Ancient China has a culture and history of 5,000 years, and there have been many dynasties in ancient Chinese history, some of which are prosperous and strong and can dominate one side, some are weak and helpless and can only settle in a corner, some dynasties have vast territories and fertile fields, and some dynasties have their territories between square inches and standing cones. Today, let's take a look at which dynasty has the largest territorial territory in ancient Chinese history?
Regarding the answer to this question, I believe everyone can blurt out, he is the grand unified dynasty established by Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan: the Yuan Dynasty. So how big was the territory of the Yuan Dynasty? The official history of the Yuan Dynasty says: "The Liaoning left and western poles of the east are quicksand, the north exceeds the Yin Mountains and the south crosses the sea surface, and the Han and Tang dynasties are at their peak." From this sentence, it can be seen that the Yuan Dynasty was extremely confident in its territory.
From its current perspective, the territory of the Yuan Dynasty stretched east to the Sea of Japan, including what is now Sakhalin, Jeju, Diaoyudo, and Outer Northeast. However, it is a pity that Japan and the Asian continent at that time were across the sea, so the Yuan Dynasty army failed to conquer Japan several times. The territory of the Yuan Dynasty extended to Southeast Asia in the south, and parts of Thailand and Vietnam were under the control of the Yuan Dynasty. The northern part of the territory of the Yuan Dynasty included Siberia and Lake Baikal, which were bitter cold places in ancient times, so they were easily conquered by Kublai Khan. The western boundary of the territory of the Yuan Dynasty was not much different from the current boundary, mainly because the western part was high and mountainous, which was not suitable for the life of Mongolian nomads, so the approximate western boundary of the Yuan Dynasty was the Tibetan Plateau and the Tianshan Mountain Range.
Having said all this, how big is the territory of the Yuan Dynasty? In fact, the Yuan Dynasty at that time did not actually measure the specific land area, so the specific area of the Yuan Dynasty could not be found in Baidu Encyclopedia and official documents. However, there are two theories circulating on the Internet, one is that the territory of the Yuan Dynasty is 16.8 million square kilometers, and the other is that it is 18 million square kilometers. These specific figures were extrapolated by later generations based on the territory of the Yuan Dynasty and cannot be used as official data.
Written at the end: Although we can no longer actually study the territory of the Yuan Dynasty, we can be sure that the Yuan Dynasty is definitely the largest dynasty in Chinese history.