One begins to read this book about the famous historical persona from Mongolia, a land of mystery for most of the world and a land that much horrors emanated from for those that experienced the invasions and onslaughts, and the author assures us that the famous Kublai Khan and his much more famous grandfather Chengis Khan (Chingis Khan and Genghis Khan being alternative spellings) were not the murderous figures as they are normally understood but men of ability, thought, and more.
And then he proceeds to give the history of the person and the clan, with all that they and their armies, mostly cavalries, did to the world they touched. Horror it is, unmitigated horror, at every stage almost, considering how many hundreds of thousands were massacred in how many different cities in very diverse parts of the world, only because this clan began with the man who believed he had a divine mandate to rule the world - and his progeny inherited this belief and stuck to it, often when they lacked territory to rule, and had infights amongst the various cousins all progeny of the one Chingis Khan only so one could find supremacy to rule the piece of earth he had chosen to rule. As for descendents of this man, somewhere one has read that they number in millions, with whole villages of central Asia often claiming descent from him.
Not that descriptions of thought and details of administrations lack as far as the life and times of Kublai Khan - and his mother - go, but the constant running theme is war, massacre of cities that do not capitulate immediately, and subsequent taxation of the conquered territory for financing of the future campaigns of the Mongols. Having conquered the territory from Mongolia to Hungary via all of central Asia and much of west Asia, the clan has not enough yet, and gets their nose tweaked only by Egypt due to the change in land; then they - specifically Kublai Khan - turn to China, conquer Tibet and all of China and declare him emperor of China (hence the Chinese claim to Tibet and genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans with deliberate settling of Tibet by Han race from faraway east coast, all because if Kublai Khan was Chinese emperor he must be Chinese and not Mongolian, according to Chinese logic; by this logic Hanover could very well claim US and all the rest of English colonies!); and yet this is not enough, he must then turn to Japan and think about what next.
There are explicit details of how many thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands, massacred in what city, from Baghdad, and Nishapur (which translates as City of Night, in Sanskrt; so it probably was so prosperous a metropolis it need not sleep at night to save on oil for lamps) in Persia to various cities in China and Japan. But the horror of the whole Mongol mentality is reflected in the mere detail of administrative time when they are of the firm opinion that farmers and peasants should be simply driven out - no matter if they starve by millions - from their land, and the land turned to pasture for the horses of Mongolians, since Mongolian horses are more precious then humans of other races and nationalities.
Not that Chinese lack horrors to match - the explicit descriptions of their weapon sophistication leaves merely scientific progress as gap from then until now, with their not only explosives knowledge and usage for war but also chemical and biological weapons.
No wonder it takes so long to read this - it takes long to overcome the horror of various accomplishments of Mongols to be able to pick it up again and go on with the next part!
And Chinese solution to the shame of conquest of China by Mongolia is simple - declare the Mongolian emperor of China as a Chinese, claim his conquests as Chinese territory, and simply never mention any of the persons of any of the other races that contributed to the glory of China, such as the architect of the palace Kublai Khan had constructed in Beijing - today's imperial palace in the place is constructed along the same lines, following the same plans and dimensions, according to this author, post the razing of his palace by the successor.
One little detail - the famous wall of China was constructed to keep out other Mongols post Kublai Khan. Thank heavens, or else who knows what other parts of earth China would claim were a part of China!
These are some of the books I read during last half a century or so, and some of the thoughts, questions, reactions and insights, emotions - and so forth -, evoked on reading them, either then or later sometime during the interim years and decades, or even thinking over now, that are summed up here while trying to record my impressions about what I read.
Serene, Reflecting
Life Recedes