The book is an exhaustive illustration of the above thesis subject since it exploits Khan’s military skills. The text equally elucidates the lustrous western perception of the Mongolis as savages because they brought civilization to its knees. The Mongals dealt ruthlessly with the ruling classes whilst they were overly friendly and liberal with the common masses that comprised of the peasants, tradesmen and extra. They levied little taxes to them; they treated with much tolerance and accommodation of divergent aspects of the locals’ culture and religion. Khan is also showcased as a ruthless barbaric blood thirsty individual that leads a relentless group of nomadic warriors in perpetrating ills against their neighbors. Tough, there is a contra in this attribute because he is equally leveled as a great leader with a wider vision that triggered a world attention with his conquest, activities of trade, innovation of ideas and development in technology. Khan fought his way to political power, he developed a military logistics that revolutionized war and deadlier weapons that facilitated speedy siege of the enemy in warfare and more accurate attack, this blended with his military skills and brilliance he was able to conquer opposing armies from Asia, crouch into the Islamic world and make the armored knights of Europe irrelevant. Even though he had a small army that did not mount to more than one hundred thousand he still subjugated many areas together with people in two scores and one year than the Romans did conquer in a period of four hundred years
The Mongolis invaders annihilated through massacre communities that resisted their encroachment. This was to act as a deterrent to other urban areas. The text emphasizes on Khans legacy as it attributes much of the produce of Renaissance such as gunpowder and printing to his legacy out of trade. They also give insights on other economic activities of the Mongolis people. Save from being merely prosperous in battle, the book denotes that, they led an elaborately civilized life as they rarely engaged in torture or maiming their victims.
The Mongals are portrayed as being very innovative and had soldiers gifted with speed and ability to maneuver drawn from their traditional war tactics used by the Stepe tribes coupled with a hierarchal type of governance that was peculiar to the kin based relationships. Khan developed this type of leadership from the former traditional ad hoc tribal orientations and brought in the neighboring communities into his army and his army practiced organized and controlled looting and the split the dividends on the basis of their preset concession. Khan
The book is a record of Genghis Khan opposing ends as he is given an impressive outlook in his initial moments of his reign before he turns barbaric. These presents him as an all rounded figure imbued with many gifting and one whose bad end measure with his good. For example he is a visionary tactician in war and is endowed with valor and courage that gives him the bigot to risk his rivals; he is also an image of relentlessness as he appears to have un swayed spirit in his passionate strive to subdue his targets. He uses scorch earth policy as a portent military tactic and mercilessly hands his victims. More contrastingly, Khan frustrates the conquered aristocrats yet he humanistic ally treats the subjects especially those that occupy the lower social strata in the conquered territories. Both contrasts of Khan as portrayed by the author in that he is a representation of an excellent leader which is an over appraisal and later on the angelic leader changes into a tyrant that molested maltreats foes in battle. He is revolution as he changes traditional form of governance and administration but retains the archaic and backward traditional war tactics of maiming their victims of war. Moreover the writer gives an elaborate positivity of a faire leader who presets a workable formula of dividing the ill gotten spoils or proceeds of looting. Save from the illustrations of the above strengths and weaknesses, he is also portrayed as barbaric in his mannerism of annihilating some of his victims and killing a number of the in a massacre.
The text alludes to the former stereotypes associated with the Mongolos as a backward and a tyrannical community though the author attempts to conceal this thus demonstrating his sympathetic nature. The writer has an empathetic quality because he conceals the stereotype associated with the Mongols that portrayed them as reckless and barbarians since they dealt ruthlessly when carrying out their attacks, for example, the massacre. The author therefore brings to a break the stereotype associated with the Mongols per se. the books strongest point is that it give a realistic treatment of the history of Khan albeit, its weakest point is its portrayal of Khan as an excellent leader in the initial phases of his reign and this is an exaggeration that comes out of the authors biasness.
In conclusion the book is worthwhile as it is a fervent portrayal of the duo sides of Khan as a military and a political leader. In this regard it is holistically relevant for this class as it reawakened the world political consciousness and opened up China, Islamic word an Europe intellectual capacitance it is thence of utmost relevance for current education in historical political thought and in tracing the intellectual enlightenment of Europe and extra. This is based on the framework that through innovation and brilliance the surrounding world could be easily conquered as Khan did.
Work cited
Paul Ratchnevsky, (1979), Genghis Khan: His life and Legacy. Blackwell.
