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.

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.

V.

Social Developments

The social changes initiated during the Yuan period benefited some Chinese but antagonized many others. Merchants, artisans, physicians, scientists, and engineers were granted higher status and greater rewards, but the scholar-official class, the traditional Chinese elite, was often excluded from positions of authority and thus was generally hostile toward Mongol rule. The Yuan's recruitment of non-Chinese for government positions also generated resentment among the scholar-official class.

The court divided the population into four classes, with the Mongols at the top, followed by foreigners from West Asia, South Asia, and Europe (Semuren), the Northern Chinese (Hanren), and the Southern Chinese (Nanren). This division seems to indicate Mongol distrust of the native population, for many of the Mongols and foreigners were uneducated, while most of the Chinese scholar-official class were Southern Chinese, the lowest class under the Yuan system. The division contributed to general Chinese dissatisfaction with Yuan rule. In addition, when the previously abolished civil service exams were reinstated in 1315, many posts were reserved for Mongols and foreigners, and a comparatively small number were left for the Chinese. Exclusion of Chinese entirely from some important government positions and later attempts to limit marriage between Chinese and Mongols also stirred resentment.

The Mongols' own social practices affronted many Chinese as well. First, the prominent roles of court adviser and administrator played by such Mongol women as Kublai Khan's mother Sorghaghtani Beki and his wife Chabi clashed with the status accorded to Chinese women. Eventually the Mongols adopted the Chinese practice of limiting women's political involvement and their property and marital rights. Second, although the court recruited Confucian advisers, educated Mongol princes in Chinese and Mongol, and encouraged literacy, they did not adopt two features characteristic of traditional Chinese society: Education was no longer the principal vehicle for social mobility, and the scholar-official class was not the dominant force in government as it had been during previous Chinese dynasties. Third, the Mongols supported such non-Chinese religions as Islam and Nestorian Christianity and restricted Daoism (Taoism). Fourth, the Mongols' fascination with hunting, their taste for meat, and their relatively frequent use of alcohol repelled many Chinese.

VI.

Artistic and Cultural Contributions

The Mongols' cultural contributions to China won greater approval. Like other parts of the Mongol Empire, the Yuan court favored and patronized artisans, resulting in remarkable advances in the manufacture of porcelain, textiles, and jewelry. Their support for the theater, in part, fostered a golden age of Chinese drama. The singing, the acrobatics, and the general spectacle of drama captivated the Mongols and prompted court patronage. More than 170 plays from the Yuan dynasty have survived. Literature and painting benefited from the abolition of the civil service exams as scholars whose official careers had been thwarted turned to these fields. Some used their work as a convenient pretext for rejecting government service under an alien dynasty. A few—including Gong Kai (Kung K'ai), Qian Xuan (Ch'ien Hsüan), and Zheng Sixiao (Cheng Ssu-hsiao)—employed their paintings as a subtle means of protest. However, other painters cooperated with the Mongols and received their patronage. Zhao Mengfu (Chao Meng-fu), the most renowned painter of the Yuan era, held a position at court and occasionally produced paintings (mainly depicting horses and other animals) that appeared to cater to Mongol taste. The painters Gao Kegong (Kao K'o-kung), Li Kan (Li K'an), Guan Daosheng (Kuan Tao-sheng), and the calligrapher Xianyu Shu (Hsien-yü Shu) all benefited from Mongol patronage.

Similarly, Mongol support for ceramics and sculpture resulted in the creation of the first blue-and-white porcelains, the carvings in the Juyong (Chü-yung) gate to northern China, the Fei-lai Feng Buddhist stone carvings in Hangzhou, and in the varied works of Aniko, a renowned Nepalese sculptor and architect.

The arrival of foreigners also contributed to cultural development. With patronage from Kublai Khan, the Tibetan Buddhist monk 'Phags-pa devised a fine but rarely used written script for Mongol and other languages in the Mongol domains. The Persian astronomer Jamal al-Din built an astronomical observatory in Khanbalik and helped to devise a more accurate calendar; Muslim physicians introduced Persian medicines into China; between 1311 and 1320, Zhu Siben (Chu Ssu-pen) produced a world atlas (Yuditu) based on information learned from foreigners; and foreign merchants introduced the three-stringed guitar, the bowed zither, and cloisonné (a type of enameling) to China.

VII.

Decline of the Yuan

The Yuan government's social and financial problems and its foreign policies, together with rifts among the Mongols, ultimately led to its collapse. Discrimination against the Chinese in government and in society alienated many of the Mongols' subjects in China. Its many construction and public works projects created financial problems, which the Mongols exacerbated by oppressive taxation and rampant inflation. Disastrous overseas military campaigns against Japan and Java fueled the financial distress of the dynasty. By the 14th century, the government's fiscal woes resulted in serious underfunding and thus deterioration of public works and the military. Finally, the Mongols themselves were divided between those who were attracted by Chinese culture and those who sought to preserve the pure and untainted Mongol nomadic heritage. The resulting infighting weakened the Mongol's hold over China. Struggles for succession to the throne and disasters, such as floods resulting from improper maintenance of public works, finally led to native Chinese uprisings against the dynasty. One of the rebels, Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), and his forces gradually gained strength during the 1350s and 1360s and finally captured Khanbalik in 1368, deposing the Yuan court. He founded the Ming dynasty in the city of Nanjing (Nanking) the same year.

The Mongols managed to unite China for the first time in over 300 years. Although their period of control was brief and was marked by civil unrest and authoritarian misgovernment, the Yuan relaxed the rigorous Confucian hierarchy somewhat, which allowed a new upward mobility for a few in the lower class. In addition, their patronage of artisans and their support of popular culture ushered in a period of great achievement in literature, drama, and fine art.