Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world

Book surveying one man's biography and his ambitious efforts to conquer the world

Summary: This book is part biography, part history of the Mongol empires, and part paean to Mongol culture. It makes a biographical sketch of Temujin (Genghis Khan), and then examines his eventual efforts to unite all the world’s people under the Eternal Blue Sky. It also offers interesting insights into the logic of large organizations, which is why it’s interesting to a tax lawyer.

In January, I read this combination biography & history. The author used extensive primary sources to discuss the personal story of Temujin—the man who became Genghis Khan—and in the process, establishes considerable insight into the man’s context, perspective, and goals.

Obviously the Mongol conquests involved enormous human costs, but I’m not going to attempt to quantify, contextualize, or discuss that—so my comments will focus on other aspects of Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Jack Weatherford (2004, Crown and Three Rivers Press) (ebook)

The Secret History of the Mongols

After the death of Genghis Khan, the Yuan Dynasty in China prepared a history that covered his life and the story of their family line. The surviving versions of the history are in the Mongolian language, but written with Chinese characters. It includes details on his parents, his childhood, and his life before becoming a prominent khan. One of the most surprising points might be the prevalence of bride kidnapping—not only was Temujin’s wife kidnapped until he rescued her, but Temujin’s father had kidnapped Temujin’s mother. The story is replete with recurring struggles between loyalty and betrayal.

Experiments in fusionism

Genghis Khan frequently integrated defeated foes into his larger family. In the context of tribal politics, family links are the basis for loyalty. So when he defeated culturally related foes, he often adopted them into his larger family, even literally adopting children and taking them into his home.

The Mongols have long been famous for their religious freedom. They even allowed a tax exemption for certain religious activities. Despite believing in their own polytheistic faith, the Mongols allowed priests, missionaries, and scholars of many different faiths. In fact, the Mongols even enjoyed religious competition, and sponsored an interfaith debate that drew spectators like a wrestling match.

They had a habitual openminded-ness, driven by necessity to adopt any new ideas, new technologies, or new strategies that worked. Their combination of different technologies led to something like an early cannon. They adopted currency for their imperial tax administration. They looked at different religions in a spirit of openness, and at different times in different places large numbers of Mongols were variously Christians (especially Nestorians), Muslims, Buddhists, or Tengrists.

This openness—as to religion, and to language and ethnic identity—also made them unlike all other large landed empires, which forced religious, linguistic, and ethnic supremacy on their defeated foes. The Mongols would watch the Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists compete in a religious debate, but they did not care enough to ban any of them. A very unique philosophy for imperial conquerors.

(with respect for John Green & Crash Course World History)

Standardization

The Mongols, despite their reputation as “barbarians” and killers (mostly due to hostile depictions by their foes and victims), employed a significant amount of standardization across their empire. As above, they used currency to standardize tax collection. They developed a post system that allowed riders to travel the length of the empire and find regular stops where they could rest and change horses (not unlike the Pony Express, but much bigger and more elaborate). Even the layout of their military camps and the organizational structures of their armies were standardized.

They made things easier to understand by standardizing them, which is a strategy that every large organization uses.

Communication

It was difficult to communicate across a large empire, especially when most of the soldiers and even the army officers were illiterate. A significant innovation in this arena was the use of rhyming songs. Officers could put their orders in the form of rhymes, to make it easier for couriers to memorize, since widespread illiteracy ruled out written orders. Even the rules of the army and laws could be set to rhyme and then sung, allowing soldiers to know and understand the rules that applied to them.

Large organizations also have familiarity with this issue. Though modern Western businesses don’t usually need to overcome widespread illiteracy, the problem of making expectations and instructions understood by employees and stakeholders is always present.

Offensive retreats

One of my favorite insights into Mongol history was their view of retreat. Mongol war strategies emphasized distance from the actual fighting, which is why they often favored archery, early firepower weapons, siege weapons, and other ranged fighting methods. Similarly, whether in small household bands or large conquering armies, the Mongols understood that retreat could be a key part of survival.

They did not accept a strict hierarchy or duality between advance and retreat, or pursuer and pursued. Because distance was safety, and the pursuer was trying to close distance towards the pursued, the Mongols knew that the pursued could quickly turn the tables on the pursuer. The Mongols often used a tactic of feigned retreats—after an initial clash with the enemy, the Mongol forces would fall back, enticing their opponents to rush headlong after them. The Mongols, at the appropriate time, would turn around and attack their pursuers. This was used successfully many times, including battles in Georgia, where the local aristocracy was shattered, and in Russia, where a 9-day feigned retreat turned into a slaughter of the Russians.

My interest is not in military strategy, but in the insights this yields into human decision-making. The Europeans and other opponents saw retreat as embarrassing, shameful, and dishonorable, and not something an opponent would willingly choose, so they saw retreating Mongols as fleeing for their lives. Their fixed and rigid view of retreat as a sign of their victory blinded them to the obvious perils of making a disorganized rush toward the enemy.

That sort of fixed view, blinding me to alternative implications of events and situations, is something that I try to carefully avoid in my legal practice. You can’t always avoid it, but when the stakes are big enough, it makes sense to consider the things you might be missing.

Humility

In that vein, I also appreciated Temujin’s advice to his sons. From the book:

He admonished them never to think of themselves as the strongest or smartest. Even the highest mountain had animals that step on it, he warned. When the animals climb to the top of the mountain, they are even higher than it is…