3/5 stars
Interesting, but frustratingly messy in places.
Bookended by the author’s personal experiences hunting for Genghis’ final resting place, and explaining the persecutions the Mongol people have experienced in the last century or so along the way, the majority of the book is a fairly straight narrative of the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire, constantly at pains to point out that they weren’t a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians.
As someone new to the subject, this was all interesting enough – but a) I was reading this to understand the post-Mongol impact on the world (as promised by the title) , not how they achieved power, and b) there was consistently far more emphasis on the eastern branch of the Empire in China than on the Middle Eastern, Indian or Russian wings.
This seems especially odd considering that:
- the author emphasises how much of the Mongols’ innovations in China were deliberately suppressed after their fall,
- the Indian branch lasted the longest,
- the Middle Eastern angle could have surely been tied in to the instabilities and rivalries in that region that have lasted to the present day, and
- that he starts and ends with personal accounts of Soviet repression of Mongol memory, implying that there remains some deep Russian connection.
None of these things are elaborated on at any length, which is a real shame, as the author is mostly good on his supposedly central thesis of how important the Mongols were on the creation of the modern world (although he is decidedly shaky on specifics in some areas).
I ended up left with the distinct impression that the book the author wanted to write was about the life, culture and history of the Mongol people, but his publisher insisted on something a bit more sellable, so tacked on the modern world pitch. The two parts may well have worked better as separate books.