Reviews of this book quickly fall down on the matter of how to spell the names of the characters. Granting that all representations of Mongol names in written languages other than Mongolian are suspect as transliterations at best, it's perhaps not surprising that reviewers come up with variant forms of names. Thus, the name of Genghis Khan's Yuan grandson is herein rendered as 'Kubilai', rather than the more common form 'Kublai'. It's not, apparently, anything out of ordinary that any Mongol history is 'secret'; apparently they all were. The Mongols (and related steppe tribes) developed a written language about a generation before the time of Genghis Khan, but they apparently didn't develop a concept of libraries and archives until considerably later. The result is that the records of the Mongols were (a) secret, in the sense that they were locked up and non-Mongols weren't allowed access to them, and (b) chaotic--poorly cataloged at best, and not well organized.This becomes even more difficult to trace because the records of the queens were apparently deliberately excised later. This means that anybody trying to reconstruct the history of the queens had to search archives from other nations and cultures, which often had quite severe implicit and explicit biases. And, since the author of this book is an anthropologist, he also works from oral history sources, though he argues that he doesn't accept these oral reports without cross-checking them with literary sources.There's a lot left out of this book. There's no mention whatever, as far as I can discern, of the Mughal Empire (probably because it's after the scope of the book). Many of the statements are hyperbolic. There was no time in which the Mongol Empire covered the whole Earth, for example. Though the northern Mongols had lands in Siberia, there's no indication that they were aware of the Americas, for example, though Siberians had relatives across what became the Bering Strait long before it was called that. And the whole Pacific Ocean seems to have been terra incognita to the Mongols, who never did develop a maritime tradition, apparently. Their empire may have been very large, but it was NOT worldwide.The uncertainties are so great that the author can't even say with certainty how many daughters, wives, or daughters-in-law Genghis Khan had. Often whole stories are based on very limited references.Notwithstanding these limitations, this book covers areas that often are ignored in histories, including things like the history of the Tatars, and of the Uighurs. But it's quite confusing, lifted out of its matrix. There really needs to have been a page or two of timeline. There are dates in the book, but whole segments are left out. Late in the book, it's stated that Columbus carried a letter addressed to the 'Great Khan' of the time--but since the Spanish Court didn't know who that would be (the book implies that the names, in 1492, would have properly been Manhudai the Wise and her foster-son/consort Dayan Khan), the actual names are left blank. Not that Columbus would have found any of the 'Great Khan's' representatives in the Caribbean anyway--but the point is that the records of the Europeans were anything but up to date. Late in the book the implication is that the Great Wall of China was first planned as late as the 15th century CE. My first response, that this was preposterous, proved out. Any wall that was built at the time would have simply been an extension of much more ancient walls, which began being built as early as the 7th century BCE. It's odd to argue that a historical book actually comes off as quite ahistorical. The only explanation I can come up with is to go back to the point I mentioned earlier--that the author is an anthropologist, not a historian, and that he goes to historical records as a check on information he has received from informants. Oral history is often short on precise dates, being more a matter of 'before, after, and at the same time as.".One note that I felt was not sufficiently developed: although the sons of Genghis Khan (and their male descendants) are represented as incompetent, their main incompetency seems to have been a predisposition toward alcoholism, which was not, as far as I can tell, schooled or treated in any way. The argument is made that since the primary fermented production of the steppes was fermented mare's milk (very low in alcohol), that there was no custom of temperance. Maybe so--in the first generations. But why wouldn't one be developed, later? And why were only men susceptible? There seems to have been some sort of cultural transition that needed to be made--and wasn't one The rise, fall, and rise of the Mongol empire is a fascinating part of history that doesn't really get taught in American classrooms. Weatherford's second book on the Mongols focuses on Genghis Khan's female decendents, and while there are a lot of great stories in here, it covers such a wide swath of history that it's much less cohesive than his first book, which focused on Genghis Khan and his immediate successors. This is really two stories — how Genghis granted his empire to his daughters, only to see his drunken, incompetent sons take it from them and lead it to ruin; and how his descendent Manduhai rebuilt the core of his empire centuries later. She's as fascinating a figure as her ancestor. But in between their two lifetimes, the book drags, as it jumps from one brief story to another, often conflating mythology and fact.
What do You think about Ratu Mongol (2011)?
A fascinating look at the women that shaped the Mongol Empire.
—john
Not quite as good as his other book on Genghis Kahn
—Webstar
