Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

By Jack Weatherford

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs

Anthropologist Jack Weatherford's 2004 history reassesses Genghis Khan, long remembered in the West mainly as a brutal conqueror. Drawing on The Secret History of the Mongols and other non-Western sources, he traces the Mongol leader's rise to power and the empire he built. Weatherford describes the reforms Genghis Khan introduced, and how Mongol rule brought lighter taxes, tolerance and flourishing international trade. He argues that by uniting East and West, the empire laid foundations for the nation-states and economic systems of the modern era.

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