9 Genghis Khan and the Great Mongol Empire

Genghis Khan and the Great Mongol Empire

The knights at their tournaments, in their finery, armor and emblems of ancestry, believed they were the foremost warriors in the world, while Mongol warriors thought otherwise. Mongol horses were small, but their riders were lightly clad and they moved with greater speed. These were hardy men who grew up on horses and hunting, making them better warriors than those who grew up in agricultural societies and cities. Their main weapon was the bow and arrow. And the Mongols of the early 1200s were highly disciplined, superbly coordinated and brilliant in tactics.

The Mongols were illiterate, religiously shamanistic and perhaps no more than 700,000 in number. Their language today is described as Altaic, a language unrelated to Chinese, derived from inhabitants in the Altay mountain range in western Mongolia. They were herdsmen on the grassy plains north of the Gobi Desert, south of Siberia's forests. Before the year 1200, the Mongols were fragmented, moving about in small bands headed by a chief, or khan,and living in portable felt dwellings. The Mongols endured frequent deprivations and sparse areas for grazing their animals. They frequently fought over turf, and during hard times they occasionally raided, interested in goods rather than bloodshed. They did not collect heads or scalps as trophies.

Mongolia. Click for more images.

Genghis Khan's Empire in 1227.
Click to enlarge. 

Mongolia

Mongolia, with white "yurts" in the valley

From his late teens to age thirty-eight in the year 1200, a Mongol named Temujin (Temüjin) rose as khan over various families. He was a good manager, collecting around him people of talent. He was vassal to Ong Khan, titular head of a confederacy, and Temujin joined Ong Khan in a military campaign against Tatars to their east. Following the success of this campaign Ong Khan declared Temujin his adoptive son and heir. Ong Khan's natural son, Senggum (Senggüm), had been expecting to succeed his father and plotted to assassinate Temujin. Temujin learned of this, and those loyal to Temujin defeated those loyal to Senggum. Temujin was now established as the head of what had been Ong Khan's coalition., and in 1206, at the age of 42, Temujin took the title Universal Ruler, which translates to Genghis Khan. Like peoples elsewhere, Genghis Khan's subjects saw themselves at the center of the universe, the greatest of people and favored by the gods. They justified Temujin's success in warfare by claiming that he was the rightful master not only over the "peoples of the felt tent" but the entire world.

As Genghis Khan, Temujin thanked his joyous supporters for their help and their loyalty, and he continued organizing. He improved his military organization, which was also to serve as a mobile political bureaucracy, and he broke up what was left of old enemy tribes, leaving as ethnically homogeneous only those tribes that had demonstrated loyalty to him.

Genghis Khan created a body of law that he was to work on throughout his life. This included outlawing the tradition of kidnapping women. The kidnapping of women had caused feuds among the Mongols, and, as a teenager he had suffered from the kidnapping of his young wife, Borte, and he had devoted himself to rescuing her.

In addition, Genghis Khan declared all children legitimate, whomever the mother. He made it law that no woman would be sold into marriage. The stealing of animals had caused dissension among the Mongols, and Temujin made it a capital offense. A lost animal was to be returned to its owner, and taking lost property as one's own was to be considered thievery and a capital offense. Temujin regulated hunting – a winter activity – improving the availability of meat for everyone. He introduced record keeping, taking advantage of his move years before to have his native language put into writing. He created official seals. He created a supreme officer of the law who was to collect and preserve all judicial decisions, to oversee the trials of all those charged with wrongdoing and to have the power to issue death sentences. He created order that strengthened his realm and improved his ability to expand its territory.

Conquests in Northern China

Genghis Khan moved to secure his borders. To his south he made an alliance with the Uyghurs, who were closer than the Mongols were to the Silk Road and to wealth. He married his daughter to the Uighur Khan, and the Uighur Khan brought to the wedding party a caravan laden with gold, silver, pearls, brocaded fabrics, silks and satins. The Mongols had only leather, fur and felt – a humiliation for a master of the entire world.

Genghis Khan needed booty to pay troops securing his northern border and subduing an old enemy there, the Merkits. He acted on his mandate as the rightful ruler of the entire world and attacked the Tangut conquerors of northwestern Chinafrom a century before, the Tangut ruling Chinese farmers and herders there. The Tangut had much in goods like the Uighur Khan. Against the Tangut the Mongols were outnumbered in warriors two to one, and the Mongols had to learn a new kind of warfare against fortified cities, including cutting supply lines and diverting rivers. Genghis Khan and his army were victorious, and in 1210 Genghis Khan won from the Tangut recognition as overlord.

Also in 1210, the Jurchen emperor, Weishaowang, who ruled a part of northern China that included Beijing, was concerned. He sent a delegation to Genghis Khan demanding submission as a vassal. The Jurchen emperor controlled the flow of goods along the Silk Road, and defying him meant a lack of access to those goods. Genghis Khan discussed the matter with his fellow Mongols and chose war. Genghis, according to the scholar Jack Weatherford, prayed alone on a mountain, bowing down and stating his case to "his supernatural guardians," describing the grievances, the tortures and killings that generations of his people had suffered at the hands of the Jurchens. And he pleaded that he had not sought war against the Jurchens and had not initiated the quarrel. ^note36

In 1211, Genghis Khan and his army attacked. The Jurchens had a large and effective army but they were hard pressed by both the Mongols and the Tangut. And the Jurchens were under attack by Chinese from south of the Yangzi River, the Southern Song emperor there wishing to take advantage of the Jurchen-Mongol conflict to liberate northern China.

The Jurchens drove the Chinese armies into retreat. The Mongols were benefiting from China having failed during the previous century to make itself a strong military power, and the Mongols were benefitting from the Jurchens being burdened by their rule over a conquered people. The Mongols were benevolent toward those who sided with them and used terror and violence against those who did not. The Mongols ravaged the countryside, gathered information and booty and drove populations in front of them, clogging the roads and trapping the Jurchens within their cities, where Jurchen authority was subject to revolt by those they had conquered. The Mongols used conscripted labor in attacking cities and in operating their newly acquired Chinese siege engines.

Against the Jurchens the Mongols had an advantage in diet, which included a lot of meat, milk and yogurt, and they could miss a day or two of eating better than Jurchen soldiers, who ate grains. Genghis Khan and his army overran Beijing and pushed into the heartland of northern China. Military success helped as people acquired the impression that Genghis Khan had the Mandate of Heaven and that fighting against him was fighting heaven itself. The Jurchen emperor recognized Mongol authority and agreed to pay tribute.

After six years of fighting the Jurchens, Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia, leaving one of his best generals in charge of Mongol positions. Returning with Genghis Khan and his Mongols were engineers who had become a permanent part of their army, and there were captive musicians, translators, doctors and scribes, camels and wagonloads of goods. Among the goods were silk, including silken rope, cushions, blankets, robes, rugs, wall hangings, porcelain, iron kettles, armor, perfumes, jewelry, wine, honey, medicines, bronze, silver and gold, and much else. Goods from China would now come in a steady flow.

The Mongols were happy to be back from China, their homeland higher in elevation, less humid and cooler. As eaters of meat and sparsely populated they felt superior to people in northern China, but they liked what China had to offer, and at home there was change. The continuing flow of goods from China had to be administered and properly distributed, and buildings had to be built to store the goods. Success in war was changing the Mongols – as it had the Romans and the Arabs.

Into Afghanistan and Persia

Genghis Khan wanted trade and goods, including new weapons, for his nation. A Mongol caravan of several hundred merchants approached a recently formed Khwarezmian Empire in Persia and Central Asia. That empire's sultan received them by having the chief of the envoys killed and the beards of the others burned, and he sent the other envoys back to Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan retaliated. In the coldest of months he and his Mongols rode across the desert to Transoxiana, with no baggage, slowing to the pace of merchants before appearing as warriors in front of the smaller towns of the sultan's empire. His strategy was to frighten townspeople into surrendering without battle, benefiting his own troops, whose lives he valued. Those frightened into surrender were spared violence. Those who resisted were slaughtered as an example for others, which sent many fleeing and spreading panic from the first towns to the city of Bukhara. People in Bukhara opened the city's gates to the Mongols and surrendered. Genghis Khan told them that they, the common people, were not at fault, that high-ranking people among them had committed great sins that inspired God to send him and his army as punishment. The city of Samarkand surrendered. The sultan's army surrendered, and the sultan fled

Genghis Khan and his army pushed more deeply into what had been the sultan's empire, into Persia. It is said that the caliph in Baghdad was hostile toward the sultan and supported Genghis Khan, sending him a regiment of European crusaders who had been his prisoners. Genghis Khan, having no need for infantry, freed them, with those making it to Europe spreading the first news of the Mongol conquests.

Genghis Khan had 100,000 to 125,000 horsemen, with Uighur and Turkic allies, engineers and Chinese doctors – a total of 150,000 to 200,000 men. To show their submission, those his army approached offered food, and they were guaranteed protection. Some cities surrendered without fighting. In cities the Mongols were forced to conquer, Genghis Khan divided the civilians by profession. He drafted the few who were literate and those he could use as translators. Those who had been the city's most rich and powerful he wasted no time in killing, remembering that the rulers he had left behind after conquering the Tangut and the Jurchens had betrayed him soon after his army had withdrawn.

It is said that the Genghis Khan's military did not torture, mutilate or maim. But his enemies are reported as having done so. Captured Mongols were dragged through streets and killed for sport and to entertain city residents. Gruesome displays of stretching, emasculation, belly cutting and hacking to pieces was something European rulers were using to discourage potential enemies – as was soon to happen to William Wallace on orders from England's King Edward I. The Mongols merely slaughtered, and preferred doing so from a distance.

The city of Nishapur revolted against Mongol rule. The husband of Genghis Khan's daughter was killed, and, it is said, she asked that everyone in the city be put to death, and, according to the story, they were.

Into Azerbaijan, Armenia and Eastern Europe

While Genghis Khan was consolidating his conquests in what had been the Khwarezmian Empire, a force of 40,000 Mongol horsemen pushed through Azerbaijan and Armenia. Without Genghis Khan they defeated Georgia's Christian crusaders, captured a Genoese trade-fortress in the Crimea and spent the winter along the coast of the Black Sea. In 1223, as they were headed back home, they met 80,000 warriors led by Prince Mstitslav of Kiev. The Battle of Kalka River (map location) commenced. Staying out of range of the crude weapons of peasant infantry, and with better bows than opposing archers, they devastated the prince's standing army. Facing the prince's cavalry, they faked a retreat and drew the prince's armored cavalry forward, taking advantage of the over-confidence of the mounted aristocrats. Lighter and more mobile, the Mongols strung out and tired the pursuers and then attacked, killed and routed them.

In 1225, Genghis Khan was back in Mongolia. He now ruled everything between the Caspian Sea and Beijing. He looked forward to the Mongols benefitting from caravan trade and drawing tribute from within the empire. He created an efficient pony express system. Wanting no divisions rising from religion, he declared freedom of religion throughout his empire. Favoring order and tax producing prosperity, he forbade abuse of people by troops and local officials.

Soon again, Genghis Khan was at war. He believed that the Tangut were not living up to their obligations to his empire. In 1227, around the age of sixty-five while leading the fighting against the Tangut, Genghis Khan, it is said, fell off his horse and died.

In terms of square miles conquered, Genghis Khan had been the greatest conqueror of all time – his empire four times larger than the empire of Alexander the Great. Mongols believed that he had been the greatest man of all time and sent from heaven. Among them he was known as the Holy Warrior, and not unlike the Jews, who continued to see hope in a conquering king (messiah) like David, Mongols were to continue to believe that one day Genghis Khan would rise again and lead his people to new victories.

To the Gates of Vienna

Late in the life of Genghis Khan something common occurred: members of his family fought over who was to be his heir. To end the dispute, Genghis Khan chose his third son, Ogedei (pronounced oh-go-day). And in 1229, after Genghis Khan's death, a great Mongol assembly confirmed the succession of Ogedei as the Great Khan.

Ogedei Khan began his rule aiming to live up to his mandate as ruler of the world. In earnest he began drafting conquered people into his armies. Around one in ten young men from agricultural societies went into the Mongol infantry, and tent dwellers (nomadic herdsmen) joined the Mongol cavalry.

In 1231, Ogedei sent an army to police Korean defiance of an agreement made in 1218 to pay annual tribute. The Koreans rebelled, and a struggle ensued that was to last for decades.

Ogedei Khan also sent his armies against the Jurchens, and in 1234 his armies completed the conquest of northern China. In the mid-1230s Ogedei sent armies toward Slavic principalities in Eastern Europe. He sent his military against Asiatic tribes between the Volga and Ural rivers, and their resistance was greater than he had expected, delaying his plans of conquest west of the Ural Mountains. Finally, in 1237, his army pushed against the Russians, conquering the cities of Vladimir, Kolmna and Moscow in 1238. In December 1240, Ogedei's army entered the city of Kiev and reduced the city to ashes, and the Mongols would dominate Russia into the 1400s.

In Hungary and Poland the Mongols were outnumbered but tactically superior. They defeated several Hungarian armies. In early April, 1241, at the Battle of Lenica (Liegnitz) in Poland, they defeated an army that is said to have included heavily armored Teutonic knights. Dying in the battle was the most powerful of Polish dukes, Henryk II (Henry II). In December the Mongols crossed the Danube River and approached Vienna. Then, mysteriously to Europeans, the Mongols retreated from central Europe. To the Europeans it seemed they had been saved by a miracle. A myth was to rise among the Poles that their brave warriors saved Europe from the Mongols. In reality, the Mongol withdrawal was in response to Ogedei's death, on December 11 after 12 years of rule. High ranking Mongol army leaders believed they had to return to confirm selection of a new ruler

From Ogedei to Mongke the Reformer

Ogedei had been like some other sons of great men – something less than his father. He had been a profligate spender of money, burdening his conquered subjects with unpredictable increases in taxes for his sudden needs of money. And torn between duty and tiring of it, Ogedei had drunk so heavily that a functionary had been assigned to count the number of wine goblets that he had emptied daily. He had died at the age of fifty-six after binge drinking during a hunting trip.

However burdensome the position, there was no shortage of young men from Genghis Khan's extended family eager to become the next Great Khan. Ogedei's widow, Toregene, began administering Ogedei's estate, ruling her late husband's realm in his name and acting as regent for her eldest son, Guyuk, in his late thirties. Military operations slowed, including a reprieve of the fighting in Korea. Conflict arose among men in the extended ruling family. In 1246, Guyuk was able to buy support and win selection as Ogedei's successor. He showered gifts on people whose support he continued to seek, from princes to lowly scribes, as if money was in endless supply.

In 1246, Guyuk Khan received an envoy from Pope Innocent IV. In a letter carried by the envoy, the pope ordered the Mongols to “desist” from their invasion of Europe. The pope offered a synopsis of the life of Jesus and Christianity's tenets. Hoping to convert the Great Khan, the pope described himself as having been delegated by God as having all earthly power and as the only person authorized by God to speak for Him. Guyuk Khan replied that God had given the Mongols, not the pope, control of the world, from the rising sun to the setting sun. God, he claimed, intended the Mongols to spread His commandments in the form of Genghis Khan’s Great Laws. And he sent back to the pope the demand that the pope submit.

Guyuk's reign from 1246 to 1247 ended with Guyuk dying mysteriously amid royal family squabbling. The selection of the new Great Khan went in 1251 to another of Genghis Khan's grandsons: Mongke. A plot by rivals to assassinate Mongke at his coronation was uncovered, and this was followed by torture, purges, trials, confessions and much letting of blood – purges within the royal family as well as among government officials.

Mongke Khan attempted to establish efficiency in governing all of his subjects. The postal relay system was freed of being jammed by elites using it for their personal benefit. He established predictable taxation that permitted planning by the empire's farmers. He demanded that local rule not interfere with productive work. The death penalty was to apply to officers who seized vegetables from the gardens of Chinese peasants. Princes were forbidden to issue orders without approval from the imperial court. Officials, civil and military, were forbidden to enter areas where they had no jurisdiction. Military campaigning was to be done without devastating agricultural land or devastating cities, actions seen as reducing potential tax revenues for the imperial treasury. Private property was to be respected. Theft and brigandage were to be punished, and the importance of law was emphasized by death as the punishment even for minor offenses.

Under Mongke Khan, women could own property and pursue litigation. They served as auxiliaries in the military, remaining hidden in the encampment during combat but joining the fight if an emergency made that necessary. Clergymen and monks were exempted from labor on community projects.

As under Genghis Khan, people were allowed to worship as they chose, and Buddhism, Islam and Christianity flourished. In 1252, Mongke's regime made official the worship of Genghis Khan.

Baghdad and the Limits of Empire

In the 1250s, France's king, Louis IX hoped for an alliance with the Mongols in order to destroy Islam. Mongke was not interested. But, to add to his rule of the world, he sent an army led by one of his brothers, Hulegu, from the middle of Persia toward Baghdad the largest and richest city in the Muslim world. Mongke planned to lead the conquest of the whole of China, himself.

As Hulegu and his army were passing through Persia, they destroyed the Muslim sect known in Europe as the Assassins (Hashshashin), opening their route to Baghdad, the largest and richest city in the Muslim world.

Some Christians in Baghdad used the coming of the Mongols as an opportunity to free themselves from Muslim rule or to avenge past wrongs, and Mongol military leaders, as was their habit, used such conflicts to their advantage. Within Hulegu’s army were Christians and Shi’a Muslims, and they are said to have been the most fervent participants in attacking Baghdad’s Sunni Muslim inhabitants. In 1258, Baghdad was destroyed and many Sunni inhabitants butchered, while Christians and Shi’a Muslims were spared. The conquest of Baghdad ended the Abbasid caliphate and Baghdad as an Islamic spiritual capital.

In 1259, Hulegu's army entered the great Syrian city of Damascus, Christians there greeting the Mongol army with joy. The Mongol army then headed southward toward Egypt, and they learned that even great empires under God had limits: In 1260, their advance was stopped near Nazareth by the Mameluks, Muslim slave soldiers who had taken power in Egypt. Taking revenge on the Christians for having allied themselves with the Mongols, the Mameluks attacked Crusader strongholds in the Middle East, the beginning of the end of the Crusaders there, leaving them only on the Mediterranean coast at Acre, Tyre and Tripoli.

Kublai Khan in China and to Japan

After two years of preparation, Mongke's army invaded China'sSichuan province. There, in 1259, Mongke died in battle. He was the last of the great khans ruling from Karakorum and the last to exercise authority over the entire Mongol empire. Another fight ensued over who was to become the Great Khan, and succeeding Mongke was a brother, to be known as Kublai Khan, who had been fighting alongside Mongke in China.

Others declared themselves the Great Khan and established independent kingdoms, bringing the division that had plagued other empires. From his capital, Beijing, Kublai Khan pursued the subjugation of southern China, attracted by its wealth, including grain surpluses and towns along China's southern coast that were prospering from seaborne trade. Kublai tried to persuade the Song emperor to subjugate himself peacefully, and when this did not happen Kublai drove his army of various ethnicities (including Chinese and Persians) deeper into China, while his navy, manned by Jurchens and Koreans, sailed south along China's coast. The drive of conquest took sixteen years and ended around 1276.

Kublai Khan interfered little in China's economy, and Mongol rule left Confucianists without much influence, giving Chinese merchants a temporary break with which to pursue trade. The Mongols assimilated little with the Chinese, Kublai not wanting his army of occupation fusing with the Chinese. Nevertheless, a little mixing between conquerors and the conquered took place – mainly Mongol soldiers taking Chinese women.

After consolidating his rule in China, Kublai Khan sent envoys to demand tribute from Japan, and he threatened reprisals if the Japanese refused. From the palace at Kyoto the Japanese answered, claiming that their nation had divine origins and therefore was not to be subject to anyone. The Japanese were preparing a military defense, while Kublai Khan believed he shouldn't permit the appearance of Japan defying him. In 1274, from southern Korea, he launched an assault – a Mongol, Chinese and Korean force – with 600 to 900 ships, 23,000 troops, catapults, combustible missiles, bows and arrows. Bad weather compelled the invasion force to return from Japan's southern-most major island: Kyushu.

In the summer of 1281, Kublai Khan tried again, this time sending some 4000 ships. For fifty-three days the Japanese held the invaders to a narrow beachhead on Kyushu. Then a hurricane struck. The Mongols withdrew again, only half of his force making it back to China. The Japanese interpreted the hurricane as a "god wind," in Japanese: kami-kaze. Kublai had found in the Far East the limits that Hulegu had found in the Middle East. It was the last attempt to invade the Japanese – until 1945, at Okinawa, when kami-kaze would also be a word of significance.

Kublai Khan

China from Mongol rule to the Ming

The Mongols in China were ruling with a great variety of administrators, military personnel and hangers on – Turks, Arabs, a few Europeans, Jurchens and Persians. The Mongols were following their tradition of supporting a variety of faiths: Buddhism, Islam, Taoism and the Christianity that was practiced also by some of the Mongols in China.

China's Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, died in 1294 at the age of seventy-nine. His grandson, Temur Oljeitu, succeeded him, made peace with Japan and maintained reasonable prosperity. Temur Oljeitu was a conscientious and energetic emperor, but after his early death in 1307 he was followed by a nephew, Khaishan, who appointed people without talent to positions of government, including Buddhist and Taoist clergy, and he spent money lavishly on palaces and temples and tripled the supply of paper money.

Following Khaishan's death in 1311 his brother, Ayrubarwada, took power at age twenty-six. However competent Ayrubarwada was as a ruler, opposition rose against him at court by those who saw him as too sympathetic with the Chinese. He died in 1320, and his eldest son, Shidebala, succeeded him at the age of eighteen. Shidebala initiated anti-corruption reforms, sided with Tibetan Buddhists against Muslims and was assassinated in 1323. 

Shidebala was succeeded by Yesun Temur, who was oriented toward Mongol traditions. His supporters had been involved in the assassination of Shidebala, and he distanced himself from them and returned to the Mongol tradition of treating religions impartially.

Yesun Temur died in 1328 and the youngest son of Khaishan, Tugh Temur, 24-years-old, took power. He was skilled in Chinese. He was a painter, supported education, lived modestly and dismissed over 10,000 from the imperial staff.

Following Tugh Temur's death in 1332, a thirteen-year-old, Toghun Temur, became nominal emperor. His ministers ran state affairs. His first minister was concerned with what he saw as Mongol weakness in China. He re-imposed segregation between the Mongols and Chinese, decreed that Chinese were not to learn Mongolian, confiscated weapons and iron tools from the Chinese, outlawed Chinese opera and storytelling, and he considered exterminating Chinese.

Rebellion and the Ming

During Toghun Temur's rule, Chinese opposition to Mongol rule was on the rise. The Mongols were different from the Chinese not only in speech but in dress and other habits, and the Chinese looked upon the Mongols as barbarians. They disliked Mongol table manners, and they thought the Mongols smelled.

Across decades of peace, the ability at warfare of the Mongol warriors had been declining. Common Mongol troops had been put to work farming to support themselves, using slaves. Some of these Mongol warriors had failed as farmers and had lost their farms. Some had become vagrants, while Mongol army officers remained as a salaried aristocracy segregated from the common Mongol soldier.

In 1346, plague had broken out among Mongols in the Crimea, and the plague spread to Mongols in China. Also there were floods that disrupted the country. Mongol military garrisons continued to rule at strategic points in China, but the Mongols were greatly outnumbered and were not prepared to contend with a great rebellion. Mongol military commanders began running the government, and Toghun Temur, now in his late twenties, passed into semi-retirement. He is reported to have taken pleasure only in boy catamites and in prayer with Buddhist monks from Tibet. Toghun Temur's debauchery and his devotion to Tibetan Buddhism added to Confucianist grievances, and opposition to Toghun Temur arose also among Buddhists. A secret Buddhist sect, the White Lotus, began organizing for revolution and prophesied the coming of a Buddhist messiah, Maitreya.

Mongol rule in China was about 76 years-old when, in 1352, a rebellion took shape around Guangzhou. A former boy beggar boy who associated himself with a Buddhist temple but never actually became a monk, Zhu Yuanzhang, left his temple and joined the rebellion, and his exceptional intelligence took him to the head of a rebel army. By 1355 the rebellion, accompanied by anarchy, had spread through much of China. Zhu Yuanzhang won people to his side by forbidding his soldiers to pillage. In 1356, Zhu Yuanzhang captured Nanjing and made it his capital, and there he won the help of Confucian scholars who issued pronouncements for him and performed rituals in his claim of the Mandate of Heaven. And Zhe Yuanzhang defeated other rebel armies.

Meanwhile Toghun Temur was still emperor, and during the rebellion in the mid-1350s the Mongols were fighting among themselves, inhibiting their ability to quell the rebellion. By 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang had extended his rule to Guangzhou – the same year that Toghan Temur fled to Karakorum. Zhu Yuanzhang and his army entered the former Mongol capital, Beijing, and with this he claimed the Mandate of Heaven. In 1371 his army moved through Sichuan. By 1387 – after more than thirty years of war – Zhu Yuanzhang had freed China of Mongol rule, and as China's emperor he founded a new dynasty: the Ming.

Expansion and Withdrawal

The first concern of China's new Ming emperor in 1370 was military strength and preventing Mongol resurgence. The emperor, Hong-wu, established garrisons at strategic points and created an hereditary military caste of soldiers who would sustain themselves by farming and be ever-ready for war. Troops were forbidden to abuse civilians. Hong-wu made his commanders a new military nobility. Hong-wu's standing army exceeded one million in number, and his navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world.

Farms had been devastated and he settled a huge number of peasants on what had been wasteland and gave them tax exemptions. Hong-wu attempted to create a society of self-sufficent rural communities. Between 1371 and 1379 the land under cultivation tripled, as did revenues. The government sponsored tree planting and reforestation. Neglected dikes and canals were repaired and thousands of reservoirs were rebuilt or restored. During his reign, China had a dramatic population growth, explained as due to an increased food supply and Hong-wu's agricultural reforms.

Hong-wu was tough on opponents. His regime executed anyone who violated his laws or were suspected of treason. He banned secret societies. He increasingly feared rebellions and coups, and he made it a capital offence for any of his advisors to criticize him. He became infamous for killing many people during his purges. His regime has been described as using many tortures, including flaying and slow slicing. In 1380, according to Wikipedia, a lightning bolt struck his palace and he stopped the massacres "for some time" while afraid of punishment by "divine forces."

Hong-wu considered the destructive role of court eunuchs under previous dynasties, and he reduced their numbers, forbade them to handle documents, insisted they remain illiterate and executed any who commented on state affairs.

Hong-wu died in 1398, at the age of seventy, and his death was followed by four years of civil war and the disappearance of his son and heir, Jianwen. Jianwen had been indecisive and scholarly and no match for his uncle, the Prince of Yan, who in 1402 became Emperor Yongle (meaning Perpetual Happiness) and made Yan his capital and renamed it Beijing

In the wake of Mongol rule, China's leaders were eager to restore things Chinese, and that included shipping on China's canals – which had fallen into disrepair under the Mongols. According to Wikipedia, between 1411 and 1415 a total of 165,000 laborers dredged the canal bed in Shandong Province, and they built new channels, embankments, and canal locks.

One of Emperor Yongle's eunuchs, Zheng He, was a Muslim whose father had made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Zheng He knew the world a little more than others, and he led a group of can-do eunuchs that performed special tasks for the emperor, and Emperor Yongle ordered Zheng to make naval expeditions.

From the Mongols the Ming rulers had inherited extensive maritime contacts and technology. During Mongol rule, large Chinese cargo ships had plied the oceans around China, including a regular run of grain from the south along the coast to the north. And Chinese ships had traded through southeast Asia to the island of Lanka (Sri Lanka) and to India. But the Ming dynasty did not maintain this trade. Zheng He's expedition, beginning in 1405, was made for the sake of geographical exploration and diplomacy – an expedition with sixty-three ships and 27,000 men. Six more expeditions led by Zheng followed, continuing after the death of Emperor Yongle in 1424. The last expedition was in 1433 under Emperor Xuande, grandson of Emperor Yongle. The expeditions reached Surabaya at the island of Java, and they reached India and then Mogadishu on the coast of Africa, Hormuz at the Persian Gulf, and up the Red Sea toJeddah. Gifts were exchanged, and rare spices, plants and animals, including a giraffe, were brought back to China

China had the world's greatest navy, with an estimated 317 ships – constructed at Nanjing. These ships were made with special woods and waterproofing techniques, and they had an adjustable centerboard keel. Some of the ships were 440 feet long and 180 feet wide, ships with four to nine masts that were as high as ninety feet, with silk sails and with crews that numbered as many as five hundred.

But in China interest in a great navy and merchant shipping was overshadowed by concern about military defenses on land. Attempts to control Annam failed and were expensive. In the mid-1400s the Mongols were making border raids and appeared to the Chinese as a greater threat. Also, Confucian influence had increased at court. Confucian scholars were filling the ranks of senior officialdom and remained hostile to commerce and foreign contacts. The Confucianists had little or no interest in seeing China develop into a great maritime trading power. The Confucianists saw internal trade as enough. The government ended its sponsorship of naval expeditions, and, in the spirit of isolationism, the government forbade multi-masted ships sailing out of port. The development of world maritime trade was left to Europeans, who were now beginning to extend their voyages