The Horde How the Mongols changed the world

The Mongols were sophisticated state builders who left a lasting mark on Eurasia, according to this eye-opening revisionist study. Favereau (The Golden Horde and the Mamluk Sultanate), a Paris Nanterre University historian, sketches the rise of the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan in the 13th century, but focuses on the subordinate territory of the "Golden Horde" under the Batuid dynasty of khans, who ruled over the steppe stretching from Central Asia into Russia and as far as Hungary. She pegs Horde society as a novel form of "nomadic empire" that migrated with its herds but promoted trade, commerce, and economic production among the sedentary peoples it controlled and taxed, using diplomacy as often as violence. Among the world-historical upheavals the Golden Horde facilitated, according to Favereau, were the Black Death and the rise of the modern Russian state dominated by Moscow. The author's accessible, wide-ranging narrative entwines political and military history with deep dives into everything from the Mongols' monetary reforms to their national beverage of fermented mare's milk, which, she contends, "strengthens the immune system and treats and prevents typhoid." Favereau downplays the bloodier aspects of Mongol power, but her detailed exploration of its more constructive side makes this a meaningful corrective to popular misconceptions about Mongols' role in world history. (Apr.)

Rather than being the murderous mob depicted in film and popular history, the Mongol horde, this book reveals, was a complex Euro-Asian culture whose history "remains as though behind a veil." From the 13th to 15th centuries, the nomadic people who composed the horde bestrode the vast treeless Eurasian grasslands, the steppe, that stretched thousands of miles across Siberia and west into central Europe. Deriving from the 12th-century conqueror Genghis Khan and existing, via his sons and others, into the 14th-century days of the great military commander Tamerlane, the horde divided and subdivided into many groups. Yet, as Favereau shows, its component parts maintained a remarkably rich and stable culture while absorbing and equitably governing the peoples it subdued. As much a community as a state, the horde created "a new kind of empire" suited to the ecosystem it occupied. The author dispels the myth that it was just a rampaging mass of warriors; it possessed great governing skills, was adept at social relationships, and remained a major force on the Eurasian landmass until it began to withdraw eastward after the Black Death. So why has its history been unknown and ignored? Because, Favereau contends, the Mongols, a herding, horse-riding agricultural people always on the move, left little by way of architecture, literature, and urban centers. This book helps rectify their absence from Western consciousness and fills a major gap in our knowledge of world history. Although the author writes her largely academic work with more fervor than grace, she fully succeeds in rescuing her misunderstood subject from the world of poetry and myth and anchoring it firmly in scholarly learning. Readers will have to adjust to little-known names, terms, and geographical realities, but Favereau does her best to help, and numerous maps, often missing in books of this sort, offer skilled assistance. A fine contribution to our understanding of the culture that "knit together east and west." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.