The Occidentals have singularly contracted the field of the
history of the world when they have grouped around the people of
Israel, Greece, and Rome the little that they knew of the
expansion of the human race, being completely ignorant of these
voyagers who ploughed the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, of
these cavalcades across the immensities of Central Asia up to the
Persian Gulf. The greatest part of the universe, and at the same
time a civilization different but certainly as developed as that
of the ancient Greeks and Romans, remained unknown to those who
wrote the history of their little world while they believed that
they, were setting forth the history of the world as a whole.

In our day, this provincialism, which impregnates all our culture, is
liable to have disastrous consequences politically, as well as for the
civilization of mankind. We must make room for Asia in our thoughts, if
we are not to rouse Asia to a fury of self-assertion.

After the Han dynasty there are various short dynasties and periods of
disorder, until we come to the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907). Under this
dynasty, in its prosperous days, the Empire acquired its greatest
extent, and art and poetry reached their highest point.[10] The Empire
of Jenghis Khan (died 1227) was considerably greater, and contained a
great part of China; but Jenghis Khan was a foreign conqueror. Jenghis
and his generals, starting from Mongolia, appeared as conquerors in
China, India, Persia, and Russia. Throughout Central Asia, Jenghis
destroyed every man, woman, and child in the cities he captured. When
Merv was captured, it was transformed into a desert and 700,000 people
were killed. But it was said that many had escaped by lying among the
corpses and pretending to be dead; therefore at the capture of Nishapur,
shortly afterwards, it was ordered that all the inhabitants should have