The Tartar Khan's Englishman

The Tartar Khan's Englishman PDF Author: Gabriel Ronay
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9781842122105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
"A splendid biography...it is gripping reading."--Economist. "No writer of historical fiction or Hollywood extravaganza could invent action half as exciting as are the rare adventures and painful peregrinations of this remarkable 13th-century Englishman."--The Times. Out of a 13th-century monastic chronicle came the seed of this incredible biography of the English-born personal envoy, interpreter, and spy in the house of the Tartar Khan. Pieced together by a Transylvanian writer who discovered the existence of this pivotal figure, it is a tale peppered with kings and warriors and mass murderers--and the mysterious man whose actions and diplomacy preceding the Tartar holocaust have left their indelible stamp on the face of Europe.

The Tartar Khan's Englishman

The Tartar Khan's Englishman PDF Author: Gabriel Ronay
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description


On the Trail of Genghis Khan

On the Trail of Genghis Khan PDF Author: Tim Cope
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408839881
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 694

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Book Description
The relationship between man and horse on the Eurasian steppe gave rise to a succession of rich nomadic cultures. Among them were the Mongols of the thirteenth century – a small tribe, which, under the charismatic leadership of Genghis Khan, created the largest contiguous land empire in history. Inspired by the extraordinary life nomads still lead today, Tim Cope embarked on a journey that hadn't been successfully completed since those times: to travel on horseback across the entire length of the Eurasian steppe, from Karakorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia, through Kazakhstan, Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine to the Danube River in Hungary. From horse-riding novice to travelling three years and 10,000 kilometres on horseback, accompanied by his dog Tigon, Tim learnt to fend off wolves and would-be horse-thieves, and grapple with the extremes of the steppe as he crossed sub-zero plateaux, the scorching deserts of Kazakhstan and the high-mountain passes of the Carpathians. Along the way, he was taken in by people who taught him the traditional ways and told him their recent history: Stalin's push for industrialisation brought calamity to the steepe and forced collectivism that in Kazakhstan alone led to the loss of several million livestock and the starvation of more than a million nomads. Today Cope bears witness to how the traditional ways hang precariously in the balance in the post-Soviet world.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World PDF Author: Jack Weatherford
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0609809644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The startling true history of how one extraordinary man from a remote corner of the world created an empire that led the world into the modern age—by the author featured in Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan. The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege. From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made.

Mongolia and the UK in the 20th Century

Mongolia and the UK in the 20th Century PDF Author: Zolboo Dashnyam
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 981161931X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
This book explores the history of Mongolia's relations with external powers via the prism of the relationship with the UK, drawing on archival documents and other historical resources in different languages such as Russian, Chinese and Mongolian. From the early history of the Mongolian state as part of the socialist alliance, Mongolia has had relations with the UK, which was the first western nation to recognize Mongolian independence in 1963. The evolving political situation in Mongolia and the world is here refracted through the relationship with the UK. Further, it introduces readers to the cultural and ideological differences between Mongolian foreign relations belong to different historical periods. This book will be of interest to scholars of Asia, of the post-socialist world, and of the role of the UK in the world.

The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes

The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes PDF Author: Max Hastings
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195205286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
This colleciton of anecdotes is principally concerned with American and British conflicts. Hastings has sought stories that illustrate the military condition through the ages, both on the battlefield and in the barracks.

Lines Drawn across the Globe

Lines Drawn across the Globe PDF Author: Mary C. Fuller
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228018412
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 599

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Book Description
Around 1600, the English geographer and cleric Richard Hakluyt sought to honour his nation by publishing a compilation of every document he could find relating to its voyages and trade beyond the boundaries of Europe. The resulting collection of travel narratives, royal letters, ships’ logs, maps, lists, and commentaries was published as Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Spanning two thousand pages and documenting more than two hundred voyages, Principal Navigations is a window onto how the world appeared to England in 1600. Lines Drawn across the Globe unlocks Richard Hakluyt’s work for modern readers. Mary Fuller traces the history of the book’s compilation and gives order and meaning to its famously diverse contents. From Sierra Leone to Iceland, from Spanish narratives of New Mexico to French accounts of the Saint Lawrence and Portuguese accounts of China, Hakluyt’s shaping of this many-authored book provides a conceptual map of the world’s regions and of England’s real and imagined relations to them: exchange, alliance, aggression, extraction, translation, imitation – always depending on the needs of the moment. At the height of the British imperial project, Principal Navigations came to be seen and valued as a founding document of English national identity. It remains a crucial piece of evidence on the history of empire, the nation, and the world. Yet after a century and a half of modern scholarship, Hakluyt’s book needs to be disentangled from the perspectives of the nineteenth century and read anew. Lines Drawn across the Globe works across the scales of Hakluyt’s collection to deliver a dazzling account of an editorial project that was fundamental to England’s encounter with the world – and the nation’s idea of itself.

Medieval Ethnographies

Medieval Ethnographies PDF Author: Joan-Pau Rubies
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351918613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
From the twelfth century, a growing sense of cultural confidence in the Latin West (at the same time that the central lands of Islam suffered from numerous waves of conquest and devastation) was accompanied by the increasing importance of the genre of empirical ethnographies. From a a global perspective what is most distinctive of Europe is the genre's long-term impact rather than its mere empirical potential, or its ethnocentrism (all of which can also be found in China and in Islamic cultures). Hence what needs emphasizing is the multiplication of original writings over time, their increased circulation, and their authoritative status as a 'scientific' discourse. The empirical bent was more characteristic of travel accounts than of theological disputations - in fact, the less elaborate the theological discourse, the stronger the ethnographic impulse (although many travel writers were clerics). This anthology of classic articles in the history of medieval ethnographies illustrates this theme with reference to the contexts and genres of travel writing, the transformation of enduring myths (ranging from oriental marvels to the virtuous ascetics of India or Prester John), the practical expression of particular encounters from the Mongols to the Atlantic, and the various attempts to explain cultural differences, either through the concept of barbarism, or through geography and climate.

The Cambridge Anthology of British Medieval Latin: Volume 2, 1066–1500

The Cambridge Anthology of British Medieval Latin: Volume 2, 1066–1500 PDF Author: Carolinne White
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316953173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
This anthology presents in two volumes a series of Latin texts (with English translation) produced in Britain during the period AD 450-1500. Excerpts are taken from Bede and other historians, from the letters of women written from their monasteries, from famous documents such as Domesday Book and Magna Carta, and from accounts and legal documents, all revealing the lives of individuals at home and on their travels across Britain and beyond. It offers an insight into Latin writings on many subjects, showing the important role of Latin in the multilingual society of medieval Britain, in which Latin was the primary language of written communication and record and also developed, particularly after the Norman Conquest, through mutual influence with English and French. The thorough introductions to each volume provide a broad overview of the linguistic and cultural background, while the individual texts are placed in their social, historical and linguistic context.

Muslims, Mongols and Crusaders

Muslims, Mongols and Crusaders PDF Author: Dr Gerald Hawting
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136027181
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
The period from about 1100 to 1350 in the Middle East was marked by continued interaction between the local Muslim rulers and two groups of non-Muslim invaders: the Frankish crusaders from Western Europe and the Mongols from northeastern Asia. In deflecting the threat those invaders presented, a major role was played by the Mamluk state which arose in Egypt and Syria in 1250. The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has, from 1917 onwards, published several articles pertaining to the history of this period by leading historians of the region, and this volume reprints some of the most important and interesting of them for the convenience of students and scholars.

The Middle Kingdoms

The Middle Kingdoms PDF Author: Martyn Rady
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541619773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
An essential new history of Central Europe, the contested lands so often at the heart of world history Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishments in politics, society, and culture. Central Europeans launched the Reformation and Romanticism, developed the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and advanced some of the twentieth century’s most important artistic movements. Drawing on a lifetime of research and scholarship, The Middle Kingdoms tells as never before the captivating story of two thousand years of Central Europe’s history and its enduring significance in world affairs.