Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476

Jack Weatherford · 4h 30m · youtube.com ↗

22 korrents from this recording

Jack Weatherford did not write this page.

Every claim below is a statement made in this recording, quoted word for word and linked to the second it was said, so you can hear it rather than take our word for it. The wording comes from the transcript published alongside the recording; the sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording.

0:17:23 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The real source of the feuding that tore the Mongol steppe apart was women, which is why Genghis Khan's first law outlawed kidnapping and selling them.

Their wordsLater, Genghis Khan will realize once he becomes Chinggis Khan, he will realize that the true source of most of the feuding on the steppe is over women. And later he will outlaw the kidnapping of women and the sale of women, in part not only because of what had happened to his mother, but what happened to him next in his life.

Interesting
0:17:23 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The Mongols manufactured almost nothing themselves, so raiding was not aggression but their way of getting the trade goods of China.

Their wordsMongols produced nothing. They could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. And so they had to get these items from somewhere, and it was through raiding.

Interesting
70 min later
1:27:20 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Genghis Khan conquered the largest empire in history with an army that never exceeded about 110,000 men.

Their wordsGenghis Khan's army was extremely good in warfare but small. He never got probably above 100,000, at the most 110,000. That is small.

Interesting
2 min later
1:29:31 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Genghis Khan's kinsmen deserted him and the common herders he promoted never did — that asymmetry is the first explanation of the Mongol army.

Their wordsI think the first point is the extreme loyalty of the people whom Genghis Khan chose. His kinsmen, as we said, had deserted him, his anda was a questionable relationship but all the others that he found were just common people, herders or hunters, very common, and they were loyal to him and never, ever revolted against him, never betrayed him.

Interesting
5 min later
1:34:38 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Settled civilizations only improve inside a fixed way of doing things; Genghis Khan had no fixed way of thinking, and that is why he could absorb any technology he met.

Their wordsI think that sedentary armies, sedentary civilizations, they get stuck in ways, this is how we do it. And we're going to make it a little faster, we're going to make it a little bigger, a little stronger but this is how we think. Genghis Khan had no set way to think and, when he encountered the first walled cities around 1209 after founding his nation in 1206, he went out on these raids and I really think there were raids not wars at first.

Interesting
5 min later
1:40:00 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The Mongols fought for victory rather than honour, which is why retreat cost them nothing and became their deadliest tactic.

Their wordsThe Mongols did not fight for honor the way we often think of brave soldiers, Achilles and the Iliad and things like that, they fought for victory. That was the one thing. So, to retreat, to save lives and all, there's no shame in that.

Interesting
4 min later
1:44:05 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Genghis Khan manufactured the atrocity stories told about him, deliberately releasing refugees to carry terror to the next city before his army got there.

Their wordsAnd when he conquered a city, he always made sure there are plenty of refugees to go to the next city because it's going to weaken them. It's going to weaken their food supply, and they're going to terrorize the people with tales of the millions of people that the Mongols killed with their steel chisel teeth and eating children and all kinds of horrible tales. Genghis Khan encouraged it.

Interesting
3 min later
1:46:46 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Anyone with a craft survived a Mongol conquest, whatever the craft was — skill was the one thing the Mongols never destroyed.

Their wordsBut the one thing that they valued were all the artisans, everybody who had a skill. And that skill could be making a pot. It could be hammering out a metal plate. It can be weaving carpets, it can be translating or just reading and writing. Every person with a skill was spared.

Interesting
7 min later
1:53:18 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets — they were acts of terror against women and children, and Americans should say so before condemning the Mongols.

Their wordsWe dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those were not military targets. We were not doing anything strategic against the country other than terrorizing the country by killing women and children.

Interesting
9 min later
2:01:54 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A nation of a million people cannot rule hundreds of millions by warfare; the Mongol Empire lasted because it offered its subjects things they actually wanted.

Their wordsIf you have a nation of 1 million people and you are ruling over hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, China, Russia, the Middle East, you do not do that through warfare. You conquer them initially through warfare, but you do not rule them through warfare. You've got to be offering something that they want, something that they like.

Interesting
2 min later
2:03:50 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The Mongol Empire was the first modern empire, because Genghis Khan invented the idea of one supreme law under which every people keeps its own.

Their wordsAnd that the Mongol Empire was really the first modern empire in the way that I'm putting together that story. And Chinggis Khan was the genius behind that, who created this idea that there could be one world in which there would be one set of supreme law, but all people could follow their own law.

Interesting
4 min later
2:08:13 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Genghis Khan made religion the choice of the individual rather than a right granted to institutions, and nobody in history had thought of that before.

Their wordsIt allowed that, but he said, every person has the right to choose their religion. No one can stop them. No one can force them. The idea that it was individual choice, no one in history had ever thought of that, that it belonged to the person.

Interesting
1 min later
2:09:33 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Genghis Khan reached his laws through the practical experience of being hurt, never through ideology or the study of moral right.

Their wordsI don't say that he did this because of some ideological reason. Just like he didn't outlaw the kidnapping of women for ideological reasons. He didn't come to it through studying ideas of moral right. He came to it through practical experience of life.

Interesting
9 min later
2:18:37 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The Mongols destroyed irrigation systems as deliberate policy to return farmland to pasture, not out of the stupidity historians attribute to them.

Their wordsSo they think, a lot of the historians, they think the Mongols are so stupid, they let the irrigation system be destroyed. No, it takes more work to destroy an irrigation system than it does to create it. They destroyed those systems out of a policy, and that was, “This is going to return to pasture land.”

Interesting
4 min later
2:22:46 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Genghis Khan raised merchants above scholars, reversing the Chinese order of rank, and that is what made a continent-wide trade network possible.

Their wordsWell, they raised the status of merchants very high. This was particularly a problem in the Chinese world. It wasn't so much in the Christian or the Muslim world, but certainly in the Chinese world, where merchants were considered extremely low. And all of a sudden he raises them up above scholars.

Interesting
1 min later
2:24:10 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
There is no documented case of anyone crossing between China and Europe before the Mongols, and since Genghis Khan there has not been a single year without contact between East and West.

Their wordsWe really don't have any well-documented case of anybody, say, from China visiting Europe or Europe visiting China before the Mongols. But since Chinggis Khan, there's never been a year without contact between east and west. It was permanent. Once he created it, it was permanent.

Interesting
21 min later
2:45:11 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Kublai Khan's invasion of Japan failed on its own terms but achieved its real purpose, which was cutting the Southern Song off from Japanese sulphur for gunpowder.

Their wordsBut there actually, I think there's a very, very good reason for invading Japan. Several. The main one was to cut off the supply of sulfur. They needed it for gunpowder in the South Song. They lost their sources in northern China when they were driven out. They got it from Japan. It was a great source.

Interesting
16 min later
3:01:25 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The Japanese defeated the Mongol invasions; the typhoon only sank the ships afterwards, and it deserves far less credit than it gets.

Their wordsBut I think Japan had defeated the Mongols. I would say. Japanese deserve credit for that victory. And then the sinking of the ships was more caused by the typhoon.

Interesting
16 min later
3:16:59 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The Mongol Empire was destroyed by the plague, which its own courier system carried out of southern China to the rest of the world.

Their wordsBut this great system that united, it's called the Yam or Ortogh, that had united everything, people could move back and forth quickly that it could also take the plague out of Southern China into all parts of the world. And I do think that's what happened. And the plague destroyed the Mongol system.

Interesting
3 min later
3:20:10 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Genghis Khan's army was the greatest military force in history, and no power will ever repeat what it did.

Their wordsNo other power in the history of the world has conquered Russia and China and Persia and Central Asia and Turkey and Korea. No power in the world has done that. Not Alexander, not the Romans. Nobody will ever do it again.

Interesting
1 min later
3:20:47 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
America keeps losing wars because it attacks the capital first; the Mongol method was to take the countryside and let the city starve.

Their wordsThe Mongol strategy is first you take the countryside. They're country people. They think in terms of countryside. You take the countryside, you occupy the countryside, and you cut off the city. It cannot live without the countryside. And that's how they did it every time.

Interesting
37 min later
3:57:20 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The section of the Secret History in which Genghis Khan rewards his daughters was cut out of the surviving text.

Their wordsHe says, “Now, let us reward our daughters.” It's actually only a phrase. I said it as a complete sentence, but it's not quite complete. The rest is gone, cut out. It's missing.

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