Chinese History · Chronicle VI of X
元 · Yuan
Kublai Khan and Marco Polo: all China under the Mongols.
The Mongol InvasionsMilitary
The united Mongols under Genghis Khan storm across the Great Wall into the Jin realm of north China.
Having united the steppe tribes in 1206, Genghis Khan turned his cavalry on the settled empires to the south. His campaigns against the Jurchen Jin brought terror and devastation but also engineers and administrators into Mongol service, beginning the long conquest that his heirs would complete.
Kublai KhanPolitical
Genghis's grandson Kublai declares the Yuan dynasty and rules China as a Chinese emperor from his capital at Dadu.
Kublai Khan chose to rule China not as a raider but as its emperor, adopting a Chinese dynastic name and building a magnificent capital at Dadu, modern Beijing. He unified the whole country under Mongol rule by 1279, presiding over the largest contiguous land empire history had known, now with China as its wealthy heart.
Kublai KhanCultural
The Venetian Marco Polo reaches Kublai's court, and the Mongol peace opens Eurasia to travellers and trade.
Under the Pax Mongolica a single power stretched from Korea to the Danube, and merchants, monks and envoys crossed it in safety. Marco Polo's account of the wealth of Cathay and the splendour of Kublai's court, whether wholly true or not, fired the European imagination and hinted at the riches that would one day draw Columbus westward.
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Kublai KhanMilitary
A great Yuan armada sent against Japan is destroyed by a typhoon the Japanese hail as the 'divine wind.'
Kublai twice tried to conquer Japan by sea. In 1281 his enormous fleet, one of the largest in pre-modern history, was shattered by a typhoon off Kyushu. The Japanese called the storm kamikaze, the divine wind, and the disaster showed the limits of Mongol power at the ocean's edge.
The Yuan OrderCultural
Yuan China blends cultures across Eurasia, and its potters perfect the blue-and-white porcelain prized around the world.
The Mongol elite ranked its subjects by origin and kept the Chinese literati at arm's length, so many turned from office to drama and painting; Yuan theatre became a classic of Chinese literature. Meanwhile potters at Jingdezhen, using cobalt traded from Persia, created the blue-and-white porcelain that would become one of China's most coveted exports.
The Fall of the YuanPolitical
Famine, floods and the Red Turban revolts overwhelm the Yuan; the last emperor flees north as the Ming is proclaimed.
A century of Mongol rule ended in disaster: the Yellow River flooded, plague and famine spread, and the Red Turban rebellions engulfed the country. The peasant leader Zhu Yuanzhang emerged victorious, took Dadu in 1368, and founded the Ming. The Mongol court withdrew to the steppe as the Northern Yuan, and China was again ruled by a native dynasty.
