Customer Reviews

Biography - Genghis Khan: Terror and Conquest

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

It was pathetically inaccurate. The sole source they cited was the Secret History, and they had a Professor of Asiatic studies from Columbia U for historical advisor; yet, even ignoring the usual 'they were vicious barbarians' slant, the piece was riddled with mistakes. The first thing I caught was a misquote from the Secret History citing the legend of the five brothers as a story about Chingghis's immediate family. After that I paid more careful attention. They did not mention his name 'Temujin' once but rather saying he was born 'Genghis'. How can they claim to be biography and not even mention the man's name? They went so far as to claim his wife and mother started the war between him and Jamuga out of jealousy over their gay love. Another glairing mistake was the when and why of invading the Song. They glossed over any political interaction as Genghis 'finding an excuse to go to war'. For an amateur historian like me to so easily spot as many mistakes as I did is pretty sad. A waste of money!

How could history be put so simply like A&E does in every biography I bought about China and Asian history? I try to understand these works are for the general public, but the conclusion is that general public is being mislead with this kind of material. My first experience was with the Mao's biography, then with the one about Marco Polo. The worst is that I bought also the Pol Pot and Chiang Kaishek biographies and have not seen them yet.
The Gengis Khan biography is full of awkward commentaries with emphasis on a supossed bloody nature of the mongols. They were no bloodier than were the rest of societies that engaged on conquest, to say the europeans themselves. The Gengis Khan was more than strategist and a ruthless leader of hordes and tribes from Mongolia.
There is no analisys about the rising of the Yuan dinasty that was created after the mongols took CHina and the cultural, historical and political implications of the east-west contact.
The emphasis is put on extremely doubtful anecdotaries, that produces a sensasionalist account about the creator of the biggest empire of the world history.

Some images used in this program are Japanese pictures from various periods. One of them is Prince Shotoku from 6th century in Japan and nothing to do with this program. I began to wonder what is correct and what is not. So, I stopped watching it.

I don't understand why everyone is complaining about. This move is accurate and I have learned a lot about him. This movie is good.

To sum up the biographers' effort here in a word: LAZY. This pitiful excuse of a documentary betrays a profound lack of research and shows appallingly little effort to gain any meaningful understanding of the subject. For starters, they never once mentioned the Khan's actual name - Temujin - in the entire presentation. That's right, they never even gave his name. They just played it off as if he was born with the name Genghis Khan, which shows not only a lack of knowledge of his personal history, but also a lack of understanding of the language. Save yourself the money and just look him up on Wikipedia. The information there is at least as accurate and more comprehensive.

As an amateur historian, I teach classes to my local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) group on selected topics related to medieval history and how things were made back then. If I were to teach a class on the life of Genghis Khan, I can tell you it would include more information about the historical context of his life, draw from more than one primary resource and an author, and would show fewer blatant inaccuracies and a greater respect for the subject as well as my audience - and that's just me teaching a volunteer class of my fellow amateur historians! It's pretty sad when SCA members hold themselves to higher standards in pursuit of their hobby than the professional biographers at A&E can be bothered to aspire to in the production of a TV program. I guess this sort of filler is what you can expect from a 24-hour biography channel.

Film is excellent....several known scholars in the field of Asian history are talking heads among the recreated battle shots, etc. An intro and voice-over by Peter Graves during the film provide enough info for someone embarking on a study of the Yuan Empire or the Mongol Empire.