Yuan Dynasty

I

Introduction

Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368, the period of Mongol rule over China initiated by the conquest of the Southern Song (Sung) dynasty by Kublai Khan (also known as Khubilai or Kubla). Northern China had fallen to the Mongols in 1234, but more than 40 years passed before they gained control over and incorporated the rest of the country into what proved to be the largest contiguous land empire in world history. Under the leadership of Genghis Khan (also known as Chinggis) and then of his descendants, the Mongols in the 13th century carved out an empire stretching from what is now Korea and western Russia in the north to Burma and Iraq in the south.

The Mongol Empire linked Europe and East Asia, initiating the first direct contacts between China and the West. After the Mongols imposed their rule over much of Asia, they promoted trade and travel, permitting West Asian and European traders, artisans, and missionaries to reach China. Chinese silks and ceramics arrived in Europe via Eurasian caravan trails and stimulated European demand for these products, inspiring the search for a sea route to East Asia.

II

Political History

Within China itself, the Mongols established the first dynasty that controlled all of China since the fall of the Tang (T'ang) dynasty in 907. In 1234 the Mongols defeated the non-Chinese Jin (Chin, or Jurchen) dynasty that had occupied northern China, and then they focused on subjugating the Song dynasty, which by the early 13th century governed only the regions south of the Yangtze River. The Song seemed to be prosperous and stable. The Venetian explorer Marco Polo referred to the Song capital of Hangzhou (Hang-chou) as “the greatest city which may be found in the world.” In reality, however, the government was facing serious financial difficulties. Large landowners dominated agriculture and evaded taxes while the high levies imposed on the peasants caused great hardship. Inadequate revenue led to limited spending on public works projects and on the military. To pay for its expenditures, the government developed policies that promoted inflation. Instability and struggles among government officials, rampant corruption, and a series of incompetent or child emperors also contributed to the Song's weakness. The Song's vulnerability allowed the Mongols, who had adopted the Chinese title “Yuan” (“first”) for their dynasty in 1271, to cross the Yangtze River in 1273, to capture Hangzhou in 1276, and to defeat the last Song emperor in 1279.

III

Mongol Administration

The Mongol leader Kublai Khan recognized that rule over China required more than simple military domination. Actual control necessitated a complicated government structure, and mere conquest and exploitation would not be adequate. Kublai realized that he had to establish political and administrative institutions similar to those native to China in order to attract the support of his subjects. He thus assumed the Chinese title of emperor and reestablished a Secretariat (Zhongshusheng) to advise him on policy and six ministries to implement policy: personnel (libu), revenue (hubu), rites (libu), war (bingbu), justice (xingbu), and public works (gongbu). He divided China into provinces and dispatched officials to govern them. He and the later Yuan rulers wished to portray themselves as supporting the Chinese ideology of Confucianism in order to win over their Chinese subjects. Thus they restored many Confucian rituals, including ceremonies for the worship of nature and of ancestors, as well as music and dance performances at court. To further the worship of ancestors, temples were built and ancestral tablets were set up for Genghis Khan and the other early Mongols. Kublai Khan recruited prominent Confucian scholars such as Xu Heng (Hsü Heng), Yao Shu, and Wang E (Wang O) to advise him and to perform the important task of writing the histories of the immediately preceding dynasties.

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The most obvious evidence of Mongol integration into China was Kublai's shift of the capital from Karakorum in Mongolia to Khanbalik (modern Beijing) in China. In 1266 Kublai ordered the construction of the new capital based on Chinese models. Laid out in symmetrical north-south and east-west axes, the capital had broad avenues stretching in geometric patterns, with eleven gates permitting entry into the city. The elaborate palaces, the Great Temple for the worship of the rulers' ancestors, and a shrine to Confucius all indicate Chinese influences. Despite a few Mongol touches in the decor or motifs in the palaces, Khanbalik was a Chinese capital.

Yet the Mongols did deviate from Chinese patterns. Kublai abolished the traditional Chinese civil service examinations, which had been the basis for entry into the bureaucracy that administered China. Reliance on these examinations, which demanded knowledge of Confucian texts and classical Chinese works, would have limited his choice for administrators solely to Chinese officials, a prospect he quickly rejected. Instead, he recruited an international group of advisors and administrators, consisting of Koreans, Tibetans, and Central Asian and Persian Muslims, to assist him in ruling China. Still another deviation from traditional practices was the power increasingly allocated to the Censorate (Yushitai), a watchdog agency. The Yuan court, fearful of its own non-Mongol officials, increased the authority of the censors to spy on the bureaucracy and to report abuses in the government and the military. The Mongols felt strongly that control required close surveillance.

The court sought a blend of Mongol and Chinese elements in its military and legal structure. It divided the army into a Mongol force, composed principally of cavalry, and a solely Chinese division of infantry. The army was effective for several decades, but, because the soldiers supplied themselves, their military training and skills eventually began to erode, which in turn weakened the dynasty. In 1291 the Mongols enacted a new legal code that was based primarily on Chinese legal traditions. However, the Yuan regime was generally authoritarian, as shown by many Mongol laws, including those allowing Mongol criminals to avoid imprisonment by paying a large fine, whereas Chinese criminals were imprisoned; and permitting the sentence of slow death (lingchi) for especially hardened Chinese criminals.

IV

Economic Policies

Yuan economic policies also accommodated traditional Chinese practices. Yuan rulers did not try to convert China into the Mongol-style nomadic economy; instead, they fostered agriculture. They restored the she, rural organizations composed of about 50 families, to assist in farming. These organizations also improved flood control, established charity granaries for orphans and widows, and introduced such new crops as sorghum. In addition, early Yuan emperors sought to protect the peasants by devising a regular, fixed system of taxation.

Unlike previous Chinese dynasties, the Yuan rulers fostered trade and accorded merchants a high social status. Moreover, they promoted commerce by increasing the use of paper money, by offering cheap loans to merchant associations (ortogh), by building roads, and by allowing traveling merchants to lodge and to obtain supplies at government postal stations, which were located about 32 km (20 mi) apart throughout the empire. Concern about supplying the new capital led the Yuan court to initiate the ambitious project of rerouting and expanding the Grand Canal, aiding the shipping of surplus grain from southern China to the less fertile lands of the north.

Such government support for merchants, together with the peace imposed on much of Asia by the Mongols, resulted in the greatest expansion of commerce in Eurasian history. Indian, Southeast Asian, Persian, Arab, and even European merchants arrived in China. Muslim merchants, the principal intermediaries in the overland trade between China and Central Asia, West Asia, and Europe, brought horses, carpets, medicines, and spices to China, and exported Chinese textiles, ceramics, and lacquerware. From the southern port cities of Quanzhou (Ch'üan-chou), Guangzhou (Kuang-chou), and Yangzhou (Yang-chou), they conveyed Chinese ceramics and silks by ship and returned with spices, precious stones, incense, pepper, and medicines.

The growing agricultural and commercial economy initially provided sufficient revenue for the court, but not for long. The original tax structure did not exploit the Chinese and was not burdensome on landlords, peasants, merchants, or artisans. In fact, Kublai Khan repeatedly reduced or postponed taxes on those of his Chinese subjects whose lands had suffered during natural disasters. Yet the various construction projects he had undertaken, the building of the capital, postal stations and roads, and the enlargement of the Grand Canal, as well as military campaigns against Japan, Java, and mainland Southeast Asia, were costly. As the government's expenditures soared, its need for additional revenue became more pressing.

The court responded by appointing two new non-Chinese ministers whose principal duties were to raise more funds. However, their authoritarian methods only worsened the problem. By imposing higher taxes on merchants, deliberately inflating the currency, and increasing prices on salt, iron, and other goods monopolized by the government, they succeeded only in alienating Chinese officials. Finally, their highhanded treatment of the bureaucracy and their profiteering led to the assassination of one and the execution of the other. The economic situation merely declined further.

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