Kublai as Emperor of China
Kublai governed through Chinese institutions but kept real power in the hands of Mongols and trusted foreigners. The central government followed the Chinese model, with a Secretariat, a Bureau of Military Affairs, a Censorate and the six ministries inherited from the Tang and Song. Branch secretariats administered the regions, and from them grew the provinces that still shape the map of China.
The civil service examinations, which had given educated Chinese their path into office, were not held during his reign; they were only restored in 1315 under Ayurbarwada. Senior posts went to Mongols and to semu, people of Central and West Asian origin, many of them Muslims with experience of finance. Two of his finance ministers, Ahmad Fanakati and Sangha, became hated for their exactions: Ahmad was assassinated in 1282, and Sangha was executed in 1291.
A Society in Ranks
Yuan society is usually described as divided into four groups: Mongols; semu; Han, meaning the former subjects of the Jin in the north; and Nanren, the southerners conquered from the Song, who ranked lowest. The ranking affected appointments and legal treatment. Chinese subjects were forbidden to keep weapons, and large gatherings were restricted. The aim was control of a vast and far more numerous conquered population.
Religion and Culture
Kublai tolerated all the major religions of his empire. He himself favoured Tibetan Buddhism, under the influence of his chief wife, Chabi, and of the Tibetan lama Phagpa, whom he made imperial preceptor. At Kublai's request Phagpa designed a new script for writing Mongolian and other languages of the empire, adopted officially in 1269.
Marco Polo
The Venetian Marco Polo left Venice in 1271 with his father and uncle and, by his own account, reached Kublai's court around 1275 and served him until about 1291. His book, dictated in a Genoese prison in 1298, gave Europe its first detailed picture of Yuan China, including its paper money, its canals and the splendour of Shangdu and Dadu. Historians still debate how far some of its claims can be relied upon, but many of its details are confirmed by Chinese and Persian sources.
The Economy under Kublai
Paper Money
The Song had already used paper money, but the Yuan made it the main currency of the empire. In 1260 Kublai issued the Zhongtong notes, backed at first by silver and silk reserves, and in 1287 a new Zhiyuan issue. Later in the dynasty overissue led to inflation, but under Kublai the system largely worked, and European readers of Marco Polo found the idea of paper currency astonishing.
Agriculture
Kublai set up an Office for the Stimulation of Agriculture and forbade Mongol herds from grazing on farmland. Rural households were organised into groups of about fifty families, called she, which were encouraged to improve irrigation, plant trees and mulberries for silk, and support one another in bad years. Public granaries were built against famine, especially in the north, where decades of war had ruined much of the land.
The Grand Canal
To feed Dadu with grain from the Yangtze valley, Kublai had the Grand Canal redirected north through Shandong. The Huitong Canal was completed in 1289, and in 1293 the engineer Guo Shoujing finished the Tonghui Canal, which carried boats into the capital itself. For the first time the canal system ran directly from the south to Beijing, on a route later dynasties kept.
Trade and Craftsmen
Overland and maritime trade flourished under the Mongol peace. Merchants from Central Asia, Persia, Arabia and Europe travelled to China, and ports such as Quanzhou handled a large sea trade with Southeast Asia, India and the Persian Gulf. Merchants enjoyed higher standing than under the Song. Skilled craftsmen were registered in hereditary artisan households that worked for the state; the Mongols valued their skills highly, and the court's demand for fine textiles, metalwork and ceramics shaped what they made.
Porcelain in Kublai's Reign
In 1278 the Yuan government set up the Fuliang Porcelain Bureau to supervise the kilns at Jingdezhen, in Fuliang county, Jiangxi. It was the first official body in charge of the town's porcelain production and marks the beginning of Jingdezhen's rise to its later role as the imperial porcelain centre.
The ceramics of Kublai's own reign largely continued Song traditions. Jingdezhen made bluish-white qingbai porcelain, and in the course of the dynasty its potters developed the thicker, opaque ‘egg-white’ glaze of the shufu wares. Some of these are moulded with the characters shu and fu, generally taken to refer to the Shumiyuan, the Bureau of Military Affairs. Longquan in Zhejiang produced celadon in large quantities, much of it for export, while the northern kilns made Cizhou wares painted in brown and black and Jun wares with thick blue glazes.
The blue and white porcelain for which the Yuan is best known belongs mainly to the fourteenth century, a generation or more after Kublai's death, when Jingdezhen potters combined the white body with cobalt imported from Persia. Yuan porcelain was not marked with reign titles in the way Ming imperial wares later were, so pieces are dated by body, glaze, form and style rather than by marks. Our Yuan dynasty porcelain collection shows the range of the period's wares, among them an early Yuan vase with an incised qilin.
Chabi
Kublai's chief wife, Chabi, was one of the most capable figures at his court. She shared his interest in governing China well and understood both Mongol and Chinese customs. She is remembered for moderating his policies, including advising against turning Chinese farmland into pasture, and for her care in the treatment of the captured Song imperial family.
Failed Campaigns Abroad
The later years of the reign were marked by costly foreign wars that brought little return. Armies were sent against Đại Việt (northern Vietnam), Champa, Burma and Java. Some rulers agreed to send tribute, but the Mongol forces suffered badly from heat, disease and unfamiliar terrain, and in 1288 a Yuan fleet was destroyed by the Vietnamese at the Bạch Đằng River. The expedition to Java in 1292–1293 ended in withdrawal. The burden of these wars fell heavily on Chinese taxpayers.
The Invasions of Japan
From 1268 Kublai sent envoys to Japan demanding submission, and the Kamakura shogunate refused. In 1274 a fleet carrying Mongol, Chinese and Korean troops sailed from Korea, took the islands of Tsushima and Iki and landed at Hakata Bay on Kyushu. After fierce fighting the invaders returned to their ships, and a storm wrecked many of them as they withdrew.
When Kublai sent further envoys, the Japanese executed them. In 1281 he launched a far larger invasion in two fleets, one from Korea and one from southern China that used ships of the former Song navy. The Japanese had built a defensive wall along Hakata Bay and kept the invaders from landing in strength for weeks. In August a typhoon struck the fleet off the coast of Kyushu and destroyed a great part of it; many of the soldiers left ashore were killed or captured. The Japanese later called the storms kamikaze, ‘divine wind’.
Last Years and Death
Chabi died in 1281, and a few years later Kublai lost his designated heir, their son Zhenjin. The emperor withdrew increasingly from day-to-day government. He ate and drank heavily, grew very overweight and suffered from gout.
Kublai died on 18 February 1294, aged seventy-eight. Following Mongol custom he was buried in Mongolia, at a site that was kept secret and has never been found. He was succeeded by Zhenjin's son, his grandson Temür.
The dynasty Kublai founded remained stable under Temür, but after 1307 a rapid succession of emperors and disputes within the imperial house weakened it. The Yuan was driven from China in 1368 by the armies of the Ming.
