#476 – Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire
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Companies
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Key Quotes
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Topics
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Insights
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: #476 – Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire
This 279-minute episode features an in-depth conversation between the host and Jack Weatherford, a renowned anthropologist and historian specializing in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. The discussion focuses heavily on the formative, brutal childhood of Temüjin (the future Genghis Khan) and how these early experiences shaped the creation of the largest contiguous land empire in history.
1. Focus Area
The primary focus is Historical Anthropology and Military/Social Organization, specifically examining the life, context, and legacy of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. Key themes include the harsh realities of the Mongolian steppe, the role of kinship and betrayal, the origins of Mongol law and governance, and the social structures (including the status of women) that underpinned their rapid expansion.
2. Key Technical Insights
- Weaponization of Environment/Objects: Early in his captivity, Temüjin escaped a yoke (kank) by using the device itself as a weapon against his guard, illustrating an early Mongol tactical principle: “If it moves, it’s a weapon.” This highlights a pragmatic, opportunistic approach to warfare and survival.
- The Importance of the Cart (Ger Ownership): The episode details that in Mongol society, women owned the gers (tents) and the carts used to move them. This established a fundamental division of labor and property rights, where the movement of the household was dictated by the women.
- Foundation of Mongol Law (Yassa): Weatherford links Genghis Khan’s later legal reforms directly to his personal trauma. His decision to outlaw the kidnapping and sale of women stemmed from the repeated betrayal and abandonment suffered by his mother, Börte, and later, the kidnapping of his wife, Börte.
3. Market/Investment Angle
While not a direct financial discussion, the historical context offers strategic parallels:
- Leveraging Disruption for Consolidation: Genghis Khan’s rise demonstrates how extreme environmental and social disruption (the collapse of his family unit) can forge unparalleled leadership capable of imposing new, unifying structures (the Empire) over fractured entities.
- Risk Management through Systemic Change: His later outlawing of endemic raiding and kidnapping was a strategic move to reduce internal friction and resource drain, stabilizing the base of the empire before external expansion. This mirrors modern corporate strategy of eliminating internal inefficiencies.
- Importance of Global Macro Context: The sponsor mention of A Leo Capital frames the discussion within the necessity of understanding complex, shifting global macroeconomic systems to make sound investment decisions—a parallel to the complex, shifting tribal politics the Mongols navigated.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Jack Weatherford: The expert guest, providing deep historical context.
- Temüjin (Genghis Khan): The central figure, whose early life (abandonment, kidnapping, poverty) is meticulously detailed.
- Erülün (Temüjin’s Mother): Portrayed as the resilient core of the family, who single-handedly saved her children by digging for roots during starvation.
- Börte (Temüjin’s Wife): Her kidnapping at age 17 was the pivotal event that solidified Temüjin’s resolve and later influenced his legal framework.
- Sponsors Mentioned: A Leo Capital (AI/Macro Investing), ZockDock (Healthcare access), Fen (AI Customer Service), Oracle (Cloud Infrastructure/AI scaling), Shopify (E-commerce platform), Masterclass (Education), Element (Electrolytes).
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
The discussion heavily covers the creation of Mongol policy. Genghis Khan’s later legal code was a direct response to the chaos of the steppe:
- Outlawing Kidnapping/Sale of Women: A direct response to his mother’s and wife’s experiences, aiming to reduce internal conflict driven by sexual competition and property disputes.
- Challenging Kinship: Temüjin’s early life proved that traditional Mongol reliance on blood kinship was unreliable, leading him to build an empire based on merit and loyalty to him rather than inherited tribal ties.
6. Future Implications
The conversation underscores that foundational trauma and environmental pressure are powerful catalysts for radical innovation in governance and social structure. The Mongol Empire’s success lay in its ability to create a unified, meritocratic system that transcended the traditional, often destructive, tribal loyalties of the steppe.
7. Target Audience
This episode is most valuable for Historians, Anthropologists, Strategists, Leaders, and anyone interested in the deep origins of statecraft, military organization, and leadership forged under extreme duress.
Comprehensive Summary
This extensive conversation with Jack Weatherford dives deep into the crucible that forged Genghis Khan, arguing that his entire life and subsequent empire were defined by the traumatic events preceding his birth and during his childhood. The narrative arc begins with the dramatic, near-criminal kidnapping of his mother, Erülün, by his father, Yesügei, setting a precedent of violence and fractured kinship. Temüjin was named after a man his father killed, and his early life was marked by repeated abandonment: being left behind by his parents, being separated from his father, and ultimately, his father’s poisoning.
The discussion emphasizes the brutality of the Mongolian steppe, where raiding for resources (especially women and trade goods) was endemic. Temüjin’s experience was uniquely harsh; after his father’s death, his mother
🏢 Companies Mentioned
Joriga Day
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Jankus Khan
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But Taimujin
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So Taimujin
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But Bichter
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So Tamujan
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So Bersht
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Lake Baikal
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Seleng River
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Vang Han
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And Vang Han
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Bhutan Chhat
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Timu Jin
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And Vanghahn
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Mother Erlun
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💬 Key Insights
"Hamas did a definitively evil act on October 7th, brutally murdering over 1000 civilians. But now, the acts of war conducted by the Israeli government have led to the death of over 60,000 people in Gaza... of which at least 17,000 are children."
"Unlike the more complexity of deep history... this is the 21st century. This is today. In this, the 21st century, I see things quite simply, and clearly, to me, the death of a child is a tragedy. It doesn't matter what their skin color is, what their religion is, or what plot of land they call home."
"I think what is happening in Gaza is an atrocity. And I think that the Israeli government is directly responsible for it. And to the degree of the US government is assisting the Israeli government in this... it needs to stop immediately."
"She said, This disease is going to take my life, but it's taking your life. She said, you gave up teaching and you gave up writing. And she said, How do you expect me to die in peace if I know that you gave up everything to this disease? You should write."
"she said, just tell the story to me. But I can't see you while you tell it. You're on the radio and I'm listening in my car driving somewhere. Just tell the story to me."
"I get to chapter or number or section 215 and there's only half a sentence left and 214 he's just awarded a girl he calls his daughter so she's probably a cliente or but she lives with his mother at this point his youngest son to low is only four years old a tatar comes and a mother urlun gives him food because you food everybody he realizes this is the mother of Chinggis Khan and that's the child of Chinggis Khan he grabs him up and kidnaps him and runs out and he's holding the child in one hand and he's pulling out a knife with another hand al-tani raced out and she grabbed his arm and held it down and two men jib and jil they were back behind the gear slaughtering an ox with an axe because you have to do it in the shade behind the gear that's you don't do it in the light and so they were back there doing that and so they raced out with the axe and they killed the man and so then Chinggis Khan was rewarding everybody for all their great deeds and jilman and jib they wanted to be rewarded for saving the life of talo you said no you killed the tatar al-tani saved his life because she held a hand that had the the knife until you got there to kill him she saved it and now we reward her"
📊 Topics
#artificialintelligence
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#investment
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#aiinfrastructure
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🧠 Key Takeaways
say that it's a pretty powerful part of this love story is that the child is likely not his and he accepted that child as his own without and defended it as it becomes much more important later as his first child
judge him any differently than other conquerors in history and other countries today that fight wars, including our own country
be able to understand why Chinggis Han or the Mongols did it
feel sorry from them and nostalgic about everything about them and maybe we're some of their beads or some of their clothing to show how much we sympathize with their suffering
say that this is the the time of the summer I yeah Japan so so there was never a real test of like that no there was some fighting and the summer I learned some very valuable things the summer I had such a ritualized way of like the Knights of Europe coming out with armor that had to be lifted up on a crane onto a horse and I mean it was just craziness crazy to the summer right almost at that point you ride out in front of your enemy and you recite the story of your genealogy all right what you know Mongols they have no use for that are there there to fight they're there to win but on the other hand this was a unknown territory to them and the weather did turn against them but I don't want to give too much credit to weather I really think that the Japanese defeated them the Mongols weren't well prepared their ships were not very good they were defeated in the first invasion could they get off the ships onto the beach or they did they had some skirmishes or small battles on land yes they did but they didn't successfully complete them no no so they couldn't do their usual Mongol thing you're right well see they don't have enough horses for one thing yeah you know and uh there were many tactical things that they had done incorrectly it's the first time anybody had ever tried to have such a massive invasion yeah so they're just learning the basics of what it means to have a navy so he has failed to conquer and he's thinking like a Mongol that you rule the those waters and lands but he ruled the ocean he stopped the trade he stopped the supply he cut off the possibility of the Song Dynasty fleeing to Japan he won in a certain way he lost but he had won his objective of cutting off southern China also it gave him navy some experience with the ocean and now they were ready to move out into the ocean around southern China so they were closing in then Aju was in command but actually the head command was a man named Bayan who was a Mongol who had been raised more in Central Asia he was perhaps born close to the Fagana Valley in that area we're not exactly sure where he's born but he grew up over there and then he eventually was living in what's now Iran what he came and he took over command of the army he was very cosmopolitan sophisticated intelligent Aju should have been in command but Bayan recognized that and he and Aju worked together very well Aju knew how to fight the war Bayan was able to negotiate things back with the capital city and handle things so Bayan is in command and so the generals are deserting the south song right and left the artisans are all coming up to join the Mongols great-paid the generals are loading up the boats with all the jewels and they grab a couple of brothers to the little five-year-old emperor and they put them on a boat and they're fleeing they even deserted their own families the generals were corrupt cowards who fled the person left in charge was the Dowager Empress an old lady shout no children she was her name the Dowager Empress she they said she was missing an eye she was ugly they're a cullter ugly she that's what they called her at that time she was in charge and she offered the Mongols everything I'll give you everything please let the Empress stay okay even if you demote him to just being a king please let him stay Bayan said no total surrender total surrender so she decided to surrender well she said yes we will surrender the capital so Bayan came in with a small group of soldiers they looked around and she invited him to come to the palace to surrender and he said no I didn't win this war in the palace my soldiers won this war in the field you have to come with the emperor in front of my soldiers to surrender but he did not harm her he respected her and there was no looting of the city now later they take everything in a very systematic way they take the archives and all this kind of stuff away but there's no wholesale looting a killing of people nothing like that so they've taken the capital and she comes out she surrenders she bows on the ground towards Beijing and then she takes the child emperor and they slowly make their way she was a little bit sick it took her a longer time to Beijing and they surrender again in a public ceremony bowing to the Kubla Khan he gives each of them a palace he gives them a new new title he probably is trying to show the world this is the new face of Mongols we don't kill off the old people anymore who are really we're going to give them a palace treat them nicely and all but the navy that had fled did not defend the city those cowardly generals they made the new little boy seven-year-old brother half brother to to Emperor Gong was his name they made him the emperor well they're just floating around in the ocean losing all support from city after city the Muslims who were controlling the trade and controlling many of the ships of that area they were Chinese Muslims but they were still Muslims they switched sides to the Mongols because of the religious freedom thing and because they were merchants and their status would be raised so the the Muslims were switching over the fleet was kind of a fleet lost without a country out there they had some loyal supporters some places are they dropped the emperor into ocean what do you mean how do you drop the emperor into ocean they accidentally spilled him into ocean and then they fished him out but he died so fortunately they had one more seven-year-old half brother so on Lentao island exactly where the Hong Kong airport is today the new well it's not so new anymore but I still think it was the new airport on Lentao island so they went there and they had a big coronation ceremony and all but the people there were not supportive enough it certainly wasn't Hong Kong then anyway at the delta of the Pearl River so they they sailed out farther south to another island and then they took it over and of course the first thing they did was well we have to build a palace what the Mongols are chasing you and you can stop and build a palace so these are like the remains of the Chinese yes the generals and the generals army and the navy and there was a real competence issue yes okay so they're going to build a house we're going to protect it with a great wall of the sea they chained together the boats across the entrance to the harbor and they put a palace boat so called in the middle the generals didn't trust their own soldiers enough so they made all of them leave the island and go to the boats to fight the Mongols so Mongols arrived in over and over and over they asked them to surrender you won't be harmed all this kind of stuff and all and but the Mongols now took over the land so they had the water all around them and they had the land and once the fighting started they could just shoot down from the highland right onto the ships and they've cut the ships off from the fresh supply of of wood and water so they can't boil rice they have to try to eat rice and drink sea water they're all sick as dogs out there and the leaders refused to surrender the little boy is their seven-year-old emperor Bing was his name with his pet parrot that's the only thing he had left in life was his pet parrot and then the Mongols they offered every opportunity but the prime minister so called coward that he is although he's treated as a hero today in China and throughout their history but coward that he was he said we will not disgrace the country by letting them capture the emperor so first he threw his own wife and children into the water to drown and then he took the emperor and held him the seven-year-old he was seven years and one month he had just turned seven years old and jumped into the water with this child a child murderer he's a child murderer to do that somehow in the whole ruckus the cage came undone with the parrot and the parrot fell in the water too so the seven-year-old boy and the parrot died in the water that was the end of one of the greatest dynasties in the history of the world the song dynasty they were intellectually great they were artistically great they were technologically great they were just one of the greatest moments of world history and it ends with this coward killing a child and his pet parrot in order to save the honor that was betrayed by this woman the men lost the war the men lost the war who's to blame an old one-eyed ugly lady imprisciate well the bigger picture there is probably is it's become the institutions became corrupt and stale and the the army weakened and the politician the politician class probably have have lost their skill and competence at ruling and all that kind of stuff and all that is true and the and the Chinese summarized that with losing the mandate of heaven right i mean everybody has their perspective maybe if uh the way you told the story has a very kind of objective sort of way of revealing the absurdity and the cowardice of it but you know this probably the Chinese perspectives that they tell the story in some kind like maintained honor to the last yes to the last moment they very often most scholars depict impriscio as the traitor to the country and i say no that boy lived on for another 45 years and so she did not betray the country she protected or emperor that she was supposed to protect it was the man who killed the child emperor who killed young bing so what was the lasting impact of Kublai Kahn unifying China well yes first of all he had unified China in the largest sense of the word with Korea to bet manchuria Mongolia part of central Asia he had unified it but he did so at the expense of his empire they didn't recognize him as the great emperor and there was a great opposition from the golden horde of russia and also from the the central region which is called the the chagatayid the descendants of sagade the second son the chagatay empire and then from the ilkaneit of Persia these are the different sort of fracturings of the Mongolian sons of jingus kahn yeah and only the ilkaneit was still loyal to him but they're so far away yeah but now he has a navy but this is i mean even the four pieces the whole thing is gigantic and even the pieces of gigantic so i mean it's very hard to keep an empire of this size together yes but he had china it was unified under him and then he he sent out the first expedition to sail directly to persia there had been trade all throughout thousands of years but i was usually port to port you know different merchants shading goods no he organized a great fleet to send a queen our princess to become queen in the ilkaneit to marry the the ilkane of persia it's persia and as are by john and armenia and rack and part of syria all of that area so he said organized this and it so happened that marco polo was ready to go home because they knew kubelicon was about to die and in fact he only had about one year left to live and they wanted to get their riches out before they didn't know what's going to happen this is a new dynasty they've been in total control of china for one generation and they didn't know what was going to happen and also just before that there'd been a bad time because kubelicon had tried to invade japan a second time and he had failed a second time and the second time i think again he had a practical purpose and net was he had this whole huge song army that now he's the new enlightened mongol who doesn't slaughter so he's got what is he going to do they're not reliable they're not safe so he sends a bunch of them up into the almuha river of what's down the russian far east or we call Siberian English but the russian far east almuha river he sent expeditions up into to bet exploring options up there but there wasn't enough room or enough agricultural area for huge military colony but most of his ships were loaded with former prisoners of the war from the song dynasty and they were not armed they had hos and implements for farming he wanted to create obviously an agricultural military agricultural farm in japan to help feed northern china because it was very important just as they were doing with the almuha river but it was more complicated so again they lost they didn't have it and part of it reason is the the exposition was massive and they organized it in the mongol principles of left wing right wing this didn't work at sea because the left wing is from korea there's korean ships built up there the right wing is from southern china mostly with ships built down there they're not the same they have a head but there's no center point jingus Khan always had the goal they called it gul the goal the center or or qoel actually all by did he had the center in command no he sent the two without a clear and they were arguing with each other not cooperating not helping each other sabotaging each other they get there once again they have the same problems even though they've come with lots of grenades this time again the grenades are exploding they're they're scaring the horses you know it's impressive and a lot of silk screens are made later showing these impressive battles and all but they're lost and again a typhoon happened to be the final the final destruction of the navy but i think it's japan had defeated the mongols i would say japanese deserve credit for that victory and then the the thinking of the ships was more caused by the by the typhoon but already the japanese had developed good strategies while the mongols have been away they knew how the mongols fought and they knew that at night they could fire flaming arrows at the ships set them on fire and they were doing great damage so again kublakhan lost the invasion of japan but the soldiers were gone they drowned he didn't kill them off was his deliberate plan but the problem was solved it's one of those ironies of history that is harder quite understand so this had happened but then kublakhan was coming to the near the end of life and marco polo and those wanted to get out they're ready to go and kublakhan allowed them to sail on this expedition with hukshin was her name the princess hukshin to go to a hormous and so they went and that began a whole system of trade back and forth back and forth kublakhan died soon after that his grandson who's not so well respected in history because he's often called a drunk but his name was tumur tumur and jetu but he was a drunk when he was young but his grandfather had him cained a couple times in public and he cured him of drinking and actually he was not a drunk later on and he was first he knew reassembled the mongol empire he did the golden horde declared loyalty to him recognize him as great hon is emperor of the whole empire the chagatahi de central aja they declared loyalty to him the ill Khanate was already loyal to him they all declared loyalty he had reassembled the empire and he had the greatest navy in the world and he sent out on voice to every place they had attacked or traded with to say that era is over we're no longer attacking anybody we're changing from conquest to commerce we want to trade with you come to china bring your goods we're going to trade with you he instituted it was short unfortunately didn't last forever i wish it could have but it was a great era of the exchange of all kinds of things going back and forth all the way actually all the way to Africa kosram or mous they had connection to somale land and some people say can you already at that time i'm not sure but very wide very wide so technically he ruled over the the largest size the mongol empire ever had yes but although actually the golden horde of russia they were quite independent by now and he let them be independent but they were loyal to him and they were still exchanging back and forth all kinds of things so there were osetian soldiers in china that had a whole contingent of osetian soldiers there and from russia from the caucus areas of russia and how do they communicate are they using like the postal service they have to you have to literally deliver the letters no over time those groups started intermarrying with they were allowed to enter married the chinese were not but they were intermarrying with mongols and they were switching to mongolian language slowly at first i don't know it's not clear but again Kubla Khan thinking in this internationalist way said okay we need a new alphabet for the world everybody in the world right with one alphabet chinese mongolian russian arabic everything it didn't work but he tried it for a while and some inscriptions are still there to this day and we should maybe briefly mention markupo that you've talked about so he is this now famous explorer that traversed the continent does so crowed and then stayed with Kubla Khan for a while and i guess one is one of the primary documenters of everything that's been going on is there something else interesting to say about about markupo and about his interaction with Kubla Khan i like markupo though i use i use his work a lot i find him very reliable in the areas where he's not reliable you can kind of tell because he didn't he wasn't there but the places he was he reported a lot of stuff and so i'm very much indebted to him for a lot of things because with something like the princess hukjin and also another fighting princess from central azure named hutulum he wrote about that but i also needed other sources so i found if i could find chinese sources or arab sources or something else or person to support it then i really felt a lot of confidence with him over time but pieces were romanticized and you have to always discount it but is very good however i believe the best work written about markupo as i from his own book which was actually written by rista cello dictated in prison in jenua you know in the 20th century ujino nio wrote a play that became a comedy on broadway called marko millions that was both a play on what he was called el milioni the million one because he had talked about cities of millions of people and about money in the millions and things that people in europe just couldn't believe could happen he then published his whole play as a book to show people what he really meant and it was an ironic look at capitalism because this is 20th century already versus the idea of like a philosopher king which he saw in kublecon it's oh markupolo becomes a symbol of capitalism not at its worst but at its most basic and that is like the princess in this story this is not in real life but this is in the play written by ujino nio by i think it captures a lot the princess hukshin says marko is an excellent judge of quantity and there are things like that and then in the play bion the great general it talks with kublecon and he said look these people are dangerous from the west we should go conquer them now while we can kublecon tells bion again in the play this is fiction but it tells bion they are not worth conquering and if we conquer them we will become like them and he said marko polo has been in our land he has seen everything he has learned nothing he has seen everything he understands nothing for me this was such an important moment in the history of the world symbolically with marko polo and kublecon the coming together of two worlds it could have gone a different way could have gone a different way and i am it's not that i'm anti-capitalist i'm pro-capitalist but the way so many things worked out it was a misstep in history maybe we took the wrong step at that moment and we could have learned more from cooperation they didn't quite integrate successfully no but today we've returned to that i think the east and the west are confronting each other again on more equal terms for a long time the west was so dominant and the east was so downtrodden by colonialism and other things an internal rot and other things but today there's none is there equality but there's more of a balance and which way will we go and again there's a lot of room and a lot of energy for division for misunderstanding versus integration like the the east is demonized in the west and one of the great regrets i have that i hope to alleviate is just how little i understand china in the east it's just sort of not not just from kind of economics politics you know reading a few books but like the way you've understood and felt them ongoing step like understand the chinese people in that way because it does feel like from that understanding there could be integration of ideas you know my work is often classified as chinese history which i think is ironic because for me it's always a mongolian history but for the last book i wrote which dealt a lot more with china because it was about kubla Khan then in that book i deliberately did not go to china i'd been there numerous times before i deliberately did not i'm an outsider i do not speak chinese i'm not a chinese scholar i never even had a course in chinese art or calligraphy or anything and i wanted to be very clear mine is an outside perspective but i think it's possible as an outsider to still have respect for that culture even if i disagree that they point this one as a hero and that one's as devilent i disagree and they'll say all i'm wrong i don't understand their history and they're probably right that's quite possible but this is an outside view that is different and tries to be respectful of what happens in that part of the world just as i'm respectful towards chinghoshan and the mongol empire i respect china very much i'm an american i love the ideals of my country i love so many aspects of our culture and there are many aspects i don't of course because it's impossible to love everything even about the members of your own family you know and i do hope that through understanding one another are just making the effort to understand even if we understand wrongly and we're incorrect in it just to make the effort to understand will help us a lot and the west has had a long couple of centuries of extreme arrogance that they are there to teach the world and i sometimes this made i meet these young people all over the world who have come to help they're an NGO and they're going to teach the people how to take care of the environment they're going to teach the women how to exercise their rights they're going to bring in micro financing to help liberate people we are arrogant beyond words and we need to be a little bit more humble and try to put ourselves on an equal basis where some of these people not as a period basis beautifully put how did the mongol empire come to an end how did it fall despite the fact that tumultal jittuhan had united the empire at least symbolically all of it and they had the trade going on the mongols never adapted well to china and they began having problems in different areas so in some areas of the world they became more like the local people so in central Asia they became Muslim and they got more absorbed into that world and broke from the mongol examples from before russia lingered on longer under mongol domination but it got weaker and weaker over time and it was based around the vulgar river but the week until the point that they just became a tributary people minority within a russian empire but the mongols had left as the framework for empire for russia that's something russians don't want to hear any more they want to hear me criticize the end of the song dynasty but it is true that even yam yam is the word that was used for this postal system and that's the ministries today and russia and there many many other things or in russia so even malchik malchin is a herder mal is a person is a animal and chin is a person a person takes care of animals you know it's all kinds of influences in russia that some people wanted to die but there's always a great powerful strand of research and scholarship in russia that supports this understanding of the mongols and I depend on them tremendously it's not just a gumballjolf is one of the famous ones but he was a little bit too romantic with his ideas and all but I depend upon a lot of the research and done by russian scholars and by early german scholars in the 19th century under sponsorship of the tar so I depend on that work so you had a great influence there but it was weakening so bit by bit 1368 the mongols have become so weak within china that they were overthrown but they weren't absorbed into china but the mongols have been there since 1215 to 1368 they packed up went back to mongolia it was just another seasonal migration yeah you know it was just amazing and they said okay we're still the uand dynasty we're not giving you the seals we're not acknowledging the ming and they'd ever did throughout the whole of the ming in fact they went down one time and captured the main emperor taking back the mongolia and then they tried to ransom him and the Chinese said no we're going to point to another emperor so the mongols decided okay the worst thing we can do to the chinese is give them back the old emperor so you had two emperors you know back okay let them work it out you know and the empire just weakened from internal reasons for the mongols but some external things from nature and i think that was the great plague you know everything in history everything that's good comes with something underneath that that's bad and everything this bad seems to have something underneath that sometimes works out good anyway but this great system that united it's called the yam or or to that united everything people could move back and forth quickly then it could also take the plague out of southern china into all parts of the world and i do think that's what happened and the plague destroyed the mongol system and if all of these people are ruled by mongols because they're benefiting so much from this system and now the system collapses yeah you don't need the empire anymore yeah so it just fell apart after 1368 the empire just fell apart and most of them stayed stayed in Persia and Iran and Afghanistan the hazara people are still descended from the army there and then in russia some of them stayed but then finally in the time of catholic great a lot of them were returned little pair they had been there for hundreds of years and then they returned to mongolia in the 1700s and so many mongols came home they were still mongols despite hundreds of years of exposure to other cultures they came back to their tent and squatting around the fire and drinking fermented milk and eating dried curds it's interesting that the the mongolian spirit is so strong that it persists yes through centuries yes i think it's just return right back on the horse riding in the open step yeah well it was actually very difficult because they were a little bit lazy and they weren't so good with doing the task and so it became difficult actually to support so many people coming home and eating up all the animals the mongols in china had been used to just eating they hadn't been producing much for 150 years so just a return to jengus con we talked about dan karlan and dan karlan said that jengus con's army was the greatest military force in history and many other historians agree that before rifles came into popular use jengus con would basically beat every single army including napolian and you mentioned the summarize the whole formal setup same with napolian there's just there's a whole you know like you know several hours to set up the chess pieces on the military board i mean you can just imagine what jengus con and the the the dynamism the the speed of everything what that would do to napolian so i guess the question is where do you agree with that notion that jengus con's army is the greatest military force in history so it answers yes absolutely no other power in the history of the world has conquered russia and china and perja and central aja and terky and korea no power in the world has done that not Alexander not the Romans nobody will ever do it again nobody's going to conquer china and russia again and rule both countries it's just not going to happen what lessons i mean can you take from that's applicable to modern warfare oh i think there's a very good lesson and the mongols took a rack they took back that they held it the americans we followed the exact opposite strategy of the mongols mongol strategy is first you take the countryside their country people they think in terms of countryside you take the countryside you occupy the countryside and you cut off the city it cannot live without the countryside and that's how they did it every time they would come in as i say in some cases two two years in advance to clear people out so they would have room for their horses and have pasture for their horses and all and you take the small towns and in the small cities and then the last one is the big city americans they said no we're going to take Baghdad we're going to bomb Baghdad we're going to have this shock and awe we're going to go in we conquer the country from Baghdad so they go in they get trapped in their little tiny green zone they never conquer a rack the strongest army in the world you know this is something that worked in europe world war two yes we bombed the cities and we took the city because that was the city the center of production for the modern era but the countryside is the place that produces the food the mongols were very aware of that and supplies the water you cut off the water from the city you cut off the food for the city what's the city going to do they're going to surrender the americans were applying something that worked in western europe to conquer Germany it did not work to conquer a rack or vietnam or even northern korea or cambodia or laos or syria or god no it worked only in grenade i think that's the only in my lifetime that's the only successful war we had lasted a couple of hours we went in conquered the little tiny island otherwise we've been chased out of every country we've lost it tail between our legs we dropped more bombs on cambodia than we dropped on germany it's hard to believe hard to believe we dropped more bombs on cambodia than on germany we did nothing because germany you destroy the cities the people surrender terrestrial is gone frankford fritzburg berlin uh in cambodia you can bomb the countryside forever you can kill the people and they did you can use chemical warfare and they did and you could still go into the eastern part of cambodia and you could go to a large areas where you don't hear birds singing because of the chemical warfare and the merit of american bombs so we still do it but we don't want to admit it and we don't want to go into win when world war two the americans did have unconditional surrender well i mean you could support the war not support the war we did it right we did it wrong these are all issues that people can argue but we had a clear policy we go into afghanistan we're fighting terror we're going to bring democracy we're going to free the women what i mean it's an absolute sheer insanity the things that we did and we kill people not only did we use chemical warfare and kill a lot of people in vietnam and laos and and cambodia we killed american soldiers we killed american soldiers and my father was one he died from agent orange disease oh but that doesn't count he didn't die on the battlefield and we didn't mean to kill him it doesn't count modern warfare is brutal and we just paper over it sometimes you know can you explain agent orange it was designed to kill all vegetation this is going to be a humane way we're going to kill all the vegetation in the jungle and that way they can stop moving the army through the jungle and they can stop the supplies from coming that was american strategy yeah henry kissinger no bell price winner he is now resting in hell is exactly where he belongs for what he did to Vietnam laos and cambodia the bombing was just absolutely horrendous so agent orange comes in they defoliated which means they wiped out the crop so people are starving literally in the case of cambodia starving to death the animals are being killed and deformed children are being born to this day and american soldiers died by the thousands not immediately not on the not on the battlefield not right there they go home they have the disease they linger they take the whole family down with them in an emotional trauma of becoming slowly paralyzed and dying we did that to our own people so yeah warfare i don't think we're any more humane with it any better today than in the past it's just we can hide parts of it more easily and deny it more easily if you're killed by a mongol it's very clear you're killed by a mongol you're killed by friendly fire in american war so different matter it seems that what people mean when they say that war is hell that's in some deep sense everybody loses no matter the narrative you put on top of it yes yes i'm not a pacifist again but i think war is acceptable in some situations but the more controlled it is the better my my effort is not to do away with all the things that happened under Chinggis Han with the brutality and all like that but it's to measure it against what goes on today in the world today and we have the different images there are two images of Chinggis Han one is our image he's a barbarian on a horseback killing people and raping women all the time the other image is the Mongolian image and when they finally built an official statue of him in that in this century for the 800th anniversary of his founding of Mongolia that to think about how to present him to the world and to themselves and they chose the link and memorial as the model he was the late great log river of the Mongol nation and so he's seated there in front of the Mongolian parliament there's another statue that's better known but it was a private enterprise that created him on a horseback but not with a weapon but he's on horseback out in the countryside but the official one for the government is Chinggis Han seated like Abraham Lincoln and they issued stamps to show that he is the great log giver and the truth is somewhere in between well they are depending on where you are and how you want to see it you know there are many things that happen that were terrible and horrible and for people who lose a war it's going to always be terrible and horrible yeah let's return back to Chinggis Han's life and the end of it how and where did he die after conquering the Horaism empire in central Asia Chinggis Han returned and then they had a great what they called not him a great celebration that went on for a whole summer just about it they had so much wealth to distribute to everybody and everybody is being given all kinds of things you know for what they have done and including the people who helped save him when he was in the in the kank and the in the ox yolk they were rewarded with everybody was rewarded it was a great time but the first place he had attacked outside was the Tanguit nation and they had sworn allegiance to him and then when he went off to the middle east they refused to send troops he didn't forget that he's going back to the Tanguit nation and he's going to conquer them again as he was crossing the goby which takes a while and you're crossing the goby he was distracted a little bit by hunting the hulawn which is the wild we say the wild ass or I used to say wild horse it sounds a little better but the hulawn to say hulawn of the goby he was off hunting hulawn he fell from his horse and he injured his leg very badly and he seemed to decline from that point and it took some number of months before August of 1227 he was very much near the end of life you can read online the exact date and it's all very specific but the truth is we don't know exactly which day he died in that time because he's one of his wives wise running the camp and they were keeping it secret until the defeat of the Tanguit was completed and the Tanguit offered all kinds of things to for the Mongols to go away again the second time and Chinggis Han had told his family no except nothing and then when they surrender you kill the royal family kill them all so that the idea they were they were Buddhist people the Tanguits were Buddhist and the idea was usually you can be reborn into your own family but he said no you kill off the whole family so they can't be reborn so he died there how is he successor chosen oh the succession issue was always difficult he did not have the right to appoint a successor that was not de mongo way he can nominate somebody so before he set off for the Middle Eastern campaign one of his wives said to him you know even the biggest tree falls you've got to make a plan and talk to your sons about the future so he did he called the sons together so this is zooch the oldest boy who is born while the father was allied with his anda jamauk and he was named visitor zooch and then the next one was chagaday and the next one was a good day and the next one was tole the father of of Kubla Khan but he was still alive at this point so all four of them came so chinghaskan explained to them he wanted to talk about the succession and to get some consensus from them about the succession and so he said the mongols always call on people to speak by order of age they also serve tea or food anything by order of age it's always done that way from then till now so he called first on zooch and he said what do you say zooch chinghaskan favored zooch this is the one who was christianal paternity but he always favored him you know the youngest tiller was too hot headed a good day was a heavy drinker chagaday was very rigid about the law of the mongols and all you know but he thought he seemed to favor zooch as a more reasonable good warrior but reasonable person but he called on zooch my son speak chagaday the second one who believes in mongolaw supposedly he jumped up and he said this is when he accused his father of all kinds of he said how can you call on this mongol this market bastard if you call on him first that means you want him to be the great Khan he should not be the great Khan of the mongol empire is this mongol empire now on and you know you can imagine kind of seen well chinkus han is the greatest ruler in the world he's sitting there being lectured by his second son and this is when he gave that impassioned speech to his now in the actually the way the secret history it makes it look like it was his assistant speaker who said it because very often the great power doesn't say the words directly they let somebody else say them form have a spokesperson but anyway I think it was his words and I think he said them on that day that's what I think on this business of you do not know you were not there you know the stars were moving in the sky the head was head was turning around the earth was turning over you do not know who loved who you do not know who your mother loved you do not know what your mother did and if I say he is my son who are you to say he is not my son by the way pretty just really high integrity really respectable to do that to have that respect and honor his wife in this way yes and the son in this way it's really powerful I believe that I don't know if she was alive at this point or not we do not have the death recorded mongols are not good at recording death they don't they usually just say somebody finished their age or they have some euphemism for it but he made that in passion speech and so God they had to submit and he said yes you are our father and we accept what you say but a dear shot with words cannot be loaded on a horse a dear shot with words cannot be eaten so sing us Han knew so he said to the boys the boys I mean these middle age men they're not boys but he said to the men what do you want to do what do you want to do and he said I don't favor it's like I day because of his attitude and the situation and the law is still hot headed and he he actually ended up being drunk drunk and dying early so what the other guys they said well a good day they chose him because he was the most the most generous and the bond vivante and he was for every party and drinking every time and yeah one time Chikihut took the great judge who wrote the secret history Chikihut took was sleeping at a cart one time of for whatever reason I don't know what I think he also had passed out drunk perhaps but a good day came out drunk and grabbed him up and pulled him back into the party and a good day was a party guy and so he was chosen as the next great Han of the Mongol Empire but fortunately there was sort of a plan B and that Chikihut Han had set up very powerful women his daughters but also he had chosen wives for each of his son very very capable wives and for a good day he had a wife it wasn't even his first wife the first wife would usually be somebody closer by a certain clan or something but he had a very intelligent woman made dorshin and then she was more or less ruling in his last few years and then after he died she ruled empire in her own name she was the ruler of the greatest empire in world ever ruled by a woman it's incredible the genius of jangus to set it up that way yes and to not you know there's probably very widespread discrimination of women at that time and to have not care about any of that and just making the right decision for like what it will keep the empire together and dorshin was actually there was peace she stopped all campaigns there was peace during her time and the women like such as dorshin and those were extremely into economics and trade and running these they had these private corporations called orphalc she was running her orphalc and everything so she became much more interested in economics of the trade and running the empire and it was the time of peace and she recognized that peace was better for trade it was better and so it was a peaceful time but like all of us you know we we have our weak points and she favored a worthless son to become the successor and none of the sons actually were great but a good they had favored another but anyway she favored guilluc her son and so she arranged to have him made a great emperor while she was still alive and she had her primary minister was also a woman an infatima from the Middle East and unfortunately they organized a purge of her court and killed off a lot of these people who had been supporting her and a lot of them were Muslims and he killed off a lot and then he was going to march against the golden horde because they weren't supporting him so he set off and he died he was only in office for 18 months and he was gone and then his wife took over okamish unfortunately she was not capable is her mother-in-law dorshin okamish was a bit greedy and she didn't start any new wars but she just kind of messed up things and she didn't rule for too long and this is why Kubla Khan's mother sorghtani was able to have a revolution she united with the golden horde she was on one end on china she had northern china the golden horde had russia the two of them united against the center and they overthrew ogalhamish and she put her son mongkhon in who was succeeded by hublaihan and we should say probably that you know this whole succession by kin probably goes against the initial spirit of what jangus constate for yes yes in the end he was a father and he favored his sons even knowing they were not so capable and he had lost the grand son that he loved but but he organized it though as what we take call today almost a corporation all lands belong to everybody in the family everybody so Kubla Khan that's why he had had soldiers there were christian soldiers osedi and soldiers and kipchek soldiers he had 10,000 of each come in and then they owned the russians would own silk factories in china the ilkhanate would own silk factories and jade mines in china of the people in china the mongols they would own villages in Persia and in ira so he organized it all his everything was owned by the entire plan it didn't last too long like that because of the divisions that developed so the great han was primarily in charge of conquering and expanding the land so they had more lands to own that was going to be the job and Kubla Khan fulfilled it mongkhan to some six-cent fulfilled it a good day did guik did not his family ruling the land all the different territories yeah and they weakened with every generation yeah every generation but that reminds me of a a very popular idea about jangus Khan articulated in the 2003 paper titled the genetic legacy of the mongols so that paper has a finding that estimates that 0