The Rise And Fall Of The Yuan Dynasty
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Hello, everyone. It's like a year and I'm Gabby and welcome back to the podcast. My host, welcome back to a podcast that is actually properly being recorded for four hours before it's supposed to be going up, which, mind you, is better because usually he records is 14 hours after it was supposed to go up. And guys, guys, I'm here to snitch today. Before we get into the episode, I just want you to know that break that break we took at Christmas. You know how we've never taken a break. We don't take holidays off on this podcast. Well, we took one this year.

Keep in mind, every single week we recorded an episode, okay? And every single week he quote unquote uploaded it, but he didn't hit publish. They were all uploaded, fully ready to go. This man didn't publish one. So we are in Denver, Colorado at his cousin's wedding and we got an email, like a message from James, the editor. And he was like,

And James was like, hey, guys, so I'm just noticing you haven't uploaded any episodes, but we I edited them. So what's going on? And so I'm now freaking out. I'm like, that's so crazy. Spotify deleting the episodes and I go check. I go to and I I lost my mind. Anyway, guys, so I'm just saying that is why we were a little bit silent there. I'm so sorry. That will never happen again because no, I will. No, it will not.

I will see to it's like guys one more thing one more thing I'm sorry we're getting into the episode but this man he is so smart okay but one time he was like in a very time-consuming

It was time sensitive. He had to he was emailing back and forth and he gets an email. I was like, hey, I haven't heard from you in a few days. And I'm like, Stephen, what do you mean? Like you haven't heard they haven't heard from you in a few days. He's like, I sent email. I emailed them back. I don't know what happened. They must have not got my email. I go into his Google. I go into his send messages and it's sitting there as a drop. This man never hit send. He never hit send. And that's happened multiple times. I know it has.

So anyway, I'm done. I'm done. I'm done spilling the deets. I'm done telling the tea. I'm just saying if you see

The episodes are not up. We don't take breaks every single week. We are recording even if it's 4 a.m. OK, so if you guys see that there's no episode one week, I need you to blow his phone. This is why people know that there's something wrong typically when we get those messages because they know that things are consistent. And so when something doesn't happen, it usually means that I had screwed up. It was Christmas. And also, I don't think you checked your podcast Instagram messages, but you guys should go follow him on Twitter at Stekuyu Official.

And literally blow his phone up. Do that. Do that. Because he hasn't turned off his Twitter notifications. Every single time someone follows him on message, he's going to get those. Sorry, I'm spilling all the deets because you don't use it, but you'll have to. I know. Anyway. X, X. It's called X. Sorry. I'm old. I'm old. I remember when X came online and it was Twitter. I remember the day it was on BBC.com.

Okay, I'm done. Anyway, let's talk about the Mongols. Oh my God. Someone's going to open this up in the first place. They're going to see the title. They're going to think, oh yeah, this is going to be a fascinating, awesome story. And then it's just two to three minutes of you ripping me a new one because look, I admit I deserve it. I don't understand how you do that. You don't understand guys. It was the holidays. It was Christmas. We were in his parents' guest bedroom recording on Christmas to make sure episodes go up and he didn't hit publish. I'm pissed.

All right. Yeah.

Yeah. Speaking of people that would be pissed, the Chinese. Oh, wait, no, that's that's topical for everything that's because also we're going right at this off of the whole tick tock ban and everything that went down with that, which I know I'm probably going to do a whole video on that in the first place. And the issue with the Chinese government and the US government and everything that happens in between there, it's it's a bit of a messy thing. But for those of you that are looking this right now and you're wondering, OK, wait, hold on, Stack, you're going to talk about the Mongols.

You've talked about the Mongols before. Multiple times, in fact. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I have. Look, I know. Well, the reason that I'm here to talk about the Mongols today when they are, you know,

went no longer at this point the mongol step nomads that's what we're going to be getting into is because we are going to mongolia this summer and i want to do something for that and also guys okay so we have a confession we're going to japan in november on one of these trips we're going to see snow monkeys we're going to tokyo like we're doing like this full japan trip okay

But out of the 24 spots, there's only eight left because we did an early access because everybody was requesting it. And we didn't expect that the people who went on previous trips along with patrons would take two thirds of these spots. Gabby has kind of spoiled this. I was trying to like ease into this being like, oh man, guys, there's these spots that are still available because for anyone who wants to go to Japan, it's basically all taken. There's literally eight spots, homies. So the trip launches tomorrow.

On Friday, the 24th? Yeah, 24th.

So if you do want to snag a spot, you got to be quick with it. I'm just saying. Exactly. Exactly. So we still know that Turkey is actually booked out now. Turkey is completely booked. That's completely sold out. So we have six spots left for Mongolia. And currently there are four spots left for Mongolia, eight spots left for Japan. Oh, four. There's only four. Oh, crap. There's four for Mongolia. And then there's eight for Japan. And then we'll see whatever the hell happens afterwards. But that's why I'm talking about Mongolia. And then I'm going to make it into next week's episode about Japan. Anyway, long segue short.

That's it. I am sorry about that, my friends. Anyway, we are going to be talking about the Mongols. And for clarification, what it is that we're talking about here is the Yuan Dynasty. Now, the Yuan Dynasty is the Chinese dynasty that was established by the Mongols and they ruled China from 1271 to 1368 AD, which for a dynasty is not a long time. Yeah, I mean, it's longer than the Qin Dynasty in the first place. But yeah, that is still a very short time.

Their first emperor was Kublai Khan, who would finally defeat the Song Dynasty, which had reigned in China since 960 AD, and this was a period, short as it was, for great growth and development. Stability and peace within China would bring prosperity, as Kublai Khan and his successors would promote international trade, which saw the now unified country open up to the wider world, and wealth flow in, because with greater contacts due to the

Well, I mean, for anyone who listened to the previous Mongol episodes that we already did, there was a little bit of expansion that happened earlier. There was, as it turns out, far more that could be traded because of how many contacts they now have. And also, while there was peace in the western part of the Mongol Empire, Kublai did go and launch two unsuccessful invasions of Japan, which we covered before in an earlier episode, as well as several others elsewhere in Southeast Asia, which I will explain a little bit of.

So, today my friends, I wanted to talk about the rise and fall of one of the greatest and, in my opinion, one of the most interesting empires to rule over China. For context, we have to go a little bit back in time, but I promise you I'm not going to be covering all of Mongol history again.

I know. For those of you who know me, Cappy, every single time that I do anything for any of my geopolitics episode and I go, OK, we're going to be talking about this thing that happened in 2023. But first, did I explain to you what happened in 1683? It's like before we can talk about today, we have to talk about 200 years ago. Exactly. And that is pretty much every single thing that I do. So I'm not going to be doing that entirely here. I promise.

Because we've already done a whole episode on the Mongols. In fact, we've done multiple episodes explaining things with the Mongols. So if you want to listen to that, I highly recommend going back and listening. No, instead, we are going to first talk about the Song Dynasty, which actually on that note, I think I could do a whole series on Chinese dynasties because we did a nine part series on the French Revolution.

I should probably cover every single Chinese dynasty. It doesn't need to be all at once or at one point, but I do need to do probably all the different Chinese dynasties. We're just pretty much doing them out of order by talking about the UN dynasty right now.

Anyway, the Song Dynasty, aka the Song Dynasty. This is something that ruled China from 960 to 1279 AD, with the reign being split into two separate periods. First, you have the Northern Song, which would rule from 960 to 1125. And then you have the Southern Song from 1125 to 1279, when it was pretty much a rump state at that point.

The Northern Song would rule a largely unified China from their capital at Kaifeng, but when the northern part of the state was invaded by the Jin state, which is, that's a whole other thing to talk about right there, which again, that could be a whole other episode, in the beginning of the 12th century, the Song would move their capital south to Hongshuo. Despite the relative modernization of China and the sheer economic wealth that they had during this time, the Song court was, how do I put this,

Not very efficient. It was horribly divided politically. Political factions were rampant and paralyzed the state so that pretty much anything that they would be done. Imagine this. Imagine you just have a bunch of court ministers that are yelling at each other from across the room. And as a result, nothing gets done. Combine that with a series of child emperors at different points. And, you know, hey, nothing happens. Literally nothing happens except everyone being burned around to the ground.

Like it was not good. And subsequently it collapsed in 1279 and was replaced with the UN dynasty. If you want me to do a whole episode on them or all the Chinese dynasties again, let me know. Either way, for years, the Song and the Jin would find each other with the Jin ultimately coming out the winners, which would push the Song further south.

They would still control around 60% of the population of China when the Mongols would come tearing out of the steppe. And at that point, it didn't matter that the two powers were fighting each other. The Mongols were about to ruin everyone's day, which to be fair, they did to a lot of different people in history. That was a pretty common theme.

See, the nomadic Mongol tribes had been assembled under the leadership of Genghis Khan, which we already covered, and they repeatedly attacked and plundered the Xia and Jin states to the north of the Song in the first three decades of the 13th century.

The Song thought that they were next, and so they made ready their armies, which was largely funded by confiscating wealth from the landed aristocracy, which I don't know if I can explain this in any other proper terms. But do you know what happens when you take the money from people that are the more powerful, wealthy members of society and the influential ones and how they react?

I'd assume it was poorly. Poorly. Because they're poor now. Yeah. And they had the resources to actually kind of resist in comparison to the peasantry. Oh, no. Yeah. So if the peasantry had resources to resist, they could rise up and get more money. Arguably. It's one of those things. Just thinking out loud here. No, no, seriously. That's actually one of the things. It's one of the key reasons as to why so many societies throughout Earth, when clamping down upon lower classes, specifically would go to remove weapons.

Because like, hell, once Japan had unified after the Sengoku Jidai, they had the sword seizures. So they were going around and seizing swords from anyone that was not a samurai, like from the family. It's like gun control, but

knives yeah the Soviets were they allowed to have cooking knives well I mean I guess it couldn't be longer than your forearm literally yes there were rules so what you just described that same thing happened in Spain

So in Spain where they had these issues. Okay. So I can't remember the exact name of the blade. I need to do a whole thing on it. You know, Robin sword on Tik TOK. Yeah. He, he has, he owns one of these things. It looks so goddamn cool. I want one of these so bad. It was, it's a Spanish. It's essentially a long Spanish fighting knife that has a ratchet system. So you know how, when you like a ratchet and it like folds out. So imagine a switch blade that was like, if a Bowie knife,

ate three other Bowie knives.

Was that to hide the fact that it was long? Yeah, because it was a knife. It wasn't a sword. So when Spain banned dueling and they got rid of swords. They got rid of swords? No, literally. They were going around. And for people, they were actually removing swords and like having people, they were confiscating them from people. You'll have to take my sword off of my cold dead body. Then at that point, they didn't have a sword. They had a knife. Oh my God. And this is what started knife dueling in Spain. Do you think they like,

Took all these swords and then people had like a black sword market. Like, were there illegal swords? Oh, I'm sure there was. Oh, did they make people register with their sword? Do you have to get a background check? I don't remember. I need to do more research on it. At this point, I'm just talking about it. I have so many questions. That's so funny. I'm just sorry. Like, you can't take a sword. Oh,

Anything could be a sword. I could take a broom and make a spear. I'm sorry. You couldn't stop me if I were dueling. I would duel. I would find a way. They would seize the weapons. That's one of the things that happened. Same thing in Germany. The German Messer, which is their sword knife. It essentially was the it's a long knife of the peasants that was basically a short sword. And that was it was a knife is what it was classified as. So not a sword. And that's why peasants were allowed to use them.

Interesting. So there's actual classism when it comes to weapons. Okay, so I feel like anytime there's a weapon and then they're like, well, you guys are using this weapon too much. We're going to take it. Then there's a black market of other weapons. I don't know. Yeah, it's also... Okay, one of the things I also need to clarify... Do you remember Crossbows when they tried to ban them? Yeah. Golly, what a time. I haven't even talked about this here before because I mentioned the Soviet Union and the seizing of weapons. I'm going to say this is a very ironic thing. For anyone who is listening to me, I...

Do not get political with people. I don't tell you what it is that you should think. I don't tell you any of these things. I just point out stuff that I find to be interesting or contradictory on stuff. Oh, this wasn't supposed to be political. I was just memeing. No, no. The idea of taking people's sides is funny. So you know how there's this association with people who are typically more left wing that desire to remove weapons from society, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So more things for gun control. But then we'll end up like Britain where they pull up with their knives. Yeah. Well, the funny thing is here, especially if you are an actual communist, and I mean this, and I'm not saying that as an insult or anything. I mean, if you are actually a communist and a firm believer in the works of Marx, well, he was an

an advocate, a strong advocate for people being armed because a government cannot be tyrannical and the people will own the means of production and be able to protect themselves. And this is the rise of the proletariat. The people cannot be oppressed if they are armed. And he was a firm believer in people being armed, which I find that to be very interesting because it goes at complete odds with what many people who would espouse his ideology believe.

Interesting. That is that is a thing. How did we end up here? We were talking about the confiscating of blades and all the different. Well, no, you were saying the elites. We took their money. Now they can rise up because they have the means to rise up. And then I accidentally was like, oh, my God, but this is a big tangent. I'm sorry. Sorry, guys. I'm sorry. OK, wait, where the hell were we?

The elites among. Right. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So, yeah, seizing all that money then from the elites did not endear them. They were going to have a reprieve for a while, though. It wasn't like an immediate thing because the Mongols ended up getting a little bit busy with dealing with all the other areas around their empire in the first place, like the Western steppe nomads. They couldn't just move south. They had to consolidate their control over the steppes.

But it is here then that that brings us to the first main character of the story, Kublai Khan. Now, Kublai was born in the year 1215, the second son of Gullui. And so he was then the grandson of Genghis Khan.

Now, while Kublai's elder brother, Mongke, was the ruler of the Mongol Empire from 1251 to 1259, Kublai was given the position of viceroy, the Ilkhan. And this is one of the things that you'll see where varying different subsections of the empire are divided into Ilkhanates. They are divided into territories with their own little khan that controls things for the khan of khan, the leader.

And he was placed in charge of Mongol Northern China. And that, as it turns out, that was perfect. Kublai would bide his time and take the opportunity to create a network of support and a team of talented advisors that would guide his rule.

His attitude towards government would be formed with the influence of these Chinese wise men who would guide him through pretty much every single thing. I think one of the things that was said about this is that during this time, this is where he was purported to learn Chinese for how to speak, read, write, that sort of thing, because many within Mongolia could not.

And so at home, in the fight that was allotted to him in the Wei River Valley, which is in modern Gansu and Shanxi province, he would establish a competent administration and build up a supply base in order to support his troops. And in the battlefield, he stressed to his generals a very simple idea. Be kind.

Now, I know you probably think you're at this point, Gabby, right? Right. It's the Mongols. It's the Mongols. What do you mean? Be kind. These are the same people that are going in and building literal pyramids of skulls, burning entire cities down and punishing people horribly. Right. Yeah. OK, well, he was inspired. He was inspired from his Chinese advisors, the varying different people that he put around him so that, yes, he was willing to do horrible things, but also at the same time, be kinder.

That's so sweet. Yeah. So the idea of that when you had conquered someone, you weren't just going to eradicate them. You could show clemency. And from that, people would maybe not hate you so much. I know it's a radical idea. You conquer them and then you shower them. You love bomb them, essentially. Maybe potentially. It depends on how it's operated. You're like, I know you're conquered, but here's some flowers, some chocolates. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's just do that on a national scale, you know, instead of building a literal pyramid of skulls in the middle of the city after occupying it. Because you remember that whole thing when I think we talked about Mongol siege tactics before that one of the things they would do is that when they laid siege to a city, if you did not immediately surrender, every single person's life in that city was forfeit. They would murder everyone. So, yeah, that is something that was a regular occurrence all over the Mongol Empire.

And so along with this, from 1253, Kublai was also personally on campaign alongside the actual Khan, Mengge, his older brother, in his attacks on southern China, which still was controlled by the Song Dynasty, as I already mentioned.

Mongol forces did not move directly south first. No, instead, they swept around the side through Tibet and into Yunnan, subduing the Dali kingdom in 1257. And then from here, the Mongols would be able to strike at the weaker underparts of Song China, which at that point, they had already prioritized the majority of their defenses to the north as because the Mongols were to the north, they believed that that is where the attack was going to be coming from.

But since the Mongols conquered everything around them, that meant that the attacks could come everywhere. And so because of this, a four-pronged attack was planned to invade from the south and west. However, the campaign stopped because a certain event happened and Mungke would die of sickness unexpectedly on the 11th of August, 1259. Now, let me ask you here something before it is that we move on.

Do you know what happens to a state or empire of warriors after a leader unexpectedly dies with no real prep work to choose a proper successor? Well, everybody fights over who's going to be the successor and then they might end up splitting it up. But if either way, no matter what they do, because there's so much infighting and so many people are going to split off into factions, it's going to fall. Exactly. Empire is going to crumble. Exactly. This would be a civil war. And that was precisely what was going to happen. Every time, man. Yep.

And so when Kublai, who was with another army besieging a city, heard that his brother,

Agrabolgen, which I'm probably butchering the name of in the first place. This was his little brother who had been left in charge back homeland, like in the homeland of Mongolia in order to control things there. He was too young to basically go off on campaign, I guess. So he was too young to go on campaign, but he was just the right age to be in charge of the country. So he would govern. He would oversee things back there. Right, right. That's logical. It's reasonable. And so he apparently was planning on having himself elected

elected as Khan. Because mind you, the Mongols did not do things like other kinds of dynasties did where they had just a leader that was straight up appointed by the previous guy. They kind of did, right? You would kind of designate who you wanted your successor to be. But the Mongols had this thing called a Kudatai, which I've mentioned here before, which is a great assembly, a great gathering. And it is a semi-democratic

meritocratic process where they would vote for and appoint the next leader of the war host. And that is the way that had worked all the way down to the tribal level before the same thing would be applied here at this point. But because now we're talking about not just a tribe, but an empire,

All the little princes, all the little generals, all the different military entities that are around the empire would rush back to the capital in order to be able to appoint the next leader. And Agrabogay, he wanted to do this, apparently.

So Kublai, he goes and patches up a truce with Song, and in April of 1260, he goes back home and arrives at his residence in Shangdu in southeastern Mongolia. There, he creates his own gulatai, or Great Assembly, on the 5th of May, and there, he is unanimously, I know it's a surprise, unanimously elected Khan, thus succeeding Mongke. Here's the problem. That whole plan that Agraboghe has, yet he actually goes through with it,

Ten days later, he announces his succession and a proclamation drawing up and drawing the whole thing up in classical Chinese. But because primogeniture, like the appointment of a firstborn son or anything like that, is not the standard, enough influential Mongol generals and leaders and other people, maybe aristocrats who believe that they could get better bonuses under Agrabulge, they unite around him and they go and declare him Khan in his own Krulutai.

This fight goes on for several years until ultimately in 1264, Kublai would defeat Agrabogge in battle and forced him to submit. Ultimately, Agrabogge would die two years later, but the family feud of which, you know, the rivalry with Agrabogge was just one manifestation of this. That would continue throughout all of Kublai's reign as at this point, the families had grown quite large. So here's the thing. When you're no longer constantly fighting each other,

and you have multiple wives, and you produce then multiple sons by each one of those wives, do you know what happens to your family, Gabby? What? It gets pretty big.

Which means that if any kind of succession issue breaks out, you suddenly have a lot of sons and males that are competing with each other. So I know how they could fix this because I was reading New Throne of Glastonbury. Oh, so we have a spoiler for you. Go for it. It's not pivotal to this story. Go for it. Go for it. Because I'm about to judge this through a historical lens. Go for it. So...

It's funny because they also were kind of like steps. They laid on his steps. They were like, you got to read it anyway. So the Khanate, he has a lot of children and all of these children could potentially become the next ruler of the country. But he randomly picks like he's the one who gets to pick here.

Out of all of these kids. And I think he had like six, eight, something like that. It was quite a bit of children. But what happens is the one that gets picked in order to make sure that there's no fight pretty thrown in theory could kill off their siblings or.

They well, they also well, they could kill off their siblings. Sometimes they don't. And then the wives of any of the men, like the other brothers, have to be sterilized. So they sterilize the women. So none of the other siblings are allowed to have children. It's actually really sad if they let them live.

OK, but by doing so, they lock down their specific. So, yeah, they get to still have siblings, the ones they like, at least, but they lock down the path of inheritance. So what you were just describing actually sounds very similar to what would happen with the Ottomans. So for those of you who have not heard the episode that I did on the Ottomans before and like how the harem actually works, yeah.

The problem that the Ottomans had in the early days of their rule is that Sultan would have like 20 or 30 sons. And then every time the Sultan died, it would basically be a race to the capital for each one of the sons who would take their own kind of little military force because each one of them had been sent to a different part of the empire in order to govern a territory in order to learn how to rule. And then once

Papa Otto dies. Everyone rushes back to fight each other to try to take the throne. And it then becomes a miniature civil war inside of the terror. Not even a miniature civil war. It just straight up becomes a civil war every time to take everything over. So after this happened enough times, the Ottomans adopted the policy of murdering basically every male that was not the heir.

And what would happen is that when a new Ottoman ruler ascended the throne, he would typically kill every single one of his brothers, except for maybe one or two that he would keep alive as insurance in case he died without children. Because that did happen. You could get suddenly sick. You could get like an infection. You could just...

freaking kill over and die or you could have like five daughters in a row and then die something could happen which meant that they needed to have males that were available as a just in case which is exactly how um the the the guy who became known as the mad became and came in charge because he was locked up his entire life inside of a room basically and

as insurance in case his brother died without heirs, which is exactly what happened. The really twisted thing about that book, though, was there were siblings who were already married, having children, and it heavily implied those children would not be around very long if their parents were not the next in line. Yeah. To dethrone. Yeah. You can't. Like it was heavily implied. Yeah.

Fun stuff. That's not really a huge spoiler for anyone who wants to read Throne of Glass, but also most people skip the book that's in anyway, apparently. I loved it. So, yeah, that is something. And the whole reason why Agrabah was even able to get more people to his side in the first place is that Kublai was seen as a progressive, which sounds so weird for me to say here. But I mean, he was a guy who wanted to kind of abandon a lot of the old Mongol traditions and ways and adopt more

Chinese styles of rule of actually ruling an empire versus a roving war band that plundered and took over everything and then burned that shit to the ground and then left. And so a lot of the old, more conservative elements, traditionalists of Mongol society sided with Agrabah until he was defeated. Here is the issue.

The problem then became that even after Agrabolge was defeated, others would still be around. And the leader of the opposition to all of this was a guy called Kaidu, who as a grandson of Olgadai, he had been a person who was personally designated by Genghis as his successor. Olgadai was. And that meant that in the case of Kublai, there was an issue with legitimacy.

Because Ogadai, having been appointed as the direct successor, means that Kublai, technically speaking, is the new leader of the Khans. That was going to be questionable.

The throne had passed from the line of Ogedei to that of his brother Tolui in 1251 with the ascension of Mongke. Kaidu would never calm down. He never let go of his hostility towards Kublai, and he remained master of Mongolia proper in Turkestan until his death in 1301. This is the thing that you're going to realize when listening to this, but the Mongol Empire at this point was basically disintegrating.

The war that would happen with Kaidu showed just how decisively Kublai had identified himself with the Chinese world and had turned against the old ways of the nomads. Genghis had been strong. He had been ruthless. He forced the Mongols to work together. Always people that would fight each other over varying different family feuds or issues. He forced them all together to serve him and his ambitions. And Kublai was strong.

but he was not as strong as Genghis Khan. And as a result, he could no longer control the steppe aristocracy effectively, which in turn meant that things started to break apart. Now, that being said, Kublai was the great Khan, and this was still a prestigious title, of course, but in reality, the empire at this point had already broken up in various different Khanates. Remember how before I said that Kublai had been the Il Khan of like Northern China? He was the viceroy of this region.

So the thing about this is that this is what we would see of the later Mongol Empire. People think that the Mongol Empire continued on for much longer than it did, but really the Mongol Empire pretty much disintegrated after the death of Genghis Khan. Like, yeah, it stayed together. But the problem with all these varying different step nomads is that that huge, vast swath of territory that they took over, technically speaking, it was still subservient to the great Khan. But...

They were pretty much little kingdoms in and of themselves. And when I say little kingdoms, like, don't get me wrong. These things were massive empires still. Like any one of these empires, one of these little Khanates on their own was the size of most European, like three times the size of most European kingdoms. They were ludicrously big, but that is still something that they were technically subservient to, but didn't really listen to the great Khan. Kublai, though, he wanted the proper Chinese title.

And so in 1268, he would set his sights seriously on the land south of the Yangtze River and the prize that was southern Song China. The campaign that he would launch against them was going to be massive as the Song Dynasty was still at this point, despite all their losses, capable of fielding an army with over a million men.

Both sides were equipped with the latest advances in technology and weaponry. Both had gunpowder weapons. We're talking early cannons. We're talking arrows that were able to fire out and explode upon impact. Catapults, siege machinery, everything that you can think of, all that was going to be involved. There was also going to be naval battles involving what was at the time the largest ships in the world.

You know, those huge European warships that we would see later on over the course of the age of exploration and beyond, especially going to like the 1600s and 1700s with the ships of the line. Yeah. The early Chinese junk ships and what they were using, there was really nothing that could match them in terms of scale. The Chinese ships of this point were pretty much aircraft carriers, except they

There were no aircraft. Instead, imagine gigantic deck battle platforms with multiple units of siege artillery that would be on it, capable of firing massive arrows, rocks, and everything else into the enemy. They were ludicrous. Three, four, five times the size of any European ship at different points. These things were truly insane. And so the warfare that was seen from that was massive.

As a result of the Song Dynasty having to face off against the Mongols, though, who were significantly more mobile with their cavalry, they would instead adopt more static warfare. Sit back,

wait with their superior numbers, hide behind their walls, wait for the enemy troops to run out of supplies, and only then engage them in battle. They would build great fortifications at key cities and river crossings in order to be able to limit the movements of the Mongols. And for this reason, it was going to take 11 long years for Kublai to gradually pick off targets one by one until he finally managed to whittle down the Song to completely crush them.

Once this was done, making himself Emperor of China, Kublai gave himself the reign name of Shizu. And in 1271, his new dynasty would be called the Yuan Dynasty, meaning either origin or center or main pivot. Basically, the axis upon which the world revolves. The Khan, who is now Emperor, it is here that he arguably embraced most Chinese traditions.

the culture. He imbued himself with it. Unlike a lot of his Mongol predecessors who would still wear the traditional step clothing, they would behave in the way of a nomad. He adopted the silk and robes of an emperor. He would ride in a sedan chair instead of a horse. He wouldn't, like this is one of those things that if a Mongol looked at him from the step and saw him being carried instead of him riding, this would be seen as a horrible sign of weakness.

But for him, he needed to show himself as being the true rightful ruler of China. All of this was part of his campaign to appear to the Chinese as the person that was rightfully in charge. So he surrounded himself with Chinese ministers and Confucian advisors, even if, you know, actually behind the scenes in order to take control of anything, anyone who had any kind of actual important position was still a Mongol or a foreigner. That is an important thing that needs to be mentioned.

All of the key positions or state were given to non-Chinese, especially members of either the imperial Mongol bodyguard or specific foreign experts in different kinds of fields. A primary example of this is the Muslims.

The Muslims during this time had huge influence within China because varying different, you know how there's that whole thing with Muslim merchants and how they would travel all across Asia, spreading Islam and gaining wealth. Yeah. So the some of the biggest finance ministers and tax collectors and people that would actually handle money, bankers, et cetera, they were Muslim.

as Kublai would invite them in and utilize them for their financial expertise. They would become the people that would be the backbone of his tax office. And it's actually one of those really funny things when we talk about this, because it was something that he used in order to be able to bind people to him that wouldn't revolt. They were almost mercenaries instead of locals that were tied to their own areas. And so with his legitimacy defined,

the true war of conquest to take the south could begin. The attack on the strategically important fortified city of Xianyang was very typical of what many of the campaigns had previously been. This would be a massive city and fortified settlement that would be besieged not for one year, not for two years, not for three, but for five years.

Gabby, if you've ever seen any pictures of what ancient Chinese fortified cities look like, they make a lot of the medieval European cities look like dollhouses.

I mean, we're talking walls that were three, four, five times the size, dozens of meters high. It is insane just how big they were. And as a result of that and the sheer amount of supplies they would carry, sieges did not go on for a couple months. They went on for years, potentially even decades in some cases. Like sieging the cities? Sieging the cities. How did the cities survive? Massive stores of food, growing things within it, sending out population to die.

What do you mean sending out population to die? There's many different strategies that you can use to outlast an enemy. And if you only have limited food supplies, reducing the number of mouths to feed is necessary. So there's cases of sieges succeeding, decade long sieges? Yeah. The siege of Malta is a great example of that. I mean, that's not Chinese in that sense in here, but they managed to last out, I think it's like the longest siege on record.

Is the siege of Malta. Because I think that was like 18 years. But then you have like no contact with the outside world. No shipping. You really have to be self-sufficient. Yeah. Yeah. And they did every possible thing that they could in order to maintain it. You also have supply runners that would be trying to sneak in supplies into the city to do all different kinds of things. You never know.

If you had a city that was on a river, you could potentially send boats out in order to be able to try and get something. Huh. You never, that's kind of how it works. And so eventually though, the city does fall in 1273. Then in early 1275, the Khan would call another Hurtai, this time to decide on how to proceed with the last set of his campaign against the Song. The Mongols would cross the Yangtze in March 1275. And from there, there was nothing we could hold them back.

The Ansi was their last great barrier that held them back. And every single time they would go into battle, it would just be massive victory after victory on land, on sea, on everything. It reached the point that the majority of Song officials, ministers, generals, they would abandon their post and flee to join the Mongols. The entire court of the Song dynasty was beset by infighting because the emperor at this time

Do you want to guess his age? Do you want to guess? Should I go high or low? Just, I guess, go low. Probably. Like 15? Younger. I mean, I don't know his exact age. I don't know. He was a child. He was like a child. Like a little kid. All right.

And the thing is, as many of you are probably aware from when I've covered this stuff in history, child emperors usually lead to disaster. I thought they actually were the best emperors because they weren't corrupted by corruption. Yeah, I know. I need to do an episode on Puyi. I was joking. I was joking. I know someone somewhere is going to hear that and be like, that idiot. Gabby, just because of that?

We're doing an episode on the last Qing Emperor, Puyi, which I've... His story, oh my god, you're gonna look at this guy and go, this is the definition of everything wrong with monarchy. He was such an evil little crazy shit when he was a kid. We're gonna talk about his story because oh my lord, is that wild. Eventually...

they would completely crush the Song. And the Empress Dowager and her young son, Emperor Gongzong, would surrender along with their capital, Linan, on the 28th of March, 1276. From there, the Song royals were sent to Beijing, where they would be prisoners, and it would still be for a couple years after that that some loyalists would fight on. They would install two more puppet emperors in order to try and control things, but the Mongols crushed all of them.

The Song had been rich enough in order to be able to fuel their vast armies, but because they had no real sense of political unity, they didn't really invest as much into their military investments outside of the north. They didn't really have much of a cavalry to face against the Mongols and also didn't really innovate in the way of weapons or tactics or anything else. It just led to them being completely crushed.

And so finally, on the 19th of March, 1279, a great naval battle was won at Yashan near modern day Macau and the Mongol conquest of China was complete. This was, mind you, the first time that the country had been unified completely with no other little states around them still free since the 9th century. So we're talking 400 years. Well, so what happens then?

Well, this is where things get kind of interesting and, mind you, very unique for Chinese history. See, the funny thing is the Mongols by themselves were incapable of ruling China. Sounds weird, but remember when I described to you all the varying different things about family ties, blood feuds, and meritocracy? Well, that meritocracy is applied to your ability as a warrior and a general, not really an administrator.

The majority of Mongols had no real education or administrative capabilities. This meant that at the lower levels of governance, they had to use Chinese civil servants to actually run all the day-to-day affairs, while any kind of posts of importance were allotted to foreigners that were directly employed by the emperor.

One of these, Marco Polo, is arguably the most familiar and famous example that we have. In fact, when talking about the UN dynasty, he's arguably the only real example that we can bring up here because his writings are largely what almost 80, 90% of our information about the UN dynasty comes from.

Kublai would institute a nationalities policy under which the population of China was divided into four categories. At the top, you had the Mongols. This would be the Menggu Ren, which would form the privileged military caste of a few hundred thousand members. They were the military elite that would live off of the land. And when I say that they lived off the land, I mean these guys did not pay taxes. They lived off of

the expense and tax of all the Chinese peasants that lived under them, which on their great estates would pay for everything that they wanted. It was essentially a new kind of ruling nobility where all the money was funneled to them for their upkeep.

Along with them, you had the foreign auxiliaries who were varying different natives of different parts of Central Asia, other step nomads and allies of the Mongols who formed a second group, the Semuren. This would be the people with special status. So all those varying different foreign officials who served the Mongols, that was them.

Their class would be the higher tier administrators. In addition, its members with their worldwide contacts and their privileged status would create a new kind of merchant class and speculator class, the investors. You could almost even say the early capitalists, except not necessarily.

Really, and that's the wrong term to use, but that's the closest thing that I can associate with this, and you'll understand what I mean here in a second. Like the Mongols, they too were exempt from taxation and would enjoy several preferential abilities, like the ability to use roads and varying different services without actually having to pay fees, which for a merchant, that is a really big deal.

The bulk of the population belonged to the third and fourth classes, the Hanren or Northern Chinese and the Nanren or Southern Chinese, the latter of which was also insultingly referred to as Manzi, the barbarians who lived in what had been Southern Song China. The expense of the state and the support of the privileged elite

was primarily resting on the taxation that came from these two groups, which created a lot of stress over time. There were other measures of segregation as well. Different things were done where we think of the Mongols as being these guys who ruled over the empire with all kinds of different magnanimity and not peace. What is the word I'm looking for here?

You know that association? We've even seen that when actually talking about stuff in history here, Gab, how the Mongols would open themselves up to new ideas and also religions. And it was a multicultural society where everyone was all well and good. Yeah. Well, the issue that we have here in this case is that, yes, that did happen. It did. The Mongols were way more open minded than a lot of people. But there was still a strict hierarchy that had to be maintained. Of course. That was natural.

And I know you're probably going to say here, Stack, you've already talked about the Mongols multiple times. Like, what? Get to the point, man. I know. Look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The thing about this is that the Mongols specifically wanted to denote who was who. They put in many different laws that separated peoples and classified them. I already list the overall types of classifications.

And the thing is, the Chinese were forbidden from taking Mongol names. They were forbidden from wearing Mongol clothes. They were not allowed to learn the Mongol language.

Intermarriage was not necessarily forbidden, but it was heavily discouraged and different punishments were meted out depending upon whatever race you were for the same crime. Forbidden romance would be kind of hot though. Forbidden romance within the Mongol court. What are you doing, step nomad? Stop. What are you doing, step nomad? Okay, I'm going to write that book and everybody here is going to read it. Sorry, guys. You're reading a smutty romance novel. And it literally needs to be called

What are you doing, Step Nomad? Okay, I want it to sell, so I can't name it that. Okay, tell us in the comments right now, whatever this is, would you buy a smut book that is, what are you doing, Step Nomad? This is the part where everyone's like, hell no. No, this is where they go, hell yeah. And you know that they would because people on the internet are degenerates. They absolutely would. Yes, but you have sophisticated listeners. I also have degenerates. I have sophisticated degenerates too. There's a mix. There's a whole mix of people.

I classify myself as a sophisticated degenerate. I would do that here. I don't know anything about you sophisticated. Gee, thanks. You're welcome. So when I talk about those differences for crimes, think about this. Let's say you stole something. Well, a Mongol who stole something would pay a fine. A Chinese person who stole something would pay a fine. And then on top of that, they would have thief tattooed onto their head.

So there would be different kinds of like whatever happens to the Mongols would happen to the Chinese, but to a slightly more extreme degree. And that's how they would do things. These punishments were meted out depending upon their race. Rather than being a completely racial motivated policy, though, the bigger thing was specifically trying to control and denote who was who for the population. Because think on it this way.

You know that whole thing from The Incredibles where it's like, and when everyone's super, no one is.

That's how it was for the Mongols. It sounds weird. I know it's weird. I'm tying in Mongols to the Incredibles, but it is because they needed to know who was a Mongol in order to give them their very specific special status that served. If you had a Mongol that looked like the Chinese, acted like the Chinese, was the Chinese, like in every single thing that they were, they had none of the military traditions of the Mongols. They were just Chinese. They stopped being a strong, effective fighting force that the Khan needed.

Simultaneously, if you had a person that was Chinese and started dressing, talking, acting like the Mongol, then they lose that ability to denote that they are actually supposed to be a Chinese peasant that is getting taxed. It's a very complicated way, but they separate separated people so they could classify them for administration. Interesting.

So it's a messy thing, but that is something that was done. Still, that being said, the emperor did make some serious attempts to try and bring people of his empire together by encouraging the use of different languages in his administration. He tolerated different religions. He even ensured that different types of food from different places would be available at the court. Like, he

he did actually build a very multicultural society and would convert from the shamanistic faith of his ancestors to Tibetan Buddhism, which was probably something that was influenced by his wife, Chabi, as well as the Tibetan monk, Vaxbalama.

Now, what's funny to note about that guy, the Lama person, is that he was given a task to create his own language, a new official language based on Tibetan and Sanskrit, which Krulatai hoped would become the court language that would unite the peoples. The people weren't just going to speak Chinese. They weren't just going to speak Mongolian, that there would be a new universal language that

everyone would learn and speak and it would unite them. But no, it didn't really work out outside of exclusively in the court. Another major policy was to promote the international trade. And this is a very important thing to touch upon.

Artisans were a group that really did benefit from the Mongols taking over because previously they actually had a pretty low class within Chinese society, which sounds weird. These are the guys that make all the really good specialty goods. But I've talked about this before where societies in Asia and how they treated merchants and artisans was weird in the sense that they technically speaking had a lower class than dirt poor peasants, despite usually being wealthier.

Especially the merchants. The merchants were people that were heavily looked down upon because in many of these societies, the way that they approached things was that merchants did not produce goods. A merchant did not make a product. Gabby, what does a merchant do?

sells a product. They sell a product. Where did they get the product? They bought it from someone else. Exactly. So they got it from one place, they moved it to another, and then they sold it. They exchanged it, usually for a big markup. So they move it from a place of high supply, low demand to low supply, high demand. And their labor in them doing that is what allows them to make money. Many societies throughout Asia...

hated this. They looked at merchants as being not necessary, but rather parasites, a arguable necessary evil. And because of that, because of them looking down upon them,

This is something that put merchants in the lower classes, but under the Mongols with their focus on trade and because the Mongols, after years of living in the steppe of not having access to these goods, of the only way for them to get many of these different goods being through traders and through artisans that made them, the Mongols highly respected them. And they put in many different measures to encourage trade.

The Mongols put in favorable tax measures and they ended some shwery regulations. These being the laws where, oh, a merchant is not allowed to wear silk. You know, these kinds of things, the laws that actually restricted their displays of wealth. They would go and be encouraged to use new paper money. Currency exchanges were better regulated. More roads and canals were built, which would aid the transport of goods. And the effect of these policies was that trade was.

boomed during this time, especially when it came to porcelain. In fact, the boom from porcelain during this time is then what would lead to the development of greater porcelain trade under the Ming dynasty in latter centuries. So all that fine Chinese porcelain and everything that we would associate that the Europeans were after, one of the key reasons that developed was specifically because of the Mongols in this time, that they encouraged the mass production of this good.

But the true greatest change that would happen is how China interacted with the outside world. You see, Kublai Khan was especially interested in reestablishing the Chinese tribute system, which had been largely neglected during the latter part of the Song's dynasty. The system would have the state pay symbolic and material tribute to China's dominant position as the center of the world, the Middle Kingdom.

This is the whole point where, remember the Yuan, where it's like the axis upon which everything revolves? Every single state would kowtow. They would bow down. They would pay tribute to China, which would assume its rightful position as the greatest state in the world. Not everyone was happy about this, naturally. Many people resisted. But this was a huge point of legitimacy that Kupe Lai wanted.

And among all of these different states that fought back, the most famous example that we've already talked about is the invasion of Japan, which remember that episode, we talked about the Mongol invasions of Japan where they invaded twice, but each time they were fought back and terrible storms would end up destroying the Mongol fleets. From that, thousands of Mongol men, their material, their equipment, every single thing would sink to the bottom of the ocean and it ended up being a huge waste of resources.

Along with that, Southeast Asia was attacked in various different land and naval campaigns, but they also ended up resisting and mostly escaping. There were invasions of Vietnam in 1281 and 1286, Burma in 1277 and 1287, Java in 1292,

But these only achieved a limited degree of success. They did make sure that the states would pay them tribute, but it wasn't like complete and total domination.

It seemed that conducting naval warfare overseas and the unfamiliar climate of Southeast Asia were going to be obstacles that were insurmountable. They wouldn't allow the Yuan to expand further. Mongol armies would face unfamiliar experiences such as humid jungles, parasites, diseases, and war elephants, which drastically slowed things down. And I'll give you this as a primary example of something that slowed this down. Gabi, what is the primary way that the Mongols fought?

Horseback. Horseback. Archery. Do you know what their bows were made out of? That thing that fell apart when it rained? Yes.

The glue? And they went to the jungle. So what do you think happened? Fell apart because the humidity. Yep. Yep. Which means... God, I've been listening to you talk history so long that I know history now. That's unfortunate. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. It's like when we used to study... So this is a little side note for anyone here. And I know this is a long episode. I've done a lot of tangents. I'd be such a hit in college now, bro. I know. With like the smart kids. What do you mean the smart kids? Like your friends and nerds. I mean, yeah, but science isn't like smart kids.

I mean, the nerds who never shut up like your people. Oh, yes. Yes. Because scientists, we literally we know so much, but we don't really talk about it unless we're doing our presentation that we rehearsed for multiple times while shaking. Right. Like scientists are smart, but we're not like we're not the talkers. So nobody knows if you're smart or not.

So the hilarious detail about what it is that she's describing is that just how she is able to know these things of history without necessarily fully understanding a lot of them is the same thing that happened to me back when we were initially in college. And I would help her with her pre-med study because I would be repeating back information to her or quizzing things for her on her stuff for, again, pre-med.

I hadn't taken any of these classes. I didn't know what 90% of these terms meant for different things of biology and chemistry and everything else. But I started learning it. I could repeat back the information even if I didn't know. So it's one of those things that's like, yeah, I could sound pretty good at that point. And now you've dealt with me for so many years that you've actually learned a lot of stuff from history, which I love. That makes me very happy. Still, they did face these issues. They did get some countries to join them.

But it wouldn't work in the case of like Japan. In other parts of Asia, to the west, there was relative peace. The so-called Pax Mongolica, the peace of Mongolia, just as you had the Pax Romana, which allowed trade and ideas to flourish. Yeah, there was a major rebellion in Tibet in the early 1290s, and the other descendants of Genghis Khan would still control their own Khanates and harass China's western borders. But overall, there was more peace that had been seen in decades or arguably even centuries during this time.

The Mongols created an empire that would move from the Black Sea to the Korean Peninsula, even if at this point it was split into large khanate that were ruled over by Genghis Khan's other descendants. From this, China was exposed to the outside world, which sought its riches. This was especially so in regards to the West and travelers like Marco Polo, who, between 1275 and 1292, served Kublai Khan, seemingly in the capacity as a kind of mobile ambassador or reporter on the remote parts of the Mongol Empire.

On his return home, Marco wrote of his experiences in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, which first circulated in 1298 AD. His description are some of the best that we have of the UN dynasty. And when I say that, they're not only just the best, they are some of the only descriptions that we have of Western writers going and describing this country, this time, this ruler. That's it. Almost everything that we have comes from him.

One of the biggest benefits that the Mongols actually brought to the Chinese then was world fame of bringing attention to the world about what it is they had. They're artisans, they're craftsmen, they were given a more elevated status and their goods became desired.

everywhere. Merchants were encouraged to use paper money, currency exchanges were better regulated, and more roads and canals, including the Grand Canal connecting southern and northern China, were built, and also ocean-going ships would aid in the transportation of goods. The effect of these policies were to create a massive boom in trade, and this was something that was desired everywhere. But while grand, not everything was positive.

Remember, Kublai launched a lot of wars to expand and establish the UN dynasty as the center of the world again. And his wars would produce a heavy and very useless burden upon the lower classes, as did his very showing extravagant building projects at Dadu, the great capital, Beijing. And peasants were brought in in massive numbers as laborers, which would cause them to neglect their farms, thus creating food shortages.

Food supplies in the north were inadequate for the new labor force and the unproductive Mongols and large quantities that had to be brought in by sea and sea routes proved insecure. So every single time a new project had to come in, hundreds of thousands of people would be brought in and this would lead to mass food shortages and people starving wherever it is that they went. The Chinese population would be treated as second class citizens.

The emperor's health would gradually deteriorate with age. He became grossly overweight to the point that he could not get on a horse as he suffered from chronic gout and rheumatism. Eventually, he would die of natural causes in 1294, the age of 79 or 80, which mind you, for a Mongol, that is a very old age. But he did. His body was taken to a secret location, possibly in Mongolia, as was tradition, and buried, most likely in some kind of big tomb, but that has never actually been discovered.

Kublai was succeeded by his grandson Timur as Khan, an emperor of China after his first choice. His son, Zhenjin, ended up dying prematurely. His grandson would continue with the same policies and institutions and many of the same officials that were appointed by his father. And from that, he did enjoy a peaceful and successful reign. But here's the problem where things began to take a rapid turn.

After this, you would have a series of short-lived emperors who would rule for very little time, who struggled to balance the competing pro-Chinese or pro-Mongol factions, the traditionalists versus the progressives, if you will. And this rivalry sometimes broke out into violence that would turn into war, like bloodbaths inside of the imperial court. There were multiple cases of the emperor being assassinated during this time, and it was a messy thing.

Unlike other rulers of China, the Mongols were never totally sinicized. They never became Chinese, unlike what Kublai tried, which proved to be a very important factor in their downfall. They continued to maintain their separateness from the native population and utilize foreigners to staff the government bureaucracy. By the mid-14th century, the Yuan rulers had been beset by a devastating combination of

Disasters, unusually cold winters, plagues, famines, flooding the Yellow River. All of this combined to bring about hyperinflation because what kind of currency were they using? Paper. They brought in and printed paper money. And when everything went to shit,

They printed more money, which created worse inflation, which in turn sent the entire system crashing down. Bandits started popping up all around the country. Smugglers would destroy trade routes. Even religious leaders would try to take over entire towns. China was falling apart from inside itself. And the rulers within the Yuan dynasty

just fought each other over power and position. Their bureaucracy was a giant overbloated mess by this point, used to favor princes and generals to try and get things done. They failed to quash numerous rebellions, including that that was perpetrated by a group known as the Red Turban Movement, led by a peasant called Zhu Yuanzhang. His first major coup had been the capture of Nanjing in 1256 AD.

After that, this peasant leader's success would continue, and he defeated his two main rival rebel leaders and their armies. Once this was done, Zhu was left the most powerful leader in China, and after taking Beijing, the last Yuan emperor of a unified China, Togon Temur, would flee to Mongolia, and the old, now abandoned capital, Karakorum, was all that they would manage to control.

The Yuan would thus continue to rule Mongolia under a new name, the Northern Yuan Dynasty, which, ironically enough, did not fall apart. It lasted several hundred more years. Meanwhile, Zhu would declare himself the ruler of China on January of 1368, establishing the Ming Dynasty. From this, my friends, we have the end of the Yuan Dynasty and Kublai Khan.

Honestly, when I talk about this, we went into so many different tangents. There are so many more things that I could talk about that could be bridged off of this. All the different campaigns, the different tribes, the dynasties, etc. Let me know in the comments what it is that you all would like to see. Because my friends, there are so many different more things that we could cover. With that, I am going to leave things here today. Thank you all so much for joining me. And I will see you all here next time. Goodbye, everyone. Bye.

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