Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty Empire in China
"Kublai Khan goes hunting." Fragment. Artist Liu Guandao (1258-1336). Silk, ink. Gugong Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
Entry
In 1271, Khubilai announced that the territories under his control would be named after the Chinese model as the Yuan Empire.
The Chineseization of Mongol rule began from the very beginning of the conquest of Jin and Xi Xia. As we wrote in previous articles, one of the main agents of the policy of Sinification and, at the same time, the policy of saving taxpayers for the Mongolian state was the Kidanin Yului Chutsai.
As a warrior people, the Mongols did not have any civilian government structures at all. The Mongols did not pay taxes, and their society was governed through tribal and communal structures closely related exclusively to military management.
After the conquest of vast states with a sedentary population, the Mongols began to adopt systems or elements of control systems that seemed adequate to them to extract profit from the conquered. Military and political power was exercised exclusively in the old way, through the supremacy of the khan, military councils, that is, the military structure of the people of warriors, and the new system of management of farmers was entrusted to local officials under the obligatory control of either a Mongol or a representative from another foreign ethnic group.
So busy in the 30s. XIII century territories in northern China used the "Tai he lu" code of the fallen Jin empire until the 80s of the XIII century.
The conquest of the Chinese lands by the northern barbarians was not the first time in stories China, especially since the predecessors of the Mongols: the Khitan, Jurchen and partially the Tangut quickly adopted the Chinese culture and system of government.
Mongolian leaders, adherents of traditions, generally proposed to destroy the agricultural population and turn the lands of China into pastures.
At the first stage, they were not attracted at all and were not interested in the culture of the peoples who were subordinated to them and subjected to slavery.
But with the growth in the management structure of the Chinese military and officials, especially during the conquest of the Southern Song, Sinification went faster.
In conclusion, I would like to note that the widespread opinion today that Russia fell into the Mongol empire with Chinese officials has no basis.
Russia fell under the yoke of the nomads, when the process of disintegration of the Mongol state into separate huge parts had already begun. And the conquest of the Chinese empire by the Song dynasty ended thirty years after the first invasion of Russia. An attempt to introduce the collection of tribute from Russian volosts according to the Central Asian version was unsuccessful for a number of reasons, and payments passed into the hands of the Russian princes. At the same time, the ransom of fees transferred to Muslim merchants in China was actively used. The way this was carried out by merchants in the former territory of the Golden Empire caused outrage even among the Chinese who served the Mongols.
Restoring the connection of times or the creation of a Chinese unified state
Kublai Khan became the founder of a new empire throughout China. Moreover, he significantly expanded it, including not only the lands of non-Chinese Tibetan tribes, the territory of the Tanguts, Uighurs, Jurchens, but even his own ulus - Mongolia.
Khubilai was a formidable warrior who from childhood was fond of hunting, that is, the school of war. He was diligently educated, studied Uyghur writing and other sciences. But especially in military affairs. Even in his youth, he received the epithet of the Wise - Kublai-Sechen. At the same time, he became acquainted with the teachings of Confucius, and later studied the "ideal", in the opinion of Chinese scholars, the history of the Tang Dynasty Empire. Khan spent a lot of time discussing the history and mistakes of past reigns, loved religious disputes and was religiously tolerant.
A modern map, where the Yuan Empire is indicated within the boundaries of modern states. Often such cards are used for unreasonable territorial claims.
Creating the empire of the Yuan dynasty, he pointed out that he proceeds from a universal, and not a narrow national approach. The previous rulers in China, in his opinion, were doing wrong when forming dynasties according to the national or tribal principle.
In fact, the structure of the Yuan empire bore a clearly expressed character of ethnic inequality, but when it was created, the ideological basis was universalism. Confucian scholars supported and developed these ideas of Kublai, seeing that after a long period of chaos, wars and robberies, the reincarnation of the traditional empire in the image of the Yuan begins. But the conqueror people themselves, not only did not share such ideas, but, as we will see below, rigidly opposed universalism, which could contribute to the assimilation of the Mongols and dissolution among the sedentary population.
In whose eyes the great Mongolian khan became the chosen emperor, who restored or, rather, created an empire within the boundaries of the reference empire of the Tang dynasty, significantly increasing its size, including by including Mongolia into the empire.
The ruler who maintains peace and harvests is endowed with divine grace, and such was Khubilai, unlike the Jin and Song emperors, who were unable to provide not only prosperity, but also elementary security.
The first Yuan emperor died in 1294 in the year of the blue horse.
Reforms in the Yuan Empire
After conquering the Song, Khubilai not only took over its control system, but also significantly improved it. The entire territory of the empire, even before the final conquest of the Songs, was divided into regions (edges), headed by officials from the Mongol nobility. Mainly this division has survived to this day.
All actions of the "governor" were strictly regulated and spelled out: what he had to do, how much to deploy troops from the edge, how much to pay taxes. For the rapid movement and transmission of information, the whole country was permeated by a system of post offices and pit stations.
It is generally accepted in our country that this system has been extremely effective since its inception, but at the initial stage this was not the case. The Mongols abused her, arbitrarily confiscating horses wherever they found them, if they were not in the pits (zhan). What caused the discontent of the population living at the post stations. The situation gradually leveled off. In Yuan, there were 1500 pit stations that ensure the rapid transmission of information, the movement of officials and messengers, as well as government cargo.
Under the Yuan, water transport was actively developed, after the war the Great Canal and other canals were restored, seaports were developed. For the first time, movement by sea was opened between north and south of China. We can say that it was the rivers, canals and the coastal strip of the sea that were the main transport arteries of the empire.
Chinese officials were called up to serve, and it was they who carried out all the routine work, primarily to collect taxes.
Was created, as we wrote, on the Chinese model, a ramified bureaucratic apparatus. This entire system was aimed primarily at restraining the local Mongol rulers, who were self-sufficient on the ground. Essentially, the central administration ruled the capitals and the small regions around them.
The Yuan Empire had a state hierarchical system, like the nomadic "empire" of the Mongols, built on the inequality of ethnic groups. This was enshrined in law; Mongols, as an ethnic group of conquerors, was at the top of the pyramid. They were joined by such ethno-allies as the Uighurs. The next were the so-called. samu, immigrants from Central and Western Asia, most often Turks and Muslims. Samu, who came from developed countries, distinguished themselves in the formation of systems for the exploitation of the Chinese population. Next were the Chinese from the Jin Empire, followed by the Jurchens. At the same time, the Jurchens, who did not know the Chinese language, belonged to the Mongols. And at the very bottom were the Chinese from the territories of the former Song Dynasty empire. If the Mongol killed the Chinese, he either paid the cost of the donkey, or went on a campaign, and for striking the Mongol the Chinese was executed.
After the conquest, slavery spread in China, which was local in the Song and Jin empires, due to the fact that the Mongols massively turned the local population into slaves during the wars. This indicates a regression in social relations. The population declined throughout China. The 1293 census in Yuan showed that the number of farms was 14, according to the calculations of researchers - 002. While in Northern Song, before the Jurchen invasion, there were 760 in the 19th century, in Southern Song - 800 000, and in Jin - 20.
In the empire, the Ministry of Agriculture was created to help the peasants after a series of wars and pogroms, in order to normalize economic activity, to ensure the plowing of wastelands. The ministry supplied rural communities with seeds and implements. But, as is usually the case in militarized societies, the state, giving with one hand, took with two. Extraordinary military levies and taxes offset all these improvements.
During the Yuan period, the codification of law takes place, a kind of symbiosis of Chinese legislation of previous eras, customary Mongolian law and current decrees is created.
The same can be said about the new capital, Khanbalik or Dadu (Beijing). It was a newly rebuilt city that boggled the imagination of travelers:
Between the first and second walls are meadows, and beautiful trees, and all kinds of animals; there are also white deer, and animals with musk (musk musk deer), antelopes and fallow deer and all kinds of other beautiful animals; and outside the walls only on the roads where people walk, they are not, but in other places and there are many beautiful animals. "
The city was built in a short time, huge masses of the population were mobilized for its construction, which was in the practice of nomads.
Khanbalik. Modern renovation. Source: History of Chinese Civilization. In 4 volumes. T.3. Edited by Yuan Xingpei. M., 2020
It was not a European or Central Asian handicraft and trade city in structure. In fact, it was exclusively an administrative center with a part serving it. In the center of it was the huge palace of the emperor-khan, which was adjoined by the buildings of departments and institutions, state depositories. Here there was a guard, consisting of regiments of different nations. Adjacent to the center were the quarters where they lived and worked, serving the imperial governors and the Mongol nobility, artisans and merchants.
At the court, scientists gathered in Dadu, 4 thousand students from Lingyang were transferred here by force, famous Han poets and artists who made the Yuan Empire glory lived here.
Shi Zu or Khubilai carried out a monetary reform, enshrining it in law in the "Yuan dian zhang": only paper money was in the country's circulation. The confused and mixed monetary system of Song and Jin was replaced by a much clearer system, of course, the purpose of which was not to harmonize finances, but to remove precious metals from circulation in favor of the Mongols. Even foreign merchants, upon arrival in the empire, were obliged to hand over all coins and ingots made of non-ferrous metals in exchange for bank notes.
The Mongols were more and more involved in the benefits of a sedentary civilization, but did not mix with the conquered, even the emperor spent three months a year in the steppe, living in a yurt.
The population of the new empire formally had to pay three types of taxes: land, poll and household taxes. Payments were canceled. But the regular tax system was constantly being adjusted for military needs. Disproportionate and uncontrollable military spending seriously undermined the country's economy, ruining its core - the peasant-producer.
The key problem in building "imperial" uniformity was the fact that the lands of northern China were distributed to the Mongol nobility back in the 20s. XIII century, which barbarously exploited the population: the nomads did not think about reproduction in the farms and proceeded solely from their own needs. This situation was in serious conflict with the formally harmonious system of the new Yuan empire.
Strife in the Mongol camp
The system of Mongolian society during the wars of Genghis Khan and his descendants should be attributed, in general, to the system of the territorial community.
And the structure of a complex chiefdom can be applied to it exclusively within the framework of this system, and not as itself.
The stage of the territorial community, especially in the early stages, demonstrates the law of dialectics about the unity and struggle of opposites: on the one hand, such a society is a society of military expansion, and on the other, a society striving for division and separatism.
Simply put, if, after the unification of the tribes in the Mongol steppe under the leadership of Genghis Khan, this union would not have had the opportunity to start a war or the war would have become unsuccessful, it immediately disintegrated. The Mongolian military organization, and there was no other, began to dominate over various conquered countries and states, but this made Mongolian society no different, and could not become. Therefore, already 50 years after the creation of a single Mongolian proto-state of Genghis Khan, it begins to disintegrate.
In 1265 Barak (Borak) khan, who was Khubilai's ally, seized the Chagadaev ulus in Central Asia. Haidu (Kaidu), the grandson of Ogedei and other princes opposed him - after a series of battles they decided to meet at the kurultai and reconciled in 1269. Formally, Haidu became the eldest here. And Barak, having set out on a campaign to the west against Abag Khan (1234-1282), was defeated to smithereens and died in 1271. Haidu (1230-1301) ruled until 1301, constantly fighting with the Yuan in alliance with Chagadaevich Duva, son of Barak. The situation was extremely delicate, since he fought with the emperor and the Great Mongol Khan, who, albeit nominally, issued labels for the rule of all Chingizids.
The arena of hostilities between them was the territory of the Uyghur tribal union. The Uighurs voluntarily became allies of Genghis Khan. For this, their ruler, the idikut, became the first, according to the Mongol hierarchy, among the conquered rulers.
The Uighurs were Buddhists and Nestorian Christians, and the Manichean teaching was also prevalent here. They were a semi-nomadic people who were also engaged in agriculture. The Uyghur Turfan principality became part of the Yuan Empire. Khaidu and Duva in 1286 defeated the Yuan troops here, driving them out of the Uyghur possessions. Idikut fled to China, his successors becoming military and civilian high-ranking officials of the Yuan. Although Turpan passed from hand to hand, but by the 20s of the XIV century. The Yuan completely lost control of the Uyghur lands. Both the material and spiritual culture of the Uighurs fell into decay, and it was their writing that was used in the Mongolian state. This regression led to the fact that part of the Uyghurs migrated to China, the remaining population soon not only converted to Islam, but also lost their self-identification. The ethnonym "Uygur" (Uygurlar) disappeared for a long 600 years.
And the Yuan, with the loss of the Uyghur lands, also lost control of the Great Silk Road (GSR). So the state on the territory of China, after the Tang Empire, again lost this important economic path. However, the IDP is more of a simulacrum than a permanent way. At the time when he completely fell under the control of the Mongols, they were still waging bloody wars with the silk producers, and when they captured the Song, they soon lost their way to the west. Merchants were more attracted by the way to Karakorum, and then to Khanbalik, where the Mongol elite paid an exorbitant price even for those times for all sorts of luxury goods and curiosities, quickly squandering the loot on campaigns.
The same can be said about the "world-system" theory in relation to the Mongol Empire, from Russia to China. This proto-state existed as a single one for no more than 20 years and disintegrated in 1259. And when China was finally conquered, in fact neither the lands of Central and Forward Asia, nor the Golden Horde were part of the same state with the Yuan Empire, which united Mongolia and China.
Against the backdrop of organic clashes between the Chingizids that took place at this time, Kublai's desire to introduce uniformity in government and taxes provoked resistance from the Mongols in Yuan itself. The uprising was raised by Nayan, the nephew of the emperor, in 1287, in northeastern China, in the territory of modern eastern Mongolia, Manchuria, northern China and Korea. Of course, he was supported by the khans Haidu and Duva. Marco Polo reported that Nayan was proud that he could muster an army of 400 thousand soldiers, while Khubalai, according to the information of the same Polo, had only guards units and people of his personal "yard" at hand: falconers, etc. The rest of the troops fought on the Yuan borders.
Nayan decided to move west to unite with Khaidu and thereby significantly increase the forces that were to defeat Kublai.
But Shi Tzu reacted with lightning speed, secretly gathering an army in twelve days in the capital and personally leading it. The emperor, following the example of the Chinese rulers, did not go on campaigns for a long time, leaving this matter to his commanders. But the situation was critical, and the Great Khan himself went on a campaign, sent the formidable Bayan, the conqueror of the Songs, to free Karakarum from the rebellious noyons and in order to block the path of Khaidu here. The highly experienced Khubilai did everything as according to the "military Mongolian textbook." He, with the commander of the Kipchak guard Tukhuta, made the transition in twenty days, having covered about 1200 km. On the way, reconnaissance destroyed or captured everyone who met on the way, which made it possible for his army to approach Nayan's camp unnoticed. At dawn, his army surrounded the unfortified camp of the rebellious noyons.
This happened near the Shara-Muren - the Yellow River (present-day Inner Mongolia, PRC). Nayan himself slept with his beloved wife, and Khubilai surrounded the enemy camp, placing detachments of 30 thousand, infantry stood behind the horsemen. But the Nayan Mongols managed to arm themselves and line up. Before the battle, the soldiers, waiting for the order of the commanders, from both sides played musical instruments and sang, Marco Polo wrote about this custom. At the signal of a big nakar, a drum, the Great Khan, the battle began, and Nayan raised a banner with a cross, since he was a Christian:
The rebellious Mongols were defeated, the leaders of the uprising surrendered to the emperor, and Nayan was taken prisoner. In order not to shed a drop of blood of a prince from the genghisid clan, he was tightly wrapped in a carpet, so he died "in full view of the sun and sky."
Mongolian commander in copper armor of the XIII century. Reconstruction by L.A. Bobrova
This ended the battle at Shara-Muren, the result of which was the temporary pacification of the military opposition of the Mongol clan clans, but the Yuan Empire was never able to cope with it to the end. And therefore, the Yuan Empire was never able to become a state in the full sense of the word. That is, the Yuan could not make the path from a "nomadic" to a sedentary "empire", the only possible form of existence of the early state during this period. As it happened with the states of the Seljuks, Hungarians, and especially with the Ottoman Empire.
But to the end, it was impossible to pacify or bring the people-army to submission, because this state formation needed strength, and acted exclusively in the interests of the people-army. And as long as these expansionist aspirations of the transitional society existed, as long as their aggression did not receive a proper rebuff, the nomadic "empire" continued to exist.
We will talk about the campaigns of the Yuan Empire in the next article.
Sources and literature:
History of Chinese Civilization. In 4 volumes. T.3. Edited by Yuan Xingpei. Translated from Chinese by I.F.Popov M., 2020.
Giovanni del plano Carpini History of the Mongols. Guillaume de Rubruck A Journey to Eastern Countries, Book of Marco Polo. M., 1997.
Rashid ad-Din. Collection of chronicles. Volume I. Book 2. M., 1952.
History of the East. T. II. M., 1993.
Hsiao Ch. The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty. 1979.
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