Jack Weatherford: observation

Transcript context

…Yes. But he had China. It was unified under him. And then he sent out the first expedition to sail directly to Persia. There had been trade all throughout thousands of years, but it was usually port to port, different merchants trading goods. No, he organized a great fleet to send a queen, or a princess to become a queen in the Il-Khanate, to marry the Il-Khan of Persia. It’s Persia and Azerbaijan and Armenia and Iraq and part of Syria, all of that area. So he organized this, and it so happened that Marco Polo was ready to go home because they knew Kublai Khan was about to die. And in fact, he only had about one year left to live. And they wanted to get their riches out before they didn’t know what’s gonna happen. This is a new dynasty. They’ve been in total control of China for one generation, and they didn’t know what was gonna happen. And also, just before that, there’d been a bad sign because Kublai Khan had tried to invade Japan a second time, and he had failed a second time. And the second time, I think again, he had a practical purpose, and that was he had this whole huge Song army that now he’s the new enlightened Mongol who doesn’t slaughter. What is he gonna do? They’re not reliable. They’re not safe. So he sends a bunch of them up into the Amur River of what’s now the Russian Far East, or we call Siberia in English, but the Russian Far East, the Amur River. He sent expeditions up into Tibet, exploring options up there, but there wasn’t enough room, or enough agricultural area for a huge military colony. But most of his ships were loaded with former prisoners of the war from the Song Dynasty. And they were not armed. They had hoes and implements for farming. He wanted to create, obviously, a military agricultural farm in Japan to help feed Northern China, ’cause it was very important. Just as they were doing with the Amur River, but it was more complicated. So, again, they lost. They didn’t have it. And part of the reason is the expedition was massive, and they organized it in the Mongol principles of left wing, right wing. This didn’t work at sea ’cause the left wing is from Korea. There’s Korean ships built up there. The right wing is from Southern China, mostly, with ships built down there. They’re not the same. They have a head, but there’s no center point. Genghis Khan always had the gol, they called it, G-O-L, the gol, the center, or Q-O-L, qol [inaudible 03:01:14]. But he had the center in command. No, he sent the two without a clear… And they were arguing with each other, not cooperating, not helping each other, sabotaging each other. qol [inaudible 03:01:14]. But he had the center in command. No, he sent the two without a clear… And they were arguing with each other, not cooperating, not helping each other, sabotaging each other. They get there, and once again, they have the same problems. Even though they’ve come with lots of grenades this time, again, the grenades are exploding. They’re scaring the horses. It’s impressive. And a lot of silk screens are made later showing these impressive battles and all. But they lost. And again, a typhoon happened to be the final destruction of the navy. But 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. But already the Japanese had developed good strategies while the Mongols had been away. They knew how the Mongols fought, and they knew that at night they could fire flaming arrows at the ships, set them on fire, and they were doing great damage. So again, Kublai Khan lost the invasion of Japan, but the soldiers were gone. They drowned. He didn’t kill them off, was his deliberate plan, but the problem was solved. It’s one of those ironies of history that is hard to quite understand. So this had happened, but then Kublai Khan was coming to near the end of life, and Marco Polo and those wanted to get out, they’re ready to go. And Kublai Khan allowed them to sail on this expedition with Kokochin, was her name, the Princess Kokochin, to go to Hormuz. And so they went, and that began a whole system of trade, back and forth, back and forth. Kublai Khan died soon after that. His grandson, who’s not so well respected in history, because he’s often called a drunk, but his name was Temur, Temur Oljeitu. But he was a drunk when he was young, but his grandfather had him caned a couple times in public, and he cured him of drinking. And actually he was not a drunk later on. And first he reassembled the Mongol Empire. He did. The Golden Horde declared loyalty to him, recognized him as Great Khan, as emperor of the whole empire, the Chagataid of Central Asia, they declared loyalty to him. The Il-Khanate was already loyal to him. They all declared loyalty. He had reassembled the empire and he had the greatest navy in the world, and he sent out envoys to every place they had attacked or traded with to say, “That era is over. We’re no longer attacking anybody. We’re changing from conquest to commerce. We want to trade with you. Come to China, bring your goods. We’re gonna trade with you.” He instituted, it was short, unfortunately didn’t last forever. I wish it could have. But it was a great era of the exchange of all kinds of things going back and forth, actually all the way to Africa, ’cause from Hormuz they had connection to Somaliland. And some people say Kenya already at that time, I’m not sure, but very wide. Very wide. So technically he ruled over the largest size the Mongol Empire ever had?…

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