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. 227 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.

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. 387 229 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.

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 self-organization 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