Building the Mongol Empire:
The mongols were a nomadic people who grazed their horses and sheep on the steppes of Central Asia. River Mongol clans spent much or their time warring with one another. In the early 1200s, however, a brilliant Mongol Chieftain united the waring tribes. This chieftain took the name Genghiz Khan, meaning “world emperor”.

His highly skilled armies conquered the Asian stipe lands with some ease, but as they turned on China, they faced the problem of attacking walled cities. Mongols and Chinese launched missiles against each other from metal tubes filled with gunpowder. This use of cannons in warfare would soon spread westward to Europe.

Genghiz Khan did not live to complete the conquest of China. His heirs did. For the next 150 years the Mongols dominated much of Asia. Their furious assaults toppled empires and spread destruction from southern Russia through Muslim lands in the Middle East to China. The Mongols devastated the flourishing province of Sichuan and annihilated its great capital city of Chengdu.

-once conquest was completed, the Mongols were not oppressive rulers. Often they allowed conquered people to live much as they had before, just paying regular tribute to the Mongol overlord.
-although the Mongol warrior had no use for city life, he respected scholars, artist and artisans. He listed to the ideas of Confucians, Buddhists, Christian, Muslims, Jews and Zoroastrians.

The PAX MONGOLICA lasted from the 1200s to 1300s. This is the time of Mongolian peace.

According to a contemporary of the Khans, Mongol rule meant that people “ enjoyed such peace that a man might have journeyed from the land of sunrise to the land of sunset with a golden platter upon his head without suffering the least violence form anyone.” Meaning people wouldn’t rob you in the streets even if you were wearing gold.

Kublai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty

Genghiz Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan finally toppled the last Song emperor in 1279. From his capital at Cambulac, present day Beijing, Kublai Khan ruled all of china as well as Korea, Tibet and Vietnam

Kublai Khan tried to prevent the Mongols from being absorbed into Chinese Civilization as other conquerors of China had bee. So he decreed that only Mongols could serve in the military. He also reserved the highest government jobs for Mongols or other non-chines officials. Still, because there were too few Mongols to control so vast an empire. Kublai allowed Chinese officials to continue to rule in the provinces.

Kublai Khana adopted a Chinese name for his dynasty, the Yuan and turned Cambulac into a Chinese walled city. He also welcomed many foreigners into his court including the African Muslim world traveler Ibn Battuta.

Marco Polo:

In 1271, Polo and his father and uncle left Venice and crossed Persia and Central Asia to China, where he spent 17 years in Kublai Khan’s service.
He described the royal palace of Kublai as being “covered with gold and silver and decorated with pictures of dragons and birds and horsemen and various breeds of beasts and scenes of battle.” Furthermore he reported that the city of Hangzhou was 10 or 12 times the size of Venice, one of Italy’s richest cities.
The Ming Dynasty Restore Chinese Rule:

The yuan dynasty declined after the death of Kublia Khan. Most Chinese despised the foreign Mongol rulers. Heavy taxes, corruption, and natural disasters led to frequent uprisings. Finally, Zhu Yuanzhang, a peasant leader, forged a rebel army that toppled the Mongols and pushed them back beyond the Great Wall. In 1368, he founded a new Chinese dynasty’s which he called the Ming, meaning brilliant.

The Ming restored the civil service system, and Confucian learning again became the road to success. The civil service exams became more rigorous than ever. A board of censors watched over the bureaucracy rooting out corruption and disloyalty.

The fertile, well irrigated plains of eastern China supported a population of more than 100 million. In the yang Vally peasants produced huge rice crops. In the 1500s, new crops reached china from the Americas, especially corn and sweet potatoes.

New technologies increased output in manufacturing and better methods of printing led to the production of a flood of books.

Ming artists developed their own styles of landscape painting and created brilliant blue and white porcelain. These vases and plates are quintessential forms of “chinaware” to this day.

Ming performing artists developed a popular tradition of Chinese opera that combined music, dance and Rama.

Between 1405 and 1433 Zheng He (the most famous Ming Chinese explorer) led a fleet of 62 boats with 25000 sailors to show local rulers the power and strength of the Middle Kingdom and collect tribute and expand trade.

In 1433, the year Zheng he died the ming emperor banned the building of seagoing ships for mysterious reasons.

As always,

Context is Everything

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