Modern City of Ulaanbaatar

In this final lecture, Benjamin summarizes the Mongols major contributions to modern life.

1. By guaranteeing military protection, the Mongol Empire enabled the third incarnation of the Great Silk Road facilitating trade revenue, cultural exchange and modern technology transfer to Europe. Nestorian Christianity and Greco-Roman medical practices (promulgated by Galen) spread east along the Silk Road as paper and gunpowder spread west.
2. With the importation of Persian (Muslim) bureaucrats and scholars to run the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols set an important precedent of religious tolerance and rewarding skill rather than social status. The Persian scholar Rashid Al-Din played a fundamental role in teaching the Chinese about Middle East history, geography, topography and map making. Links with China led Persia (and eventually the rest of the Middle East civilizations to incorporate Chinese rice into their diet), as well as enabling both cultures to hare their knowledge of agronomy and medicine.
3. Using block printing invented in Korea in 751 AD, the Chinese produced their first block printed book in 868 AD and first used moveable type in the early 11th century. From there, printing t spread first to the Ikhanate and from there to Europe.
4. Gunpowder, which played a substantial role in capitalism, imperialism and globalization,  was first developed under the Jin and Song dynasty.
5. The Mongols were also the first political force to cultivate a special relationship with Tibetan Buddhists priests, leading to the installation of the first Dalai Lama (the Mongol word for Ocean) by the Ming dynasty in 1578 AD.

Benjamin also traces the modern history of the Mongolia. Invaded by Chinese nationalists in 1922, the country sided with Russia following the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s Adopting Russian food and a Russian-style education system, many Mongolians attended university in Moscow.

In July 1990 after the Soviet collapse, Mongolia also experienced economic collapse after privatizing all private property and factories. Today it’s a fully capitalist modern nation

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/12373094/12373142