MONTHLY MULLING 💡
Genghis Khan & The Modern World, $BABA Stock Analysis, and Searching For Italy
Hi👋,
Tapan here.
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Happy Sunday y’all!
I recently took a trip to Lake District which is stunning. It’s full of lakes (duh!), mountains, and market towns. It was really beautiful.
One of the sights was called Castlerigg Stone Circle which was a stone circle (similar to Stonehenge) and about 5000 years old. Surprisingly, ever since I have been in a history rabbit hole. So the “theme” of today’s newsletter will be history!
The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.
Niall Ferguson on the Lessons Of History
Onwards🚀
💭MULLING
🍕 Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy (TV Show - Docuseries)
I am a sucker for historical docuseries, especially those covering food. It is fascinating how food traveled across the world through migration and conquest to shape some of the well-known dishes that we eat today.
I am also a sucker for Italy. My fascination for Italy started ever since I ran through the streets of Florence as Ezio Auditore while playing Assassin’s Creed. I know…I know…such a nerd.
So when I found this show, I devoured it. Stanley travels through Italy eating and explaining regional cuisines!
Some of the things from the show that blew my mind🤯
Arab conquest of Italy gave us the pizza (well, it gave us cheese)! They brought the buffaloes with them around 3000 years ago.
Tomatoes that are widely used in southern Italian cuisine (pizza, pasta) didn’t arrive until the colonization of the Americas in the 1500s! It appeared in a Medici family’s herbal guide with the name of Pomodoro or the golden apple.
Pepper has been exported from India to Egypt since 1200BCE. But when the Romans conquered Egypt they gained control of the trade routes to India. They started importing pepper from India and we got one of the four ancient kinds of pasta - cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper).
Act of suspension means you pay ahead for someone in need. This act is still common in Naples where you can “suspend” coffee or groceries with the vendor who will then give it to someone who doesn’t have money to buy it.
🧠 Genghis Khan & Impact On The Modern World
I recently finished Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World (book review below!) and I was completely blown away by the huge impact one man has had on our history.
Like the tingling vibrations of a bell that we can still sense well after it has stopped ringing, Genghis Khan has long passed from the scene, but his influence continues to reverberate through our time.
Jack Weatherford
The book is a fascinating read but here were some of the impacts that I noted👇🏼
Babur, the founder of the Indian Mughal Empire, was a descendent of Genghis Khan. He was thirteen generations descended from Genghis Khan’s second son, Chaghatai. Similarly, the Yuan Dynasty of China, Persian Ilkhanate, and the Golden Horde of Russia also descended from Genghis Khan.
Genghis Khan had authorized the use of paper money backed by precious metals and silk shortly before his death in 1227. Later, Guyuk (Genghis Khan’s grandson) purchased vast amounts of goods and paid for them with paper drafts on the promise that the paper could be converted into gold or silver by the merchant when needed. With Guyuk's death, many local officials and advisers no longer wanted to pay off these bills issued by the late khan. This was one of the first financial crises owing to a gold-backed currency. The Gold Standard was used in the US until the 1930s!
The Mongols introduced guns and gunpowder to the European nations through trade with China.
The Black Plague was potentially introduced to Europe due to the Mongol trading. Owing to the plague, the population of Europe declined from around 75 million to 52 million. The plague also led to mass killings of the Jews by Christians as they were blamed for the plague.
The Mongol Empire also established the first postal system. Riders carried messages across a network of huts and could cover as much as 200 miles a day by constantly changing mounts.
📚TREAT YO’ SHELVES
You can find my favorite books on my site and add me on GoodReads.
🐄 Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris
About the book: The book is a study of human society and cultures. Marvin answers 10 questions spanning the early civilization since when cows were worshipped in India till the medieval ages when women were burned at the stake in Europe on suspicions of them being a witch. Marvin explains that there is a method to the madness. Honestly, the book is average and could be skipped.
Important Lesson: Cultural ideas and practices that seem strange to us may be vital to the people of those cultures.
Favorite Quotes:
Primitive peoples go to war because they lack alternative solutions to certain problems—alternative solutions that would involve less suffering and fewer premature deaths.
The Eskimos explained their fear of boastful and generous gift-givers with the proverb “Gifts make slaves just as whips make dogs.”
👑 Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
About the book: This book was an eye-opener. Chinggis Khan was one of the greatest conquerors and administrators of our world. He gets a lot of flak for the destruction he caused. However, this book studies his life from a Mongol perspective while providing a lot of factual details on the positives of his empire. First paper currency, religious tolerance, trade routes, taxation, census, and intellectual freedom were some of the tenets of the Mongol Empire under Chinggis which are still being debated today. Although he arose out of the ancient tribal past, Genghis Khan shaped the modern world of commerce, communication, and large secular states more than any other individual.
Important Lessons: Like the tingling vibrations of a bell that we can still sense well after it has stopped ringing, Genghis Khan has long passed from the scene, but his influence continues to reverberate through our time. His life is worth a detailed study.
Favorite Quotes:
Terror, he realized, was best spread not by the acts of warriors, but by the pens of scribes and scholars.
He tried to teach them that the first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion, and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that “if you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead.”
God presided over the whole earth; he could not be cooped up in a house of stone like a prisoner or a caged animal, nor, as the city people claimed, could his words be captured and confined inside the covers of a book.
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📈 #61 – How to Value a Stock? Analyzing if Alibaba Is a Good Buy: we explain how to value a stock using Alibaba as an example. Psssttt, it was undervalued at $160 | Episode Page
🙈 #62 – 5 Misconceptions For Beginner Investors: we debunk 5 common myths or misconceptions that beginner investors have | Episode Page
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