Mongol Expansion in China

The Mongols took over the Chinese in the summer of 1214 A.D., passing the Great Wall of China and defeating the Chin Dynasty. Overall, the Mongol conquest had a negative effect on China. Three aspects of China were affected by this invasion; culture, economy, and foreign relations, and can be proven through modern day China’s economic and cultural dysfunction.

The greatest reason for the negative impact of the Yuan Dynasty on China was the simple fact that the Mongols were so violent and aggressive that they would wipe out an entire city, leaving no trace of life. The Mongols left a scar on Chinese culture, and did so through slaughtering people for fun and making a game out killing anyone who stood in the path of the Mongols. The Mongols used brutal methods to conquer and control nations. One historian, John Carpini, wrote about some of the strategies use by the Mongols to completely eradicate any nation that resisted Mongol rule.

He writes: “If a place is well fortified they surround it and securely hedge it in so that no one can get in or out, and they fight fiercely with machines and arrows and do not stop the attack by day nor night, so that those in the fort can not rest. The Mongols do rest however, because they divide up their battalions and one follows the other in fighting so they are no tired at all. If they cannot take the place that way, they throw Greek fire (incendiary material).

In fact, they sometimes take the grease of the men they kill and throw it liquefied onto the houses, and wherever the grease catches fire it burns as though it cannot be extinguished. Yet it may be put out, they say, by pouring wine or beer over it, and if it falls onto flesh it may be extinguished by rubbing it with the palm of the hand. If this too fails the Mongols resort to burrowing tunnels under the walls thus gaining entry. Through all of this they continually ask their opponent to surrender.

In their wars they kill whomever they capture, unless by chance they decide to keep them as slaves. They assign those to be killed to captains of hundreds so they may be killed by them with battle axes; these captains then divide the captives as they decide and give ten or more or less to a servant to be killed”. The Mongols were quick to resort to violent methods and used whatever it took to conquer the city they had set their sights on. During the Mongols conquest of China, the Mongol leader, Genghis Khan, used many deceitful methods to overtake the Chin army.

The greatest example of this is shown when the Mongols send the emperor a letter saying, “Your districts and counties in Shandong and Hebei are now in my possession, leaving you with only Henan. Heaven has so weakened you that, if I was also now to attack you in your distress, what would Heaven think of me? I therefore intend to turn back with my army. Might you not provide some supplies for my troops, thus lessening the resentment of my generals?”.

The emperor was made to believe that he could rid the country of the Mongols by sending them many lavish gifts (his daughter, one thousand boy and girl slaves, three thousand horses, and untold quantities of gold, silver, silk, and brocades), but all this letter proved to be was a call for a short intermission for the Mongols to regroup and come back stronger to overtake China’s cultural and political capital. The Mongols destroyed Chinese cultures through violence and sheer disregard for anyone other than themselves.

As the Yuan Dynasty took control the Chinese suffered economically from the destroying of entire cities by the Mongols and the high taxes forced on the Chinese by the Mongol Empire. The destroying of cities was the greatest reason for China’s economic failure. When a city was destroyed it affected trade and decreased the overall productivity of China as a whole. Many cities are strategically placed and supported ancient trade routs throughout China.

As these cities fell so did the trade routs. The Mongols eventually caused their own fall through their reckless demolition of cities and burning of farms which supported the country through the products produced and the trade routs supported. The wake of destruction was described by a Persian historian, Nasir al-Din Juzjani: When a few years later Baha ad-Din, leader of a mission from Sultan Muhammad of Khwarizm, approached the capital he saw a white hill and in answer to is query was told by the guide that it consisted of the bones of the massacred inhabitants.

At another place the earth was, for a long stretch of the road, greasy from human fat and the air was so polluted that several members of the mission became ill and some died. This was the place, they were told, were on the day the city was stormed sixty thousand virgins threw themselves to death from the fortifications in order to escape capture by the Mongols.” By doing this the Mongols were unknowingly shooting themselves and China in the foot by taking away the supporting cities to the nation that they had conquered. The high taxes established by the Mongols also greatly contributed to China’s economic failure.

The Mongols controlled the land they conquered through high taxes since the Mongols were greatly out numbered by their subjects, a million to one (Weatherford 253). These taxes were so high that it was barely possible for the majority of all the citizens to pay the minimum amount. Since the citizens could not pay the government could not pay and slowly built up debts costing the nation a fortune. Due to the Mongols recklessness and lack of consideration towards the future economic state of China, and all the nations Mongolia ruled for that matter, economic failure was an obvious result.

As a final result of the Mongol occupancy, China cut off all foreign relations with the rest of the world setting it behind in technological and economical developments. When the Ming Dynasty finally regained control of China around 1340, the Chinese were terrified of being concurred again after having lived under Mongol rule for almost one hundred years. The Chinese were left in a state of disaster with much of their culture, cities, and money gone.

For five hundred more years China would have no further contact with the rest of the world save for close neighboring countries due to this. China’s decision to do this was harmful to an already damaged economy. When China emerged from its state of seclusion it had a poor economy and a severe lack of modern technology.

The Mongols were a ruthless nation of barbaric nomads that came into China uninvited, destroyed its culture, economy, and its foreign relations. China lost ancient traditions, cities, money, and its will to develop as country. Once a great empire, China was reduced to a small un-modernized country left behind in the development of the rest of the world.