Text: Xiao Xiao
Editor: Xiao Xiao
Introduction:
Kublai Khan, also spelled Kublai Khan or Kublai Khan, temple number ancestor, (1215-1294), Mongolian general, politician, grandson and greatest heir of Genghis Khan. As the fifth emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368) (reigned 1260-94), he completed the reign of China (1279) opened by Genghis Khan in 1211, becoming the first Yuan ruler in all of China.
Argument: A brief analysis of the reign of Kublai Khan, the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty
At the same time, Kublai Khan was the hegemon of all other Mongol rule, including regions as diverse as the Golden Horde in southern Russia, the Persian Ilkhanate (present-day Iran), and the steppe hinterland where Mongol princes still lived a traditional nomadic life. To govern China, which has a long and unique political and cultural history, we need a special order to govern the country.
Historical background
The Mongols were nouveau riche nomads. Until Genghis Khan unified them under his centralized control in 1206, they were nothing more than a largely autonomous tribe, more or less unknown in historical records. With the exception of some organized hunting and managing their herds, they have little experience in economic activity.
Until a few years before Kublai Khan's birth, they were illiterate. Before the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, they had little experience of statecraft, and concepts such as urban social taxation were brought to their attention by their foreign advisers, who were very dependent on them.
The limited political power of the Mongols contributed in large part to the relatively rapid collapse of their empire; Yuan's control of all of China lasted less than a century. With a few notable exceptions, such as Kublai Khan himself, Mongol rulers seem to view power as personal property, or at most family property.
Exploited for immediate gain. As a result, with the exception of regions like China with strong indigenous political traditions, they have never succeeded in organizing a lasting state. The same is true in China, where everything ultimately depends on the willpower and ability of the ruler.
In China, as elsewhere, the Mongols came to power entirely by force. With such prestige as a backing, relying on his domineering personality, and building on the splendid civilization developed by his predecessors in China, the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Kublai Khan could temporarily maintain the illusion of Mongol supremacy. In fact, his reign must have been a period of solid expansion and lasting achievement for his contemporaries, including Marco Polo, a Venetian traveler who became Kublai Khan's agent, and whose book Marco Polo's Travels was the main source of information on East Asia during the Renaissance.
However, Kublai Khan faced an unsolvable dilemma at the beginning of his reign, which was vividly expressed by one of his Chinese advisers in a note to him: "I have heard that a man can conquer an empire on horseback, but a man cannot rule on horseback. In other words, for inexperienced Mongols to govern China, they must adopt Chinese methods and even live according to Chinese models.
However, to the extent to which they do so, they are bound to become increasingly assimilated and may even lose their identity altogether. On the other hand, if they work through Chinese and other agents, they alienate the masses of the people, who will ostracize them.
In both cases, the Mongols — culturally less advanced than Chinese, numerically overwhelmed by them, and accustomed to different ways of life — could not continue to rule China as a distinct privileged caste for long. Only the brilliance of Kublai Khan's personal achievements overshadowed this fact.
Power
Kublai Khan was the fourth son of Tuo Lei, the youngest of Genghis's four sons, and his favorite wife did not begin to play an important role in the expansion and consolidation of the Mongol Empire until 1251, when he was in her 30s. His younger brother, Emperor Meng Ge (reigned 1251–59), was determined to complete the conquest of China's Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279)—centered on Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province)—planned by Genghis Khan's third son.
Meng Ge also intended to conquer Persia, a task assigned to Kublai Khan's brothers. At that time, Kublai Khan was given full civilian and military responsibility for China's affairs. He never seems to have learned to read or write Chinese, but he has recognized the superiority of Chinese thought and has gathered a group of trustworthy people around him. Confucian strategist.
His attitude towards government was formed under the influence of learned Chinese who convinced him that rulers and ruled must be interdependent and reinforced his innate tendency to love and magnanimity. Domestically, he established competent administrative and supply bases in the fiefdoms allocated to him in the Wei River Basin (present-day Gansu and Shaanxi provinces).
On the battlefield, he emphasized to his generals the admonition of his mentor - the importance and effectiveness of forgiving the vanquished. Compared to the methods of Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan's contemporaries in Central Asia, the treatment of the vanquished was a great advance in civilized behavior, and demographic massacres remained the expected result of the capture of cities.
Kublai Khan attacked the Southern Song Dynasty from the flank, conquered the Dai kingdom of Nanzhao (present-day Yunnan Province), and then handed over command to his general Wuzhiyang Chatai. In 1257, Meng Ge personally commanded the war, but died in 1259 and was left in the homeland because of his youth, he planned to be elected khan himself, and he reached an armistice with the Song dynasty.
In April, he arrived at his residence in Shangdu (a famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), in southeastern Mongolia. His colleagues held a big meeting there", and on May 5, Kublai Khan was unanimously elected khan to succeed Mengko.
Ten days later, he announced his succession in a proclamation drafted in classical Chinese. Since primogeniture was not an accepted principle at the time, Aliberg, with the support of some powerful supporters, held his own Kuritai in Karakoram (the original capital of the Mongol Empire, now in northern Mongolia) and proclaimed himself a khan, ignoring Kublai Khan's actions.
Although Marco Polo insisted that Kublai Khan was a direct legitimate descendant of Genghis Khan and a legitimate monarch, his legitimacy has been questioned. A legendary Mongol chronicle records that the dying Genghis Khan named his son Kublai Khan as the future khan, which seems to have been artificially designed to justify the usurpation retroactively.
In 1264, Kublai Khan defeated Ali Boko in battle, forcing him to submit. Two years later, Ali Bo died, but the family feud, and the rivalry with Ali Bo was one of its manifestations, which continued throughout the reign of Kublai Khan. His opponents resented the abandonment of the old ways of the steppe and the adoption of a Chinese-centric foreign culture.
Since the leader of the opposition was Kaidu – who was personally designated by Genghis Khan as his successor as the grandson of Vokotai – represented the cause of legitimacy. In 1251, with the accession of Mongo, the throne passed from the Wokotai lineage to the lineage of his brother Tulei. Kaidu never relaxed his hostility towards Kublai Khan, and until his death in 1301, he remained the master of the Mongol headquarters and Turkestan.
The war in Kaidu showed how Kublai Khan decisively identified with the Chinese world and turned against the nomadic world. Genghis was powerful and ruthless, enough to force the Mongols, who were always inclined to family feuds, to serve him. Although Kublai Khan was powerful, he could no longer effectively control the steppe nobility.
China is reunified
Kublai Khan's achievement was to re-establish the unity of China, which had been divided since the end of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). His achievements were much greater, because he was a barbarian (in the eyes of Chinese) and a nomadic conqueror. However, even in official Chinese historiography, Mongolian Kublai Khan was respected.
As early as 1260, he established a reign period in the Chinese way to determine the date of his reign, and in 1271, eight years before the dissolution of the Southern Song Dynasty, he proclaimed his dynastic Yuan, or "Great Origin," under the name "Da". He never lived in Karakorum, the short-lived capital of Wokuotai, but established his own capital, Beijing, in his current location, a city known as "Dadu" in his time.
The final conquest of the Southern Song Dynasty lasted several years. Kublai Khan was probably content to rule northern China and give the Song Dynasty nominal control of southern China, but the Song Dynasty's detention and mistreatment of his envoys convinced him that he had to deal decisively with the declining regime in the south. Military operations began again in 1267.
Emperor Duzong of Song was apparently misserved by his last ministers, who were said to have been misleading him about his true situation, while many Song commanders voluntarily defected to the Mongols. In 1276, Kublai Khan's general Bayan captured the then Emperor Xiao Song, but loyalists in the south postponed the inevitable end until 1279.
Since all of China was in the hands of the Mongols, the Mongol conquests in the south and east had reached the limits of effectiveness. However, Kublai Khan waged a series of costly and troublesome wars to restore China's prestige, with little success.
At different times, the neighboring kingdoms were required to pay tribute: Burma (Burma), Annam and Champa on mainland Southeast Asia, Java (present-day Indonesia), and Japan. The Mongol army suffered some disastrous defeats in these battles. In particular, the invasion fleets sent to Japan in 1274 and 1281 were almost completely destroyed, although their losses were caused both by storms (the legendary Japanese kamikaze typhoon of those years) and by Japanese resistance.
End:
Kublai Khan was never completely discouraged by the insignificant results or costs of these colonial wars, which ended only under his successor, Temur. Marco Polo hinted that Kublai Khan wanted to annex Japan only because he was excited by reports of Japan's immense wealth. His colonial war, however, seems to have been primarily aimed at a political goal — to make China the center of the world again.
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