Narrator (6:02)

T minus 10.

Ryan Reynolds (6:03)

Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Dan Snow (6:05)

God saved no black White Unity till.

Duncan Weldon (6:09)

There is first some black Unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

Dan Snow (6:21)

Duncan, great to have you back on the podcast.

Duncan Weldon (6:23)

Thank you for having me.

Dan Snow (6:24)

Let's do the geography first. I'm so interested in the Eurasian steppe, partly because we talk about European empires. That era has gone. But Russia is still a massive European empire extending into Asia because of this steppe. It's like a superhighway, isn't it, for us, in this little old island, this little old archipelago, it can be difficult to understand the scale of it. Tell me about it.

Duncan Weldon (6:43)

Okay, so the Eurasian steppe is one of the big geographic features of Eurasia, of the world. It stretches all of the way from Hungary and Eastern Europe all the way across to the borders of China. It goes from the very top of Russia all the way down to the modern Middle East. And it's this primarily large expanse of grassland. And as you say, it's been regarded in different ways over the last few thousand years. Sometimes it's appeared to be almost the edge of the world, this sort of desert of grass. At other times, though, it seemed more like an ocean, maybe dangerous to cross, but definitely worth doing it and, you know, with potential great rewards if you have the skill to do it. But it's a giant expanse of grassland that takes up, well, most of Eurasia.

Dan Snow (7:34)

And how does that environment determine the kind of settlement that you can have there? Is the soil very fertile? You talk about grassland. Does that mean it's fertile soil? Can you intensely farm it, have cities there and settle communities?

Duncan Weldon (7:47)

Yeah, well, it's grassland, but it's not particularly fertile for growing crops. You know, in general, where the population centres have been in Eurasia over the long, long course of history look quite similar to where they are now. So there's a lot of population at the very western end of Eurasia. Europe, there's a lot of population at the very eastern end, sort of around China, you had very different soils there. You had agricultural revolutions, you had the mass cultivation of rice in China, of grains in Europe, which allowed for very productive agriculture for quite high levels of population. Whereas for most of the Eurasian steppe, the geography, the climate, the soil, it doesn't allow for that sort of intense cultivation and of agriculture. So you don't get the same sort of sedentary agricultural populations. Instead, for most of history, the people that have lived on the steppe have Been nomadic. They've moved around over the course of the year, following where the grass is. They've lived off animals, off hunting, off grazing. A very, very different style of agriculture. Fewer people and people who are on the move rather than in the same place.

Dan Snow (9:04)

And so you move with your herds, right? You eat the grass and then you move the whole shebang onwards.

Duncan Weldon (9:10)

Yes, you move the whole shebang onwards. And you know, that sort of agriculture means you get very, very different states developing. So, you know, where you've got permanent agriculture, growing stuff in the ground, your livestock isn't moving with you, you get hamlets, and those hamlets become villages, and maybe some of those villages eventually become towns, and maybe some of those towns eventually become cities. You don't get that on the steppe where people are moving around, and if your area is filled with villagers, you know, eventually some villages will take over other villages. That's how you start to see what we think of as traditional states developing. Again, you don't get that on the step. This climate leads to a very different system of agriculture. That very different system of agriculture leads to very different societies.

Dan Snow (10:02)

As you're talking, I was thinking of Bronze Age, Iron Age Greece and coalescing around cities. And then you get philosophers poking their nose into natural science and all that kind of stuff that we're familiar with, that we called civilisation.

Duncan Weldon (10:13)

Less of that on the step. Less of that on the step.

Dan Snow (10:16)

And does that mean, if you're settled, you develop heavy armour tools, you fight in serried ranks of infantrymen? Is this too sort of naive to say that on the steppe you. You just become very, very good horsemen? So you've got this not just different way of life, different way of making war as well.

Duncan Weldon (10:32)

Oh, absolutely. So on the steppe, you know, the horse is absolutely central to life on the steppe. People start to ride at a very, very early age and they're in the saddle for many hours of most days of their lives. They become excellent horsemen and horsewomen. But it's not just that they're very good riders, it's also that there are a lot of horses on the step. When we get on to talking about Genghis Khan, you know, at one point the Mongol emp. Maybe half of the world's horses. So, yes, the horse is central to life on the steppe, and yes, they fight in a very different way. So armies on the steppe have, in Genghis Khan's day, and for a long time before that, have been primarily composed of mounted horse archers. You know, the armies of Genghis Khan don't look that different to the armies of Attila the Hun, which came out of the steppe and terrorized the late Roman Empire 750 or so years before Duncan.

Dan Snow (11:26)

We're going to get into that because it's just one of the most amazing stories in history. You've mentioned Genghis Khan. Let's go. There he is born, what, in sort of the mid 12th century? About 1162, we think.

Duncan Weldon (11:37)

Yeah, at some point in the mid 12th century. And, you know, there's some debate, but yes, the 1150s, at some point.

Dan Snow (11:43)

And he's the son of a respected figure, chieftain almost, but he has a pretty tough upbringing. Tell us why he does.

Duncan Weldon (11:49)

There's good points and bad points to the birth of Genghis Khan. On the other good point is he's the son of a respected tribal chieftain. The bad point is his father has fallen out of favor and he's sort of thrown out of the tribe almost. And sort of young Genghis Khan almost vanishes from recorded history. We don't quite know what he was doing. He may have served as a mercenary for Chinese armies, but he eventually returns to the steppe after his adolescence as an experienced warrior. He may only have been in his teens, but rises to power very, very.

Dan Snow (12:25)

Quickly, and he conquers a neighbouring tribe or two, and then a mixture of kind of diplomatic alliances and conquest. He unites all these disparate groups. Is that normal that these groups of nomadic herders will occasionally kind of coalesce as one, then break apart again? Is this a sort of natural life cycle of this part of the steppe?

Duncan Weldon (12:44)

Yeah, it does happen. You get, you know, confederations building up and then breaking down. But what Genghis Khan achieves is something a lot more than that. Genghis Khan goes on to build what is, at that point, the largest empire the world has ever seen, still one of the largest empires the world has ever seen, hundreds of years later. He clearly had a gift for war and for empire building, but his real exceptional gift was for organization, because building large confederations on the steppe is just hard. It's much harder than it is in China or Europe. Genghis Khan is able to break down traditional social organization on the steppe, which is traditionally based on kinship groups, and build something that, in modern terms looks a bit like a meritocracy. It's, if you join up into my confederation, you will be given a chance to rise, you will be given a fair share of the spoils. And that's sort of the nomadic confederation empire he goes about building.

Dan Snow (13:47)

We're going to get onto his leadership skill. For those of you who want to skip business school and get it all here, just buckle up for the next 10 minutes. You're going to love this. But let's do the chronology quickly. He doesn't just unite the tribes. He then invades northern China and conquers much of what is today China. And then, extraordinarily, he goes and invades the great empires of Central Asia until, by his death, his empire, what stretches from modern Korea right the way through, and, well, indeed, his sons and grandsons will extend that, but almost to the borders of the Middle East. By its death.

Duncan Weldon (14:16)

Yeah, by his death. And then his successors go on into, you know, invade the Persian Empire into the Middle east and push as far as into Hungary in Europe, you know, it's empire on a phenomenal scale, unimaginable.

Dan Snow (14:30)

So you've talked a little bit about the meritocracy. Well, let's start with war, because I'm so fascinated by this. But moving at astonishing speed in different 20th century, like almost armored spearheads that then converge, attack an enemy from at the same time over enormous distances, from different angles. Not unlike the Blitzkrieg of 1940.

Duncan Weldon (14:51)

Yeah, I said before he had access to a lot of horses, it's believed, you know, when he first sort of unites the tribes, he is ruling an area with maybe 1 million people and maybe 5 million horses. And those horses really matter as much as the people for what happens next. So a Mongol army, modern historians estimate it had maybe 15 to 20 horses per person. There is an awful lot of remounts there, and those remounts really matter. So a Mongol army is capable of moving at a pace of 30 to 50 miles a day, whereas its opposing armies, whether they be Chinese or Persian or European, at this period, struggles to make 10 miles a day. So these are much faster armies in the strategic sense that can appear in unexpected places. And then tactically, when they appear on the battlefield, as you say, they converge from different directions in the right place. But when they're actually in battle, they can control the pace of the engagement because they're much more mobile than most of their opponents. They can move within bow range, fire off a lot of arrows, move out again, do that as many times as they need before finally deciding to close and finish it. But, yeah, strategically, very, very mobile. And then tactically, in battle, able to control the pace of battle purely because they've got so many horses.

Dan Snow (16:14)

And that means you can gallop along and your remounts can chill out a Bit, even though they're not carrying a human body and you just hop from one saddle to the next onto a slightly fresher horse.

Duncan Weldon (16:25)

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It's something that their opponents, whether it's primarily the Chinese, the Persians, the Europeans, really struggle to cope with.

Dan Snow (16:33)

And also what really slows armies down in elsewhere, isn't it that the wagons with all the flour on, because we're bread eaters, we're stupid bread eaters. Whereas they could bleed their animals and they had these hawks, didn't they, that go off and do a bit of hawking as they're going along. The hawks are scouring the steppe for rodents they can eat.

Duncan Weldon (16:49)

Yeah. Something that's really, really hard for a 12th, 13th century European or Chinese army to deal with. Just something so different to what they're used to.

Dan Snow (17:00)

I mean, the idea of the Mongols fighting King John's army in the early 13th century is just a terrifying, terrifying thought.

Duncan Weldon (17:09)

Yes.

Dan Snow (17:09)

And thank goodness for all those rivers and the complicated geography of Europe that was in the way. What about that sort of the exhibition of violence, the sort of astonishing violence that we've come to associate with the Mongols? Now, is that just us being a wee bit kind of Orientalist because there's plenty of violence going on elsewhere, or is there something about their use of exemplary violence that persuaded people not to fight them?

Duncan Weldon (17:31)

They can be very violent. If you go back through Mongol legal codes, the words you become very familiar with are the penalty is death. A surprising amount of crimes, you know, punishable by death. And, yes, they were capable of using terror as a weapon. The economist in me would call this terror as a signaling device. So you turn up, if a town doesn't surrender, you massacre everyone in that town, and you're doing it as a strong signal that you should do what we say, or these are the consequences. That sort of use of terror is worth stepping back for a moment and thinking, you know, we've spoken about the sheer size of this Mongol Empire, but it's fundamentally an empire built on the steppe that is different to the British Empire or the later Russian Empire in a similar place. When we think of empires, we often think of this in a very sort of European way of, you know, turning up, planting your flag, putting your colonial administrators in charge and, you know, ruling it as your territory, the Mongol Empire. There are bits of it that look like that in China, but there are lots of it that look more akin almost to a modern mafia protection racket. It's just that, you know, the Mongols are going to turn up several times a year you're going to have to hand over a tribute payment. And as long as you hand over the tribute payment, they're then going to move on. And if you don't hand over the tribute payment, you're going to be subject to this horrific violence. But it's not necessarily a territorial empire with administrators. It's more sort of a tribute taking protection racket across lots of the steppe.

Dan Snow (19:07)

Right. So there's not a sort of Mongol garrison in your Central Asian cities around the clock?

Duncan Weldon (19:12)

Not necessarily, no. Often it'll just be they're going to turn up and you have to hand over X amount of silver or grain or manufactured goods or porcelain. Depends on, you know, whatever form you pay your tribute in.

Dan Snow (19:25)

You're listening to Dan Snows history talk about Genghis Khan and the Mongols. More coming up.

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Dan Snow (22:20)

Just before we leave warfare behind. I love the deception. I love the way that they would do fake retreats. They would leave the skinniest and most knackered looking horses in the wake of their army to persuade an enemy that they're really at the limit of their endurance. They're all tired and broken. And then the enemy might be filled with courage to advance towards them. And then Genghis Khan would turn around and stun them.

Duncan Weldon (22:40)

Just also, just tactically very sophisticated. So, you know, Mongol commanders would generally prefer never to completely surround an opponent because they were aware that if an opponent was completely surrendered, their soldiers would see there's no way out and might as well fight to the death. Leave a gap they can run away through is much preferable.

Dan Snow (22:58)

Amazing. And as they run away, I'm sure you can exact a terrible punishment.

Duncan Weldon (23:02)

Absolutely.

Dan Snow (23:03)

Yeah. Well, Julius Caesar called that always leave the Golden Breath Bridge. So let's come on back to his leadership style. Meritocratic. So noble. We could probably overstate this with our 21st century hats on. But he sort of overlooked sometimes the more traditional ways of promotion based on birth, and he rewarded competence.

Duncan Weldon (23:21)

One way to think about it is we've spoken about the steppe and the character of steppe life and how the climate of the steppe shapes societies. The people in the steppe, the great Eurasian Plain, have never lived in complete isolation from the settled societies around them. They're always interacting with the settled societies. Sometimes that interaction has taken the form of trade. People from the steppe will turn up with animal produce, with leather goods, and, you know, they will trade a barter in return for rice or manufactured goods, the product of settled societies. And sometimes that interaction has been a lot more violent. People on the steppe raiding the settled societies to take what they need. One way of thinking about what Genghis Khan achieved was he was able to unite all of These different tribes and confederations into this giant tribute taking protection racket. So going back again to the economics of this, there was an economy of scale. One tribe raiding some Chinese towns, fine. You can steal some manufactured goods, you can carry off some rice. All of these tribes together turning up and demanding that China hands over huge amounts of goods and tribute. There's a lot more booty there for the tribute taking empire for the Mongols. So you get this economy of scale by binding them all together. But the way that had to work was that this booty had to be shared.

Dan Snow (24:50)

So he's sharing it out. Well, I mean, how do you build a system where you can. I mean, I guess that's one of the fundamental questions about humans in a marketplace, how do you share out the surplus to your workforce?

Duncan Weldon (25:01)

This is the interesting thing. So basically, depending on your rank, you were entitled to a higher share of it. But what is quite interesting is the different sort of regional areas of the empire were all entitled to a share of each other's produce. So you see porcelain being sent from Mongol China to, you know, the Mongols who happen to be in charge in Persia. You see Persian goods being sent all of the way back to China. There is this general sense that we are all in this together, we all owe each other a bit of this tribute.

Dan Snow (25:33)

Speaking of these things like porcelain, what I find striking about the Mongols is they obviously had such a profoundly idiosyncratic way of making war. You know, so particular to them. You know, this horse born, these mounted archers, this astonishing way of making war. But when they took over other societies and discovered new technology like gunpowder, they incorporated that too. He seemed to have an extraordinary flexibility.

Duncan Weldon (25:57)

Yes, they're really open to new ideas. You see it in warfare. You see how they get used to gunpowder in China. They incorporate that they're very keen on. The Chinese have a lot more history of an expertise in things like siege craft. So you see Chinese siege engineers being brought along with Mongol armies as they move into Persia, into bits of Eastern Europe. And it's not just in warfare. I mean, they're open to all sorts of things. So, you know, running an empire, this big island, obviously a big administrative task. And they rely very heavily on the traditional Chinese administrative Mandarin class for that. Kublai Khan establishes an institute of calendrical studies to, you know, make sure there's a calendar which works across the empire. And you see this sort of mixing of ideas as well. So you see Chinese medicines being introduced into Persia, you see Persian surgical techniques being introduced into China. They are Very keen on taking anything that works and trying to spread it across their entire territory.

Dan Snow (27:06)

Duncan. So is this why we talk about this era as one of globalization? By uniting this massive, very disparate territories across Eurasia, is that like almost creating a big free trade area? Do you suddenly see an upsurge in the movement of goods and peoples and ideas across this?

Duncan Weldon (27:25)

You do. So, you know, some historians, some economic historians talk about this period from, you know, roughly 1250, a bit after Genghis Khan's death, for 100, 150 years as the Pax Mongolia, you know, the Mongolian peace, in that the Mongols have conquered all of this territory. And that means, for the first time in quite a long time, travel between Europe and China along the old Silk Roads is relatively safe because it's all Mongol territory and the Mongols are keen to encourage trade. So you do see goods, peoples, ideas on the move. Now, it's not like modern globalization, and it's not even like the globalization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the First World War, because the technology's not there. You see ideas moving and you see goods moving. But the goods that move tend to be those with a very high ratio of value to weight. Stuff that's not too heavy, but you can sell for a lot of money. It's things like spices, it's things, to an extent, like porcelain, it's things like slaves, it's not so much big, heavy lumber and grains, lumps of iron. Yeah. Obviously, the most famous European traveler in this period is obviously Marco Polo, but he's not alone. You know, there are sort of guidebooks written by Florentine and Genovese merchants, how to profit from this huge opportunity, which is the Silk Road.

Dan Snow (28:50)

Because if you've got a piece of paper or whatever it is from a Mongol at one end of this system, that's your ticket to cross the whole thing. Presumably you can proceed without worrying about loss of goods or even life.

Duncan Weldon (29:03)

Absolutely. And they police the trade routes quite effectively. There's even a system for returning stolen goods. Along the trade route, some merchants are allowed to use the way stations, which are meant for the internal imperial communications postal route, where every 30 or 40 miles or so there are stations with fresh remounts and a place for travellers to stay. There's even, in some cases, this sort of Mongol doctrine, whereby the first time they do business with new merchants, they will give them a really good price to encourage them to come again. They're very open to encouraging trade along the empire.

Dan Snow (29:43)

So lots of these things that we accept in the west that originated in China, things like paper and gunpowder. Is this a period where you see some of those civilization changing bits of technology arrive in Europe and whether Europeans are aware of that, like, oh, gosh, lots of stuff coming from the east at the moment.

Duncan Weldon (30:02)

This is exactly true. It's not just goods. These ideas are moving across the Silk Roads. Yes. It's when you see things like gunpowder, things like proper paper making technology coming from China, along the Silk Roads down into Europe. And it's not an easy journey, you know, it's relatively safe. But to go from Europe to the other end of the Silk Road is probably an 8, 9, 10, 11 month journey. But it's one worth doing because there are some numbers here. A Florentine guidebook says to do this round trip from Europe to China and back will probably cost you 3,500 florins, including buying trade goods, a considerable sum, but you will then be able to sell the stuff you bring back for 25,000 florins. So it's a huge return if you can raise the 3,500 florins to do it, if you can devote the time to doing it.

Dan Snow (30:57)

Amazing. And I guess sometimes it's what's in people's heads. If you're the guy who has the recipe for gunpowder, then you can make that journey and you will be welcomed with open arms in the warlike West.

Duncan Weldon (31:06)

And, you know, just the travellers along the Silk Road, they're quite impressed by lots of aspects of Mongol rule. You know, we spoke about the terror and there is an awful lot of terror used in this conquest. But once Mongol rule is in place, there are bits of it that Europeans were really impressed by. So, for example, there is a system whereby if crops fail in one area, the imperial overlords will make sure that some of the surplus from neighbouring areas is brought to the area where there's been a crop failure to prevent famines, almost like an insurance system on the settled agricultural bits of the empire, which is something the Europe of that time was totally lacking. So they're quite impressed by lots of aspects of it.

Dan Snow (31:51)

What about religion? Were people allowed to largely go on practicing their own faiths in all this great patchwork of territory that they conquered?

Duncan Weldon (31:59)

Yes, people generally had to go on practicing their own faiths. I mean, generally, as long as you don't miss your tribute payments, they're quite hands off. I mean, again, I go back to the analogy of the mafia protection racket. As long as you are making your payments, they are generally content for you to get on and do whatever you want, organize your society however you want, believe in whichever God you want.

Dan Snow (32:21)

I think it's a reasonably new study in the looking at the Black Death, the plague, and they think that that also may have been the spread of plague, may have been facilitated. The Cinea pestis bacteria may have been facilitated by this opening up of these great Eurasian trade routes. And it's only 100 or so years later than Genghis Khan and we see that arrive via the Silk Roads into it's Crimea, I think Black Sea initially, and then into Italy, isn't it?

Duncan Weldon (32:46)

Yeah, it's no surprise. It's Italian merchants carrying it. They're the people doing a lot of this trade den Silk Route. But yeah, the words of one later historian, Genghis Khan didn't just create a place where goods and ideas and people were on the move, he created a single market in microbes because people were moving much more, diseases were able to move much more. Yes, the Black Death almost certainly came to Europe and into the Middle east, down the Silk Roads, came to Europe, reached the Crimea, boarded probably a ship from Genoa and landed in Europe. And yeah, the downside of that episode of globalization was of course, the worst pandemic the world has ever seen.

Dan Snow (33:26)

Clearly he changed the world. There's few political, military individuals that have had a more direct impact on the course of history. I mean, he really did bind those Mongol tribes together and then he led those unimaginable conquests. Politically, the legacy didn't last that long, but still significant. How do you see his legacies across? State building, empire building, but also all these other areas we talked about. What does the modern world owe to Genghis Khan?

Duncan Weldon (33:52)

What I find fascinating about the Mongol Empire while it lasted was if you look at the sort of the differential impact on China and Europe. China was directly conquered. Millions of Chinese people probably died during the period of conquest and then they were ruled by the Mongols, handing over tribute for a long period. China didn't directly benefit. China paid a lot of the costs from Mongol rule. Europe though Europe is never directly part of the empire, but Europe benefits from these Chinese and indeed Middle Eastern innovations and ideas coming down the Silk Roads. It benefits from the trade and it helps build up all of these wealthy merchants who facilitate the trade. It helps build up European capital, much of which is then later used to fund Vasco de Ghana and Columbus's voyages of discovery. It sort of leaves this culture in Europe of there is money to be made out of there and international trade is something we can benefit from it leaves this sort of outward looking, almost Europe and it leaves China a bit more fearful of outside forces. But if Genghis Khan is the father of the first great age of globalization, yeah, I think it's perfectly fair to argue he's the grandfather of, of the Industrial Revolution. The Black Death arrives because of this. Pax, Mongolia. The Black Death kills so many people in Europe. There's a shortage of peasants. Wages start to rise and we get into the very, very, very beginnings of a process whereby because wages are a lot higher, people are starting to look for, is there a way I can replace human labour with machines? And eventually that leads to the Industrial Revolution.

Dan Snow (35:46)

There's a study that suggests astonishing proportion of Asians today have a common ancestor around about 800 years ago. And the thought is it might be Genghis.

Duncan Weldon (35:56)

Tremendous. Yes. Genghis legacy lives on in so many.

Dan Snow (35:58)

Ways in so many of us. The empire did not last a very long time compared to the Roman Empire. But then again, the British Empire didn't really last a very long time. Once it really got going in the mid 18th century, it was done by the mid 20th. So longevity shouldn't be mistaken for impact. I mean clearly the British Empire enormous impact subsequent history and the same true of that gigantic, if slightly, what lasted about a century, would you say, before it really does break into disparate and warring parts.

Duncan Weldon (36:29)

It may have only lasted around a century, a century in a bit. But building an empire on the steppe, I think is really hard. It's almost surprising it lasted as long as it did and it outlasted just Genghis Khan and survived his death. You can't emphasize enough that the geography, climate and social structure of the steppe is different to Europe, it's different to China. Building lasting political unions in an area where people are constantly on the move is just harder.

Dan Snow (37:00)

Interesting. Thank you so much indeed for coming on the podcast and talking all about Genghis Khan and how he changed the world. Fascinating stuff. Duncan Welton, tell us about your new book.

Duncan Weldon (37:10)

Oh, thank you. Yeah. So Blood and the Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to Ukraine is my new book. There is a Genghis Khan section as we've been talking about, but it's generally about the kind of things we've been talking about. It's about the interaction of, of warfare, social organization, economic development, how the two have played off against each other over time. So, you know, starting off with things like the Vikings looking at medieval warfare, looking at Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire all the way through to the total wars of the 20th century, Vietnam and the war in Ukraine.

Dan Snow (37:49)

I think we're gonna have to get you back on the podcast. Do you perchance have a chapter on the British Fiscal Military state of the 18th century?

Duncan Weldon (37:54)

I have a chapter on the British Fiscal Military state of the 18th century and Seven Years War just for you.

Dan Snow (37:59)

Oh, oh, you've got an invite right away there buddy. Thank you so much. Go and get everyone blood and treasure. Duncan, I look forward to getting you back on the podcast soon.

Duncan Weldon (38:06)

Thank you.

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