book report: Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world

Maybe Genghis Khan is the worst killer in human history after all. In fact, maybe life wouldn't be the way we know it now if it weren't for the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 1100's AD. This is the argument made by Jack Weatherford in Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World 2005 is a fantastic read on the Mongol empire at the turn of the first millennium AD. He is an admirer of the empire and downplays somewhat the horrors of Mongol warfare and pumps up the politics of free trade and freedom of religion.

The research on Genghis's life consists of research into a document called The Secret History of the Mongols, an authentic Mongolian history, and correlating it with the terrain in Mongolia today. From these sources Genghis's life before becoming Khan is analyzed. Of interest to me is finding out that some neighboring tribes were Christian as well as Buddhist and Muslim. Genghis himself was an animist.

Genghis's first major campaign was against the Jurched in Northern China which set the tone for all his campaigns.

Instead of being followed by mobs of refugees as was typical for the armies of the time, the Mongols were preceded by them, and the Mongols also used the displaced peasants in a more direct way as shields and as living battering rams against the city gates. The Mongols showed little concern for the loss of enemy life so long as it preserved Mongol life. As the captives fell in battle, their bodies helped to fill in the moats and form pathways over defensive holes and structures made by the enemies. Trapped inside their cities, the Jurched and their subjects starved; and in one city after another, they resorted to cannibalism. Discontent grew, and urban mutinies and peasant rebellions broke out against the Jurched officials, who proved unable to protect, feed, or manage the massive numbers of refugees. in the worst such rebellion, the Jurched army eneded up killing some thirty thousand of their own peasants. (p.93)

Genghis understood that war booty was more than pretty, shiny things. War booty included skilled and knowledgeable tradesmen, clerics, scientists, and engineers. Their abilities either served the empire back in Mongolia or on the battlefield.

People without occupations were collected to help in the attack on the next city by carrying loads, digging fortifications, serving as human shields,being pushed into moats as fill, or otherwise giving their lives int he Mongol war effort. Those who did not qualify even for these tasks, the Mongol warriors slaughtered and left behind. (p.112)

Worse off than the peasants were the aristocracy. They rebelled if left alive, so he killed them. Of course, those city leaders were never the first to offer surrender. But Genghis offered peace in reward for surrender but annihilation as a consequence for resistance. This is where history presents us with such high death tolls.

While the destruction of many cities was complete, the numbers given by historians over the years were not merely exaggerated or fanciful - they were preposterous. The Persian chronicles reported that at the battle of Nishapur, the Mongols slaughtered the staggeringly precise number of 1,747,000. This surpassed the 1,600,000 listed as killed in the city of Herat, In more outrageous claims, Juzjani, a respectable but vehemently anti-Mongol historian, puts the total for Herat at 2,400,000. Later, more conservative scholars place the number of dead from Genghis Khan's invasion of central Asia at 15 million within 5 years. Even this more modest total, however, would require that each Mongol kill more than a hundred people, the inflated tallies for other cities required a slaughter of 350 people by every Mongol soldier. Had so many people lived in the cities of central Asia at the time, they could have easily overwhelmed the invading Mongols.
Although accepted as fact and repeated through the generations, the numbers have no basis in reality.it would be physically difficult to slaughter that many cows or pigs, which wait passively for their turn. Overall, those who were supposedly slaughtered outnumbered the Mongols by ratios of up to fifty to one. The people could have merely run away, and the Mongols would not have been able to stop them. Inspection of the ruins of the cities conquered by the Mongols show that rarely did they surpass a tenth of the population enumerated as casualties. The dry desert soils of these areas preserve bones for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, yet none of them has yielded any trace of the millions said to have been slaughtered by the Mongols. (p. 118)

The author's defense of the Mongols has some merit. Are the remains missing? Ok. Perhaps they washed down rivers. Perhaps they were burned. Would propaganda perpetuated by the Mongols worked a greater offense than their siege machines? Yes. Were there that many people to begin with? who could know. but could they kill that many? Not in hand to hand combat, but in siege warfare which allies with starvation, disease, and cannabilism to achieve victory,yes they could kill a hundred enemies for every soldier. The tone of the book seeks to see past the hyperbole and see the accomplishment. Genghis accomplished much in battle. It was his grandsons, and Khubilai in China receives the focus, who accomplished much by politics. What none of the Mongols could do by force, take southern China, Khubilai did by persuasion. He made himself Chinese. He made his capitol in Baijing. He built the forbidden city so that the Mongols could let down their hair and speak Mongolian and live in their gers. After reading this i was desired to be a part of the Mongol empire, since so much of the atrocity was swept under the rug.

What was the undoing of the Mongol empire, the plague, which undid much of the Eurasian world. How did the plague spread around Eurasia? The Mongol trade routes. It started in Khubilai's southern Asia and eventually killed more than Genghis ever did. Eventually trade was stopped to stop the spread of disease and the empire, without the wealth or the army or the population had to return to Mongolia, suffer insurrection, or intermarry and lose their identity. A couple descendants continued to reign until the British and Soviet empires dethroned them from India and central Asia.

I enjoyed the book and appreciated the intermingling of Europe's and Asia's history and commerce. I think the history shows that the world has been flat a long time and is not a new internet phenomenon.