Jin dynasty

Again, thank you very much for the kind, uh, very kind words.

So, uh, we- what we'll be looking at today is essentially starting from the establishment, like the formal establishment of the Mongol Empire in the year 1206, uh, going over how the early empire is looking like, the structure of the state, what's maybe its aims, and, um, how it's, how it's running, how it's functioning, and then going into the early years of the war in China, and probably wrapping up around the year 1215, by which point, uh, the city that we now know today is Beijing, but at the time Zhongdu, the capital of the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty, um, falls to the Mongols, and Genghis Khan's attention after that will be drawn to the west to Central Asia, to the Khwarezmian Empire, which will be the focus of our following episode.

Um, so our story is starting in what is marked here as the Grand Horde on your map here, which I assume is supposed to be a, uh, a site that we see called in the, uh, Mongolian accounts the Iki Aguruk, um, or today probably the archaeological site known as Avarga.

So this was some-- maybe city is perhaps a generous description for what it was.

With reading a bit between the lines of some sources written decades later, it can seem that probably by the end of Chinggis Khan's life is when we can most reliably say there is some sort of conception of domination over all of the world, or at least all of the steppe.

With the early empire, we-- like the very early years of the empire, we can't really trace that definitively, but... 'Cause what we can see instead, though, from the nature of its interactions with other states, the Mongol Empire is not yet seeing itself as superior to them.

So the type of diplomacy it's engaging in with the Jin dynasty, with the Tangut Empire or kingdom, with the Qara Khitai, and even with the early interaction with the Khwarezmian Empire in Central Asia, that the Mongol Empire is seeing itself more as a member of this political system, not the only legitimate state in the world, which is very much what, um, it conceives of itself as by the 1230s.

Just a question.

Just 129,000 men.

They're conquering the Jin Dynasty in China, which has a population of tens of millions.

They are sweeping through the Khwarazmian Empire in the Middle East, which has vast professional standing armies.

They were fighting empires that had cities with more people than the entire Mongol army.

Yeah.

The historical texts outline a campaign by the brilliant Mongol general Subutai in northern China that reads like a modern doctrine of total war.

It was a calculated three-phase operation designed to completely dismantle the agricultural foundation of the Jin Dynasty.

Subutai's campaign is the perfect distillation of Mongol environmental warfare.

But following the collapse of the Uyghur Haganites in the 9th century, there doesn't get to be, again, a political authority based within the Mongolian plateau controlling everything.

What you have instead is empires based in what we would call today northern China, such as the Khitan-ruled Lao dynasty, and then the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty, so the ancestors of the Manchu and the Qing dynasty, who of course Craig knows very well.

A little

bit.

And this is who is dominating Mongolia from the 10th century through to the 12th century, is empires outside of Mongolia proper.

And are they exerting this exclusively through the use of money in trade? It's to my understanding how they did most of this.

Especially in the Jin case, this is exactly what they're doing.

And they'll support different factions in Mongolia by giving them access to trade with China.

And that's why they named Beijing Nanjing, the southern capital for Liao dynasty.

And then around 1153, the Jin dynasty renamed it into Zhongdu, the central capital.

First time the city is the actual capital of something, not a secondary frontier or a military base anymore.

And then, as you know it, a very, very frequently mentioned character, Kangis Khan, came around 1215.

They were pragmatic conquerors, always searching for advantage, and gunpowder offered exactly that.

By the time the Mongols had subdued the Jin Dynasty in northern China, and later turned their attention toward the remaining Song territories in the south, gunpowder weapons had become part of their military repertoire.

Historical records suggest that Mongol forces used gunpowder-based projectiles and incendiary devices during their campaigns, incorporating them alongside traditional siege equipment such as trebuchets and catapults.

This blending of old and new became a hallmark of Mongol warfare, a willingness to combine whatever tools proved useful, regardless of their origin.