After a long wait, the next episode of the Mongol Empire Podcast has arrived. Due to the amount of information I’ve accumulated, it made sense to split the Rise of Temujin over a number of episodes. These will be released each month, giving me to some point in the New Year to research the next stage of the history of the Mongol Empire. As for the Rise of Temujin, I have just got to finish off writing the last part of the mini-series and then that will be ready to go.
Looking forward, I have ambitious plans to increase the number episodes I release – not necessarily for the main narrative thread, but instead a number of supplementary episodes that focus on a particular subject or individual. Obviously, this will depend on the amount of material I can find as medieval sources can be frustratingly brief in their coverage of events and people.
The Mongol Empire Podcast website is slowly developing. I have set up an Imgur account to host images, such as the Borjigin family tree. I’m still not sure that Imgur is the best place for this sort of thing, but until I have a better alternative it will do (It wasn’t and as of 28/3/20 all images are currently hosted by the site). As I said in Episode 3.1, I want to develop more resources, including maps, to give better context to Mongol history as geographic locations in particular can be pretty meaningless.
Away from the Podcast and Website, I have returned from Japan where I had a good time watching the Rugby World Cup. The book Ghenko was interesting and Yamada did a good job of making a readable account of the Mongol invasion of Japan. However, it was written in 1916, and its age does show. Yamada holds the standard view of period that the Mongols were uncivilised barbarians with few redeeming features. There are number of errors relating to names, relationships and actual history, which isn’t that surprising considering that the only sources used for Mongol history are 19th Century western accounts such as Henry Howorth’s History of the Mongols. Where the book does excel is in it’s apparent use of Japanese sources and Yamada provides a detailed account of the Japanese reaction to the Mongol threat.
Whilst the invasion of Japan is quite a way off at this stage for the Podcast, Ghenko has provided an interesting introduction into something I currently have little knowledge of.
I should get back to finishing off the Rise of Temujin, so that’s your update for this week. You can find the latest episode of the Mongol Empire Podcast on Podbean, Stitcher and iTunes.