Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Weatherford, Jack. Ghengis Khan and the making of the modern world.  xxxv, 312 pp., illus., bibliogr. New York: Crown Publishers, 2004. $25.00 (hard), $14.95 (paper)

(book review - by Cheryl Magnant)

This historical ethnography of the Mongol people as hunters growing into the powerful nation of destroyers, conquerors and shapers of history under the leadership of Ghengis Khan is a carefully researched piece of scholarship divided historically into three parts.  For introduction, the author relates his personal research endeavors in the Mongolian steppes and gives a broad overview of how Mongols are perceived in the present age and how and from where commonly known perceptions and misconceptions of the Mongols have arisen.  The first part of the narrative tells of Ghengis Khan’s birth in 1162, his rise to power and his charisma as a leader and unifier of the steppe tribes into a founded nation in 1206, and then recounts many of his successes at expansionism until his death over twenty years later. The second part relates the further expansions of his immediate heirs and their entering the Mongol World War, which lasted five decades until his grandsons went to war with one another; the war was the beginning of the end of the great nation which ruled nearly half of the world from the Mongol steppes north to the dense forests of Russia, south to Vietnam and westward to the edges of modern western Europe, and deeply southward into India. The third part examines Mongolia’s century of peace and the effects the Global Awakening had on modern society in terms of political, commercial and military institutions. 

 

Following the three narratives is an epilogue giving a culturally emotional tribute to a newly discovered site located by the author and his scholarly companions; it is the location of Ghengis Khan’s wife’s kidnapping, the pivotal event which ignited Ghengis Khan into ingeniously changing a tribe into a nation.  Extensive chapter notes provide cross-referencing in English, when available, and other languages if not; all referenced foreign scripts have been Anglicized.  For Anglicizations within the narrative, Jack Weatherford provides a note on transliteration of the Mongol language and a glossary of Mongolian names and places appearing in the text.  His selected biography is replete with no less than one hundred and ninety-five references, followed by acknowledgments to the diversity of people in Mongolia, Russia, China and the United States, ranging from herders to parliament members, who assisted him in his years of research.  Throughout the ethnography, intermittent drawings depicting historical moments reflective of Mongolian art and culture appear by Dr. S. Badral of Chinggis Khaan University.  Finally, a several-paged index culminates this ethnography. 

Jack Weatherford’s premise in writing Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is that through the influence of Ghengis Khan, contrary to popular belief, the world was not only threatened by his warring ingeniousness and revolutionary tactics but was also positively transformed.  Jack Weatherford writes about the ancient struggle between the hunter and the herder and portrays the triumph of the hunter in a revisionist history of Ghengis Khan reshaping civilization worldwide by conquering peoples but not destroying cultures.  Ironically, Ghengis Khan, an illiterate hunter who became Great Khan in his early forties, surrounded himself with scholars and skilled artisans of the conquered peoples and amalgamated their knowledge into his growing Mongol kingdom; thus, through his military thrusts primarily west and southward, he redistributed his newly gained knowledge and learned skills, and as a result, impacted world history by reshaping literature, language, art, music, erudition itself, methods of war, politics and diplomacy, commerce, philosophies, and, in fact, he was the first conqueror and ruler to successfully practice religious tolerance.  Ghengis Khan was a humanitarian who abolished torture, avidly sought out new technologies and forms of expertise, and as Great Khan, head of the Mongols, was representative architect of history.  His four male offspring were the dynasty founders of the Golden Horde in Russia, the Moghul Empire in India, the Ilkhanate in Persia and Iraq, and the Yuan Dynasty in China.  His blood legacy lasted for seven hundred thirty-one years until the last descendent, Alim Khan, was deposed as emir of Bukhara.  Yet, the legacy he gave the world was the foundation of modern civilization:  international paper currency, a postal system, technologies such as printing, the compass and abacus, as well as the spread of merchandises.  Namely, the legacy he bestowed on civilization was the beginning of the homogenization of our present global village.

 

Mediaeval Commerce Asia - source

Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is a theoretical narrative of historical events which took place eight centuries previous.  Extensive passage of time and translation concerns of The Secret History of the Mongol raise some questions as to the exactness of the events reconstructed in this ethnology, especially as The Secret History of the Mogols was written for the royal Mongol family significantly after Ghengis Khan’s death.  Over a period of five years Jack Weatherford researched and took cultural journeys through the “Great Taboo,” Ghengis Khan’s homeland and forbidden burial site.  Through careful readings of the more than a dozen language translations of The Secret History of the Mongols, Jack Weatherford, self-confessed as lacking proficiency in the Mongol language, along with two renowned Mongolian scholars, Professor Kh. Lkhagvasuren, archeologist, and Professor O. Sukhbaater, geographer, retraced the steps of Ghengis Khan in the same inclement weather as was presented in The Secret History of the Mongols.  Vast discrepancies between the translations became apparent as well as the difficulty in deciphering the context of relocating non-geographically named sites.  Other names appear to be in code or allude to places and events of common knowledge at the time but about which have been lost in the intervening centuries.  Due to harsh weather, the steppes are ever-changing and topographical landmarks have been erased or defaced, making positive identification difficult.  Transliterations of names into English alone also inhibit the preciseness demanded of empirical research; however, Jack Weatherford presents several names of controversial spelling and, explaining his choice in selecting one, systematically uses it throughout his narrative. 

 

The Secret History of the Mongols is a cultural tool, describing even the weepings of the Great Khan; nevertheless, there exists one cultural aspect that leaves gaps in the understanding of peoples of non-Mongolian backgrounds:  the topic of death, which is still not culturally discussed in Mongolia today.  As a result, a mystical vagueness surrounds the death and burial of Ghengis Khan, and no matter how scholarly or technical the searching may become, the steppes will never bring to light his disguised-by-trampling burial site.  Jack Weatherford, already holding a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, yet, owing to his five years of extensive research with the steppe scholars and an additional year of literary research on Mongolia at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota where he is the Dewitt Wallace Professor, was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the Chinggis Khaan College in Mongolia for his scholarly research on Mongolia and Ghengis Khan.  His most recent ethnography, Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, is imbued with Jack Weatherford’s insightful steppe-life cultural experiences which clarify presupposed cultural knowledge in the recently corrected and translated The History of the Mongols: The Life and Times of Chinggis Khan (2001) by Urgunge Onon.  The books counterbalance each other.  The History of the Mongols focuses on the past and is a cultural translation from the original Uighur script into English, whereas Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World not only explores Mongolia’s ancient history but also ties in the ancient past with the modern present. 

 

Cheryl Magnant