A kinder, gentler Khan.(Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World)(Book Review)

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford (Crown, 352 pp., $25)

FOR years the more robust souls here at NATIONAL REVIEW have prided themselves on being to the right of Genghis Khan. Now, however, comes Jack Weatherford, a professor of anthropology at Macalester College, to make the case for a kinder, gentler Genghis in his revisionist history of the fast rise and quicker fall of the Mongol Empire.

Blessed with an eye for the main chance, and a capacity for killing friends and family at propitious moments, the boy born in 1162 as Temujin dominated his tribe and, by 1204, captained it to triumph over its rivals. As they exerted their majesty over an expanding realm, this shaggy steppe-chieftain and his descendants became the emperors of kings.

Genghis sportingly offered enemies a choice: surrender or die. If they decided to fight, the khan was as good as his word, and they died--all of them, men, women, and children--but those who elected to pay fealty to the conqueror lived in peace under Mongol protection. The price of this privilege for the defeated was the mass-sacrifice of their native aristocracy and the export of their treasure to his coffers.

So far, Genghis Khan may not sound like a compassionate conservative, but Weatherford argues that his subject was a great deal more tolerant and far-sighted than his barbaric reputation suggests. Suborned peoples, of all creeds and cultures, were permitted to conduct their affairs autonomously--so long as they recognized his paramountcy. He was the first of the great free traders, a meritocrat, and, by the lights of his time, a nicely enlightened despot. You could do worse than being ruled by Genghis Khan, and many did.

After his death in 1227, his heirs bickered, yet still the empire grew, an achievement owed to the enterprising generals Genghis had nurtured, who continued their mentor's policy of attacking the world, as well as to the swift, and expertly regimented, Mongol cavalry. Much of China fell under the Mongols' sway, and, far to the west, the sultans, the Caesars, and the throned dynasts of Europe trembled at the approach of these strange and fierce Asiatics.

But within a couple of generations, this rags-to-riches tale turned into a cliche, with a cliche's inevitable ending: The descendants of the great khan, swaggering with booty and rather too fond of their mighty pleasure-domes (which they did decree), lost their will to power. There were the usual civil wars, several failed campaigns, a spate of poisonings, and a few palace coups. Ominously, no longer were the Mongols feared. And then, in the mid-1300s, the Black Death visited itself upon the Mongols as on others. Trade ceased, as did the flow of tribute. The Mongol periphery lost contact with the Mongol core, and soon afterward the Mongol Empire just up and slipped away.