Genghis Khan was born Temüjin around 1162 as the eldest child of a Mongol chieftain, and his family was abandoned by its tribe after his father died. He rose through alliances, betrayals and defeats, and in 1206 an assembly of the Mongols gave him the title Genghis Khan. He reorganised the Mongol tribes into a meritocratic military system and then led campaigns against the Western Xia, the Jin dynasty, the Khwarazmian Empire and others. By his death in 1227, his armies had conquered much of China and Central Asia. His successors extended the empire further west, and the trade routes it protected linked a vast area.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.