Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World: A Summary

By Betty Bassett

Genghis Khan was the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. He vanquished peoples covering 12 million square miles approximating four times the size of the United States. The Roman Empire, in comparison, conquered the landmass of only the size of one half of the United States. 

Was Genghis Khan as brutal and as savage a warlord as he was accused or was it a myth? Did he build pyramids out of enemy skulls? Did he boil people alive? Scholars believe that these were stories invented to terrify his enemies.

Regardless of methodology of demise the sheer quantity of casualties due to the Mongol expansion amounted to 40,000,000, twice that of Josef Stalin and Hitler combined.

Where is the silver lining? The Mongols in their mercy, or perhaps resource management always offered their enemies the chance to surrender first and join their ranks or otherwise be slaughtered.   

Despite the heavy casualties involved due to the Mongol invasion of the known world, many progressive ideas took hold and still yet endures in modern society: freedom of religion, meritocracy, equality under the law and free trade without taxation to promote commerce.

One man was the single perpetrator of the Mongol advance and his name was Genghis Khan. He was an illiterate Mongolian that became ruler of a population of 2 million illiterate people. Genghis Khan grew up in the part of Mongolia that was near Siberia. His given name was Temujin, which means “of iron” or “blacksmith”. He faced many hardships as a child because nearby tribes were often at war with one another. Life was short, violent and dangerous. People killed, kidnapped and enslaved one another.

Genghis Khan’s father, Yesugei, had kidnapped his mother to make her his bride. She was already married but according to Mongolian tradition it was acceptable to kidnap women of a different clan for the purpose of marriage.

Hoelun, his mother gave birth to Temujin in 1162. The tribe afterwards cast them out to die. Hoelun taught Temjun everything he needed to know to survive in the harsh conditions of Mongolia. When he was a child, he killed his older half-brother. Then he was captured by a different tribe and became a slave but later escaped.

The Mongols became responsible for many of the things we modern people now embrace in the way we set up our government and construct our society.

Genghis Khan through his conquest helped connect China and Europe by creating diplomatic bonds and trade routes. 

In his book, Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World, Jack Weatherford attributes the following to Genghis Khan:

A culture of meritocracy

A culture that believed in the rule of law

Strong sponsorship of European and Asian commerce through free trade and no taxation

A first culture that promoted universal literacy

A first international postal system

1. Unprecedented Religious Tolerance

One of the most striking aspects of Genghis Khan's rule was his policy of religious tolerance. Unlike many other conquerors throughout history, Genghis Khan did not impose his own religion on the people he conquered. Instead, he allowed his subjects to worship as they pleased, so long as they paid tribute to the Mongol Empire and did not engage in activities that threatened the stability of the state.

Weatherford would likely emphasize the importance of Genghis Khan's policy of religious tolerance as a model for modern-day leaders. In a world where religious conflict is all too common, Genghis Khan's example shows that it is possible to create a stable and prosperous society that respects the religious beliefs of all its citizens. Moreover, Genghis Khan's policy of religious tolerance helped to create a sense of unity among the various ethnic and religious groups that made up the Mongol Empire, thereby contributing to its stability and longevity.

2. A Culture Of Meritocracy

Throughout Asia before Genghis Khan’s time privilege and status was awarded at birth depending on the family that one was born  to. Genghis Khan awarded privilege depending on loyalty and achievement on the battlefield. Unlike many other rulers of his time, Genghis Khan did not rely on birthright or family connections to determine who would hold positions of power in his empire. Instead, he promoted individuals based on their abilities and accomplishments, regardless of their social status or background.

How did he set up this system?

In warfare Genghis Khan's force comprised of cavalrymen, who shot arrows from horseback.

 

He also had an army. Every male between 15 and 70 years of age was a soldier in the army. 

Genghis Khan appointed the best soldiers to be in charge of 1,000 men and those who were even better would be appointed to lead 10,000 men. Genghis Khan gave everyone the opportunity for advancement if they were loyal.

Genghis Khan's meritocracy is a model for modern-day leaders. In a world where nepotism and corruption are all too common, His example shows that it is possible to create a fair and just society that rewards individuals based on their talents and hard work. Moreover, his commitment to meritocracy helped to ensure that the most capable individuals were placed in positions of power, thereby contributing to the success and stability of the Mongol Empire.

3. The Rule Of Law

Genghis Khan's legacy includes his commitment to the rule of law. Throughout his reign, Genghis Khan worked to establish a legal system that was fair and just for all his subjects. He created a set of laws known as the "Yassa" that established guidelines for everything from trade to marriage to war. Moreover, Genghis Khan worked to ensure that the laws were enforced fairly and impartially, regardless of a person's status or background.

In a world where corruption and abuse of power are all too common, Genghis Khan's example shows that it is possible to create a legal system that is fair and just for all citizens. Moreover, Genghis Khan's commitment to the rule of law helped to ensure that his subjects were protected from arbitrary abuse by those in positions of power, thereby contributing to the stability and longevity of the Mongol Empire.

His system of law forbade theft, adultery, blood feuds, and bearing false witness. These laws were unique to the Mongol empire.  The laws, derived from Genghis Khan's  nomadic heritage, had a cohesive effect.  It kept an empire together.  The laws were known as The Great Law and were  devised by Genghis Khan.  They were revised throughout his   lifetime. The purpose of establishing these laws was to unite disjointed people and remove cultural tensions that could ignite civil unrest. The goal of establishing laws was to eliminate strife and to create stability. 

4. Free Trade And No Taxation

Genghis Khan exempted religious leaders from taxes and public duties. He also gave tax breaks to doctors, scholars, lawyers and teachers.

Genghis Khan turned conquered towns into trade routes connecting East and West.  He  built many roads to promote trade and to facilitate the Mongols' rule over conquered territories.   

 

The Silk Road which was the trade route linking east to west was stablelized. Tax exemptions were given to tradesmen and merchants who made use of this route.   

The Pax Mongolica, known as  the Mongol Peace, was the period of peace that was enjoyed after the Mongolian conquests. Because the whole of the Silk Road was under Mongol rule, trade flourished and technologies were shared.

5. Universal Literacy

 

Genghis Khan ordered the creation of a writing system to enforce his laws. It was absolutely the most widely adopted system of writing in all of Asia and across the stretch of the Mongolian Empire. Laws were outlined on a document known as the Great Yassa. Crimes were often punishable by death. 

6. Postal System

Genghis Khan invented the first postal system, which allowed people to share ideas and wealth across borders. Knowledge was the method by which Genghis Khan ruled his empire.  Knowledge also became the undoing of the Mongolian Empire when the Plague took hold. There was no one left to man the communications stations.  

In its hay day there was a Pony Express courier system. Every 20 miles was stocked with supplies of food, horses, and lodging. Riders could travel up to 200 miles a day by often changing mounts. The postal-station system was devised to facilitate the transmission of mail from one part of the empire to another. 

 

The vastness of Genghis Khan’s empire was and is hard to conceive.  How powerful was Genghis Khan?   His power came from the way that he was able to maintain new laws.  It helped keep peace among diverse conquered ethnic groups.

Undoubtedly there were positive aspects of Genghis Khan's legacy, but also it also left  devastating impact on the people it conquered. The Mongol conquests were marked by immense destruction and death, as the Mongols were known for their brutality towards conquered peoples. 

The life and legacy of Genghis Khan is nuanced with good and bad. He was in no small way, a great military leader and a champion of certain values, his actions left an indelible mark on the people he conquered. In the study Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire it is important to fully understand both the positive and negative aspects of their legacy.

In a historical perspective, while the Mongol Empire was certainly a destructive force, it was also just a product of its time. The Mongols were not the only conquerors in history to utilize violence.  By placing the Mongol Empire within a contextual norm for the time,  we could argue for a more balanced understanding of its rise and fall. 

Quotes from Jack Weatherford that illucidates the beliefs and influence of  Genghis Khan's:

The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead.

Genghis Khan warned his sons to only say what needs to be said. A leader should demonstrate his thoughts and opinions through his actions, not through his words: “He can never be happy until his people are happy.” He stressed to them the importance of vision, goals, and a plan. “Without the vision of a goal, a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others,

Victory did not come to the one who played by the rules; it came to the one who made the rules and imposed them on his enemy.

The Chinese noted with surprise and disgust the ability of the Mongol warriors to survive on little food and water for long periods; according to one, the entire army could camp without a single puff of smoke since they needed no fires to cook. Compared to the Jurched soldiers, the Mongols were much healthier and stronger. The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains. The grain diet of the peasant warriors stunted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones.

You may conquer an army with superior tactics and men, but you can conquer a nation only by conquering the hearts of the people.

In probably the first law of its kind anywhere in the world, Genghis Khan decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone.

Raiding followed a geographic pattern originating in the north. The southern tribes that lived closest to the trade cities of the Silk Route always had more goods than the more distant northern tribes. The southern men had the best weapons, and to succeed against them, the northern men had to move quicker, think more cleverly, and fight harder. This alternating pattern of trade and raiding supplied a slow, but steady, trickle of metal and textile goods moving northward, where the weather was always worse, the grazing more sparse, and men more rugged and violent.

The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches. It began on a specific date with a panel of judges to oversee it. In this case Mongke Khan ordered them to debate before three judges: a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. A large audience assembled to watch the affair, which began with great seriousness and formality. An official lay down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death “no one shall dare to speak words of contention.” Rubruck and the other Christians joined together in one team with the Muslims in an effort to refute the Buddhist doctrines. As these men gathered together in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing something that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history. It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade. In the initial round, Rubruck faced a Buddhist from North China who began by asking how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck countered that the Buddhist monk was asking the wrong questions; the first issue should be about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awarded the first points to Rubruck. Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God’s nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. As they debated, the clerics formed shifting coalitions among the various religions according to the topic. Between each round of wrestling, Mongol athletes would drink fermented mare’s milk; in keeping with that tradition, after each round of the debate, the learned men paused to drink deeply in preparation for the next match. No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.

The Mongols did not find honor in fighting; they found honor in winning. They had a single goal in every campaign—total victory. Toward this end, it did not matter what tactics were used against the enemy or how the battles were fought or avoided being fought. Winning by clever deception or cruel trickery was still winning and carried no stain on the bravery of the warriors, since there would be plenty of other occasions for showing prowess on the field. For the Mongol warrior, there was no such thing as individual honor in battle if the battle was lost. As Genghis Khan reportedly said, there is no good in anything until it is finished.

In contrast to almost every major army in history, the Mongols traveled lightly, without a supply train. By waiting until the coldest months to make the desert crossing, men and horses required less water. Dew also formed during this season, thereby stimulating the growth of some grass that provided grazing for horses and attracted game that the men eagerly hunted for their own sustenance. Instead of transporting slow-moving siege engines and heavy equipment with them, the Mongols carried a faster-moving engineer corps that could build whatever was needed on the spot from available materials. When the Mongols came to the first trees after crossing the vast desert, they cut them down and made them into ladders, siege engines, and other instruments for their attack.

In conquering their empire, not only had the Mongols revolutionized warfare, they also created the nucleus of a universal culture and world system. This new global culture continued to grow long after the demise of the Mongol Empire, and through continued development over the coming centuries, it became the foundation for the modern world system with the original Mongol emphases on free commerce, open communication, shared knowledge, secular politics, religious coexistence, international law, and diplomatic immunity.

 

Whether in their policy of religious tolerance, devising a universal alphabet, maintaining relay stations, playing games, or printing almanacs, money, or astronomy charts, the rulers of the Mongol Empire displayed a persistent universalism. Because they had no system of their own to impose upon their subjects, they were willing to adopt and combine systems from everywhere. Without deep cultural preferences in these areas, the Mongols implemented pragmatic rather than ideological solutions. They searched for what worked best; and when they found it, they spread it to other countries. They did not have to worry whether their astronomy agreed with the precepts of the Bible, that their standards of writing followed the classical principles taught by the mandarins of China, or that Muslim imams disapproved of their printing and painting. The Mongols had the power, at least temporarily, to impose new international systems of technology, agriculture, and knowledge that superseded the predilections or prejudices of any single civilization; and in so doing, they broke the monopoly on thought exercised by local elites.

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