genghis khan and the making of the modern world book

In fact, one of the reasons Mongols used bows was to avoid the splattering of blood on themselves that would occur in hand to hand combat (48). However, the Mongols viewed mentioning blood as a violation of taboo (24). This sounds extremely brutal when compared to a quick decapitation. In the book, there are a few mentions of someone being put into a bag and kicked to death or drowned. These unfounded views and many others permeated throughout the unconscious bias and have left us with an inherently negative and incorrect view of the Mongols.īefore I go onto praise the Mongols, I do want to address the topic of cruelty. Crookshank released the book The Mongol in Our Midst which introduced the term “mongoloid,” and used it as a mental categorization and a race (258). It went over how the Europeans besmirched the reputation of the Mongols and Genghis Khan in the eighteenth century (254) and how this has affected the unconscious bias of today. I was wrong about the Mongols in so many ways and the book even discussed why. Ghenghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford was an eye-opening book for me.

I am attempting to be accurate, but this is, at the end of the day, a blog post. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this post and I may have misinterpreted the book. With that in mind, I’m going to play around with upcoming posts to find a better format.Īs a note, I have read a single book on the Mongols and everything should be taken with a grain of salt in this post. I wanted to discuss how the author examined death through her characters, but never found the right way to do it. I spent more time trying to provide context for the post than thinking and writing about the book.

Genghis khan and the making of the modern world book