Resumo de Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World

Say ?Genghis Kahn? or ?Golden Horde? to the average person and he
immediately will conjure up an image straight out of that Capitol One
commercial: a ravening mob of hairy, unwashed barbarians,
burning, pillaging and displaying a collective IQ roughly in the
neighborhood of room temperature. Now, however, comes author Jack
Weatherford with a revisionist history that finally sets the record
straight.

In ?Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,? Weatherford,
paints the Mongol empire that rose under Genghis Khan in the 13th
century and peaked under the governance of his brilliant grandson,
Kublai Khan, in the 14th, as having had as lasting and as beneficial an
impact on Western civilization as did the Golden Age of Greece. At its
peak, the Mongolian empire extended from the Korean peninsula in the
east, across much of China and Russia all the way to the gates of
Vienna in the West, and as far as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the
South. Genghis Khan, arguably the most brilliant general in history,
conquered more territory in less time than the legions of Rome and the
army of Alexander the Great combined. In the course of that lightning
conquest, he completely changed the rules of warfare and ended the
medieval way of life in Europe.

But warfare is not the only thing that marked the Mongol Empire. Out of
it came a manifest list of things never before seen in the West. They
included the printing press with movable type, gunpowder, paper money,
silks and satins and established trade routes that made
intercontinental commerce in such things possible for the first time.
Material goods were only part of the picture. Genghis Khan tore down
and rebuilt the entire social code of his day, establishing a
meritocracy and egalitarianism never before dreamed of. In an age of
brutal religious oppression and feudalism in Europe, he abolished
torture, granted universal religious freedom, crushed the feudal system
and ended aristocratic privilege. His grandson, Kublai Khan, known to
generations of American school children only in connection with the
Italian adventurer, Marco Polo, took his grandfather?s legacy,
consolidated it and exported it to the West.

In the beginning, the little boy who was to become the great Genghis
Khan was an unlikely candidate for greatness in anything. His name was
Timujin. He was afraid of dogs, cried easily and was constantly
tormented by an elder brother. His family was outcast, wandering the
bleak Mongolian steppe, living as hunter-gatherers on whatever came to
hand. In the course of events, Timujin was kidnapped and forced into
slavery. He escaped his captors, and later visited vengeance upon them,
but not before having to fight with arms and mind for supremacy over
feuding tribal chieftains whose followers he then bound in near fanatic
loyalty to himself. By this means was the Golden Horde born.

Weatherford, professor of anthropology at Macalester College in
Minnesota and a recognized specialist in the study of tribal peoples,
details it all in meticulous, well-researched form. But while the
content of the book well may wind up on someone?s final exam, never
think that this is a dry exercise in academe. Weatherford, a born
storyteller, writes history with the sweeping flair of master novelists
Samuel Shellabarger and Raphael Sabatini. Genghis Khan?s rise to power,
before sweeping all before him as he led his invincible Golden Horde
across Asia, is as gripping a tale as that of Scaramouche or Andrea
Orsini in ?Prince of Foxes.? The only difference is, this saga really
happened.

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