Or maybe not enough of myself as a reader. ![]() Perhaps I am asking too much of Weatherford. How does one define impact? Most Westerners know little about the Mongols, and much more about the Greeks and Romans.Īs I said at the beginning, I may be wrong-headed in all of this. Weatherford would say they had great Impact. The Greeks, who never controlled much real estate, have been influencing world thought and action for thousands of years. Yet, the Roman Empire lasted for half a millennium, and its influence is still being felt today throughout the world. Weatherford makes the point, early on, that the Mongol Empire at its greatest was much larger than the Roman Empire. Were their victories ultimately fruitless since the Mongols, in the long run, couldn’t capitalize on them? They spread themselves so thinly that their impact was only temporary - if a century or more can be said to be temporary. That’s what I wonder about the Mongols - their staying power, or lack thereof. The sense I get from Genghis Khan is that the Mongols were like a tornado that comes and nothing can stand in its way, and then it’s gone. I think that might be what I find as the greatest fault with Weatherford’s book. That seems to be why we today don’t think of the Mongols as true empire-builders. It appears that, after the fragmentation of the empire, the Mongol element was woven into, but not dominant over, the developing local cultures. Their culture appears to have been able to meld with those of conquered peoples in such a way as to create strong, unified nations that operated more efficiently, tolerantly and profitably. The Mongols rose because of the brilliance of Temujin’s military strategy. The third fault that I found in Weatherford’s book is related to the second. What’s missing is some perspective, some weighing of positive and negative. However, Weatherford seems to me to have gone overboard. He is emphasizing the ways in which they were admirable. His point, I suspect, is to correct many misconceptions that, over nearly a millennium, have been built up in the West about Genghis Khan and the Mongols. But the way Weatherford presents this information is as a bald fact, without context. I’m not saying that he’s wrong when he says the Mongols were more tolerant. (In general, Weatherford’s approach to providing the reader with information struck me as laying down one layer of facts atop another layer atop another layer, and on and on.) Instead of using perhaps a chapter to address these differences, Weatherford lards them throughout the introduction and second half. He does this in a way that’s hard for a reader to respond to. When they conquer a city, they only slaughter the rich whereas the Europeans kill the poor and ransom the rich. The Mongols are more tolerant than Europeans. In a 20-page introduction and throughout much of the book’s second half, Weatherford frequently compares the Mongol culture with that of Europe and finds Western civilization wanting. The second and third faults with Genghis Khan - if they are faults - have to do with what I found to be a lack of analysis and synthesis. I don’t think Weatherford found an adequate way to focus the information in the second half. That focal point is there for the opening half of Weatherford’s book, and then it isn’t. In a biography, the subject provides a focal point for the writer and for the reader. His relatives expand it even further, and then it breaks into four smaller empires. Temujin leads his people to unheard of victories. So, in essence, this is a book about the rise and fragmentation of the Mongol Empire. Yet, for even more of the book (143 pages), it tells the story of what happened after he died. The first is that Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is ostensibly a biography of Genghis Khan - and it is for its first 128 pages. I can’t help thinking, though, that there were perhaps three faults of the book that caused me to lose my way. Perhaps Weatherford provided so much information and perspective new to me that my circuits overloaded, and I just couldn’t hold my own as a reader. The fault, I acknowledge, may lie with myself. So why do I come away from the book dissatisfied? He examines the seemingly endless ways in which the Mongols, in their empire-building, had an impact on every corner of Asia and Europe. Weatherford’s 2004 book is filled with insights into the culture of the Mongols and their methods of war-making. Actually, I should say “empires” since the unified domain that Temujin created in the 13th century on his way to becoming Genghis Khan (which means “strong, wolf-like leader”) was quickly fragmented among four branches of his family. It is a detailed, well-documented, well-researched look at the rise of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. I know that I should like Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.
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