Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

"For one, it was a New York Times bestseller. Jack Weatherford’s gone on to write a few other books, one about the Mongolian queens. Another very interesting book of his is Genghis Khan and the Quest for God , which looks at Chinggis Khan’s interest in religion. When this book came out in 2004 it created a lot of buzz. This was his first foray into dealing with Mongols and, like many of us, Jack Weatherford was bitten by the Mongol bug. His enthusiasm is infectious. There are many factual errors in this book, but he’s an incredible writer and, as an anthropologist, he brings a perspective that many books on Chinggis Khan don’t have. Many scholars don’t like it because there are so many errors. But, at the same time, this is exactly the kind of book that I would give to, say, a high school student who was interested in the Mongols. Because Weatherford writes so well, it captures your imagination. It’s a page-turner. It reads like a novel. “Using modern terms or morals to try to describe him is unhelpful” One of the neat things he’s done is to have his books published first in Mongolian and then in English. They’ve become very popular in Mongolia. He lives part of the time in Mongolia—at least he used to—and he’s set up a fund to translate books from English into Mongolian, to broaden horizons. So, he’s done a lot of good things with his success. His enthusiasm sometimes gets ahead of him, but this was the type of book that brought me into the Mongol world. When I was in fifth grade, I stumbled upon Harold Lamb’s biography of Chinggis Khan. In the 30s and 40s Harold Lamb wrote tons of popular history books. Biographies, histories of the Crusades—you name it, he wrote it. That book is bad history. It’s so outdated. At the same time, it’s what got me interested in the Mongols and, without it, I don’t know whether I would have stumbled upon the Mongols in the same way. I don’t think I would have always had an interest in the Mongols lurking in the back of my mind, so that when I was in college, that would be the direction I decided to go in. The modern world becomes the modern world because the Mongols completely change everything. That, in itself, is not necessarily a new idea. This book just articulates it a lot better. Sometimes he goes too far. For instance, he says that the Renaissance was due to the Mongols. I don’t know if it’s due to the Mongols, but I would say that it would look a lot different without the Mongols involved. It still probably would have occurred, because you do already have things happening to set it in motion. Europe becomes much more aware of the world, there are new influences coming from the Middle East and so forth because of the Crusades. That also sets up the Italian merchant states, who provide the money that then funds the artists and thinkers that create the Renaissance. Eventually the Mongols came into the Middle East and got involved in the Crusades. In the 1220s, they were thought to be the armies of King David—a legendary Christian king of India. It turns out they weren’t, but their presence affected the Fifth Crusade. Then there were several efforts by King Louis IX of France to form an alliance with the Mongols to recover Jerusalem, although at one point the Mongols believed that King Louis submitted to them. One of the crusader lords, Bohemond VI of Antioch and Tripoli becomes a Mongol vassal. And the Italians do a lot of business with the Mongols in the Black Sea and the Middle East. Once the Mongol collapse starts, this leads to a change. More business went through Egypt because of the chaos taking place in Persia as a result of the Mongol collapse. Spices start to be traded through Egypt to Italy and then throughout the rest of Europe and, ultimately, will lead to Christopher Columbus saying, ‘Hey, there’s got to be a cheaper way of doing this.’ Columbus’s whole purpose was go to India, but also the court of the khans in China. It’s true, the Mongols haven’t been there for 130 years but, as far as he knows, he’s still going to the court of the khans. He still thinks the Mongols rule. The Italian merchants still would’ve been looking for spices and other goods and so forth without the Mongols, because they were businessmen. The entire economies of Genoa, Venice and Pisa were based on this trade. They were trading before the Crusades, but business really picked up during the Crusades, because suddenly they had access to ports. Then, once the Mongols arrive, they have access to them. The whole reason why Marco Polo’s uncles went to China was because they suddenly could. There were safe routes. It probably would have happened, but it would have been different. Yes, although traders could get cut off because of civil wars. That started a new emphasis on sea routes. There was a lot of contact between Persia and China because of the Mongols that would not have happened in the same way. Whether you’re going by land or sea, the Mongols are involved. All sorts of things. There’s the cultural aspect, the exchanges of knowledge and culture that get transmitted by people moving around the Mongol Empire; not only people traveling, but people being moved one way or the other—armies marching back and forth, or populations being relocated. The Mongols moved captured populations from Central Asia to Mongolia and elsewhere. We get German miners, who are captured in the invasion of Hungary, being settled down around the Tian Shan mountains to work as miners. Things moved around and this invariably leads to the dissemination of culture and knowledge. I talked a lot about this in my own book, The Mongol Conquests in World History . But Weatherford really emphasizes how the Mongols change things and how the world is completely changed because of them in a very accessible way. There’s a good reason why this was a bestseller: it’s a page turner. I would say so. The study of the Mongol Empire is vibrant, despite the lack of university positions specifically dedicated to it. I can’t keep up with all the publications coming out, both books and journals, and I think there is a much greater appreciation of the merits of looking at the Empire as a whole and not just on a regional basis. Thomas Allsen, who unfortunately passed away in 2019, really showed what can be done if you look at the whole Empire and, because of that, there is more of an appreciation of its legacy. There have been numerous museum exhibitions. One was supposed to take place in France. The Chinese government loaned many objects, but then suddenly asked them not to mention the Mongols or Chinggis Khan at all—so asking them to ignore one of the most pivotal events in history. It was stupid politics. It was related to the issue of crushing the Mongolian language in Inner Mongolia. There were numerous protests in Inner Mongolia. The current Chinese leadership wants to ignore the presence of minorities and just say ‘we’re all Chinese’. They are Chinese, but they’re Mongolian Chinese, just like you have African Americans or Italian Americans. Everyone has an appreciation of their heritage. If you ignore that you miss out on what makes everything unique and interesting."