Khubilai's Coinage Crisis: How Inflation Split the Mongol Yuan

In Episode 162, Lucas and Luna dig into an overlooked trigger of Mongol fragmentation: the disastrous monetary experiment of Khubilai Khan's Yuan dynasty. Despite conquering China on horseback, Khubilai tried to rule it with paper — literally. His government issued the world's first nationwide paper currency, the chao, backed by silver reserves and forced on everyone from taxpaying peasants to Silk Road merchants. But the system's fatal flaw was overprinting. To fund wars against Kaidu, the Song holdouts, and Japan, Khubilai's treasury churned out chao faster than silver could back it. Inflation spiraled. By the 1290s, merchants in Tabriz and Sarai refused Yuan paper, crippling trade across the Mongol common market. The Ilkhanate's own monetary reform under Ghazan Khan — the introduction of the silver-based dinar — marked a deliberate break from Yuan economic control. Drawing on the account of Marco Polo, the financial records of Rashid al-Din, and modern economic analysis, this episode shows how Khubilai's printing press, not just his wars, tore apart the last threads of Mongol unity. #KhubilaiKhan #YuanDynasty #PaperMoney #Chao #Inflation #MongolEmpire #SilverStandard #GhazanKhan #Ilkhanate #SilkRoad #MarcoPolo #RashidAlDin #EconomicHistory #Kaidu #SongDynasty #Tabriz #Sarai #FexingoHistory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo