Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World Summary

Does having a technological advantage always mean you will win? In my opinion, having a technological advantage does not always mean you will win. Some didn 't have any technological benefits but they still won, and some had many technological advantages but they lost. In Jack Weatherford 's “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World”, Genghis Khan 's conquest were made possible by his brilliant military strategies. He was ingenious at getting ideas from different travelers he met, such as Marco Polo. He also used traditional Mongol military tactics and more “modern” tactics such as guns. The territory Genghis Khan conquered was made possible mostly by his political abilities and partially by some new weapons. He allowed people he conquered all freedom as long as they obeyed his overall authority. Although, Genghis Khan had many advantages, he was best at using his clever military strategies. For example, before conquering the “Mongols would promise justice to those who surrendered, but would swore destruction to those who resisted” (page 111). This would frighten the empires and most of them would end up surrendering. Another thing Mongols did was “operate a virtual propoganda machine that consistently inflated the number of people killed in battle”, this helped spread fear (page 114).
For close combat he also used a sharp, lightweight saber with which he could cut and slash with one hand. He adopted the idea of a trebuchet from the Chinese, “a catapult powered by the drop of a heavy counterweight, threw objects even faster than the torsion catapult” (page 94). Genghis Khan also made use of the ballista which was a “mechanical device that shot large arrows that could damage buildings and structures and kill any person or animal in its path” (page