Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (ISBN 0-609-80964-4) is a 2004 New York Times Best Seller book by Jack Weatherford, Dewitt Wallace Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College. It is a narrative of the rise and impact of Genghis Khan, and of his successors. In addition to various accounts in English, it refers to three major non-Western sources: The Secret History of the Mongols, the Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā of Juvayni and the Jami al-Tawarikh of Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. Weatherford has the ambition to present Genghis Khan in a far more positive light than traditional Western historiography. The last section of the book deals with historiography of Genghis Khan in the West and argues that his earlier image as an "excellent, noble king" was converted into that of a bloodthirsty pagan during the Age of Enlightenment.
The book is a revisionist work more sympathetic to the Mongols. It has also been seen as a part of a number of other re-estimations of Genghis Khan, as in the work of Ratchnevsky, who focuses on his knack for forging alliances, his fairness in dividing the spoils, and his patronage of the sciences. Similarly, Saunders and H.H.Howorth have argued that the Mongol empire contributed to opening up intellectual interactions between China, the Middle East, and Europe.
Read more about Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World: Mongol Image, Legacy, Reception, Historiography, Misrepresentations
Famous quotes containing the words genghis khan, modern world, making, modern and/or world:
“Genghis Khan, in his usual jodhpurs accessorized with whip, straddled a canvas chair and gloated upon the fairyland he had built. Journalists, photographers, secretaries, sycophants, script girls, and set dressers milled and stirred around him, activity ... irresistibly reminiscent of the movement of maggots upon rotting meat.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church.... We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)
“The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art ... is merely romantic fiction.... The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)
““Must we burn Sade?” asks Mme de Beauvoir. Now that you mention it, why not? The world is littered with literature. And Sade teaches us little about human nature which we couldn’t gather from a few minutes of honest introspection.”
—D.J. Enright (b. 1920)