Was Genghis Khan the World’s First Globalist?

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0:36Find out more at cantor Fitzgerald.ie. Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Today's podcast is about the first real globalised leader was none other than Genghis Khan.

0:49David McWilliams: We're going to be discussing the economics of the Mongol Empire and how the Mongol Empire led to the Renaissance. That's all coming up. Scaling a business takes the right expertise at the right time. Upwork helps growing teams quickly bring in specialized freelancers so you can move faster and take the business to the next level. One of the biggest growth hacks is realizing you don't have to do it all yourself. Upwork makes it easy to bring in the right freelancer when you need them so you can stay focused on what you do best. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more.

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2:49How you doing there? It is time for the podcast. Today's podcast is going to be a really unusual, because it's Christmas, John, we are going to do something completely related to Christmas, which is going to be the economics of the Mongol Empire. Okay. I know this is taking you a little bit by surprise. I just feel all Christmassy already. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got that whole fucking Santa Claus thing going on. think Genghis Khan Genghis Khan or Genghis Khan I'm not too sure where do you want to go? I don't know do you know it's an interesting thing about Genghis, Genghis Khan or pronunciation in general and this is a slide aside, when I was working in the BBC World Service, did you work for them?

3:28do you know what, funnily enough I did yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah but there was a pronunciation department, oh I like that in the BBC and I used to make promos. I was part of the promo department for the English networks and I did loads of different promos, but the phone rang from the pronunciation department saying that I pronounced Beijing wrong because a lot of people say Beijing, but it's actually Beijing apparently. And the other one was Putin because a lot of people say Putin and it's not Putin because that means the path of 10, but it's very much Putin. So Genghis, Genghis, I wonder what they'd say about that.

4:12Mongolians? No, the BBC. Oh, the BBC. The reason, there's many reasons I'm doing this podcast on the economics of the Mongol Empire. One of which is that I have noticed a very sharp increase on Mongolian barmen in Dublin and waiters and waitresses. Really? Yes. Over the last one, if you go to Neary's, there's a particularly good Mongolian young fella who is the barman. Absolutely brilliant. But I was there having a drink. I was thinking of this as I was having a pint. But I want to talk to you about it because I want to talk about Ukraine. Oh, we've just jumped over to the other side of the world.

4:46Yes. Well, that's the interesting thing. You think you've jumped to the other side of the world. Right. But one of the fascinating things about Ukraine, the many fascinating things about Ukraine, one is when you're in Ukraine and in Russia in general, a lot of people look very Asiatic. A lot of Slavic people look very Asiatic. And I've always wondered where did that come from? And the second thing is, of course, it's from Asia, but how come, John? How come? Stop you. Sorry. Stop you. Stop you. I'm on the flow. All right.

5:14David McWilliams: And the other thing is, what is the DNA profile of Ukrainians? Because we know that Ukrainians are one of the most varied DNA, and that makes complete sense because of where it is location-wise. It's just this extraordinary crossroads. They're not purely Slavs. They're not purely Slavs at all. There's Tartar blood. There's Mongol blood. There's all sorts of blood in Ukrainians. They're incredibly mixed. Lots of Jewish blood. There's lots of Northern Slavic blood. There's lots of Western European blood in Western Ukraine. And then you have a lot more sort of Asian blood in Eastern Ukraine. So that got me thinking about why.

5:58David McWilliams: And then one of the reasons why is that the Mongol Empire, our friend Genghis okay we're going for Geng Genghis yeah not Geng Geng I don't know you're the pronunciation well I'm going for Genghis alright Genghis right okay the Mongol Empire okay so we're thinking we're in the 11th century this is going to be on the economics of the Mongol Empire yeah I was going to ask you what the economics angle the economics angle is phenomenally people associate the Mongol Empire with absolute terror, absolute destruction, absolute devastation. But in actual fact, the Mongol Empire was the world's largest continuous free trade zone.

6:41David McWilliams: So we're going to rescue Genghis Khan from the flames of history, and we're going to locate him in a liberal economic approach to trade. And as a result of that, what we're going to see is that because the Mongol Empire opened up the Silk Road again, which had been closed for about a thousand years. A huge amount of innovation that was actually holed up in China from gunpowder to paper, to paper money, all these things. Yeah, writing and stuff. Actually writing, all this sort of stuff came across from China, was allowed to come across from China to Europe because of the Mongol Empire. We're going to make the ridiculously flamboyant claim, John.

7:28Ridiculously flamboyant.

7:30David McWilliams: that without the Mongol Empire, there would be no Renaissance. Ooh, that's a good one. There you go. So that's a podcast that's going to be all about. And without the Mongol Empire, there would be no Black Death. And what I want to talk to you about, we're going to talk about the Mongol Empire, but it's how one thing that happens very far away can have unforeseen consequences somewhere else. And it can take a while to get there. But once it does, it can be devastating. So this is like the flap of the butterfly. Exactly, exactly. So that's where we are. It's a pre-Christmas, very un-Christmas thing.

8:05We're going to talk about Mr. Genghis Khan, right? Okay, so let's start there. Who was he? What's his game? And what were his economics? Yes. Okay, so the Mongol Empire is the largest continuous empire the world has ever seen.

8:20David McWilliams: It stretches from Ukraine in the west to Korea in the east. Right. Okay. Half the world. Basically half the world. And it's half the world which is on the move, which is half the world which is going from a nomadic existence to a domestic existence. It is a total state of flux. We are located, John, in the year of our Lord, because we are, talking about Christmas, 1162. Right. And now what people will know about the Mongol Empire is that it dominated most of the world for a couple of hundred years. Okay, so some fun facts you'll know about Genghis Genghis is that Genghis Khan, ferocious warrior, possibly led directly to the death of 40 million people, which would put him up there as the world's most infamous killer.

9:11Well, he's up there with Hitler and Stalin and Mao. Yeah, all those good lads. All those lads. And those guys, but he did it on horseback. They did it. He did it by hand.

9:23David McWilliams: He did it by hand, right? He did it by hand. whereas they were killing people in a mechanized industrial scale, right? Yeah. The Mongols were killing people by hand, right? Okay, so that's... Old school. Exactly. But there was a lot of excitement also about his prolific, not killing, but also his prolific amount of children he had. And in 2003, a study came out, a genetic study, is that at least 16 million people in the world today are directly related to Genghis Khan. 16 million people. Wow. And allegedly... Did he have red hair as well? Of course. Prolific. Prolific sires as we are. I can see the resemblance.

10:12David McWilliams: And do you know in Korea, one in 200 Koreans have the gene that relates them to Genghis Khan Really? Right So that shows you But do you know just a little side there do you know the equivalent over here is Niall of the Nine Hostages? Yes I remember him Niall of the Nine Hostages And as I always said Niall of the Nine Sausages I do remember that when you were in school I do But he apparently is there's a bit of his DNA in pretty much everybody in this country. Nile of the Nine. Hostages. Yeah, fair to say so. So let's, coming out of our DNA test, right, John? Okay, we are going into, it's 1162.

10:57David McWilliams: Right. Somewhere close to Lake Baikal, which is now in Russia, but just on the northern border of Mongolia. And Lake Baikal is the biggest freshwater lake in the world. Exactly. So an incredible source of vitality, right? And a young man is born, and we think his name is Temujin. Let's just say the Mongols weren't great at keeping records, right? They were on their horses, right? But he's born in 1160. Now, to give you a sense of what the global economy looked like at that, right? All the big empires are gone, right? So the Byzantine Empire is kind of on its own. It's doing its thing. But the Muslim caliphate that existed from 600 odd to about 900, that is gone in Persia.

11:45David McWilliams: That's gone in Baghdad, all these places, right? The Byzantine Empire is kind of clinging on to its sort of slightly post-Roman Christian thing. Your Holy Roman Empire that you like, that's a little sort of sliver of land, okay? And in China, meanwhile, there's a split between the Jin state in the north and the Song state in the south. So China is not unified. So it's a world that is incredibly unstable. So the massive empires are gone. This is well before the Russian Empire. This is well before we even hear of Muscovy as a power, right? Yeah, yeah. And out of Mongolia emerged this ferocious force, which are the Mongols.

12:26David McWilliams: And of course, what gives them the technical ability over everybody else is they can ride at speed and kill. And they are a ferocious killing machine, maybe the most extraordinary killing machine the world has ever seen. And they conquer enormous swathes of the world's population. So what we know is he's born around 1160. Yeah. By 1206, this guy Temujin is given the title Genghis R. Genghis, which means the great leader. Okay. So he must have begun by unifying the Mongol tribes under his leadership. So we're talking about a nomadic state. We're talking about various tribes. This is a microcosm of what's happening in the rest of the world, which is that all the big empires from the Roman Empire forward are beginning to crumble.

13:25David McWilliams: So everything's up for grabs. So it's that backdrop or that background noise gives the Mongols the opportunity to expand out of Mongolia. And when you think about the distances we're talking about from Korea to Ukraine, this is the whole effectively Eurasian landmass. and they conquer it in decades. But they were using the Silk Road. Now, this is where we're going to get to. Oh, okay. So the Silk Road was closed because what happens when all big empires collapse is typically they cede power to little smaller groups. Most of those little smaller groups, as they did during the Silk Road period, begin to set up little trade barriers, little Brexiteers.

14:11Imagine little Brexiteers. They're medieval Brexiteers. Asiatic medieval Brexiteers, right? Lots of Nigel Farages. Lots of Nigel Farages, exactly. Lots of little Nigel Farages with their own little areas, right?

14:24David McWilliams: So what they stop, they stop the continuous trade that was basically there from the second century BC. Right. The Silk Road. So the Silk Road is completely blocked, right, at this stage. So there's no connection, there's no trade, there's no ideas flowing from east to west. But what we have in China is an incredibly innovative society in China. But it's slightly closed off. And what the amazing thing about the Mongols was that they were wedded, and this is the interesting thing, to free trade, to what we would know as free trade. But I'll give you some more statistics. So in 1209, he is the Genghis of the Mongols, right?

15:08David McWilliams: So he's the great leader. In 1211, we know that he basically, he goes and the Uyghurs, remember the Uyghurs? Yeah. He conquers the Uyghurs, right? These are a very old tribe. He then conquers a crowd called the Tanguts, right? These are all living around what you would describe as Central Asia. Right, yeah. And the deal with the Mongols was very simple. If you resisted, they would slaughter everybody. But if you said, okay, you guys can run the place. So if the Mongols turned up, which you don't want them turning up. it's not a good sign Monday morning you're stretching the lads are at the door you're getting out of the scratcher it's like knock knock who's there Genghis Genghis who oh no exactly I hear come on in Genghis want a cup of tea right so Genghis cause I can exactly so once Genghis came knocking the door you had a choice if you but the interesting is the history up until recently was the idea that Everybody was laid waste.

16:10David McWilliams: Everyone was terrorized. In fact, amazingly, the Mongols, one English monk described the Mongols as, a detestable nation of Satan that poured out like devils from Tartarus. And Tartarus was that part of Central Asia where the Tartars are from. The fascinating thing was the Mongols never came within 1 ,500 miles of England. but their reputation was so extraordinary. This is even before social media. They were influencers before influencers. And they were the nation of Satan. So everyone was terrified of them. But the evidence now is that in actual fact, if you said to Genghis when he came knocking the door, come on in, we'll pay you some taxes.

16:59David McWilliams: They were actually unbelievably open rulers. So a tiny Mongol elite would rule a big area. Right. And what you'd do is you'd pay taxes to them, but they kind of left people alone. So it was kind of very feudal. Very feudal. Yeah. And people would describe it now as almost meritocratic, the Mongol system, right? But that doesn't sit well with our image of these being these ferocious killers because they were also ferocious killers. Yeah, well, 40 million says that. It's amazing. So they take, imagine this, right? they take Persia, Tibet, Korea, Crimea. In China, they actually take over all of China, which is extraordinary when you think about it, right?

17:45David McWilliams: It takes them a couple of generations to do so, right? So it wasn't until Genghis's grandson, Kublai Khan, who actually ended up being the ruler of China. Kubla Khan is known for his erotic poetry, John. Yes, indeed. You know that? And Frankie Goes to Hollywood Songs. Yes. Such other great markers of modern literary achievement. The Holly Johnson. From Holly Johnson to Kubla Khan on the podcast, right? But what interests me is that very soon after Kubla Khan dies, the Mongol Empire collapses. So we're talking about an empire that stretched Korea, Japan, the Sea of Japan, all the way to Ukraine, right?

18:31David McWilliams: Yeah. Now, it collapses very quickly in the Civil War, which always happens after a great leader dies, into four areas. Yeah. The first one was the European side, which you might have heard of the Golden Horde. Yeah, the band, yeah, yeah. The first band as well. Good band, Dublin band, Simon Carmelie leads to their... That's right, yeah, yeah. Friends and Time, big song they had. Was that their song, yeah? I think it was their song. I saw them. One Hit Wonders. I saw them at the Trinity Ball in 1988 or 89. That's how long ago it is. Oh, yeah, yeah. They were very 80s. Great name for a band, I think.

19:07David McWilliams: Great name for a band. They also played at a stage, and the next band to play on the stage was Public Enemy. I was at that gig. Yes. And that's when all, I remember Flavor Flay was saying, fight the power. And all the white middle-class kids were going back, fight the power. and I'm just sitting there and goes you are the fucking power that's a slight aside I was saying I remember that gig they were so out of place weren't they it was brilliant they were so out of place it was the whitest place ever Dublin in 1988 you remember the big clock around his neck yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly but it still is a great song Fight the Power it's still a classic in fact the opening of Fight the Power still is chilling it's so good it's early rap we digress we digress okay Pull it back.

19:56David McWilliams: Okay, so you had also a place called the Ilkhanet. Right, and the Ilkhanet, so the Golden Horde is the European side. The Ilkhanet is based around Persia. That's another massive empire, right? And then you have the Changai, Kanet. It's all Kanet. Right. And that was basically what we call Central Asia, the sort of place that we did the podcast on a couple of weeks ago. And then finally, you have the Kanet of the Great Khan and Yang Dynasty. Yan. Yin or Yang? We have the great Khanate of great Khan and Yang dynasty, which is China. So it splits into four. But something fascinating happens when it splits into four.

20:37David McWilliams: Rather than become these autonomous blocks, it becomes a free trade zone. Right, okay. So the free trade zone is fascinating because the Mongols want to trade. And this is really interesting. most big empires when they conquer other peoples they block everything off and they try and milk the resources of the people but because the Mongols were nomads they didn't make anything so think about manufacturing requires you to be sitting down making things you can't be on your horse running around the step. And you're kind of, you have to be close to your resources you're close to resources, you have to sit down you have to figure out how to make things Typically, manufacturing requires energy, it requires fire, it requires iron.

21:26David McWilliams: So it requires a domestic working population to produce the goods to the merchant class who then sell the goods. In a market. In a fixed market. Exactly. So what the Mongols realized was that they needed the merchant class. and they needed the merchant class. So they opened up the Silk Roads, which had been closed in previous incarnations because they realized that what they could not do themselves when they were hanging around, zooming around the world, was actually make things. So they outsourced the making of things to other people. Now, and amazingly, they actively introduced policies that were intended to keep trade flowing They had a network of relay stations to provide food and lodgings all across the Silk Roads.

22:18David McWilliams: They had trade associations. It's amazing when you think of it. Trade associations with official backing, which merchants could pool their resources because, of course, it was incredibly dangerous to trade to bring stuff long distance. And the way in which you reduce the risk is you had the merchants pool their resources and their money through trade associations. And they had insurance policies. Wow. In case things went wrong. Where did this kind of, because this is very modern thinking. So where did that kind of thinking and mindset come from? The mindset came from the fact that they realized.

22:52So again, what we have in a 21st century worldview is you look back on people who came before us a thousand years ago and you think automatically they're backward. They're not sophisticated. They can't figure the world out. We are the pinnacle of human achievement. Yeah. So what I'm saying is, no, what basically,

23:11David McWilliams: this is the European Union before the European Union. It's open. They have free trade. They have free movement of people and free movement of capital and free movement of ideas. And this is the fascinating thing. And what seems to have been the driving force was their understanding that as nomads, they couldn't make anything, but they needed the resources of those who could make them. So they said, okay, you guys do your thing, which comes back to this idea that they were much more enlightened than people think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So where did all this go wrong if this was so successful and so kind of innovative?

23:49David McWilliams: Well, there's a thing called the, you know the Pax Romania, you hear about the Roman peace. There was a Pax Mongolia, which was this peace that actually existed between all these warring factions, but because the Mongols were able to actually preserve the whole empire. But of course, what went wrong was that the first question is why didn't they go further yeah why did they stop they were swept through all of russia why did they stop in ukraine and what seems to have happened is when kubla khan died there was as always happens in these things a scrap internally as to who would run the place yeah and rather than expanding more it seems that they actually turned inside on themselves and decided to actually have a scrap internally, right?

24:35David McWilliams: Right. Then the whole thing splits apart. That's so typical, isn't it? Yeah, it's completely typical. Internal politics. The whole thing splits apart. But, fascinatingly, the trade element is what they left Europe with. Right. So, first of all, they don't conquer Europe, but Europeans are well aware that out there somewhere in the steppe is these ferocious people you never want to come in contact with, number one. Number two, because of the new Silk Roads, which they reopened, there was contact between Europeans and Asians for the first time in a thousand years. Right. Like, why do you think Marco Polo went to China?

25:20David McWilliams: Because he could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And why could he? Because the Mongols allowed him to do so. Right. They opened up the trade routes and of course he goes to China although there's many people saying he didn't go to China that he actually heard about it from somebody else and the diaries of Marco Polo were actually written They're all made he up? Well you know he listened to somebody he heard other merchants who went Right, okay So the story of Marco Polo is that he went to China for about two times for a period of years and then he came home but we also know his father had gone there and we also know his uncles had gone there Right So this is a suggestion that Marco was a better writer than a better traveller and he put the whole thing down He was the marketing guy.

25:59Yeah, he was the branding guy. He was the marketing guy, exactly. He was Marco from marketing, right? But when he went to China, he came back,

26:08David McWilliams: not just with tales of Kublai Khan's exoticism and eroticism, which is where all the idea of Orientalism comes from. The fact that Europeans fetishised Asia as this sort of exotic place and Asian women were different and Asian silks and whatever. But of course, what the Chinese really brought back from China were pottery, gunpowder, right? They brought back gunpowder. Writing, Chinese calligraphy, but writing on paper, which Europeans had never done. Watches, which Europeans had never had. Watches? Yes. Mechanical watches. The Chinese had them. Wow. Right? So the Chinese had made all this stuff.

26:51The civilization is much more. In fact, when I was writing the book, I was thinking lots of things. and you've realised everything came from China. Almost everything that we have came from China. It's like in the 70s and 80s, us going up to Belfast and coming back with bangers and sparklers. Well, bangers and sparklers, yeah, which I suspect mightn't have come from China then, but definitely. What I always found so intriguing about Ireland was you can buy bangers in Northern Ireland, ironically. You can buy gunpowder in the place there was a war going on and you couldn't buy it here. I remember going up to the North and saying, hold on, wait, wait, wait.

27:23Like, provos, gunpowder, bangers. How come you buy this stuff in Yuri and you can't buy it here? But anyway, such are the idiosyncrasies of our upbringing, Johnny Boy. Now, back to our friends, right?

27:37David McWilliams: It was trade with Asia, which is promoted by the Mongols that opened up Europeans to the magic of Asian technology. And that Asian technology was the beginning of the process of innovation that culminated in the Renaissance. But there is one dark chapter that links us directly to the Mongols, which changed Europe forever. And that, John, was the Black Death. Let's explore that a little bit further after a bit of this.

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29:56So, Mark, we are in the 13th stroke 14th century. Yes. And we're in the Golden Horde. We're in the Golden Horde, which is in and around Ukraine.

30:08David McWilliams: Ukraine, Russia. So that massive, massive stretch. So if you can imagine you're going from Kiev all the way through Moscow, all the way to Katerinburg, which is Perm, these cities, big cities in central Russia, to the Urals, massive part. Right, okay. Okay. So that's where we are and that's the time. So what happened then? So the Black Death starts in a place called Kaffa. Right. So 1343 is the year. It's the very first example of biological warfare ever. Oh. Okay. Where's Kaffa? Kaffa was a port town on the Black Sea. Right. Probably around where Sevastopol is now, or that part, okay? Crimea, that area.

30:59David McWilliams: Now, why was the report town there? And why were people from Genoa, which is on the other side of Italy, there? This is the fascinating interaction of economics, environmentalism, ecology, and volcanoes, John. Right. Okay. Okay, so the Genovese, which were great traders, had a small merchant town and a small settlement of soldiers and merchants in Crimea. The question is, what were they doing there? What were they doing there, Mac? They were... This is junior cert, past history, past economics, okay? They were trading grain. Right. They were bringing grain back because, remember, I described that massive step.

31:47David McWilliams: incredibly fertile. Yeah, yeah. And of course, Ukraine is still incredibly fertile. Yeah. Okay, maybe the most fertile soil in the world, bar Argentina. So, soilologists, or whatever they're called, tell us, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why were they training grain, John? Because they wanted to make bread. Exactly. And why weren't they making bread at home? Why weren't they making bread at home? So, the reason is the following. That it seems that in the 1340s and 1330s, Europe went through a series of incredibly, incredibly bad summers. Right. No sun. Yeah. So grain harvests, sweet harvests fail. And one of the reasons people believe this happened was there was a volcanic eruption, possibly in Iceland, around the same time, which blackened the summer sky with, do you remember the ash from Iceland?

32:40Yeah. I remember, actually, I remember. I went to Iceland during this. when the Islans defaulted, right? Remember they defaulted? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in Reykjavik making a documentary for Aussie TV from this Icelandic. He was a representative of the Icelandic government. Yeah. And he's looked at me and said, but we have no cash. We have plenty of ash, if you'd like it. Loads of ash, no cash. We have no cash, but we have plenty of ash. So the same thing of volcanic eruption,

33:14David McWilliams: precipitates two or three very, very bad harvests in Europe. Europeans can't feed themselves, so they go to see where they can trade grain. Where they can get grain is off the Mongols in the steps of the Golden Horde. But the Mongols, having been traveling and having been Asiatic people, had built up an immunity to the Black Death. Okay. And this is the fascinating. So these type of pandemics were endemic in Asia. And over hundreds of years, they had built up a immunity. We hadn't. Yeah. You see, the interesting thing is that you're talking about the 13th, 14th century here, because a very similar thing happened back in the 6th century.

33:59They call 536 the worst year to be alive ever. And the reason being was because there was, like in the 13th century, there was a massive volcanic eruption. And it could have been Iceland or it could have been North America, but it basically blackened the northern hemisphere of the earth, including China. And from that, you got the Justinian plague. Yeah. And you had, the sun was blocked for somewhere between 12 to 18 months.

34:32David McWilliams: The year of no summers, John. That's what it's called. Years of no summers. Do you know what? Actually, just one last little thing in that. Between 535, I think it was, and 539, there was, in Ireland, there was a thing called the great failure of bread. Same thing. Same thing. Same thing. So what we're talking about is this interaction. Yeah. So the Europeans had to go and get wheat somewhere else. Yeah. So they go to the steppe. They're trading furs as well with the Mongols because what the Mongols could bring was basically pelts from Russia and grain. But the very first evidence of biological warfare is what the Mongols did was they realized that the Europeans had no immunity to the Black Death.

35:21David McWilliams: And they were seen with massive catapults throwing dead bodies, infected bodies into Kaffa, which was a walled city. Wow. To contaminate the Genovese, knowing that the Genovese would bring it back. So this is about the sophisticated thinking. Oh my God. How cruel and how... Or innovative, depending on which way you look at it. Yeah, I suppose. So the first evidence of biological warfare is the Mongols catapulting contaminated bodies over the walls of Kaffa, contaminating the Genovese. and they knew that once they were contaminated, the Genovese would try to get home, which is a natural instinct.

36:07Because the Black Death then kicked off in Italy in around 1346, was it? Around then, right?

36:15David McWilliams: And it comes to Marsala in Sicily. That's where it first docked. Okay, yeah, yeah. And they were ghost ships. Now, this is the fascinating thing. So the Genovese sailors were all contaminated. They were all dying or had died on the trip home. So by the time that these ships in effect limped into the port, they were absolutely fair game for looters. Right. And it was the looters who contracted the Black Death from the Genoveses and spread it all over Europe. Yeah. So what you see is this extraordinary interaction of immunity, biology, the environment, i.e. our volcanic eruptions and the fragility of human existence because we are so dependent on everything going right and how something that happens miles away yeah wherever that explosion was whatever that eruption was has profound effects on human populations thereafter the european population falls by about a half yeah right the black death okay but fascinatingly and this is one thing we forget about is as the population fell the people who remained got richer and this is a very strange thing because they were agricultural based so basically what you see is that those who remained who are able to farm they ended up owning twice the land they'd owned because half the people were dead, right?

37:50David McWilliams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what you see then is extraordinary increase in the income of farmers. And as the income of the farming families rose in the late 14th century, less of the family had to be employed on the farm in subsistent labour. So one or two of the farmers, kids who now were recipients of the higher income, left the farm and went into cities to take up trades, artisans, maybe take up being a scribe, all that sort of stuff. And you begin to see the basis of what you would call an embryonic artisanal class. And where those people become most evident is in Florence. Right, gotcha. And from there, you have an educated artisanal class with a higher income directly related to the fact that all their ancestors had just died.

38:46David McWilliams: And they begin to seed the revolution in thinking that was the Renaissance. And what you see thereafter is the emergence of art, philosophy. Why? Because they could, because they weren't totally and utterly harnessed to the land because of the huge increase in income that came as a result of the Black Death, which wouldn't have happened, John, had we not had the biological warfare of the Mongol Empire against the Genovese. That's incredible. Can I ask you a question then, just going back, wheeling back a little bit, what did the Europeans, I know they didn't get all the way to Europe, but what did this part of the world learn from the Mongols' quite innovative financial and trade structure?

39:40David McWilliams: Well, I mean, one of the things that I wrote about in the book was the deployment of zero, which came from India, most likely from China, then to India, then to Persia. And then the Arabs picked that up. What I think the Europeans got from the Chinese, from the Silk Road, was, yes, we got diseases, but we got ideas and technology. And we got this extraordinary fusion of Chinese. And it's amazing when you think this was so long ago. Chinese engineering, in effect. Yeah. and European mercantile trade. So basically, if you wanted to make money in Italy, so if you think of geographically, Italy is in the middle of the Mediterranean.

40:21The Mediterranean is the conduit to the east

40:24David McWilliams: through the Bosphorus and out into the Black Sea. Okay. So Italy was geographically at the center. And what the Italians got was they got everything first. This is the interesting thing. Right. They got all the ideas first. They got the technology first. They got the clothing first, everything first from the East, from the free trade zone that the Mongols had set up, which allowed the Italians to be linked amazingly, not directly, but indirectly to the Chinese. Right. And so they got all the innovations first. And then, of course, you have the merchant class and you have all that sort of stuff.

41:03David McWilliams: But it just shows you that globalization, we land here. We all think about globalization as a new thing and it's like some part of some liberal project and it's globalist. No. The first real champion of globalization, Genghis Khan, John. We'll leave it there. Genghis. Genghis.

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