27.7 The far east: a.d. 1201 to 1300  (Page 2/2)

For awhile Kublai Khan had as his "roving secretary of state" the Catholic, Marco Polo, who was especially impressed with the size of the capital city, Kanbalu (Peking) and with the road system which included the posting stations, each having up to 400 horses. He estimated that the Great Khan kept some 200,000 horses and 10,000 posts on the Silk Road. (Ref. 247 ) The Khan insisted on imperial administration of the iron producing regions of Hopei and Honan but by that time production had sunk from the previous 35,000 tons per annum down to about 8,000 tons and this was exclusively consigned to equipping the Mongol armies with armor and weapons. Iron production was not restored to its former level, in part because of vast disasters to the canal system following an 1194 flooding of the Yellow River, with subsequent establishment of a new path to the sea. The canals were never restored. (Ref. 279 )

At the time of Polo's visit to Hangchow, ships from the Indies brought spices and left with Chinese silks. This was a metropolitan city with Arabs, Persians and Christians and there were hotels, restaurants, taverns and tea houses. Under the Yuan Dynasty, however, the country's productivity fell and commerce was disrupted. In the countryside people ate snakes, grasshoppers and rats. Southwestern China, the present Szechuan and Yunnan, had a different people, cut off from the rest of the nation and there Marco Polo

In spite of many deficiencies, Kublai did promote many public projects, patronized education, letters and arts, carried out many socialistic measures

As in India, metallic guns were in use in China by 1275. (Ref. 213 ) Economic difficulties of this and the next century, inherent in the archaic circulation of heavy caixas of copper or iron and the enlivened external trade along the Silk Route, was partially solved by the use of paper money. This not only facilitated internal payments between provinces but reserved silver for trade with Central Asia and the West. (Ref. 260 )

Japan

About 1200 Zen Buddhism arrived in Japan from China as an antagonist to the ritualism and intellectualism of earlier sects. As the Kamakura Bakufu Dynasty weakened, a rival family had set up the Hojo Regency in 1199, ruling the Shoguns, who in turn "ruled" the emperors for the next 134 years. In 1268, during the supremacy of the first shogun family, the Genji, envoys from Kublai Khan arrived in Japan with a letter ordering that country to submit to Mongol suzerainty or be invaded. The envoys were returned with no answer, so Kublai ordered his vassal kings in Korea to construct a great invasion fleet and for six years both nations prepared for the coming battle. In 1274, 15,000 Mongols and 8,000 Koreans

Only in this century did Japan's population become great enough to allow the threshold to be crossed from epidemic to endemic disease, so that measles and small-pox became "children's diseases". The dynamic growth occurred with the population jumping from 4,410,000 about A.D. 1000 to 9,750,000 by about A.D. 1200. (Ref. 140 )

Korea

After the Mongols had conquered the Chin on the northern Chinese mainland, they reached Korea by 1235 and through intermarriage, the Koryo kings became merely a branch of the Mongol imperial family. This, and the rise of Confucianismn, led to acceptance of Chinese leadership in political and cultural matters. Mongol influence remained until well into the middle of the next century. (Ref. 27 , 64 , 175 )

Southeast asia

In Burma, Ava developed on the upper Irrawaddy, Toungoo on the Sittang and Pegu became the capital of a new Mon kingdom of the south. All of these were Theravada

Buddhist areas and they had stupas, not temples, as places of worship. Ancestors of the modern Thai entered the country from Yunnan and founded dynasties with capitals at Cheingmae and Ayuthia (near modern Bangkok). By the end of the century Buddhist monks from Ceylon had converted the Thai and there resulted Buddhist art and ceramics, with a marked preference for a green glaze, imitating the famous Chinese celadon. (Ref. 19 )

We noted in the last chapter that the Chams had taken over Angkor, but Jayavarman VII, although already in his 50s, launched a merciless counter-attack and drove them out, allowing him then to continue to build Angkor's royal city complex. He rebuilt Angkor Thom as his own royal capital and added 10 miles to the original walls of the city as well as constructing many monuments and temples in all the cities of his empire. He also ordered 102 hospitals and 121 hostelries built along the hundreds of miles of highways. Jayavarman VII died about 1219 and from then on no Khmer king undertook such projects and the dynasty actually went into decline. Many social and economic factors contributed to this weakness, including the gradual migration of the Thais and Vietnamese southward out of the Khmer sphere of influence. The capital city, however, maintained its magnificence. (Ref. 176 ) Phnom Penh was developed on the Mekong in this century. After Mongol attacks, Burma, Siam, Annan and Champa all accepted vassal status to the Yuan Dynasty.

One Mongol expedition, using a rebuilt navy, even hit Java in 1292 and 1293, but no settlements were made and they did not establish enduring control over the island. They did help a son-in-law of a recently killed king of the Srivijaya Dynasty put down the rebel murderers, but then the Mongols themselves were trapped and the son-in-law, Vijaya, started a new dynasty with a capital at Majapahit. This Hindu empire ruled a large part of present day Indonesia from 1291 to 1513, although Islam was already being brought to Sumatra by Arab traders. (Ref. 101 , 8 , 175 , 279 )

The use of metallic guns drifted into southeast Asia at the end of the century from India and China, so that it is possible that Philippinos saw gun-fire before Frenchmen did. (Ref. 213 )

Forward to The Far East: A.D. 1301 to 1400

Choose different region

• Intro to Era
• Africa
• America
• Central and Northern Asia
• Europe
• The Indian Subcontinent
• The Near East
• Pacific