Warning: For those who don't read headings - this blog is not easy listening. Also, the facts have been selectively cropped and may be a bit shaky...
I recently returned a borrowed DVD on the history of Genghis Khan (a bloody 50mins delivered with the courtesy of the british taxpayer by the wonderful BBC) to my DVD benefactor, who had selflessly lent the disc unseen, fresh and resplendent in its store cellophane. Displaying some impatience and the incisive need to solve and simplify that all engineers share in common, he asked me "so what was his secret, was he a diplomat or a barbarian"?
A fact that tyrants, and probably most politicians in charge of great states, divine, or more likely assume early, is that all great feats are built on blood. And so it is with great civilizations.
We pondered the success of the Romans, whose conquests translate down the ages as civilized, "light-touch" conquests, firm to be sure but fair. The romans' earmark may have been organization and discipline, from societal and governmental structures to sophisticated logistics, public engineering and taxation (haven't the Italians come so far?!). But they were nothing if not masters of warfare, with the military arts at the core of their society. The sword of harsh retribution hung suspended over every diplomatic endeavour, responded to every rebellion in the ungrateful and barbaric provinces.
That their reputation, filtered through the lens of the ages, appears as a success based on statesmanship, may be fair but is perhaps a result more of their wiliness rather than their restraint. In the era 100-BC to 300 AD in Egypt, which at the time was the granary of the Roman empire, so vital to Rome's stability, oceans of blood were shed but rarely by the Roman's themselves, preferring the vicious equilibrium resulting from localized rivalry among the Greek, Jewish and Christian inhabitants. Although its army occasionally waded in with some devastating purges, the area was largely off limits to Roman politicians, finding direct suppression and unnecessary involvement more often incited unrest or weakened its hold.
In Britain, outright Roman conquest was preceded by lengthy periods where the island gladly paid tribute, or at least eagerly sought "terms" right on the eve of invasion, so long as one would be so kind as to not invade one quite just yet, thank you kindly, terribly sorry for the inconvenience...
The Romans' did not reach their dominant position without repeated use of direct force - quite the opposite - by the time of a British invasion, word of the Romans' military might had long before reached the shores. And despite the acquiescing and diplomacy, Britain's time soon came; after a wee debacle where Caligula ordered his army to attack the English Channel then collect seashells as plunder, General Plautius (under Claudius) brought the Romans back to Blighty and forced surrender of substantial british forces after a shock and awe naval battle ending in the Thames.
I look out the window at the Hotel Kazakhstan, and ponder the Cyrillic "K" shaped neon. The K is not shaped as in the western alphabet but in cyrillic script appears tailed by what might be a trickle of ink or, given the topics I'm mulling, blood. The silty steppes, inhospitable and bare, have for millenniums been a ready sponge to soak up the life fluid of invaders and defenders, feuders and usurpers. There's no surprise that one of the most violent and shocking empirical forces the world has seen came from this hostile hand to mouth environment and the times in which Genghis lived.
Genghis' formative years commence with the slaughter of his father, promptly followed by the abduction and rape of his newly wed, and not long after the bloody betrayal of his childhood friend and co-chieftan. This once friend, Jamuka, seals the end of their alliance by boiling alive all of Genghis' generals in an impressive and presumably crowded iron cauldron, following a decisive (and disappointing for Genghis) first show-down. Genghis veritable baptism in blood should have ensured that Jamuka would go no more quietly into his good night than Genghis' generals screaming, spitting and bubbling away. But instead Genghis offered his childhood friend to join him again, and on refusal granted his request for a quiet and noble death (although the slow and purposeful breaking of someone's back might not sound it to us). He was a military genius, a leader of men, and wily in diplomacy. But like the areas other big hitters, the Huns, the Scythians, and Tamerlane (who in one battle sent burning, screaming camels against his terrified enemy to incite panic in their elephant vanguard), he was a man of the sword.
So the answer to the engineer's question was "yes"; barbarity and violence, and, equally, the threat thereof. It's an urban myth that Genghis Khan, voracious in his sexual appetites, past his genes to 20% of the modern world (probably more like 0.5%, but traced to his clan not to him as an individual). But it's well documented that he slaughtered up to 30% of the populations in the territories he conquered. The "scorched earth" policy of warfare was first traced to his Steppes precedents, the Scythians, and Genghis embraced it wholeheartedly and effectively, offering all towns in his path the option to (a) surrender or (b) to have their city razed to the ground and the inhabitants subjected to raping, wholesale murder and looting. They didn't always opt for the seemingly logical option (which in fairness, often turned out to be "C", "all of the above")
Violent, yes, and when he died, he presided over an empire stretching from Beijing to Europe, further than that of Alexander the Great, and going on to become the largest empire in history. Mr Khan is on record while lying upon his deathbed as being disappointed, nevertheless, that he hadn't quite taken the world.
