Chapter 8
Reshaping China in the Eurasian Mongol empire: The Yuan
period (1134/1179 - 1368)
Key ideas:
This chapter investigates the rise of Mongol Eurasian domination and the major changes the Mongol
conquest involved for Chinese societies of the former Jin and Song empires.
The Mongol Yuan dynasty (1234/1279 – 1268) still tends to appear
as “a catastrophic arrest in the long-term evolution of Chinese
society and economy,”226 as a black hole between the flourishing
Song and the later imperial period. Compared to the Song and the
late imperial period from about 1500 onwards, sources on the Yuan
period are relatively scarce and the density of research low. It is for
this reason that we explore the Mongol period in its own chapter.
What happened during the Mongol century and how, in particular,
was southern Chinese society and economy affected by Mongol rule?
These questions have huge implications for questions concerning
continuity and development through the late imperial period of the
Ming and Qing. We will have to come back to comparing late imperial
structures with those of the Tang to Song transformation on the one
hand and those of the Yuan on the other, and this exercise is easier
if we can refer to separate chapters. We will use this chapter for a
very short introduction to the breathtaking Mongol rise across the
Eurasian continent, to the disintegration and to some key issues of
Chinese society under Mongol rule.
The rise of the Mongols227
A Mongol archer: http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/images/mongarch.jpg
226
Von Glahn, “Imagining Pre-modern China,” p. 69.
Mote (1999), Imperial China, 900-1800, part 3, Franke and Twitchett, eds. (1994), The Cambridge
History of China. Vol. 6. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368, chapters 4 – 9.
227
Menggu 蒙古) was no less sudden that that of the Jurchen. One of
many nomadic peoples of northern Mongolia, Mongols find no
mention as one of the many tribal constituents of the Liao steppe
empire. It appears that steppe conditions and tribal formations
became increasingly unsettled in the power vacuum left by the
demise of the Khitan empire and under the conditions of climatic
cooling that made steppe life even harsher. In the late 12th century,
Temügin (1155-1227), originally a leader of a quite minor lineage,
succeeded in forging the Mongol nation from the variety of Mongol
and Turkic peoples of northern Central Asia. In 1206, he was
proclaimed Chingis Khan (also transcribed Ghengis Khan, Chinese
transcription Chengjisi han 成吉思汗), a grandiose title claiming
universal rulership. His success as a conqueror almost bore out these
claims.
The military society
His strategy for forging a cohesive followership out of competitive
tribal units was simple: He generously shared the spoils of war with
his followers while mercilessly destroying those who had opposed or
betrayed him, extending vengeance over whole populations. The
Mongols followed Jurchen precedent of organizing their whole
society into military units. In addition, two key changes contributed
to formin a unified nation: Chingis Khan insisted on the adoption of
Mongol customs, thus effectively integrating Turkish tribes into the
Mongol nation, and he early on institutionalised laws, and set up a
courier system after the Chinese example.
The force thus mobilized consisted of no more than half a million
people. Yet it was a military power invincible in battle. Mongol
cavalry, with up to five horses per horseman, possessed the
advantage of superior speed and mobility in all open country. The
dynamics of expansion in the steppe tradition of attacking for
subjugation and looting meant that conquest had to be carried on in
order to keep the growing Mongol nation itself supplied. At the same
time, the total mobility of warrior horsemen followed by their families
and dependants in the train meant their total dedication to warfare
as means of life that would not only provide riches and glory for the
warriors themselves but ensured their families’ livelihood.
The great campaigns
The great campaigns of conquest through the first half of the 13th
century were set in motion when the gradual steppe expansion
brought the Mongols into contact with the Uigur and Tangut
kingdoms that controlled the Silk Road trade. This opened up a new
world of undreamt riches as well as access to the information
highway of the period, where news could be gathered on all parts of
the world that were involved in Eurasian trade.
Map: The Mongol empire at the end of the 13th century: http://www.lacma.org/khan/map.htm
The Mongols were most apt learners in the fields of warfare and the
use of intelligence. They quickly learnt the techniques of siege
warfare and showed themselves well informed about political and
religious situations in the regions they invaded. Knowing about
massive regional dissension in Persia, for example, Chingis Khan
dispatched a minor force with the order to kill the Kwarezmid Shah –
a task that was successfully completed!
This is not the place to go into the Mongol conquests and campaigns
that reached Persia and the Levant, Poland and Hungary in the West,
while conquering the Tangut Western Xia (1227), the Jin (1234), Dali
(1254) and Sichuan, and finally the Southern Song empire (1276) in
East Asia, while Koryeo was forced into submission (1231).
Only the remotest regions (from a Mongolian perspective) were
spared – by coincidence. In 1241, Mongol forces suddenly withdrew
from Central Europe, called upon the death of Ögödei Khan. In 1274
and 1281 two attempts to invade Japan were thwarted by typhoons.
Only in the Near East an albeit minor Mongol army was beaten and
forced to retreat by Egyptian Mamluk forces.
Throughout the period of unprecedented expansion, the Mongols
remained raiders. Their interest was in loot, of both skilled people
and goods, not in killing or in ruling the conquered territories; their
punitive campaigns were directed personally against those leaders or
rulers who had wronged Mongols - according to Mongol standards.
Leaders or cities that were frightened into surrender were spared
violence, those who resisted were slaughtered as a deterrent for
others.
The destruction of centres and states was the more devastating the
more organized, integrated and agrarian a society was. Direct loss of
life in wars, particularly the slaughtering of whole cities, and indirect
death in their aftermath due to epidemics, insecurity and economic
disruption was most horrific in China, Korea and in Middle East.
The Mongol conquest of Northern China
The Mongol conquest of China began in 1211 with mounting
pressure on the Jin empire. By 1215, the Jin abandoned North China
and relocated their capital to Kaifeng. In 1210, the Western Xia had
recognized Mongol suzerainty, but this formal step was not followed
by true submission. Upon returning from the first Western
campaigns, Chingis Khan himself led a punitive campaign against the
Xia empire. Against fierce resistance, all urban strongholds were
annihilated and the state utterly destroyed. Some years later, the
remnants of the Jin were destroyed.
Northern China, the northern part of the Great Plains from the 1210s
and their southern parts from the 1230s onward, was reduced to a
state of stateless captivity for many decades. A few Jin warlords,
who submitted to the Mongols early enough to be honoured, were
able to preserve relative peace and security in areas under their
sway for some time, while Daoist, Buddhist and Nestorian
monasteries enjoyed privileges and could provide some protection. A
highly educated Khitan of the Liao royal house, Yelü Chucai (耶律楚
材) (? - 1243), saved the North China Plain from total de-population.
When a plan came up under Ögödei Khan to transform much of the
North China Plain into pastureland, this honoured but none too
influential advisor convinced the khan that regular taxes would
provide greater returns than the benefits to be expected from
pastures.
The transition from conquest to rule
The mentality of raiders began to be replaced by an interest in rule
from 1260 onwards with the ascent to power of Kubilai Khan
(Chinese: Hubilie 忽必烈, 1215 - 1294). Kubilai, whose fief was
located in northern China and who was more oriented towards China
than any former Mongolian leader, introduced a major shift in
Mongol imperial approach. He moved his capital from Karakorum to
Beijing, assumed the attributes of a Chinese ruler, soon adopting
Chinese reign titles and the dynastic name Yuan from 1271. Most
importantly, he reorganized rule over his Chinese territories as a
mostly Chinese-style administration – recognizing its efficiency in
providing wealth for his capital and resources for further conquests.
Kubilai succeeded in asserting himself as the Khan of all Mongols and
justified his worthiness by conquering the richest and most populous
empire of the world, the Song. Nevertheless, deep rifts came to the
fore in Mongol leadership during his time. The western khans
converted to Islam in the late 13th century and became Turkish
rather than Mongolian ruling elites. Although the khanates stretching
across the Eurasian continent remained a zone of open trade, they
gradually drifted apart. Among the eastern Mongols, meanwhile,
proponents of traditional Mongol ways and advocates of Chinese
style administration became fundamentally opposed. Bloody
succession and power struggles caused by this unbridgeable rift
would accompany the Yuan court throughout the dynasty.
Portrait of Kubilai Khan, hunting in the steppe setting, detail; by the woman court painter Liu Guandao 劉貫道,
ca. 1280: http://content.edu.tw/senior/art/tp_cc/ink/ca61.htm
The Mongol conquest of Southern China
The two states in the occupation of the Song empire illustrate the
change in Mongol warfare and outlook. The campaigns of the early
1250s into Dali and Sichuan followed patterns of steppe warfare,
relying on speed and cavalry and turning to total destruction in order
to “punish” resistance. When the Mongol advance was stalled by
Song armies, the population of Sichuan became the victim of Mongol
wrath. One of the most densely inhabited and productive regions of
the Song empire, Sichuan remained a sparsely populated borderland
through the Yuan period and would not recover until the Qing period.
When Kubilai ordered the final conquest, he carefully prepared a
campaign that would mainly rest upon infantry and navy and waged
a war that would last from 1267 to the fall of Hangzhou in 1276 and
three more years until resistance had been subdued and the last
Song heir had drowned himself off Hongkong. By this time, he had
heard of the conquest of Nanjing by the Song in the 10th century,
glorious for having been achieved “without killing a single person.”
Kubilai instructed his generals to follow this ideal. Although they
reverted to the practice of butchering whole populations of cities
which had put up resistance, with the slaughter of Changzhou 常州
east of Nanjing most atrocious and renowned, the war was mostly
undertaken as a military operation, not a campaign of destruction.
Hangzhou, cowed by the example of Changzhou, was taken without
bloodshed, and the last Song emperor and his family taken into exile
with dignity.
Chinese society under the Yuan
Scenery at the Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge), south of Beijing; anonymous Yuan painting:
http://www.lugouqiao.org.cn/HTMLFile/Info_209.html
Kubilai was succeeded by ten Yuan emperors before the Mongol
rulers were driven back to the steppe by the Ming. Politically, the
dynasty remained unable to overcome the tension between steppe
needs and the administering of a vast sedentary empire.
Administration remained fitful and oriented to fiscal needs of the
dynasty. Precedents of the dual systems of the Liao and Jin were not
followed. Distrust of Chinese led to the use of Turks and other
Central Asians in many administrative posts, antagonizing their
Chinese subjects. While the total population of the Southern Song,
the Jin, Dali and the Western Xia perhaps approached 200 mio
persons around 1200, that of the Yuan empire in 1290 is estimated
at no more than 75 mio.228 The human disaster looming behind
these figures is beyond imagination.
Regional differentiation
Yet, once the wars were over, routine and reconstruction set in. After
all, the Mongol court was in far-away Dadu 大都 (Beijing) or at the
even farther summer capital Shangdu 上都 (ca 200 km north of
Beijing), and life and local society was mostly organized and run by
Chinese. The extended Mongolian empire opened up new
opportunities for trade, both across the continent and over the seas.
In fact, foreign visitors, such as Marco Polo, do not record a
devastated society, but were overwhelmed at the wealth of the
country, especially of the still great cities Hangzhou and Quanzhou.
Similarly, Chinese art history doe not tell a story of disruption, but
presents a smooth continuation of former styles and themes.
This apparent contradiction becomes understandable when we take
into account that devastations were most severe in the North and in
Sichuan, while the South was largely spared.229
The Far South
Although the Far South experienced considerable destruction in the
campaigns from 1276 to 1289 and was seriously affected by
epidemics, overall population remained at least stable.230 Robert
Marks estimates that the colonization process “was greatly
accelerated when the Mongol invasion of the south in the 1270s
made swamps and malaria less risky to the Han Chinese than staying
in the path of the invading army.”231
The exceptional case of Jiangnan232
Crucially important, after the conquest Jiangnan was largely
unaffected by war, uprisings and epidemics throughout the Yuan
period. Research on population history suggests that important
peripheral regions of Jiangnan, the area between Huaihe and Yangzi
as well as Hunan also were quite stable through the Yuan period.233
The leading economic core area of the Song period was thus able to
function as a centre where technologies and economic structures
survived and the Chinese elites concentrated.
This painting illustrates the familiarity of Yuan-period literati in Jiangnan with Central and Western Asians. It
depicts a Luohan (Arhat) but resembles a portrait. The painter Zhao Mengfu 赵孟頫 (1254 - 1322) was a member
of the Song royal lineage who attained high office under Kubilai (and the husband of Liu Guandao).
http://www.vartcn.com/art/yxyy/guohua/200612/12337.html
228
Wu Songdi (2000), Zhongguo renkoushi. Vol. 3: Liao-Song-Jin-Yuan shiqi, p. 387
In the context of the demographic disaster that befell Northern China, it should be pointed out that
it began in the late Jin period, when the southward shift of the Huanghe in the late 12th century
caused great destruction in the eastern plains.
230
Wu Songdi, Zhongguo renkoushi. Vol. 3, pp. 551-570.
231
Marks (1998), Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, p. 52.
232
Li Bozhong (2003). “Was There a ‘Fourteenth-Century Turning Point’? Population, Land,
Technology, and Farm Management.”
233
Wu Songdi, Zhongguo renkoushi, vol. 3, pp. 515-517 and 526-528.
229
Books and continuity234
In addition, using the example of handbooks for agriculture, Deng
Gang has pointed out that printed books played an important role in
saving knowledge across major catastrophes. In this context, we
should note that the severity of natural disaster in China at all ages,
the growing awareness of the dangers of epidemics in densely
populated regions and the sense of intense military threat in the
Song and Jin empires, may have induced members of the educated
elite to make conscious efforts for the preservation of knowledge in
the face of doom. While this is speculation, it is clear that parts of
the Jin elites consciously worked to preserve Chinese culture for a
future time when “barbarians” would no longer rule them, and that
both late Jin and Song elites were intensely conscious of living at the
end of an era.235
The resilience of Chinese social structures236
On the whole, the locally oriented society and gentry selforganization proved to be surprisingly resilient and capable of
preserving economic and cultural structures. Education and the
ideals of scholar-officialdom were continued despite the fact that
234
Deng Gang (1993). Development versus Stagnation: Technological Continuity and Agricultural
Progress in Pre-Modern China.
235
E.g. Gedalecia (2000), A solitary Crane in an Spring Grove: The Confucian Scholar Wu Ch'eng in
Mongol China.
236
Bol (2003), “Neo-Confucianism and Local Society, Twelfth to Sixteenth Century: A Case Study.”
state examinations were restored only in 1315, after an interruption
of thirty years.
The long end of the Yuan and the second demographic catastrophe
After some fifty years of peace and recovery, Yuan power obviously
waned from 1330 onwards. At the same time, the cooling climate
placed great pressure on the agricultural Chinese society. Severe
floods, famines and epidemics caused a general breakdown of
society. While the dynasty came to be constricted to the capital
regions, dependent on the support of Northern warlords, local
warlords and millenarian uprisings sprang up all over China. Over
four long decades, China descended into chaos. Civil war and natural
disaster caused a second demographic catastrophe. From the Yuan
population maximum of the early 14th century, estimated at 85 mio,
steep decline set in. By the time the Ming dynasty had restored some
order to its realm at the end of the century, it ruled over no more
than 72 mio people.237
The Red Turbans
Unsurprisingly, the Maitrea Buddha became exceedingly popular in
these times, the Buddha of the future, now believed to be able to
descend any time to deliver the world from its misery. Millenarian
beliefs centred on Maitrea and syncretic religious teachings became
the banner under which popular uprisings organized themselves
throughout Eastern and Central China. They used red headbands for
recognition and were therefore called the Red Turbans (hongjin 红巾
). Leaders of these uprisings as well as many of the local warlords
mostly came from lowly background. Personal strength and daring
had become the only useful criteria for leadership. One of these rebel
leaders, a young man from Anhui named Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋
(1328 - 1398, reigned as the Hongwu Emperor 洪武, 1368-1398)
gradually acquired the leadership of all Red Turbans and became the
founder of a new dynasty, the Ming 明.
Conclusion
Instead of a summarizing conclusion, let us briefly turn to three
facets of Yuan history that often appear in stereotypical
generalizations about Mongol empire and Chinese society.
Caste?238
Hostile Yuan histories, drawing on traditional dynastic history writing,
make much of the four classes of Mongol subjects as a caste system
of discrimination along ethnic lines. According to this system,
Mongols ranked highest, followed by Turks and other Central and
Western Asians (the Semu ren 色目人, “people of coloured eyes”),
237
Wu Songdi, Zhongguo renkoushi, vol. 3, p. 465. The Ming territory, confined to China proper, was
considerable smaller than the Yuan. As the northern steppe and Manchuria were thinly populated,
however, these vast territories had little impact on population figures.
238
Endicott-West, Elizabeth (1994). “The Yüan Government and Society;” Mote, Imperial China, pp.
489-497.
again followed by the subjects of the former Jin (Hanren 汉人), and
with “Southerners (Nanren 南人), subjects of the former Song,
ranking lowest. While there is no doubt that Mongols looked down
upon Chinese, who obviously mostly lacked the Mongol warrior
virtues, and that the Semu ren in government service were
privileged, systematic discrimination is not borne out by official
careers of Southerners and the success of Chinese merchants.
Another aspect of Yuan civil administration has attracted less
attention but appears to have had more lasting effects upon Chinese
society: For fiscal reasons (bluntly: for easier exploitation), Yuan
population registers were organized along occupational categories.
These occupational household registrations were intended to become
hereditary. Although the dynasty was unable to enforce such strict
regulations of people’s lives, the system clearly ran counter the open
society of the Song.
Black Death
Black Death, the bubonic plague, devastated Europe from 1347
through the 14th century, bringing the High Middle Ages to an end.
As devastating epidemics are also recorded in late Yuan China, an
influential hypothesis has been put forward, suggesting that it were
Mongol troops who contracted the disease in remote regions of
Yunnan and spread it in China and across the Eurasian continent.239
This hypothesis is satisfying, as it provides a link between the
“catastrophic arrests” suffered by Europe and China after a period of
flourishing, while relegating the origin of the disaster to a Chinese
frontier region and the role of the agents to the Mongols.
Nevertheless, it has been refuted by recent research. Reasons for the
rejection are that the Yunnan origin cannot be substantiated and that
the epidemics can neither be identified as the bubonic plague nor did
they sweep across all of China in great waves as was the case of
Black Death in Europe.240 The example of the Black Death should
therefore caution us against looking too much for parallels between
the demographic disasters of Europe and China.
Women241
Generally speaking, steppe women are thought to have enjoyed a
higher social standing than their Chinese counterparts. Concluding
from this, the Yuan dynasty is commonly depicted as a period during
which tight control over women, which had been established by Song
period Neo-Confucians, was relaxed, only to be reinforced anew by
the Ming dynasty.
239
See McNeill (1976), Plagues and Peoples, pp. 141f., 259-269. Also Marks (2002), The Origins of the
Modern World: A Global Ecological Narrative, pp. 36-38.
240
Fisher (1995). “Zhongguo lishi shang de shuyi,” and Li Bozhong, “Was There a ‘Fourteenth-Century
Turning Point’?” p. 138.
241
Birge (2003), “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming: The Institutionalization of
Patrilineality.”
Bettina Birge has recently revised this interpretation. She shows
convincingly that women’s economical independence was in fact
defended by Song law. In particular, women retained full control
over property they brought into their marriage, and which tended to
be a fair share of their father’s possessions. Neo-Confucian rhetoric
was directed against a social custom that ran against their construct
of the strict patrilinear family, but it was not effective to change this
custom. Whereas according to Chinese custom, widows, divorced or
mistreated wives returned to their natal families, taking their
property back with them, Yuan family law made the allocation of a
married wife with her in-laws permanent and regarded her
possessions as part of her husband’s family. Despite its relatively
short duration and the uneven enforcement of laws, the Yuan
dynasty thus eroded women’s economic independence. We may add
that the Ming code cemented this situation, albeit presenting it as a
“return” to true Confucian custom.
Concluding remark
Altogether, the Mongol Yuan period constitutes a watershed in
Chinese history. In our explorations of late imperial history, in
particular of the formation of the Ming state, we will reconsider
structures inherited from the Yuan, either taken over or developed
out of a need to counteract Mongol influence. In some cases, as the
example of women’s property rights show, both strands reinforced
the same effect.
Further reading:
Hansen, Valerie (2000), “The Mongols.” In The open Empire: A History of China to 1600. Chapter 9.
New York: Norton.
For a picture of society, economy, religion and individual stories, with emphasis on intellectual and
daily life.
Smith, Paul Jakov (2003). “Impressions of the Song-Yuan-Ming Transition: The Evidence from Biji Memors.”
In Smith and von Glahn, eds. The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, pp. 71-110.
For an analysis of contemporary observations on politics and society from the Song to the early Ming.
Ebrey, Patricia, ed. (1993). “A Mongol Governor.” In Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, part 4,
chapter 44
For the life of a conscientious Mongol governor..
Ebrey, Patricia, ed. (1993). “A Scholar-Painter’s Diary.” In Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, part 4,
chapter 46.
For scholarly life during the Yuan dynasty.
For the seriously interested, the following works provide well-written studies on
specific issues:
Birge, Bettina (2003). “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming: The Institutionalization of Patrilineality.”
In Smith and von Glahn, eds. The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, pp. 212-240.
and
Bol, Peter K. (2003). “Neo-Confucianism and Local Society, Twelfth to Sixteenth Century: A Case Study.” In
Smith and von Glahn, eds. The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, pp. 241-283.
For two dense and concrete studies of social change from the Song to the Ming.
Franke, Herbert (1994). China under Mongol Rule. Aldershot: Variorum. (Variorum Collected Studies Series
429)
For a good general study.
Rossabi, Morris (1992). Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the first journey from China to the West.
For an East Asian perspective on the West of the Eurasian continent