topics: |  history | genghis

Intended for young adults, a colourful text that places Genghis Khan in the
new postcolonial perspective pioneered by Jack Weatherford.

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modern scholars have significantly re-evaluated and refurbished the image of
Genghis Khan. They do not dispute that he was a ruthless conqueror
responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Yet, some of
these experts point out, so were a number of larger-than-life Western
military leaders, including Greece’s Alexander the Great and France’s
Napoléon Bonaparte. And no one calls Alexander a barbarian.

Quotes from Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World:

	In American terms, the accomplishment of Genghis Khan might be
	understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group
	of educated merchants or wealthy planters, had been founded by one of
	its illiterate slaves, who, by the sheer force of personality,
	charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule,
	united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution,
	established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of
	warfare, marched an army from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of
	commerce in a freetrade zone that stretched across the continents. On
	every level … the scope of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments challenges
	the limits of imagination and taxes the resources of scholarly
	explanation.

and from George Lane, Life in the Mongol Empire, 2006
	Beneath the rhetoric and propaganda, behind the battles and
	massacres, hidden by the often self-generated myths and legends, the
	reality of the two centuries of Mongol ascendancy was often one of
	regeneration, creativity, and growth.