Transcript for the Piece Audio version of RN Documentary: Cavalry, Caravans and Christians: Genghis Khan and Europe's first global age
MUSIC: Passages, WEATHERFORD 1A: In the summer?tribes. (27?) INTRO:
WEATHERFORD 1B: And the people..to this day. (30?)(or sooner) SOUND: Hurray sound SOUND: Leve de Koninigin?hurra. Every year, when the Queen of the Netherlands opens parliament, she is acclaimed with a triple ?hurrah?, a custom that has come down to us from the Mongols. (10?) WEATHERFORD 14: Yes it was picked?hurray. (29?) SOUND: Mongol Hurra This uncanny overlap of ancient custom and modern ritual is just a faint echo down the centuries of the tremendous impact which the Mongol invasions had on Europe. Dr. Jack Weatherford is professor of anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota and the author of an acclaimed book, ?Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World?. WEATHERFORD 9C: Well so far as we know?to this day. (17?) Within a generation of uniting the nomad tribes of the Eurasian Steppes into one unified Mongol nation, Genghis Khan and his sons gained control of the largest contiguous land empire in history. At his death in 1227, Genghis Khan and his nomads had expanded his empire to an area twice the size of the United States today. VEIT 18: An economy?control. (30?) (OR:?land. [38?]) Doctor Veronica Veit is professor of Mongol studies at Bonn university in Germany. VEIT 6B: Certainly Genghis Khan?personality. (50?)
Eventually Mongol power extended from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, over an area the size of the African continent. The Mongols conquered China, most of presentday Russia, Central Asia, Persia, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. Mongol armies advanced to the fortified gates of towns in Hungary, Ukraine and Poland. HEYNAL TRUMPET In Krakow Poland, a trumpeter sounds the call-to-arms from the tower of St. Mary?s church on Market Square. He does this every single hour. The music stops abruptly just before the last note, just as it did in 1241, when the trumpeter?s throat was pierced by a Mongol arrow. BRING UP TRUMPET This hourly reminder of a siege that took place almost eight hundred years ago reflects the suddenness of the Mongol advance.
VEIT 4: It might interest?with them. (38?) WEATHERFORD 4: The Mongols moved in winter?decimated. (1?07?) VEIT 17: The Mongols were so merciless?problem. (20?) WEATHERFORD 2: The Mongols certainly?history (47?)
MUSIC: Arvo P?rt, < CD Magnificat Antiphonen, ?O Adonai?, (1 min), Cappella Breda olv Daan Manneke,Wijnand van Hooff, WVH054. NOVGOROD CHRONICLES:
BATAR 5: (Mongolian)
Genghis Khan is Mongolia?s national hero. Since the end of communist rule in 1990, scholars in Mongolia have once again been free to give him the credit they feel is long overdue. BATAR 6a+b: (Mongolian)
In fact, from the start there were also positive legends. Writing at the end of the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer?s Canterbury Tales describes Genghis Khan as ?so excellent a lord in all things?. Perhaps Chaucer was influenced by Marco Polo?s descriptions of the splendors of the Khan?s court. In fact, by this time, the Mongols had withdrawn from most of Europe, almost as suddenly as they had come. WEATHERFORD 3:Their forays?.abandoned it. (25?) MUSIC : Richard Wagner, Prelude to Parsifal, But Europe?s curiosity had been aroused. At the very same time that the Mongols entered Europe, Europeans themselves had for the first time begun to move beyond the borders of the continent. Crusading Christian knights ventured forth beyond the Mediterranean and the Bosporus and set their sites on taking the Holy Land back from the Moslems. Europeans saw themselves as the good half of a bipolar world divided between Christians and infidel Saracens. When a third, unknown party,the Mongols, entered the scene, Europeans could not help but see them from within their own Christian perspective. VEIT 1: In the 1230?s?.Christian cause. (45?) WEATHERFORD 6: The Europeans?against the Moslems. (40?)
With plenty of room for misunderstanding, Europeans nevertheless hoped it might be possible to Christianize the Mongols. Royal and papal envoys were sent to the Mongol courts, and for the first time, Latin Europe came into direct and conscious contact with the Asian Orient. VEIT 7A: So pope Innocent?importance to scholars (46?) WEATHERFORD 7A: It?s one of the funny?among them. (39?) The Christianity practiced by some Mongols was Nestorianism, an ancient form of eastern Christianity dating from the 5th centuryBut the first generations of Mongols did not grant any religion a priveleged position, and practiced a policy of strict religious tolerance. VEIT 12A: This is indeed?reconciled. (33?) WEATHERFORD 8: Because as one?respected. (22?)
VEIT 12B: Well, this?exempt from tax. (31?)
MUSIC: ?Serenade?, < CD Egschiglen, perf.+ comp. Janzannorov, Heaven and Earth, HE1, C.240474, 2 min. Under the Mongols, one ruler controlled the entire length of the Euroasian continent, and this made it possible for people and services to travel huge distances freely. Merchants like Marco Polo were able to journey safely for thousands of miles from Italy to the Far East. This Pax Mongolica, as it was called, led to the most advanced system of communication known to man up to that time. Under Mongol control, the Steppes had become open thoroughfares for a global exchange of people, ideas and goods. WEATHERFORD 9A 1: Once the Mongols..Columbus. (54?) VEIT 15: The Mongols?each other. (39?) WEATHERFORD 9A 2: The Mongolians?trade system.(22?)
MOROZOVA 3a: The commodities?Mongols. (22?) No country in Europe was more affected by the Mongol conquests than Russia. Dr. Irina Morozova is a specialist in Mongolian history at the International Institute of Asian Studies at Amsterdam and Leiden universities. MOROZOVA 3b: The infrastructure?.later. (40?) Their encounter with the Mongols has left Russians in a lasting state of ambivalence about whether they belong to Asia or Europe. At times of conflict with the West, Russians tend to embrace their Tatar identity, At other times, Russia likes to see itself as a guardian of civilization against the Asian hordes, and as the self-sacrificing bearer of what is called the Mongol yoke. MOROZOVA 2B: And still? in the minds of people.(30?) It was thanks to the Mongols that Moscow became a new center of power and Mongol institutions like the legal system known as the Yasa have had a lasting impact on Russia. MOROZOVA 1b: The Mongols?Mongol empire. (46?) MUSIC: C.227297, Ar Khovchiin Unaga, trad., Mandukhai Ensemble, SA141006, Sunset France, 1 min. The Mongols lost control of their empire by the end of the 14th century. The Moslems consolidated their hold on the Holy Land, the Ming Dynasty removed the Mongols from power in China, and a new scourge isolated and decimated the interlinked communities of the Mongol Silk Road: the Black Death. WEATHERFORD 11: You know?Mongol Empire. (35?) Subsequent centuries largely forgot the Mongol contribution to civilization. During the Enlightenment and the age of imperialism, the Mongols became associated with barbarism and even mental retardation in children. But our own global age allows us to adopt a different perspective VEIT 13: Absolutely?ideas. (47?) WEATHERFORD 13: And also?more clearly. (32?) OUTRO/ Back announcement END OF MUSIC: Passages (see opening), 1?30?
Radio Netherlands Worldwide presents:
?CAVALRY, CARAVANS, AND CHRISTIANS:
Genghis Khan and Europe?s First Global Age?,
Presented by Marijke van der Meer
(OR: ?who followed him. (43?)
Europeans were overwhelmed by the speed of the invasion and could not defend themselves against the unconventional military tactics the Mongols used.
(OR: civilized people[24?])
Foreigners called Tartars came in countless numbers, like locusts, into the land of Ryazan?.The pagan and godless Tartars, having taken Ryazan, went to Volodimir, a host of shedders of Christian blood. ..And the lawless Ismaelites approached the town and surrounded the town in force?The pagans took the town, and slew all from the male sex even to the female, all the priests and the monks, and all stripped and reviled gave up their souls to the Lord in a bitter and a wretched death. (41?)
Numerous contemporarly descriptions like this one from the Novgorod Chronical of 1238 portray the Mongols as beastly cannibals. Some eye-witnesses believed they had come from Hell. In Hungary, a third of the people were killed or imprisoned. However, it has to be said that most historical accounts about the Mongols have been written by their victims. For a different perspective professor Bold Batar of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of Historical Reseach at the National University of Mongolia.
BATAR 5: (English voiceover) ?.people. (1?06?)
BATAR 6A+B: English voiceover. (50?)
VEIT 9: The Mongols? Mongols. (30?)
(OR: ?authority [55?])
OR: ?teach. (45?)
OR: ?religion. (17?)
+
WEATHERFORD 9B: So we began?connected them. (24?)
Passages,
