Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (44 page)

“unknown to the ancients:”
Francis Bacon,
Novum Organum,
vol. 3,
The Works of Francis Bacon,
ed. and trans. Basil Montague (1620; reprint, Philadelphia: Parry & MacMillan, 1854), p. 370.

“In the fresco cycle”:
Lauren Arnold,
Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and Its Influence on the Art of the West,
1250
–
1350
(San Francisco: Desiderata Press, 1999), p. 39.

“a numerous and simple people”:
Nicolaus of Cusa,
Toward a New Council of Florence: “On the Peace of Faith” and Other Works by Nicolaus of Cusa,
ed. William F. Wertz Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1993), pp. 264.

“among these various forms of sacrifice”:
Ibid., p. 264.

“It is proper to keep the commandments”:
Ibid., pp. 266–267.

imagery of Mongol greatness:
For more on “The Squire’s Tale” and the Mongols, see Vincent J. DiMarco, “The Historical Basis of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale,”
Edebiyat,
vol. 1, no. 2 (1989), pp. 1–22, and Kathryn L. Lynch, “East Meets West in Chaucer’s Squire’s and Franklin’s Tales,”
Speculum
70 (1995), pp. 530–551.

“This noble king”:
The original text by Chaucer reads as follows:

Heere Bigynneth the Squieres Tale

At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye,

Ther dwelte a kyng that werreyed Russye,

Thurgh which ther dyde many a doughty man.

This noble kyng was cleped Cambyuskan,

Which in his tyme was of so greet renoun

That ther was nowher in no regioun

So excellent a lord in alle thyng.

Hym lakked noght that longeth to a kyng.

As of the secte of which that he was born

He kept his lay, to which that he was sworn;

And therto he was hardy, wys, and riche,

And pitous and just, alwey yliche;

Sooth of his word, benigne, and honourable,

Of his corage as any centre stable;

Yong, fressh, and strong, in armes desirous

As any bacheler of al his hous.

A fair persone he was and fortunat,

And kepte alwey so wel roial estat

That ther was nowher swich another man.

This noble kyng this Tartre Cambyuskan.

10. The Empire of Illusion

“When Christopher Columbus”:
David Morgan,
The Mongols
(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1986), p. 198.

–
For information on the plague in Mongol territories, see Michael W. Dols,
The Black Death in the Middle East
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977).

–
For more information on the plague in general, see Robert S. Gottfried,
The Black Death
(New York: Free Press, 1983), and David Herlihy,
The Black Death and the Transformation of the West
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

bodies of plague victims catapulted over the walls:
Belief that the Mongols deliberately spread the plague remained strong enough to inspire imitation of it through the years, but without success. Russian troops reportedly used the tactic against Sweden in 1710, and in World War II, Japan tried it by dropping infected fleas from airplanes onto Chinese villages. The fleas had been exposed to a particularly virulent form of plague and did infect some villagers, but they did not create an epidemic.

the population of Africa declined:
For population estimates, see Massimo Livi-Bacci,
A Concise History of World Population,
2
^nd
ed., trans. Carl Ipsen (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997), p. 31, and Jean-Noel Biraben, “An Essay Concerning Mankind’s Evolution,”
Population
(December 1980).

the epidemic permanently changed life:
For a fuller discussion of the impact of the plague and similar diseases, see William H. McNeill,
Plagues and People
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), pp. 132–175.

“venerable authority of laws”:
Boccaccio,
The Decameron,
trans. M. Rigg (London: David Campbell, 1921), vol. 1, pp. 5–11.

Christians once again turned on the Jews:
For information on the Jews being blamed for the plague, see Rosemary Horrox,
The Black Death
(Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 209–226.

the Mongol authorities increased repression:
Regarding anti-Chinese policies on the Mongols, see John W. Dardess,
Conquerors and Confucians: Aspects of Political Change in Late Yüan China
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).

granted ever more favor and power to Buddhism:
Regarding Tibetan Buddhism under the Mongols, see Hok-lam Chan and William Theodore de Bary, eds.,
Yüan Thought: Chinese Thought and Religion Under the Mongols
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p.484.

         
the collapse came quickly:
For an account of the end of Mongol rule in China, see Udo Barkmann, “Some Comments on the Consequences of the Decline of the Mongol Empire on the Social Development of the Mongols,” in
The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy,
ed. Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 1999).

expelled the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish traders:
For more on the impact of trade, see Andre Gunder Frank,
ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 112.

Columbus embarked on his voyage:
For more on Christopher Columbus and the Mongol influence, see John Larner,
Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

“the most singular people on earth”:
The quotes in this paragraph are from the Baron de Montesquieu,
The Spirit of the Laws,
Trans. Thomas Nugent (New York: Hafner, 1949), pp. 268–280.

“I have confined my plan”:
The quotes in this paragraph are from Voltaire,
The Orphan of China, in The Works of Voltaire,
vol. 15, trans. William F. Fleming (Paris: E. R. DuMont, 1901), p. 180.

“The more I see”:
Ibid., p. 216.

“what have I gained”:
Ibid., p. 216.

“The
lips
are large”:
The quotes in this paragraph are from George Louis Leclerc Buffon,
Buffon’s Natural History of the Globe and Man
(London: T. Tegg, 1831), p. 122, quoted in Kevin Stuart,
Mongols in Western/American Consciousness
(Lampeter, U.K.: Edwin Mellen, 1997), pp. 61–79.

“The leading characters:”
Robert Chambers,
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
(London: John Churchill, 1844; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 307.

“the northern Chinese”:
Carleton Coon,
The Living Races of Man
(New York: Knopf, 1965), p. 148.

“Mongoloid race”:
John Langdon Haydon Down, “Observations on the Ethnic Classification of Idiots,”
Journal of Mental Science
13 (1867), pp. 120–121, Quoted in Stuart,
Mongols in Western/American Consciousness.

“Parents too nearly related”:
Chambers, Vestiges, p. 309.

“pre-human, rather than human”:
quoted in Francis G. Crookshank.
The Mongol in Our Midst: A Study of Man and His Three Faces
(New York: Dutton, 1924), p. 21.

“Mongolian stigmata”:
Ibid., pp. 72–73.

“Mongol expatriates”:
Ibid., p. 13.

“Atavistic Mongolism”:
Ibid., p. 92.

“from the East”:
Vladimir Sergeevich Soloviev,
Pan Mongolism,
in
From the Ends to the Beginning: A Bilingual Anthology of Russian Verse,
available at
http://max.mmic.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/index.htm
.

“dream of the past”:
Jawaharlal Nehru,
Glimpses of World History
(New York: John Day, 1942), p. 5.

calendar based on the year 1206:
For Information on the Genghis Khan calendar, see Sechen Jagchid and Paul Hyer,
Mongolia’s Culture and Society.
Boulder: Westview, 1979), p. 115.

translation of the
Secret History
:
During World War I, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions prevented much study of the
Secret History.
In the 1920s, the French sinologist Paul Pelliot prepared a French translation, but it failed to be published until after World War II. The German publisher Bruno Schindler of Verlag Asia Maior prepared the German text for publication in Leipzig, but because of growing Nazi persecutions, Schindler had to flee to England. He left the manuscript behind, where it was eventually taken over by another publishing house, Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, which managed to set it in type in 1940. In France, Pelliot’s translation was finally published in 1949. A complete Russian translation was made public about the same time, and the German edition appeared in 1981. Except for the few eccentric international scholars who worked on the manuscript, the world took little notice. Over the subsequent decades, these dedicated scholars from several countries labored to reconstruct and translate the history first into proper Mongolian and Chinese, then into Russian and French, and still now many debates still rage over particular passages. Some excerpts from Russian, German, and French translations did make their way into English, but overall the English-speaking world seemed to show a profound lack of interest in the Mongols in general, including this so-called
Secret History.

“the fortress of old Bukhara”:
Helene Carrere D’Encausse,
Islam and the Russian Revolution: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia,
trans. Quintin Hjoare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 164–165.

“to place the bloodthirsty barbarian Genghis Khan”:
Larry Moses and Stephen A. Halkovic Jr.,
Introduction to Mongolian History and Culture
(Bloomington, Ind.: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1985), p. 168.

Epilogue

“Is it our fault”:
From “Chinggis Khaan,” composed by D. Jargalsaikhan and performed by the musical group Chinggis Khaan.

A Note on Transliteration

Transliteration

There are at least a dozen systems for transliterating classical and modern Mongolian names and words into Latin letters, but no single system has been agreed upon. In the belief that scholars can easily understand all the spellings, I opted to use the renderings that are easiest for the English speaker to read, understand, and pronounce, and in so doing I adhere to the following principles.

1. If a common form already exists in English, I use it. Thus, I use the Persian name
Genghis
, simply because that spelling is more recognized than
Chinggis, Jenghiz, Djingis
, or the many other renditions of the name. Similarly, for the old capital I use the widely known Turkic form
Karakorum,
rather than the modern Mongolian name
Kharkhorin
or the more scholarly name
Qaraqorum
.

2. For toponyms, I prefer modern Mongolian names whenever possible—such as
Kherlen
River, rather than
Herlen, Kerulen,
or
Qerelen
. I use the Mongolian version of the modern capital
Ulaanbaatar
rather than the Russian form of
Ulan Bator
.

3. I use
khan
for tribal leader or Mongol king, but I use
Great Khan
for the highest office. To follow modern Mongol usage of
khan
for king and
khaan
for the Great Khan would be too confusing for the English reader.

4. One of the most common consonants in Mongol is the Mongol
kh
—similar to
ch
in German
ich
or Scottish
loch
. It is sometimes written as
q, h,
or an apostrophe.

5. Whenever possible, I avoid umlauts or diacritical marks. In Mongolian, as in the other Altaic languages, the differences between front vowels and back vowels is of critical importance. Anyone who speaks the Mongolian language will know whether the names are pronounced in the front or the back of the mouth, and for most other readers, the marks are probably not relevant.

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