Re: [Marxism] Pomeranz

["acpollack2@xxxxxxxx" <acpollack2@xxxxxxxx>]

Since Genghis Khan's name has come up: this may have been
discussed when the hardcover was issued but I didn't pay
any attention to the book until its paperback release. It
seems, from browsing it and looking at a couple reviews, that
it's somewhere between an academic and popular book, but
his main thesis is worth engaging with: that his conquests
played a crucial role in spreading trade across continents
and thus in shaking them all up -- enough so in Europe to have
led to the Renaissance. He seems to go overboard -- for instance
adopting the rhetoric of pro-globalizers to make Genghis look
list the first free-trader (sort of the way science popularizers
take a concept like chaos and apply it to everything under the
sun whether appropriate or not). And he's been challenged on
some of his facts (for instance his account of the sacking
of Baghdad is appallingly scanty.

But whether or not Weatherford is right that Genghis has
gotten a bad rap, that he actually encouraged exchange of
ideas and technologies, that he was tolerant of existing
cultures, blah blah blah -- the question is, did his
conquests play a pivotal role in the evolution (and/or
stagnation) of the societies under discussion in the
Pomeranz debate, if only in the sense that the barbarian
conquest of Rome had a continentwide role in both advancing
and retarding Europe's evolution, regardless of intentions.


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