This book turned out to be quite a revelation. I think that Weatherford's central thesis is that the Mongols have been totally misunderstood, underappreciated, and misrepresented by western writers as barbarian conquerers and destroyers. (He lays much of the blame for this at Voltaire's doorstep.) Weatherford's point is that they essentially made the modern world. During the Mongol World War and the "Pax Mongolia" that followed, the Mongols ruled much of the known world and instituted policies and practices that gave rise to much of the modern world economy and politics. He makes a strong case that Medieval Europe was the direct beneficiary of Mongol rule, while remaining unconquered, receiving the technology that enabled the Renaissance: "They laid the nucleus of the universal culture and world system, global civilization. The basis for modern world culture. Europeans were recipients of this civilization even though not conquered by the Mongols, leading to the reawakening of European civilization. " The hallmarks of Mongol rule were free economic trade, religious toleration, and meritocracy of service. Under their rule, a number of states took shape that have something like the same boundaries that they have today: China, Russia, Korea, and Russia. It's a long way from the normal thinking that we have of Genghis Khan and the mongol hordes.
It all began with Genghis, of course, and Weatherford tells his story about growing up an orphan and an outcast but who eventually unites the disparate tribes into the Mongol people and thence begins conquering neighboring peoples and tribes until he and his descendants essentially ruled all the people between the Pacific Ocean and the Mediterreanean Sea. Genghis himself conquered the northern Chinese Jurgen, most of the central Asian cities, and much of Persia. His sons and grandsons went on to establish the golden Horde in Russia, extending rule in India, and uniting northern and southern China into one Kingdom, extending free trade and the Mongol economy that encouraged the exchange of culture and technology. Much of the Mongol empire then fell apart either through nationalist uprisings by the conquered people or through dynastic squabbling among the heirs, but Weatherford also points to the importance of the plague in bringing down the trading networks on which the empire depends. Of course, it was those same networks that were responsible for the rapid spread of the plague out of the Chinese deserts and into the rest of the world. Even so, the Moghul emperors claimed direct descent back through Tamerlane to Genghis Khan, and they ruled India until deposed--and beheaded--by the British in, what, 1848? And the last Mongol ruler in central asia wasn't overthrown until the 1950's
Author: Weatherford, Jack
Date Published: 2005
Length: 14 hr 20 min
Narrator: Davis, Johnathan
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