Kublai Khan: ruler of the waves

Summary

Summary of "Kublai Khan: Ruler of the Waves" - History Extra Podcast

Podcast Information:

• Title: History Extra Podcast
• Host/Author: Immediate Media
• Episode Title: Kublai Khan: Ruler of the Waves
• Release Date: December 4, 2024

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Introduction to Kublai Khan

In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, host Emily Griffith engages in a detailed conversation with renowned historian Jack Weatherford about his latest book, Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China. The discussion delves into the life, reign, and legacy of Kublai Khan, the grandson of the legendary Genghis Khan, and his unique ventures into naval conquest and administration.

Key Quote:

“Genghis Khan may have built a formidable land empire, but his grandson Kublai Khan mastered the seas.” — Jack Weatherford [01:59]

Kublai Khan's Rise to Power

Jack Weatherford provides a comprehensive background on Kublai Khan, highlighting his unexpected ascent within the Mongol Empire. Despite being the youngest son and not the most Mongol-appearing descendant, Kublai's strategic education and his mother's influence played pivotal roles in his rise. His mother, Sorakhtani, recognized his potential and ensured he received a robust education influenced by Chinese traditions, preparing him for bureaucratic leadership in northern China.

Key Points:

• Early Life: Kublai was not initially expected to inherit leadership due to his position in the family and less traditional Mongol appearance.
• Mother's Influence: Sorakhtani played a crucial role in shaping Kublai into a bureaucrat, emphasizing education and governance over traditional Mongol militarism.

Key Quote:

“His mother recognized that he had certain talents and she was in charge of northern China. She gave him an excellent education with all kinds of tutors from different countries, different cultures, different religions, but especially in Chinese education.” — Jack Weatherford [06:27]

Military Campaigns and Naval Innovations

Kublai Khan's military endeavors were characterized by significant strategic innovations, particularly his foray into naval warfare—a realm traditionally foreign to the Mongols. Weatherford explains how Kublai, under the guidance of his capable officers like Adju, transformed the Mongol military approach by developing one of the first truly offensive navies.

Key Developments:

• Naval Engineering: Collaboration with engineers from Iran and Iraq to mount trebuchets on boats, enabling the Mongols to assault Chinese cities via the Yangtze River.
• Deployment Against Southern Song Dynasty: The creation of a formidable river fleet that successfully besieged and captured the Southern Song capital, Hangzhou, in 1279.

Key Quote:

“They figured it out. They did it, and then they started smashing the walls of the Chinese city, coming down the Yangtze river from the upper part down ever towards the south Song capital at Hangzhou.” — Jack Weatherford [17:47]

Conquest of Southern Song and Strategic Challenges

The fall of the Southern Song Dynasty marked a significant turning point in Kublai Khan's consolidation of power in China. Weatherford narrates the strategic maneuvers and the eventual surrender of the Southern Song under the determined leadership of Kublai Khan and his general, Bayan.

Key Events:

• Siege of Hangzhou: Employer Bayan's respectful treatment of the surrendered officials, emphasizing order and assimilation over indiscriminate destruction.
• Final Stand of the Song Dynasty: The tragic end involving the young Emperor Gong and Prime Minister Lu, leading to the collapse of one of China's most illustrious dynasties in 1279.

Key Quote:

“The Mongols will pursue you to the end. That's exactly what they did. They came with their own ships.” — Jack Weatherford [30:58]

Administration and Dual Capital System

Kublai Khan's rule was characterized by a unique balance between Mongol traditions and Chinese administrative practices. Weatherford discusses how Kublai maintained two capitals—Xanadu in Inner Mongolia and a Chinese-style Forbidden City in Beijing—allowing him to navigate and integrate the dual aspects of his empire effectively.

Key Points:

• Dual Capitals: Xanadu served as the Mongol summer capital, while Beijing housed the Forbidden City, embodying Chinese architectural and administrative styles.
• Cultural Integration: Kublai leveraged Chinese civilization's advancements while retaining Mongol governance structures, fostering a hybrid administrative system.

Key Quote:

“Kublai Khan kept the two systems operating both at the same time and sometimes in opposition to each other that he was able to exploit in various ways.” — Jack Weatherford [31:28]

Impact on Commerce and the Silk Route

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on Kublai Khan's influence on global trade, particularly through the establishment and protection of maritime Silk Routes. Weatherford emphasizes how the Mongol Empire under Kublai facilitated unprecedented levels of commerce between the Middle East and China, revolutionizing global trade dynamics.

Key Points:

• Maritime Silk Route: Kublai's control over key maritime pathways enabled efficient and safe trade, reducing costs and increasing the volume of goods.
• Economic Integration: The unification under Mongol rule allowed for the free movement of merchants and goods, fostering economic prosperity across Eurasia.

Key Quote:

“The Mongols had set up a superhighway of the sea, a silk route of the sea. And they connected the Middle East, and from there, it was just a short hop over to Europe.” — Jack Weatherford [36:11]

Legacy of Kublai Khan

In reflecting on Kublai Khan's legacy, Weatherford argues that while Genghis Khan often overshadows his grandson, Kublai's contributions, particularly in shaping modern China and global trade, are unparalleled. Kublai Khan's reign laid the groundwork for the contemporary geopolitical landscape in Eurasia.

Key Points:

• Geopolitical Influence: Kublai's unification of China and his control over vast maritime routes fundamentally shaped the region's political boundaries and economic interactions.
• Cultural and Economic Integration: The Mongol policies under Kublai fostered cultural exchange and economic interdependence between diverse civilizations.

Key Quote:

“If you look at the world today, it's really the world that the Mongols created in the sense that Korea had not been united, the Mongols pushed them together. Russia had not been united, the Mongols pushed them together.” — Jack Weatherford [41:54]

Conclusion

Jack Weatherford encapsulates Kublai Khan's multifaceted legacy, portraying him as a visionary leader who transcended traditional Mongol warfare to embrace and integrate maritime power and sophisticated administration. Kublai Khan's reign not only unified China but also established crucial trade networks that connected disparate civilizations, leaving an indelible mark on world history.

Final Thought:

“I agree with Marco Polo that he was the greatest, probably the greatest ruler of that era.” — Jack Weatherford [41:54]

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Produced by: Lewis Dobbs
Podcast Host: Emily Griffith
Author Discussed: Jack Weatherford

For more insights into Kublai Khan and other historical figures, explore the full podcast episode on History Extra.

Transcript

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[Jack Weatherford]

Detail. Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Genghis Khan may have built a formidable land empire, but his grandson Kublai Khan mastered the seas. So how did a nomadic leader come to have such a formidable navy and conquer China in the process? Well, Emily Griffith spoke to Jack Weatherford about his new book on the subject to find out more.

[Emily Griffith]

So we are going to be talking all about Kublai, Khan, the Emperor of the Seas, as you've just written a book which is called exactly that. So would you mind introducing us to Kublai Khan? Could you give us that 60 second introduction to him?

[Ebay Ad]

Yes. Kublai Khan is the grandson of Genghis Khan, who is, of course, the greatest conqueror in the history of the world. And he became not only the Great Khan of the Mongolian Empire, but also the Emperor of China. And that's what he's best known for today. Probably in all of Chinese history, he's the best known of all the emperors. But what people don't know is the part about the sea. No one associates Mongols with the sea.

[Emily Griffith]

So, before Kublai Khan, what did Mongol rulership look like?

[Ebay Ad]

Well, it hadn't been for a very long time. It was only two generations that the Mongol Empire had been founded in 1206. And it was basically ruled by Genghis Khan and then by his successors by horseback. They were running back and forth all over the world, conquering the world all the way from Korea to Hungary. And so they were operating out of mobile camps. They had a very, very small capital called Karakorom or Hakorin in Mongolia, but it was mostly just for warehouses to keep stuff that came in. The Mongols themselves never lived there. They lived in tents. And so it was a very personalized rule and was very centralized, despite the huge territory that they ruled. And they were ruling in, I would say more in an ad hoc way. The Chinggis Khan passed a lot of laws. He gave the great law to the people, and all the generations that followed claimed to be following him. Of course, it was often interpreted in ways that were very personal to them. So then, for Kublai Khan, he came in to be the Emperor of China was much different than the way the Mongolians had been ruling up to that.

[Emily Griffith]

How did a nomadic leader come to conquer China then?

[Ebay Ad]

Well, Genghis Khan started off just raiding into China. About 1209 were the first raids, and I don't think he had any intention of conquering China. He was raiding, he was coming in. Sometimes it was trading, sometimes raiding. And then he was having trouble with. The rulers of northern China at that time were the Jin dynasty. They weren't really Han Chinese people. They were from Manchuria, but the Jin dynasty was ruling. And at one time he besieged their capital, which is now Beijing, but they were ruling from there, and he conquered it. And they swore allegiance to him and to give him all the tribute that he had asked for. And as soon as Genghis Khan left and went back north, across the Gobi, up to the great plateau of Mongolia. The Emperor fled. He didn't stay there. And he broke his promise to Genghis Khan. You don't break a promise to Genghis Khan. He's the one person in history that it's very difficult to get away with. He will accept all kinds of things, promises, but then you have to do it. So he came back to Beijing, he conquered it once again. And by this time, of course, the Emperor himself had fled south. But this was in the summer of 1215. And then in September, Genghis Khan's daughter in law, Sorkhtani, gave birth to a child. And she was married to the youngest son of Genghis Khan. That child became a Kublai Khan, or Kublai Khan, as they say in Mongolia.

[Emily Griffith]

And what do we know about Kublai Khan's rise through the ranks? How did he go on to become so, well, become so powerful eventually, yes.

[Ebay Ad]

You know, I think that if you were around in 1220s and 30s and 40s and even the 50s, the last person you would expect in the ranks, royal family to become the Great Khan or the Emperor of China would be Kublai Khan. Because not only was his father the youngest son, but he was the second son of his father and mother. And so he was just way down. But also he was the least Mongol of all the grandchildren. Even when Genghis Khan met him, Genghis Khan looked at him and said, you don't even look like a Mongol. He said, you look like your mother's people. You don't look like us. And we're not exactly sure what he meant by that, but it's obviously that he saw some difference. And his mother, she seemed to recognize that he had certain talents and she was in charge of northern China. And so I believe from the beginning she was helping to make him into a bureaucrat, to help maybe be a governor of northern China, something like that. I don't think she had in mind that he would become Emperor. That was going to be her eldest son, Meng Han, who did become Emperor for a while. So she gave him an excellent education with all kinds of tutors from different countries, from different cultures, different religions, but especially in Chinese education. So that if he became a bureaucrat ruling that, then he would have some background. I don't think anybody was thinking about him because he had brothers who were out there conquering and they were zipping back and forth, conquering Iran, conquering Russia, conquering all kinds of places. He Tended to complain a little that he had gout and he didn't want to go out. And so no one was expecting much from him.

[Emily Griffith]

What happened to change that?

[Ebay Ad]

His older brother became the great Han Mung Han that we mentioned. He came in 1252, and then he died unexpectedly only a few years later. Kublai Khan was out on a mission at that point. He had tried to get out of it by gout, but his brother said, no, you gotta go, you gotta go. So he was out on a mission in southern China. And he just continued with his mission. And it's his wife. By this time, his mother, Sorakhtani had died. But his wife, her name was Chabi. Chabi. She sent him a message, a sort of coded message which was basically, forget about what you're doing now. That is not so important. You got to take care of the Mongols, come back and become the great emperor. And his younger brother named, was claiming the emperorship. And he was back in Mongolia and the people were flocking to him. He was a real Mongol. He was just plain hot headed, very temperamental. And Chabi said, come back, come back. And so he came back to the north of China. And then she was more the inspiration, I believe, than anything else. But he accepted that. He took her word for it. And then suddenly he became very interested, it seemed like in the climb to power, which he had not been before.

[Emily Griffith]

This contest of power between him and his brother.

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Yes.

[Emily Griffith]

How did Kublai Khan actually pip him to the post? How did he come out on top?

[Ebay Ad]

Kublai Khan was in China. His mother had ruled most of northern China. And then she had put him in charge of northern China. The youngest brother was in charge of Mongolia. Mongolia probably only had 1 million inhabitants at that time. China had many tens of millions of people. It had a huge army, it had everything. He had control over that in northern China, he only controlled about half of the China, what we think of today as China, because of the southern Song dynasty was in control of the south, but still just controlling the north was a tremendous asset. And his brother, in a certain way, I would say, didn't stand a chance. Because the Mongolians in Mongolia at that time, they had an army, but it was very dependent on food and supplies from China. And Aragbokh was cut off from that. And he turned toward Central Asia and went into Kazakhstan, raiding for food. But even the Mongols who were there did not help him very much. So his army was starving. He was losing. Kublai Khan conquered him, captured him, set up a tribunal to have an investigation, a trial, and Arikbokh mysteriously died. And so now Kublai Khan was in control of northern China. He claimed to be the great emperor and one brother, his brother Hulegu, who was ruling in what's now Iran and Iraq, the Ilkhanate, the Mongols called it. His brother supported him, but all the rest did not, the ones in Russia and the ones in Central Asia. So even though his brother supported him, he was cut off from his brother because Iran, Iraq were so far away. That later became an important issue because all the cousins in between China and the Middle east basically were against Kublai Khan.

[Emily Griffith]

That's fascinating. It must have proven quite a significant difficulty.

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Yes, because all of the Silk Route ran through the territory of his cousins. I mean, the whole point of conquering China was to control the trade. They didn't want to just have China, they wanted the trade with the outside world. And now it was very difficult because the cousins, they allowed some trade because it benefited them, but overall they were more in control than he was. And he still had not conquered southern China. That was the greatest goal of all because that was the, we could say the factory of the world. They were producing the silks, the porcelains, all the great things that came out of China were coming out of the south. And now he did not control it, and he did not control the Silk Route in the north.

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[Emily Griffith]

How did he come to establish himself in China? How did he overthrow the Song dynasty?

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Well, the Mongols, of course, were only on horseback. But remember, he's a poor horseman, let's just say, like that. He is open to new ideas and to new ways. And fortunately, he had some excellent officers. And one that I really appreciate a lot is then a young man named Adju. And Adju was the grandson of a great general named Subadai who had served under Genghis Haran. And so aju, he went with his father, Oryankadai, to conquer first Northern Vietnam because they wanted to circle around South China. He went there, and they came down the Red river. And they thought they were going to win this because they were the Mongols. And the Mongols never lost anything. So they came down the Red river, and the emperor of Daeviet of Vietnam came up the river, and they were on opposite sides. But the Mongols had difficulty crossing the river. It was hard to figure out how to get across. Mongols really had very little technology for the sea or for rivers, for water in general. However, they saw that the Vietnamese had come up the river mostly on boats, and then they had some elephants. So the idea was they were going to charge the elephants with flaming arrows shooting at their feet in order to terrorize them. But to do that, they had to first send a squad in to destroy all the boats so the Vietnamese could not escape. Well, as soon as the battle started, the Mongols, they're not interested in boats. They want to go to battle. So they immediately forgot about the boats, left them there. They defeated the Vietnamese, but the Vietnamese loaded onto the boats and headed back towards Hanoi. And so Orihangada had lost that. But his son AJU learned a lesson. AJU learned a lesson. And so then aju, and coming down the Yangtze river in China, he was extremely observant. And he went around everywhere, every little nook and cranny that he could find, every creek, every little swampy area. He was really studying the area very, very carefully. And what he realized was the Chinese cities were built with extremely strong fortifications on the land side, because they were always attacked from the land. But on the water side, it was very weak because they depended upon what they call the Great Water Wall. It wasn't like the Great Wall of North China. It's a Great water wall of boats. And at this time, there was no real threat from the north up until now. So AJU figured, okay, if they could attack that side from the water. So how do you do that? There is no such thing as an offensive navy at this point. The navy is just there for defense, and it belongs to the Southern Song. But he figured out if they could get some good engineers from Iran and Iraq to come in to make trebuchets, these catapults, and somehow mount them on boats. And Kublai Khan agreed to this, and he brought them over very quickly, and they started experimenting. How do you get a trebuchet onto a boat and then attack? But they figured it out. They figured it out. They did it, and then they started smashing the walls of the Chinese city, coming down the Yangtze river from the upper part down ever towards the south Song capital at Hangzhou. And this was the turning point. Now he had a real navy, and he was headed towards the capital of the Southern Song dynasty.

[Emily Griffith]

This is where this great offensive navy comes in. What did it look like? You mentioned the trebuchets. Can we get a picture for our listeners?

[Ebay Ad]

Well, he had taken over, first of all, part of the Jin dynasty when he conquered the Jin dynasty. The Jin dynasty had also tried to make an offensive navy to use against the Southern Song, but they were much worse at it than the Mongols. They made beautiful ships, river ships, beautiful. And the Jin emperor, he decided he wanted something magnificent. He wanted red sails. So they had these red, red sails. And then he wanted them to glisten, so they covered them with a light coat of oil. So he had a beautiful, beautiful fleet of river ships that would just impress anybody. And as soon as they got out into the ocean, they didn't even have a navigator they hardly knew. Well, they didn't know how to go south. That's all they knew. And so here they are in these river ships, bouncing around on the ocean, not knowing where they're going. They see some other ships coming towards them. Well, it's a Southern Song fleet, but they think it must be some of their own people. They didn't think the Southern Song was up there yet. So here's his army out there with beautiful red sails. And immediately the Southern Song got close and they began firing, of course, flaming arrows right at those nice big red sails. And the oil set them on fire. And the men on those ships were so tightly packed with such heavy armor that many of them died in the fire and the rest died in the water. So this was the kind of army or the kind of navy that Hubla had inherited. But he was also very clever to entice a lot of Southern Song craftsmen over to the Mongols. One thing about Mongols was they valued craft work. Every city they conquered throughout the world, they would always take the craft workers, whether it's weavers, potters, people who could translate, speak different languages, read and write, anybody with a skill that would take it. And this was not true in China. In China, craftsmen were. These artisans were rather low compared to the aristocrats, to the mandarins, to the educated people, those who could write poetry and do calligraphy. That's what was valued. But the Southern Song craftsmen and soldiers and merchants saw that the Mongols valued them greatly and rewarded them greatly. So many of them began to defect to the Mongols, and they helped to build a navy. Now, before he completed his conquest of Southern Song, there was a strange thing. He suddenly decided, let's attack Japan. It's a little unclear why, but I think it could have been part of the idea is kill the chicken to scare the monkey, that you're going to make the Southern Song, perhaps surrender if you conquer Japan. But the other thing was also Japan was applying some very important materials for making gunpowder to the Southern Song. And I think that Kublai Khan wanted to cut off that trade route to Japan. And he also wanted to make sure that there was no opportunity for the Southern Song corps to flee to Japan. So he invaded in 1274. He lost the Mongols, even though they came with this nice firepower and they could throw these grenades that exploded. Grenades exploding on a beach don't really conquer a country. And then the winds came up and ships were still not perfect for the sea. They were a little bit weak. They were more river ships. So there was a small expedition, but it lost. However, Kublai Khan was still determined to conquer the Southern Song. They were just sort of floating along. The Mongols had failed to conquer Japan. What did they have to fear? They had the Great water Wall. And now they were more interested in building these little paddle ships to go out on the lake and have wine and have Song and enjoying life. And the Mongols kept coming and kept coming and kept coming.

[Emily Griffith]

So what was the moment where the tide turned in the Mongols favor?

[Ebay Ad]

I think it was a series of conquests coming down the Yangtze. But then as they got close to Hangzhou in 76, there was a child emperor. There had been a series of incompetent emperors and child emperors and all kinds of things. And this young boy named Gong, Emperor Gong, had a regent who was in control of the country. She was a former Empress Xie. She was often called Ugly Xie because she was supposed to be unattractive, had only one eye and things like that. But she was deserted by most of the officers and the members of the court. They all fled. Many of the officers of the court left their own family there in Hangzhou. And they fled because the Mongols were coming. And she knew the Mongol system. She understood the Mongol system of war. And that is, if you surrender, you will be spared. There's a very clear you will be spared. And the people will be left in peace. They will be under Mongol rule. You will lose all the wealth of the aristocrats and of the court. And she negotiated back and forth to have the young emperor recognized as at least a king or as a puppet, anything but. The commanding general over AJU was named Bayan. Bayan. Marco Polo called him Bayan of the Hundred Eyes, which is a strange name, but Bayan was a very honorable Mongol. But he said no, there's only one way. The Mongol way is total surrender. We don't negotiate, we don't accept. We only accept total surrender. That was it. And so Xie decided to surrender to the Mongols with the hope that they would be merciful to her. She surrendered. Bayan came with a small detachment to the city to enter the city. And then she said she would formally surrender to him. But he was a very gentle person in some ways. And he said no, he was just a humble soldier. He wasn't qualified to come to a palace and he would just, just look at the city and he would leave and she would come out. Because what he really wanted was not for her to surrender surrounded by her own people in her palace. But it was the soldiers, the Mongol soldiers who had been fighting for years. She would come out with the Emperor and her court and surrender in front of the soldiers. They deserved that honor, he thought. She came out, she played her role very majestically. She bowed towards Beijing, towards Kublai Khan and the office. She bowed to the Mongols and she surrendered. And the Mongols, they treated her with all the respect you can imagine. They took her to Beijing, they gave her a palace, they gave her a subsidy for life, a tax free subsidy for life, everything. But she had no power. And also the same was true for the young Emperor Gong. They took the city. They left most of the people in peace. But they did begin a systematic looting of the palace. Now, looting sounds like just chaos. No, no, this was very well organized by bureaucrats who recorded everything they wanted exactly all of the archives. They wanted to record everything very correctly and then take it north. But they did not rob the common people. It was only this transfer of capital from the palace and from the government. But the men who had escaped, the men who were cowards, who did not defend the city, of course they condemned her as the coward. She's this almost 70 year old lady. Here they are out there in their 30s and 40s and they are blaming her. But they fled with the Song navy towards the south. But the Mongols, they don't give up. You don't just run away and think that it's going to be over. The Mongols will pursue you to the end. That's exactly what they did. They came with their own ships. After, they would call them renegades, but then other people would call them Song loyalists. And the Song loyalists, they took another young brother of the now defeated emperor and made him emperor. Another child. They somehow had an accident and dropped the child in the ocean. They fished him out and he died. So then they took another child. And now they were beginning to run out of boys. They only had one young boy left to the pure. They took him and they made him the new emperor. And they failed. Further south to an island. And the first thing is set up a palace. This is not correct thinking. You know, you're fleeing from the Mongols. You do not worry about having the right kind of Confucian palace for this child emperor and for the ministers who are around him. The main minister's name was Lu, Prime Minister Lu. So the Mongols came, they came with their ships. And now the Song thinking was still, our ships are our great wall of the sea. So they chained them together as they had so often done, to form a great wall in front of the harbor. So here, all these ships, maybe a thousand even, chained together one to the other. And then the prime minister ordered everybody off the island and onto the ships. He was afraid that if the court went onto the ships, the men who were left behind would desert to the Mongols. So he ordered everybody onto the ships from the land. Well, there's nothing dumber he could have done because now the land is there. So the Mongols take the land. Now the Mongols cut them off from water supply and from firewood. And the Mongols can shoot down from the cliffs. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. And then very soon the men are out of water. They're trying to eat dry rice or rice cooked with seawater. They're dying. The men are dying. And the Mongols, they tried over and over to get the court to surrender. And Prime Minister Lu refused. Refused every time. And then even a small detachment of Southern Song, they tried to rescue the Emperor and said, let's flee with the Emperor, let's take him. Probably they were going to try to go to North Vietnam. Let's take him away for safety. And they failed because the Prime Minister Liu refused. And then when it became absolutely obvious from the fires that were raging, from the shooting of the people, the dying of the sailors of the Southern Song, they were losing. Prime Minister Liu would not surrender. The boy was there on the ship. A little boy, 7 years old. He had one friend in the world, one friend. It was a parrot. He had his little pet parrot with him. He was on the ship and the Prime Minister first took his own wife and threw her into the water to drown because he didn't want her to dishonor him by being captured. And then supposedly he said that the child had to die in order to avoid the treachery of the woman who had betrayed the country. He's a 39 or 40 year old military official of the government. He is blaming this 68, 9 year old woman for having lost the country that he fled. He deserted. He took the child and he jumped into the water with the child emperor and with all the papers and the official seals, everything that they could take with them. And somehow the parrot itself was knocked off of its perch in a cage and the cage and the parrot fell in with the boy. And that was the end of the great Song dynasty. It ended in 1279. It had been founded in 960 by great people. It was one of the greatest dynasties in the history of China. Great in technology, great in art, great in literature, great in trade, great in everything. And it ended in the murder of a seven year old boy and his parent.

[Emily Griffith]

It's an awfully tragic end to such a long lasting dynasty.

[Ebay Ad]

Yes, but a poor child. His older brother lived on because he had been taken by the Mongols. But of course, now two of the younger brothers are dead.

[Emily Griffith]

It's really awful, awful end to it. Of course. This is where Kublai Khan takes power, isn't it?

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Yes. Yes. Now he rules all of China. For the first time in more than a century, China is now united. In fact, China is bigger than it's ever been before because he already had Tibet, he had Mongolia, he had Manchuria, he had Western China. So he had a much larger country than China had ever been in the past. It was a new empire, a true empire.

[Emily Griffith]

And he seems very much split between these two worlds. How did he balance those two influences?

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Well, in part, Kublai Khan kept the two systems operating both at the same time and sometimes in opposition to each other that he was able to exploit in various ways. But for example, he had two capitals. His original capital, it was Inner Mongolia, and the one that we call in the West, Xanadu, the famous Xanadu of the poem. So Xanadu was the summer capital, and it was organized like. Mostly like a Mongol camp, although it also had palaces to the side, more or less. And that was where he would spend the summer. And they would do Mongol things and eat Mongol food, everything Mongol. And then in the city, he had, of course, his own small Forbidden City, which was mostly based around what's now Beihai park in Beijing. And then within that, they had huge gardens, their own meadow that they had created, and they had Mongol tents. So they'd go back and forth between events held in the palace, which were Chinese style events, and then events that would be held in the Ger, which the Mongols called the Tent of Ger, or the Ord, and he would try to use both. For the most part, the Mongol system was dominant at this time. But he was also quite clever in using the best of the Chinese civilization to the maximum that he could use it.

[Emily Griffith]

By looking at Marco Polo's accounts, we seem to get this idea of Kublai Khan's court being quite progressive. How much truth is there in that quite uncomplicated account of Kublai Khan?

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Yeah, well, just as I love the Mongols, I love Marco Polo too, because he loved the Mongols. So complimentary towards him. Yes, I certainly believe that he was extremely innovative, because just as creating this first truly offensive navy that was able to capture so much was very, very important, you know, he was very poor in some things. He never really got a truly organized legal code going. He tried to invade Japan again, the second time, and once again he lost. But this time I don't think again, he was trying so much to conquer Japan. He had all these hundreds of thousands of Southern Song soldiers, and he didn't know what to do with them. And so I think he was trying to exile them there. He had also looked along the Amur river in Siberia, and he exiled some there, and Tibet, where he also exiled some of them to Tibet. So he lost that. But in a very cruel irony, he had solved the problem. And that is because the ship sank and the soldiers were gone. And he had been determined not to slaughter the soldiers, but now they were gone. By the act of nature, the great Wind, the kamikaze wind had come in and it sank the boats and killed them. So he continues to fail in many things, but he saw the potential of the sea and how important it was. He still had this problem of getting across the silk routes to his cousins in the Middle east, in Iran, Iraq. So he began to organize a plan to send a convoy to Iran, all the way to the Ilkhanate, to Hormuz. And so the emperor organized this under the plan of sending a Mongolian princess to marry the Ilkhan, the Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate of Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan, in other areas. And her name was. It was a long, arduous journey. Remember the young boy, the last emperor of the Southern Song? He had a parrot. Well, she's a Mongol. She went with a tiger. And it was loaded with all kinds of trade goods. And it was a hard trip. Many people died. It took a long time, but they made it to Hormuz. This is the longest expedition, really, in world history. Before this, merchants had gone back and forth, but mostly they would go one port to the next port, change ships, load, unload, pay tariffs. But the Mongols had set up a superhighway of the sea, a silk route of the sea. And they connected the Middle east, and from there, it was just a short hop over to Europe. So you've connected two of the greatest civilizations of history, the Muslim Middle east and China.

[Emily Griffith]

Can you just tell us what impact it had on commerce as well, as you mentioned, warfare earlier and conflict, but this huge trading network.

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Yes, you know, the trade was more important. When you think about the Mongols, we think about the warfare. That's always the issue. But we have to remember, in this nation of 1 million people, they had about 100,000 soldiers. Originally under Genghis Khan, 100,000 soldiers from a nation of 1 million. They do not conquer and control nations of 100 million people, much less to control most of the Eurasian continent. Russia, Iran, Iraq, what's now Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Syria, China, Korea. No, it's because of the commerce. The people recognized that the Mongols were extremely good with commerce. They valued the merchants, and goods were moving back and forth. And so these goods were revolutionizing life. You had new products, new medicines, new types of dye, new types of tiles, for example, for China, new types of metal with better steel being manufactured. And of course, the beautiful porcelains and hard, strong porcelains of southern China, together with much of the silk work and the jade work and other things like damask. So many things were coming back and forth, back and forth. And a ship can carry much more than a camel caravan. You can restock as you go along for food and water. You don't have to feed a bunch of camels. It's much easier. You can transport massive amounts of materials. So this was the beginning of really trade on a massive level in the world. It was extremely important for everyone, not just for the areas ruled by the Mongols, but also Europe was suddenly getting in on it. Tatar cloth, Tartar cloth, became one of the most valued possessions in Europe. They were extremely interested in these goods from China.

[Emily Griffith]

Did they face any setbacks in this at all?

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Finally, the Mongol army itself failed to conquer Egypt. And so they tried many different things. Kublai Khan sent word to the Ilkhanate. These are his nephews or his grandnephews by this point, because his brother has long since died. But he sent word to them to make an alliance with the Europeans, with the pope, and with the kings in Europe, because the Mediterranean people are good with ships, and they can supply ships, and they can attack Egypt by water, and the Mongols will come again by land, and that way the two together could conquer them. Well, for a little while, they made some progress. Genoa decided, okay, yeah, that's a good idea. And they sent shipbuilders to actually do Babylon, which was ruled by the Mongols. So here in Babylon, you had Italian Genoese shipbuilders making ships that they were going to use to invade Egypt. But Egypt under the rule of the Mamluks, they were very clever people, and they simply bribed them not to support the Mongols anymore. And so Jediwa suddenly withdrew its support, which is a little, tiny, tiny story in history, a little footnote. But these men were deserted. Here are all these shipbuilders in Babylon of all places on earth, and they've been deserted by their home country. We really don't know what happened to them.

[Emily Griffith]

It's certainly an interesting insight into that. One little moment to broaden out the scope again, how much influence did the control of the sea give Kubla? How far was he, as your book title suggests, Emperor of the seas?

[Ebay Ad]

Well, even though he had not conquered Japan, he had not conquered Vietnam, and he had a short expedition with Java, he had not conquered Java, but he controlled the ocean. So all of these countries had to deal with him. They had to deal with the Mongols, they had to have trade with the Mongols. And so from Sakhalin island, which is off the coast of what we usually call Siberia, but Sakhalin island all the way to Hormuz, they controlled that. So he controlled this route. And he also protected it, and he reduced the price of everything because now you didn't have to pay every single port along the way. You paid the Mongols. They took care of everything. They had fair prices. They valued these merchants. And so they had goods moving back and forth, and it was extremely important. Now, some of the efforts did fail. They attempted to introduce some of the Mongol laws into Iran. And some of the Chinese, for example, Kublai Khan's economy was based on paper money. It worked fine in China. Chinese were used to it. It was backed up. It was working fine. So Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, all of these, suddenly they were ordered, they had to use the paper money, and it was being printed up exactly like in China. These people had never heard of that. The whole system collapsed. The paper currency, the universal currency system, was a failure. It was an idea far, far beyond its time. But even in the failure, the failures sometimes are so spectacular and so interesting. You see the genius behind. I don't think I've ever used that word for him before. But anyway, I agree with Marco Polo that he was the greatest, probably the greatest ruler of that era.

[Emily Griffith]

We so often focus on Genghis Khan and his achievements, his conquests. Do you think that this overshadows the legacy of Kublai Khan? And also, what would you say Kublai Khan's legacy is today? How would you explain it to our listeners?

[Ebay Ad]

Well, first, for me, the grandfather. I'm a grandfather. The grandfather always overshadows the grandchildren. So I do have ultimate respect for Genghis Khan, but I have tremendous respect for Kublai Khan too. But I think it's this. If you look at the world today, it's really the world that the Mongols created in the sense that, you know, Korea had not been united, the Mongols pushed them together. Russia had not been united, the Mongols pushed them together. China had never been of the shape and size that the Mongols created. You look at China on the map today, and it's only a little bit smaller than the China of the Mongol Empire. Now, remember, it was only one part of the Mongol Empire. It wasn't the whole empire, but the Mongols created that. They created that. So the geography of Eurasia in particular today, but not really Europe, but the rest was so much shaped, even in the Middle east, they helped. And the Ilkhanate, they gave right. Iran was allowed to flower again with their own version of Islam and with their own culture again. And I say that the Persians, the Iranians, they really do not like the Mongols at all. However, they greatly profited under the Mongols gave them a country in a certain way, we could say separate from the Arab world. So they created the map of the world.

[Jack Weatherford]

That was Jack Weatherford. His book, Emperor of the Seas, Kublai Khan and the Making of China is out now. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Lewis Dobbs.