Genghis Khan and The Making of The Modern World - Legacy

Legacy

The book puts particular emphasis on what it perceives as Genghis Khan's legacy; it attributes many aspects of the Renaissance such as the spread of paper and printing, the compass, gunpowder and musical instruments such as the violin, to the impact of trade that was enabled by Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. In a 2005 review, Timothy May comments that passages such as

In the end, Europe suffered the least yet acquired all the advantages of contact through merchants such as the Polo family of Venice and envoys exchanged between the Mongol khans and the popes and kings of Europe. The new technology, knowledge, and commercial wealth created the Renaissance in which Europe rediscovered some of its prior culture, but more importantly, absorbed the technology for printing, firearms, the compass, and the abacus from the East.

are "without question, controversial. Many would scoff at the notion that a horde of illiterate nomads from Mongolia created the Renaissance. There is something to be said about Weatherford's view"... "presents his case very eloquently and with an abundance of evidence demonstrating not only the indirect influence of the Mongols in Europe but also the transformation of the Mongols from agents of innovation in the Renaissance into agents of destruction in the European mind during Enlightenment."

However, the most controversial statement in the book is possibly the statement that the European Renaissance was a rebirth, not of Greece or Rome, but of ideas from the Mongol Empire:

Under the widespread influences from the paper and printing, gunpowder and firearms, and the spread of the navigational compass and other maritime equipment, Europeans experienced a Renaissance, literally a rebirth, but it was not the ancient world of Greece or Rome being reborn. It was the Mongol Empire, picked up, transferred, and adapted by the Europeans to their own needs and culture.

Some of the points mentioned are:

• Astronomy: "New knowledge from the travel writings of Marco Polo to the detailed star charts of Ulugh Beg proved that much of received classical knowledge was simply wrong." p. 236

• Paper money: experiments in Persian Il-Khanate (p. 204-5), also p. 236

• Art: The Franciscans, who had wide contacts with the Mongol court, and Mongol/Persian art influenced Giotto di Bondone and his disciples, so much so that St. Francis' life was depicted in Mongol dress - "literally wrapped in silk". Also, a 1306 illustration of the Robe of Christ in Padua, the golden trim was painted in Mongol letters from the square Phagspa script commissioned by Khublai Khan (p. 237-8)

• Democracy and Government: Suggests that some of Kublai Khan's reforms in China, which localized power and gave political strength to individual farms, was the first democratic experience in China, and continued only when the Republicans and Communists began to reintroduce local government. The author also suggests that the tribal government of the Mongols had many democratic elements, and refers to Mongol leaders being selected by council (khuriltai) as "elections", although, these like the Athenian or Roman versions, may be more properly called election by an elite (an oligarchy). In addition, he repeatedly declares that the Khans ruled through the will of the people.