The Yuan Dynasty was a unified regime ruled by foreign peoples, and although it is objectively described, it is an important historical marker. In the nearly 300 years of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, foreign ethnic groups successively established a number of regimes in the Central Plains, all of which were limited to the north. Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty of the Xianbei tribe hoped to promote reform and lay a good foundation for the unification of the south, but it backfired; only the Mongols swallowed gold and destroyed the Song Dynasty, becoming the first foreign power to successfully unify the north and the south.
How to view the "foreign" rule of the Yuan Dynasty?
Compared with the period of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the degree of sinicization of the Mongolian people was very low, and many high-ranking officials in the imperial court did not even understand Chinese characters.
Under the rule of the Yuan Dynasty, Mongolian officials and magnates used various means to loot the people's wealth, such as forcibly encroaching on the people's fields, putting tea and agricultural tools in the monopoly, exchanging paper money for people's money, setting up clever names to levy fees on the people, and setting up various bureaus. In order to facilitate tax collection, the Yuan Dynasty adopted a similar bidding method, in which a certain person guaranteed to pay taxes to the central government, and then collected taxes on behalf of the designated area, and the problems arising from it can be imagined.
In addition, the Yuan Dynasty set up ten provinces, which were not divided according to the shape of mountains and rivers. Taking today's Guangdong as an example, it belongs to Huguang and Jiangxi, which are blocked by Lingnan.
This reflects the fact that the Yuan Dynasty did not seriously examine the local system. Decentralization of power, a simple addition of a layer to the original local units, the establishment of ten provinces, the highest level of local administrative units, as if the central operation of the replication of the local government: the establishment of the prime minister as the governor, the Pingzhang political affairs as the deputy governor, with the jurisdiction of the area of the executive, financial, military, judicial and other powers. Under the province, roads, states, and counties are maintained, and the governor is called Daru Huachi. The local governors are all Mongolians or Semu.
In a sense, the power of the provinces is broad and powerful, and the local government is highly autonomous, but there are big problems in operation. In order to facilitate local supervision, the boundaries of provinces are not based on the shape of mountains and rivers, but deliberately grouped together different natural environments and ethnic cultures, making it difficult for localities to develop.
The ruling thinking of the "foreign races" of the Yuan Dynasty was also reflected in the imperial infighting. In the 98th year of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan served as the monarch of the unified dynasty for 22 years, and then nearly 40 years after Emperor Yuan Shun ascended the throne, nine monarchs were replaced, reflecting the serious fighting in the imperial family.
In order to compete for power, the royal family not only fought in secret, but even fought against each other, which greatly undermined the strength of the central government and the stability of the political power. Emperor Yuan Shun was another long-reigning monarch, and he used Tokhtar to carry out a number of reforms, which had a great momentum, but unfortunately fell short, and the imperial family was once again caught in a power struggle.
In fact, court struggles were the norm in imperial history, but such incessant and blatant struggles reflected the failure of the Yuan dynasty to establish a system of succession and the failure of Confucian culture to curb ambitions.
The Yuan Dynasty lasted for nearly a hundred years, which is not considered a long life, but it cannot be said to be a quick death. The bureaucratic corruption of the Yuan Dynasty did not mean that the whole country was in chaos, and there were certain achievements in economic development and cultural exchanges. The Yuan Dynasty died in less than a hundred years, either from the analysis of the ruling policy, or from the discussion of the economic environment. However, one of the backgrounds that cannot be ignored is that the Yuan Dynasty governed the agrarian society with a nomadic mentality.
The author does not mean that having foreign characteristics is the original sin, but how to balance the culture of the own and the Han culture is a kind of political wisdom. The high degree of sinicization has the danger of losing its own national identity, which is precisely the negative criticism of the Sinicization movement of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty. However, the rejection of sinicization is prone to long-term social confrontation, and the ruling measures often fail to play a positive role in response to the current situation, which may be a portrayal of the Yuan Dynasty.