Jack Weatherford: evaluation

Transcript context

…You mentioned that Genghis Khan’s childhood, Temüjin was marked by extreme tribal violence. Can you describe sort of the state of affairs in the steppe? How much violence is there? How much kidnapping is there? The story of Temüjin is not a unique story for that time. Now, as an isolated family of outcasts, of course he’s not participating in the various feuds and the raids of the people around them, but they are constantly raiding in the winter and for women and for horses and for any kind of valuables that they can find. It’s almost like their way of getting trade goods from China. That one group raids the other in order to find out whatever they have for textiles or for metal. Mongols produced nothing. They could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. And so they had to get these items from somewhere, and it was through raiding. Even in the genealogy of Temüjin, you see going back generation after generation of women having been kidnapped, children born who are not necessarily the father’s child, and it’s unclear who the father was, and all of these issues go back for a long time. Later, Genghis Khan will realize once he becomes Chinggis Khan, he will realize that the true source of most of the feuding on the steppe is over women. And later he will outlaw the kidnapping of women and the sale of women, in part not only because of what had happened to his mother, but what happened to him next in his life. And this is one of the things you talk about, this in some ways, the love story with his wife was her kidnapping, was the defining… If you could point to one place where Genghis Khan the conqueror was created, it’s that point, his wife being kidnapped. Can you describe, first of all, his love for this woman and what that means and what the kidnapping of her meant?…

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