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A review by alexandrapierce
The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East by Nicholas Morton
4.0
Read courtesy of NetGalley.
As a Jill-of-all-trades when it comes to history, I feel like "the Mongols" is one of those topics that a lot of people have vague ideas about but don't really know what they're talking about, or any details at all. Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, greatest land empire of all time... done.
Yeah. This book has made an enormous difference to the way I see the Mongols as a group, as an empire, as an historical force.
In his Introduction, Morton promises "a multi-perspective history of the Mongol invasions constructed from many different viewpoints". And that's definitely what the book delivers, as the way that the movement of Mongol troops - in and out of territory, sometimes staying, sometimes just installing new leadership after dismantling entire areas - impacts on a variety of pre-existing governments. The thing that surprised me is just WHERE that is happening... because it's the "Near/Middle East" (which is a stupid term for an Australian to use, but there we go). The book is focussed on how the Mongols impact on everything from Egypt, through the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem, to Byzantium, and to Syria and Georgia and Armenia. I don't quite know where I thought the focus would be - I knew the Mongols had briefly penetrated Europe and made everyone crap their pants - but this was not it. And the thing is, the Mongols are a significant force for DECADES. There are events in this history - across the 13th and into the 14th centuries - that I already knew but that I had NO IDEA were at least partly as a result of the pressure coming from the east, via the Mongols: either directly because of the Mongols' actions, or because of the movement of people driven out by the Mongols (directly or through fear). How is it I had no idea of this?? I'm going to say it's at least partly racism, and also partly the occasionally narrow focus of some histories - in trying to narrow down the historical story, some things get chopped. (Rant could be inserted here about how choices are made, etc... but I'll spare my reader.)
One of the slightly odd parts of this book is that it is NOT as focussed as I had expected. There's entire sections about the politics of the Franks in Jerusalem and the Crusader States... with no apparently connection to the Mongols. Morton gets there eventually, but it does sometimes feel like there's a lot of extraneous detail that wasn't required to actually understand the point of the book - the Mongols. Not that I didn't enjoy the detail! It just wasn't necessary.
Obviously, I learned an enormous amount from this book. About the Mongols themselves - how they were organised, how they viewed themselves (as having a mandate from heaven to rule, and that all religions were fine because they were all subsumed within their own), and how they dealt with subject people. I also learned a huge amount about what was going on in Egypt around the period of the Mamluks coming to power, and to the east I finally learned something about Georgia and Armenia, which hadn't previously come across my radar in this period. Also more about the Crusader States, and generally how all of these states interacted with each other. Which is also something that I feel like has been missing from my knowledge here. Of course rulers were in contact, of course they were making deals and alliances, including across religious and ethnic lines... but I don't really kn0w about them.
The book itself is well-written. I found it engaging - perhaps because I was already invested in the general period and area. As with all such books, I did sometimes find the names hard to follow... if only everyone in the past had differentiated their names more (did there need to be more than one Bohemond?). Morton has structured the book well, largely chronologically and within that, geographically. There are also some useful maps that make locating the changing circumstances of the various polities easier. Overall, definitely a good addition to my understanding of the world.
As a Jill-of-all-trades when it comes to history, I feel like "the Mongols" is one of those topics that a lot of people have vague ideas about but don't really know what they're talking about, or any details at all. Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, greatest land empire of all time... done.
Yeah. This book has made an enormous difference to the way I see the Mongols as a group, as an empire, as an historical force.
In his Introduction, Morton promises "a multi-perspective history of the Mongol invasions constructed from many different viewpoints". And that's definitely what the book delivers, as the way that the movement of Mongol troops - in and out of territory, sometimes staying, sometimes just installing new leadership after dismantling entire areas - impacts on a variety of pre-existing governments. The thing that surprised me is just WHERE that is happening... because it's the "Near/Middle East" (which is a stupid term for an Australian to use, but there we go). The book is focussed on how the Mongols impact on everything from Egypt, through the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem, to Byzantium, and to Syria and Georgia and Armenia. I don't quite know where I thought the focus would be - I knew the Mongols had briefly penetrated Europe and made everyone crap their pants - but this was not it. And the thing is, the Mongols are a significant force for DECADES. There are events in this history - across the 13th and into the 14th centuries - that I already knew but that I had NO IDEA were at least partly as a result of the pressure coming from the east, via the Mongols: either directly because of the Mongols' actions, or because of the movement of people driven out by the Mongols (directly or through fear). How is it I had no idea of this?? I'm going to say it's at least partly racism, and also partly the occasionally narrow focus of some histories - in trying to narrow down the historical story, some things get chopped. (Rant could be inserted here about how choices are made, etc... but I'll spare my reader.)
One of the slightly odd parts of this book is that it is NOT as focussed as I had expected. There's entire sections about the politics of the Franks in Jerusalem and the Crusader States... with no apparently connection to the Mongols. Morton gets there eventually, but it does sometimes feel like there's a lot of extraneous detail that wasn't required to actually understand the point of the book - the Mongols. Not that I didn't enjoy the detail! It just wasn't necessary.
Obviously, I learned an enormous amount from this book. About the Mongols themselves - how they were organised, how they viewed themselves (as having a mandate from heaven to rule, and that all religions were fine because they were all subsumed within their own), and how they dealt with subject people. I also learned a huge amount about what was going on in Egypt around the period of the Mamluks coming to power, and to the east I finally learned something about Georgia and Armenia, which hadn't previously come across my radar in this period. Also more about the Crusader States, and generally how all of these states interacted with each other. Which is also something that I feel like has been missing from my knowledge here. Of course rulers were in contact, of course they were making deals and alliances, including across religious and ethnic lines... but I don't really kn0w about them.
The book itself is well-written. I found it engaging - perhaps because I was already invested in the general period and area. As with all such books, I did sometimes find the names hard to follow... if only everyone in the past had differentiated their names more (did there need to be more than one Bohemond?). Morton has structured the book well, largely chronologically and within that, geographically. There are also some useful maps that make locating the changing circumstances of the various polities easier. Overall, definitely a good addition to my understanding of the world.