With an army of less than one hundred thousand men and in just twenty-five years, Genghis Khan managed to subdue more territories and people than the Romans did in four centuries.
His empire, which stretched from the snowy Siberian tundra to the hot plains of India, from Korea to the Balkans, covered at its peak between seventeen and nineteen million square kilometers, the approximate area of the African continent. The Mongol leader conquered more than twice as many regions as any other man in history. However, the popular image of him is much less benevolent than those of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. He was the archetype of the barbarian, of the bloody and ruthless savage.
Genghis Khan (1162-1227) was born in an environment of enormous tribal violence, characterized by murders, kidnappings and enslavement, into an outlaw family abandoned on the steppes. While still a child, he killed his older half-brother and was captured and chained by a rival clan until he managed to escape from him. All this information contributes to configuring a cauldron of horrors. But that boy who was afraid of dogs and cried very easily was predestined to change the world, as his mother de ella prophesied when observing the blood clot in her hand, although not opening the doors of barbarism and destruction, but rather connecting it , making it modern.
The military expansionism of the Mongols had unexpected and revolutionary global consequences: it changed the way of waging war, prioritizing speed and surprise on the battlefield over city fortifications, it unified tribes, it connected civilizations of Europe and Asia. and opened new trade routes, overthrew the feudal system... This is what the historian and anthropologist Jack Weatherford explains in his suggestive and original book Genghis Khan and the Creation of the Modern World, now published in Spanish by Ático de los Libros.
According to the researcher, a specialist in tribal peoples and recipient of the Order of the North Star, the highest decoration awarded by the Mongolian government to foreign citizens, for his studies and books on Genghis Khan and the Mongols, the empire erected by the conqueror developed a unique system based on personal merits, loyalty and the achievement of objectives. He lowered taxes, established the first international postal system and created a kind of international law. He also granted religious freedom in his dominions, diplomatic immunity to all ambassadors and legates, and abolished torture.