Dan Snow
speaker
15,041 appearances
104 recordings
11 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard today
Dan Snow’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 101 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 24.
Appearances
There were caravans and missionaries and artisans and diplomats moved between China, the Islamic world and beyond.
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But as is often the case,
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The benefits, the rewards fell unevenly.
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The Khan's governments, the elites, did very well.
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But for the Han Chinese population across those vast heartlands in what we might now call eastern and southern China
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Well they didn't benefit quite as much, in fact they often shoulder the burden for this prosperity.
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There was heavy taxation, which funded the Khan's extravagant new capital city.
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There was the forced labor required to build it.
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The Han Chinese and other ethnic groups suffered persecution under a rigid social hierarchy.
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Corruption was rife and much of China saw little to no benefit from the boom in trade.
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And so it's not hugely surprising that within a century of Kublai Khan's death, the Yuan dynasty was crumbling.
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By the thirteen thirties, Han Chinese rebels were exploiting these cracks.
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They were determined to establish a new Han ruled empire.
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And the man who'd become their leader, the founder and the first great Ming Emperor
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has a very, very unlikely origin story.
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He was a peasant called Zhu Yuan Zhung.
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Born on the agricultural plain between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.
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In thirteen twenty eight.
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To tell this story, I'm meeting Dr.
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Jeremiah Jenny, an expert in Chinese history, who you'll have heard many times on this podcast before.
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Showing 61–80 of 15,041 · page 4 of 753
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