Does money really decide wars? Strange tales from the Vikings to the Luftwaffe to Ukraine

The Bunker

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture, Government

4.6 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why did getting pillaged by Vikings ultimately help the economies of the Middle Ages? How did a flood of silver from conquered South America end up making Spain poorer? Was Genghis Khan the father of globalisation? And why was it a terrible idea to garland Luftwaffe fighter aces with medals and fame? In an absorbing new book Blood and Treasure: The Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to Ukraine, economist and historian Duncan Weldon explains how war shapes economies and economies shape wars… and why the consequences are usually what nobody expects. • Pre-order Blood and Treasure through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund The Bunker by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too. • Support us on Patreon for early episodes and more. • We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/bunker to get your £100 sponsored credit. Written and presented by Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Tom Taylor and Dom Delargy. Produced by Liam Tait. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Managing Editor Jacob Jarvis. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production www.podmasters.co.uk [[ LINK https://www.podmasters.co.uk/ ]] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We run adverts on our podcasts so we can pay our team and our freelancers,
0:04.8	but we know that commercial messages are not everyone's cup of tea.
0:08.4	So if you'd rather listen without ads, there's an easy solution.
0:12.5	Just support us on Patreon for ad-free episodes.
0:15.9	Follow the link in the show notes to find out more.
0:31.0	Hello and welcome back to the bunker, bringing you news without the nonsense every morning from the worlds of current affairs, culture, business and today, history and economics.
0:36.5	I'm Andrew Harrison.
0:40.3	War prosperity, said the Austrian economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mezes, is like the prosperity than an earthquake or a plague
0:46.0	brings. He should know in 1940 he had to flee Austria to escape the Nazis, who subsequently
0:51.5	looted his life's work. The idea that war and economics are
0:55.2	intrinsically linked and that one drives another isn't a new one, although the idea that war
1:00.1	eventually brings some sort of economic benefit has taken a bit of a battering lately. Does relative
1:04.7	economic strength determine the victor in wars? Do wars start for purely economic reasons?
1:10.2	And most importantly, if we know so much about
1:12.5	the economic factors that go into past wars, will it help us prevent future ones? All this is explored
1:18.3	in the fantastically entertaining new book, Blood and Treasure, The Economics of Conflict from the
1:23.3	Vikings to Ukraine, by friend of the podcast Duncan Weldon, formerly an economics journalist at
1:28.6	The Economist and the BBC after starting his career at the Bank of England. And he's here with us
1:32.8	today. Hello, Duncan. Hello. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. This is a really
1:36.4	fascinating book. I loved it. Similar school as guns, gems and steel by Jared Diamond or maybe
1:40.9	homo sapiens. It is a colossal subject. When looking at this question of economics and war
1:46.5	and how they influenced one another,
	...

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