Book Description
"In recent decades, the image of the medieval conquering Mongols has undergone a transformation, showing yet again how the present shapes the past. The shift in perception rests on impressive advances in scholarship on the Mongol empire, combined with political changes that have transformed the Mongolian nation from a communist cold war client of Russia and China into a fledgling democracy with an open economy." "From a twenty-first century scholar's perspective, the Mongols appear as early adepts of globalization, linking the remote ends of the Eurasian continent through diplomatic, military, commercial, microbial, and cultural exchanges - a prelude to the Columbian exchange of barely a hundred years later. In these pages, readers should gain insight into how the Mongols saw and experienced the world, and the logic of their actions in it. Although we cannot answer every question that might arise, we can be assured that the Mongols under Chinggis Khan and his successors constructed their empire according to terms that made sense to them." --Book Jacket.