Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

by Jack Weatherford

Despite all that Emir Timur sought to do in restoring the Mongol Empire, he did not follow the ways of Genghis Khan. He slaughtered without reason and seemed to find a perverse but persistent pleasure in torturing and humiliating his prisoners.

When Timur delighted in public torture or piled up pyramids of heads outside his conquered cities, it was assumed that he was carrying on the traditions of his Mongol people. The practices of Timur were anachronistically assigned back to Genghis Khan.

The descendants of Timur became known in history as the Moghuls of India. Babur, the founder of the new dynasty in 1519, was thirteen generations descended from Genghis Khan’s second son, Chaghatai.

One of the first to reevaluate Genghis Khan was an unlikely candidate: peace advocate Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of Indian independence.

“It would be foolish not to recognize the greatness of Europe. But it would be equally foolish to forget the greatness of Asia.”

despite all the military prowess, he wanted friendly relations with the world: “His idea was to combine civilization with nomadic life. But this was not, and is not, possible.” The Mongol Khan believed in “the unchangeable law for ever and ever, and no one could disobey it. Even the emperor was subject to it.” Nehru then offered a personal insight: “I have given you more details and information about Chengiz Khan than was perhaps necessary. But the man fascinates me.”

In 1857, the British army removed the last Moghul emperor of India, Bahadur Shah II, and in the following year sent him off to exile in Burma in order that they might bestow his title on Queen Victoria, who became Empress of India in 1877.