The Guardian-Blockbuster show on Genghis Khan opens in France after row with China
November 3, 2023 4 min 696 words
这则报道提到了一场关于成吉思汗和蒙古帝国的大型展览在法国开幕，这场展览在经历了与中国的争议后终于得以展出。该展览包括了欧洲以前从未展示过的物品，吸引了大量观众。这场展览试图超越成吉思汗和蒙古帝国的电影刻板形象，强调了这个广阔大陆帝国在13和14世纪的地缘政治重要性，涵盖了气候变化、大流行病、地图制作和科学等多个领域。 这一展览的背后涉及到法国和中国之间的文化争议，其中中国试图干涉展览内容，要求去除一些特定的词汇，并要求控制宣传册、解说和地图。法国方面坚决拒绝了这些要求，认为中国试图对蒙古文化进行有偏见的重写，以符合其国家叙事。因此，展览最终是在蒙古和法国博物馆的合作下举行的。 这一展览提供了一个机会，重新审视蒙古帝国的历史对当今地缘政治的重要性。正如该展览的总策展人所言，蒙古帝国的历史反映在当代世界的中国和俄罗斯关系、伊朗和中欧等地的政治和领土问题中。此外，蒙古帝国的历史还涉及到气候变化、全球化和大流行病等问题，对现代社会产生了共鸣。展览的内容还包括蒙古帝国的宗教宽容以及对伊斯兰、基督教和佛教历史的影响，以及蒙古制作的地图如何改变了世界。 这一展览提供了一个深刻的历史教育，将蒙古帝国的复杂性呈现给观众，并强调其在当今世界的重要性。这也是文化和历史展览的一种力量，可以帮助人们更好地理解并思考世界历史和现代地缘政治。展览的开幕对于法国和蒙古之间的合作和文化交流具有重要意义，希望能够鼓励更多的人探索这一历史时期。
It was a major cultural row between France and China, prompting a history museum to pull the plug on one of its most important exhibitions of the decade accusing the Beijing authorities of interference and trying to rewrite history.
But now the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne history museum in Nantes has finally opened its blockbuster exhibition on Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire, with large crowds queueing to see hundreds of objects that have never been shown in Europe, some dug up by archaeologists only three years ago. It is part of a new modern reading of the geopolitical importance of the vast continental empire.
The exhibition, Genghis Khan: How the Mongols Changed the World, is the first French show about the warrior ruler, who by the time of his death in 1227 ruled over an empire that stretched from the Caspian to the Pacific, four times the size of Alexander the Great’s and twice the size of Rome’s.
Crucially, the exhibition seeks to look beyond the cinematic cliches of bloodthirsty warriors to the wider-ranging and geopolitically relevant lessons of the expansive Mongol empire through the 13th and 14th centuries, from climate change to pandemics, cartography and science. At its height, the empire controlled more than 22% of the landmass of planet, stretching from the shores of Japan to eastern Europe.
The museum row in 2020 focused on the project’s collaboration with the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China. Chinese authorities demanded that certain words, including “Genghis Khan”, “empire” and “Mongol”, be taken out of the French show. They asked for power over exhibition brochures, explainers and maps at a time when the Chinese government had hardened its discrimination against ethnic Mongols, many of whom live in the northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia.
The Nantes museum pulled the plug and refused the demands, saying Chinese authorities wanted “elements of biased rewriting of Mongol culture in favour of a new national narrative”.
The new show, which features more than 400 pieces including helmets, fabrics, ceramics and paper money, has instead gone ahead in collaboration with museums in Mongolia, the landlocked country between Russia and China. It comes amid fresh interest and re-examining of the history of the Mongol empire ahead of a planned Royal Academy show in London on Mongol art.
Bertrand Guillet, the director of the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne and Nantes history museum, and general curator of the show, said: “What seemed important when we launched this project six years ago was to go beyond the figure of Genghis Kahn, who is known in slightly vulgar terms as a bloody tyrant.
“We wanted to look beyond the bloody conquests … to explore the coexistence between sedentary populations and nomad populations, a moment of globalisation that allowed considerable exchanges between east and west, the transfer of savoir-faire, the transfer of materials, ideas and that moment of exchange which sparked great changes in the history of humanity.”
Guillet said it was a way of looking afresh at history’s relevance to current geopolitics. “The Mongol empire was gigantic and there are echoes of its political and territorial questions today in the contemporary world: the relationship of China and Russia, what happens in Iran, in central Europe.”
He said a close reading of the history of the Mongol empire also revealed how it was confronted centuries ago with climate change in a way that “resonates with us today”. He said: “There is also the issue of globalisation and pandemics. One of the reasons for the collapse of the Mongol empire was the spread of the great plague, which circulated on the main routes across it.”
Guillet said religious tolerance in the empire had important effects on history in terms of the spread of Islam in central Asia as well as Christian and Buddhist history. Also, the maps created by the Mongols changed the world. “That cartography would be seen by Marco Polo and feed the imagination of Christopher Columbus, with multiple consequences.”
The exhibition runs until 5 May 2024.