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Kublai Khan’s ascendancy in 1260 marked a definite change in Mongol government practice. Kublai moved the seat of Mongol government from Karakorum in Mongolia to Shangdu (“Upper Capital”), near present-day Dolun in Inner Mongolia. In 1267 the official capital was transferred to Zhongdu, where Kublai ordered the construction of a new walled city, replete with grand palaces and official quarters, that was renamed Dadu (“Great Capital”) before its completion. Under its Turkicized name, Cambaluc (Khan-baliq, “The Khan’s Town”), the capital became known throughout Asia and even Europe. But, true to nomad traditions, the Mongol court continued to move between these two residences—Shangdu in summer and Dadu in winter. With the establishment of Dadu as the seat of the central bureaucracy, Mongolia and Karakorum no longer remained the center of the Mongol empire. Mongolia began to fall back to the status of a northern borderland, where a nomadic way of life continued and where Mongol grandees, dissatisfied with the growing Sinicization of the court, repeatedly engaged in rebellions.
Kublai, who even prior to 1260 had surrounded himself with Chinese advisers such as the eminent Buddho-Daoist Liu Bingzhong and several former Jin scholar-officials, was still the nominal overlord of the other Mongol dominions (ulus) in Asia. By then, however, his Chinese entourage had persuaded him to accept the role of a traditional Chinese emperor. A decisive step was taken in 1271 when the Chinese dominion was given a Chinese dynastic name—Da Yuan, the “Great Origin.” Before this the Chinese name for the Mongol state was Da Chao (“Great Dynasty”), introduced about 1217. It was a translation of the Mongol name Yeke Mongghol Ulus (“Great Mongol Nation”) adopted by Genghis Khan about 1206. The new name, however, was a departure from Chinese traditions. All earlier Chinese dynasties were named for ancient feudal states or geographic terms; even the Khitan and the Juchen had followed this tradition by naming their states Liao (for the Liao River in Manchuria) and Jin (“Gold,” for a river in Manchuria that had a Juchen name with that meaning). Yuan was the first nongeographic name of a Chinese dynasty since Wang Mang established the Xin dynasty (9–25 ce).
During the 1260s the central bureaucracy and the local administration of the Chinese empire were remodeled on Chinese lines, with certain alterations introduced by the Jin state. The Central Secretariat remained the most important civilian authority, with specialized agencies such as the traditional six ministries of finance, war, officials, rites, punishments, and public works. The Shumiyuan (Military Council) was another institution inherited from previous dynasties. A Yushitai (Censorate) was originally created for remonstrations against the emperor and criticism of policies, but increasingly it became an instrument of the court itself and a tool to eliminate other members of the bureaucracy. In the main the territorial divisions followed Chinese models, but the degree of local independence was much smaller than it had been under the Song; the provincial administrations were actually branches of the Central Secretariat. The structures of the various provincial administrations throughout China were smaller replicas of the Central Secretariat. According to Chinese sources, in 1260–61 the lower echelons in the Central Secretariat were mostly Chinese; the high offices, however, even if they had traditional Chinese names, were reserved for non-Chinese. Surprisingly, Kublai Khan had few Mongols in high administrative positions; apparently suspicious of some of his tribal leaders, he preferred absolute foreigners. The military sphere was affected least by the attempts to achieve a synthesis between Chinese and native ways of life; there the Mongol aristocracy remained supreme.
Too many antagonistic social and ethnic groups existed within the Yuan government to secure a stable rule. The traditional Chinese value system had largely disappeared, and no political ethics had replaced it. While personalized loyalty focused on the ruler, the companionship of nökör relations was not enough to amalgamate the heterogeneous ruling group into a stable body. This unbalanced system of government could function only under a strong ruler; under a weak or incompetent emperor, disintegration was certain, and a decline in efficiency resulted.
The former scholar-officials of China remained to a great extent outside the governmental and administrative structure; only minor positions were open to them. The Mongols never made full use of the administrative potential of the scholar-officials, fearing their competence and abilities. The ruling foreign minority in China was more an elite of the colonialist type than a part of the Chinese social system.
The unwillingness of the Mongols to assimilate with the Chinese is shown by their attempts to cement the inequalities of their rule. After the Song empire had been conquered, the population of China was divided into four classes. The first class was the Mongols themselves, a tiny but privileged minority. Next came the semuren (“persons with special status”), confederates of the Mongols such as Turks or Middle Eastern Muslims. The third group was called the hanren (a term that generally means Chinese but that was used to designate the inhabitants of only northern China); this class included the Chinese and other ethnic groups living in the former Jin state, as well as Xi Xia, Juchen, Khitan, Koreans, Bohai, and Tangut, who could be employed in some functions and who also formed military units under Mongol leadership. The last group was the nanren, or manzi, pejorative terms in Chinese, meaning “southern barbarian,” which designated the former subjects of Song China (about three-fourths of the Chinese empire). The lowest stratum in Yuan China was occupied by enslaved people, whose numbers were quite considerable. Enslavement was hereditary, and only under certain conditions could an enslaved person be freed.
More than four-fifths of the taxpayers came from the nanren group, which was generally barred from holding higher office (only rarely would one of them rise to some prominence). The Mongols and the semuren were tax-exempt and enjoyed the protection of the law to a higher degree than did the hanren and nanren.
The formal distinction between various ethnic groups and the corresponding graded status was not a Mongol invention but a social differentiation inherited from the Jin state. In the same way, many institutions were taken over from the Jin. Law in Yuan China was based partly on the legislation of the Jin and partly on traditional Chinese law; Mongol legal practices and institutions also played a great role, particularly in penal law. The Yuan legal code has been preserved in the dynastic history, Yuanshi, as well as other sources. In addition, many rules, ordinances, and decisions of individual cases are collected in compilations such as Yuandianzhang, which throw much light not only on the legal system but also on social conditions in general.
Mongol and Chinese dualism is also reflected in the problem of administrative documents and languages. Few of the ruling Mongols, even in the later years of the Yuan, knew Chinese, and the number who mastered the Chinese script was still smaller. On the other hand, only a few Chinese bothered to learn the language of their conquerors. Administration and jurisdiction therefore had to rely largely on interpreters and translators. Mongol was the primary language; most decisions, ordinances, and decrees were originally drafted in Mongol, and a Chinese interlinear version was added. This Chinese version was in the colloquial language instead of the formal documentary style, and it followed the Mongol word order so that it must have seemed foreign to the native literati. Many of these Chinese versions have survived in collections such as Yuandianzhang.
Economy of China
The Mongol conquest of the Song empire had, for the first time since the end of the Tang, reunified all of China. Song China had traded with its neighbors, the Liao and the Jin, but trade had been strictly controlled and limited to authorized border markets. The Mongol conquest therefore reintegrated China’s economy. The Mongol administration, in its desire to utilize the resources of the former Song territory, the most prosperous part of China, tried to promote internal trade and aimed at a fuller integration of north and south. The region around the capital was dependent on grain transports from the south, and large quantities of food and textiles were needed to keep the Mongol garrisons. The Grand Canal, which had linked the river systems of the Yangtze, the Huai, and the Huang since the early 7th century, was repaired and extended to Dadu in 1292–93 with the use of corvée (unpaid labor) under the supervision of a distinguished Chinese astronomer and hydraulic engineer, Guo Shoujing—an action entirely within Chinese tradition. This was preceded, however, by another measure in the field of economic communications that was unorthodox in Chinese eyes: about 1280, concessions for grain transport overseas were granted to some private Chinese entrepreneurs from the southeastern coastal region (some Chinese government officials were traditionally antagonistic toward private trade and enterprise, an attitude that the ruling Mongols did not share). These private shipowners transported in their fleets grain from the lower Yangtze region to northern Chinese harbors and from there to the capital. Early in the 14th century, however, these private fleet owners, who had made huge fortunes, were accused of treason and piracy, and the whole action was abolished. The Mongol government never replaced them with government fleets.
Another factor that contributed to the flourishing internal trade in China was standardized currency. The Song and Jin had issued paper money but only in addition to bronze coins, which had remained the basic legal tender. The Yuan government was the first to make paper money the only legal currency throughout the empire (1260). This facilitated financial transactions in the private sector as well as in the state treasuries. As long as the economy as such remained productive, the reliance on paper money as the basic currency had no detrimental effects. Only when the economy began to disintegrate under the last Mongol ruler did the paper money become gradually valueless and inflation set in. One reason for the paper currency might have been that much bronze and copper was used for the Buddhist devotion and its statues, another that metal ores in China proper were insufficient to supply enough coins for some 80 million people.
Religious and intellectual life
The Mongols did not try to impose their own religion (a venertaion of heaven, the forces of nature, and shamanistic practices) on their subjects. This gave comparative freedom to the existing religions in China, including what the Mongol rulers considered to be the sanjiao (“three teachings”): Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Both Daoism and Buddhism retained their distinctive identities and organizations; although they often rivaled each other, they were not mutually exclusive. The neo-Confucianism of the Zhu Xi school enjoyed orthodox status after the 1310s, but adherents of the three teachings interacted philosophically and intellectually in a way that popularized the “amalgamation” of the three schools among the common people and the literati, if not the foreign residents, of China.
Daoism
Under the Jin dynasty several popular Daoist sects had flourished in northern China, and Genghis Khan had apparently been impressed by the Daoist patriarch Changchun. In 1223 Genghis Khan granted to Changchun and his followers full exemption from taxes and other duties demanded by the government; this was the first of a series of edicts granting special privileges to the clergy of the various religions in China.
For some time it seemed as if Chinese Daoism would win favor with the Mongol rulers at the expense of Chinese Buddhism. The Buddhists, however, also profited from the open-minded attitude at the court; they tried to win influence within the imperial family, prompted by the fact that many Buddhist institutions had been occupied by the Daoists, who relied on Mongol favor. Under the grand khan Möngke, several discussions were held between the Daoist and Buddhist clergy (1255–58), ending in a ruling that the former Buddhist temples should be returned to their original purpose. Imperial orders also outlawed some apocryphal Daoist texts, in which Buddhism was presented as a branch of Daoism and the Buddha as a reincarnation of Laozi, the founder of Daoism. But Daoism as such continued to exist under the Yuan, and the fiscal privileges originally granted to the Daoist followers of Changchun were extended on principle to all clergies.
