book genghis khan and the making of the modern world

It seemed highly unlikely that he would have ever had enough horses to create a Spirit Banner, much less that he would follow it all over the world.” “Fate did not hand Chinnguis Khan his destiny. With appreciative descriptions of the sometimes tender tyrant, this chronicle supplies just enough personal and world history to satisfy any reader. By his telling, the great general was a secular but faithful Christian, a progressive free trader, a regretful failed parent and a loving if polygamous husband. On a smaller scale, Weatherford also devotes much attention to dismantling our notions of Genghis Khan as a brute. Without pausing for too many digressions, Weatherford's brisk description of the Mongol military campaign and its revolutionary aspects analyzes the rout of imperial China, a siege of Baghdad and the razing of numerous European castles. In just 25 years, in a manner that inspired the blitzkrieg, the Mongols conquered more lands and people than the Romans had in over 400 years. In researching this book, Weatherford (Savages and Civilization), a professor of anthropology at Macalaster College, traveled thousands of miles, many on horseback, tracing Genghis Khan's steps into places unseen by Westerners since the khan's death and employing what he calls an 'archeology of movement.' Weatherford knows the story of the medieval Mongol conquests is gripping enough not to need superfluous embellishments the personalities and the wars they waged provide plenty of color and suspense. First, he points out that the Mongols ruled by consensus rather than bureaucracy and he argues that they propagated this system of governance in many parts of their.Apart from its inapt title Genghis Khan dies rather early on in this account and many of the battles are led by his numerous offspring this book is a successful account of the century of turmoil brought to the world by a then little-known nation of itinerant hunters. Weatherford constantly points out the ways in which the Mongols innovated institutions in order to promote the common good. Instead, he points out that Europeans in the Renaissance held the Mongols in very high esteem and that only in the Enlightenment did European historians and culture generally begin to imagine the Mongols and their leader as dark forces. But Weatherford argues that this is not so. They have been demonized as Asian hordes, vicious conquerors and destroyer of cultures across Europe and Asia. Western historiography has, for centuries, presented the Mongols, Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire as brutal, savage and uncivilized.

Jack Weatherford has a clear agenda in writing Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

Book genghis khan and the making of the modern world