Dreadful as were the means of the Mongols, the changes they wrought were astonishing and epoch shifting. Indeed, this transformation of trade is almost certainly the Mongols’ greatest significance to the story we are telling in this book. So it is to that part of their legacy that we will now turn, as we discover how intrepid merchants, scholars, and explorers from east and west flourished in the aftermath of the Mongol conquests, exchanging ideas, goods, and wealth, and remodeling the western world and western minds as they did so.
