Temuchin proclaimed as Chinggis Khan. From Rashid al-Din's manuscript, 14th century.

While we often think of globalization as a twentieth century phenomenon, one of its first instances occurred in the thirteenth century. According to Columbia Economics professor Ronald Findlay and Mats Lundahl of Yale University, the Mongol Empire was the source of an early wave of globalization.

In their paper "The First Globalization Episode: the Creation of the Mongol Empire, or the Economics of Chinggis Khan" Findlay and Lundahl explore how the nomadic nature of Mongolian society, which had resulted from low population and the harsh natural conditions of the steppes, lent itself to a unified expansion on a global scale under. Findlay applies an economic model which shows how Chinggis Khan's conquests extended the area used for production and for tax revenue, and increased the population with each new territory so that an increased and effective army could be maintained. He broke down the traditional power structures where many tribal chiefs would compete and plunder decreasing productivity and revenue. He unified the tribal chiefs in 1206 not only through his own military might but also by providing incentives of wealth from the “lucrative wars . . that could only be won through a unified front under a supra-tribal leader.” By 1279 under the conquests of Kubilai Khan, it was “the largest continuous empire that the world has ever seen, up to the present day,” from Siberia to Poland, from Indochina to the southern border of Iraq.

Ronald Findlay and Mats Lundahl, "The First Globalization Episode: the Creation of the Mongol Empire, or the Economics of Chinggis Khan". Summer 2005.