 until her death from multiple sclerosis in 2013. After a graduate degree from the University of South Carolina, he earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego with additional graduate work at Frankfurt University and Duke University. He worked as legislative assistant to Senator John Glenn and taught for twenty-nine years at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he held the DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Chair of Anthropology.
He now lives at Tur Hurah on the Bogd Khan Mountain in Mongolia.
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It was once said, but rarely repeated, that in the not too distant past, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of miles away, a group of rough and tumble henchmen intercepted, humiliated, tortured, then cruelly and unceremoniously put to death a poor, humble emissary of peace, not knowing the Great Mongol Khan and his mighty army horde was right behind the envoy, just over the next hilltop, and would not be denied.
Utilizing the military tactics learned over the years from the mighty Genghis Khan, after his death in battle in 1227, his sons and grandsons picked up where he left off, having grasped the tactical importance of a variety of attack modes, including the "dogfight," "silent attack," "lightning strike," and "divine wind."
In the "dragnet," for example, you never know what kind of hoofed animals and wild hogs might be scooped up for a Royal Mongolian Barbecue.
Therefore, in long, protracted wars, and laboring under all conditions, the Mongols perpetuated their reputation as having a viable, unified, highly organized, and very effective fighting force. Reading between the lines, you learn what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.
In 1236, the year of the monkey, Batu's leading general attacked the Volga River region of Bulgar. A few short years later, in 1240, the year of the rat, the Mongols attacked Kiev. Afterwards, Khan Batu came to be known as Tsar Batu. He has left an impressive legacy.
After the death of Genghis Khan's sons, Ogodei and Batu, their sons continued the aggressive actions of their fathers before them. Ogodei's sons attacked China and Batu's sons attacked Europe, automatically assuming command in their places.
In 1241, the three Princes of Mongolia, Batu, Buri, and Guyuk began squabbling among themselves for a time, halting progress in their invasion of Europe. It is not clear whether or not their differences were satisfactorily resolved, but this did not prevent the Mongol army from attacking the German knights and defenders at Walhstatt. The Mongols had easily lured the knights into a trap and defeated them handily. Duke Henry II was killed in the battle. But, according to the author, the battle had been fought merely as a diversion for the Mongols. The real objective for the Mongol army was Budapest, Hungary. Within three days march away, the invaders killed an estimated 100,000 Hungarian and Polish soldiers who came out to greet them. King Bela IV was forced to flee, and miraculously escaped the carnage.
Near the end of 1241, Khan Ogodei died, and the full-scale invasion of Europe suddenly ceased. The Mongols left without a word, without further ado, perplexing all concerned. In 1242, the year of the tiger, the Mongols simply withdrew from W. Europe altogether, back to their expanding Russian stronghold base. By 1255, all four of Genghis Khan's sons had died. So, it came to pass that the men fought the wars, but their women ruled the empire, as suggested by the author. So it was the Mongols who must have coined or invented the term, "the power behind the throne."
In July, 1251, Mongke Grand Khan was proclaimed the supreme ruler of the Mongolian empire. He was the son of Genghis Khan's youngest son, Tolui. His mother, Sorkhokhtani, ruled N. China and E. Mongolia. Definitely worthy of mention is the fact that all four of her sons would become Khans: Arik Bok, Hulegu, Kubilai, and Mongke. The family certainly had a complicated genealogy.
In 1253, the year of the ox, Mongke Khan set forth a magnificent celebration, feast, and a religious debate among the prominent religions of Buddhism, Muslim, and Christianity. There were years of peace and prosperity and they must not have had anything better to do at the time. In August, 1259, as the author faithfully relates, Mongke Khan died.
In 1260, Arik Bok became the Great Kahn. But he was ousted by his brother Kubilai Khan in a coup soon afterwards. He died in 1266, under mysterious circumstances. Definitely suspicious. You wonder what really happened.
Kubilai Khan's greatest achievement was in conquering and unifying all of China by mostly peaceful means. Essentially, he unified China through the use of a strong army, influential propaganda, a benevolent administration and instituting fair policies. The author makes several such perceptive inferences in that chapter of history. You may draw your own conclusions. Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. We know why they built the "Great Wall of China."
The stories themselves and the timeline presented by the author certainly provides a firm framework for analytical readers who want to dig, delve, and dive deeply into material of the book in order to discover juicy pearls of sensational facts and fascinating multi-faceted, ruby-red details about the numerous countries involved; the so-affected and impacted regions of the then-known world; and their powerful, enigmatic, illustrious leaders, hitherto largely unknown entities. History may ordinarily be considered a dry, tedious subject in general, but, I am positively certain, that reading about the great Mongol horde will quickly become a worthwhile endeavor for anyone with an inquiring mind, particularly those who want to know exactly what "the enemy" has been thinking all those years.
Particularly, when they are skeptical that a large, motley, scattered band of poor, illiterate, back-woods marauders could possibly have traveled over such great distances for so many years to fight battle after battle together against trained soldiers protectively ensconced on solid foundations and secured behind the dense, thick rock walls of fortified castles. It boggles the mind to think that they could shoot up Main Street in town on Saturday night like drunken cowboy outlaw revelers; or attack the Fort, like a renegade tribe of wild North American Indian warriors, massacring everyone inside, then moving on to the next fortified city. Perhaps, it is speculative science fiction to think so, but I begin to wonder if there hasn't been a massive cover-up about a thousand years ago, or even farther back in time; if there wasn't an undisclosed "Area 51, Roswell, New Mexico" from some technologically advanced civilization hidden within the dense forests and inside rugged mountain caverns, somewhere in the more remote, desolate, and isolated regions of Mongolia. Where exactly did the space ship land? Where did all the flying saucers go? Far-fetched as it may seem, Europe, China, and the Middle East might actually have been invaded in the medieval ages by alien beings, originating from another planet in a far distant galaxy, who suddenly appeared on Earth in human form, and infiltrated the Mongol army horde, solely in order to have them turn the tide of history in their favor. On the other hand, maybe they were just looking for the "Lost Ark of the Covenant," and the raiders had to fight everyone along the path to get there. Only the physical evidence and concrete proof is missing.
R. Royce was snorkeling at an as of yet undisclosed location when he noticed a school of sharks pass beneath him in the oceanic depths. He thought, "I should have stuck to noodling for catfish in the tributaries of the Missouri River."
That made him think about something he told his sister some months ago, "Don't let your mother and your sister drive you crazy and let them ruin your life." All of them have such willful minds. They are stubbornly determined, persistent, and totally committed to their actions. "Can't they just let it slide for a change?" Elders don't want change. They can't deal with it. Youth wants to try a fresh, novel approach. She's stuck in the middle and can't escape her destiny.
Later on the beach, Royce called Cornelius Korn, his business associate and long-time friend on his cellular telephone. "The sharks have arrived to have the barnacles scraped from their bellies, ingest their vitamins, and get their shot records updated," he said. "How are things going on base?"
"Couldn't be better," replied Korn. "Three subs will arrive within the month for routine maintenance and resupply. Technicians will modify and upgrade their electronics equipment. The excavation and construction project is moving along like clockwork."
"The O-club has been bustling with activity, as have the USO office and Recreation Center. The troops couldn't be happier," said Royce. "Island Adventures is a trip out of this world."
"There's no shortage of pirate booty in Bluebeard's Duty Free Store, either," said Alexis Sue Shell, Cornelius's girlfriend, grinning.
"Let's go, Buck-O," said Raquel Remington. "But, I don't want to pressure you in any way." They had been happily sipping Margaritas in the shade and cool tropical breeze of a nearby Tiki hut. "Talk about an ocean view!"
"Hickory liquory daiquiri dock. See the surfers on the boardwalk." sang Alexis, enthusiastically. She was poetry in motion.
"Why they're none other than the famous Hollywood movie moguls and Italian film directors, Royce and Korn," said Raquel, as they walked toward them and bellied up to the bar.
"We eat spaghetti westerns for breakfast," said the jovial Korn.
"Trinity is still my name," said Royce, referring to an Italian movie of the same name.
"My red, swollen feet hurt terribly," exclaimed Korn, suddenly mildly irritated, pointing down to his bare appendages. The sandals he was wearing exposed his tender feet.
"You probably thought you'd stepped on a jelly fish, and he turned out to be a Portuguese man of war," said Royce, now smiling congenially.
"Definitely not a Squid or a Navy Seal," retorted Korn.
"Yes, he might have kicked your derriere, otherwise," said Royce.
Along about that time another couple strolled up, Richard Ishtabuhla and Heather Meriwether. He was the former King Richard III in exile and she was his Lady. They were traveling incognito, and mum was the word. The last to arrive was Sailor Dan Sandhurst, another undercover operative, and business associate of the present party. He came to pass along a message. The Phluegers would be arriving in a few days to make final preparations for the sale and transfer of the newly constructed corporate headquarters building on the island. It was a big deal about to bear fruit. Official now, the navies from a dozen or more allied nations had signed a 99 year lease for the use of the land and facilities at the proposed top-secret subterranean submarine base.
"We plan on catering to all of their military needs," said Sandhurst. He was actually a highly competent contract, procurement, and logistical officer. Someone misquoted him as having said, "If the Navy wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one." Before too long, he was happily engaged and living in paradise.
"You come highly recommended by my young Aunt," confessed Daisy Mae Jones, his sweetheart, when they first met at the Academy.
A problem I have is the tone of the book. While the author wants to correct the erroneous and confused image of Genghis, he tries too hard to "rehabilitate" the image. This is to some extent quite justified. But, I think the tone is almost like that of Genghis's PR agent. Of course it is a political year, so maybe I'm oversensitized.
The author makes the very good point that the administration of Ghenghis, and to some extent his grandson Khubulai,employed many creative aspects from which we might learn.
I'm puzzled, however, by the fact that Genghis was untutored and illiterate, typical of the Mongols, yet his administration required a lot of record keeping and arithmetical skills, the source of which is unclear. Moreover, the plethora of creative innovations would seem to have come from more than Genghis's experience and observation. Perhaps the author might have delved more deeply into where these factors came from.
The author makes a very persuasive argument that much of the foundations of the Renaissance came not from Crusaders grabbing texts from the Holy Land but from their observations of, and interest in, the Mongols. There is a great section on the bubonic plague, supposedly originating in Southern China, infecting the world due to the trade routes and mail system developed by the Mongols. This development prostrated Europe and the Mongols as well, although several centuries before the Renaissance.
One interesting note, not made by the author, is the impact of these reforms on modern China. For instance, we read elsewhere of the neighborhood and workplace "councils" prevalent to this day in China. An argument can be made that these reflect mongol traditions. Further, some of the current politburo struggles are reminiscent of those of the Mongols in a rather striking way.
Those in the military might also benefit from reading the analysis of Genghis's military victories. He used the latest technologies, was highly unpredictable, focused on winning and winning only. Those enemies who gave up were treated well, those who didn't were disposed of. The Mongols succeeded in abolishing the assassins, appeared to pacify Afghanistan, and subdued a major portion of the Muslim world. Would that we were that successful.
Although the purpose of war was often the booty, the book also shows the problems associated with an economy based on warfare, booty or none.
Despite the author's academic background, the style is lucid and enjoyable. All in all, this is a very stimulating and enlightening book. I took one star away only because of the tone and what the author did not face, as described above.
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Neste livro, o propósito do autor é contar a história de Genghis Khan desde o inicio de sua vida até as consequências atuais de seu império, daí a "construção do mundo moderno" do título. Houve realmente a destruição completa de muitas cidades, mas assim que a paz era estabelecida havia tolerância religiosa, comércio fluindo como nunca antes, estabelecimento de direito internacional, submissão de governantes às leis, trocas culturais, desenvolvimento agrícola e muito do que reconhecemos e queremos em estados contemporâneos. Tanto que, mesmo com o fim do império, muitos estados sucessores asiáticos, mesmo atuais, quiseram se associar à imagem dele.
O texto é bastante envolvente e didático. Não se trata de um livro técnico, às vezes lembra uma narrativa épica e mesmo as partes descritivas são fluidas.
Enfim, é um excelente livro para aprender sobre uma figura e um império tão importantes para a história mundial e que definiram em parte o mundo como conhecemos hoje.