The book suggests that the western depiction of the Mongols as terrible savages that destroyed all civilization was due to the Mongol's dealings with the opposing hereditary aristocracies. In battle, the book claims, the Mongols always annihilated these ruling classes in order to better subdue the general population. Since, according to the book, it was these aristocratic classes that could write, their treatment at the hands of the Mongols was what was recorded throughout history. However, still following the book's line of argument, what was less well known was the treatment of the general population (peasants, tradesmen, merchants) under Mongol rule. The book states that in general Mongol rule was less burdensome on the masses due to lighter taxes, tolerance of local customs & religions, less capricious administration, and universal education for all.
Denigration
According to the books' narrative, the view of Genghis Khan changed during the 18th century:
Whereas the Renaissance writers and explorers treated Genghis Khan and the Mongols with open adulation, the eighteenth century Enlightenment in Europe produced a growing anti-Asian spirit that often focused on the Mongols, in particular, as the symbol of everything evil or defective... 254
Montesquieu writes disparagingly of the Mongols, as having "destroyed Asia, from India even to the Mediterranean; and all the country which forms the east of Persia they have rendered a desert." (The spirit of the Laws, 1748)
Voltaire, in adapting a Mongol dynasty play as an allegory on the present French king, described the Mongols as "wild sons of rapine, who live in tents, in chariots, and in the fields." They "detest our arts, our customs, and our laws; and therefore mean to change them all; to make this splendid seat of empire one vast desert, like their own."
Soon, the Asian inferiority model came to be regarded as the scientific view. The widely influential French naturalist Comte de Buffon, in his encyclopedia of natural history after many remarks disparaging the Mongol physique, described them as "alike strangers to religion, morality, and decency. They are robbers by profession." Translated from French into many European languages, his work became one of the classic sources of information during the 18th/19th centuries.
The Scottish scientist Robert Chambers wrote in a widely-read book:
The leading characters of the various races of mankind are simply representatives of particular stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. ... [in comparison, the] Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born.[12]
Soon it became clear that the Mongoloid race exhibited a close relationship to the orangutan, not only in facial traits but also in posture; both like to sit with folded legs in the "Buddha" position.
Mongolian features were linked to ******** people (as "arrested children"). [13]
