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Genghis Khan, trade warrior (2021)
His Pax Mongolica connected Europe and China, leading to exchanges of technology and culture.
According to Marco Polo's account, "if the people are afflicted by any dearth through unfavorable seasons, or storms or locusts, or other like calamity ... no taxes are exacted for that year; nay more, he causes them to be supplied with corn of his own for food and seed." In Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, O'Rourke and his co-author Ronald Findlay of Columbia University go so far as to argue that "globalization ... began with the unification of the central Eurasian landmass by the Mongol conquests." The vast suburbs of Cambaluc, according to Polo, "lodge the foreign merchants and travelers, of whom there are always great numbers who have come to bring presents to the Emperor, or to sell articles at Court, or because the city affords so good a mart to attract traders."
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