The Last Emperor

Welcome to the History of the Mongols episode 24 The Last Emperor.

so here we are after almost two hundred years of history we reach the end not the end of mongol influence in eurasia nor the end of the states that emerged from genghis khan's conquests the golden hoard would last another one hundred years but the end of the mongol empire the fall of the yuan dynasty in would leave the weakened golden horde as the only surviving carnate and therefore this date usually marks the end of the empire that began with jenghis's unification of the steppe tribes

as we'll see the mongol royal house in china would actually retreat to govern their old lands in mongolia a symbolic moment if ever there was one the man who oversaw the final disintegration of the yuan dynasty the last emperor was togon

togon was the son of kasala who you may remember was briefly great khan in thirteen twenty nine before almost certainly being assassinated by his brother young togon temur had been exiled at the age of ten to an island off the coast of korea and from there to quang tsi province in southern china where he spent a year receiving tuition from a buddhist monk

after his uncle tugh's death togon was bypassed for the throne in favor of his half-brother six-year-old rinshabal rinshabal though died after six months in december thirteen thirty two and there followed a seven-month hiatus while the two most powerful warlords el temur and bayan tried to manoeuvre their favoured candidates on to the throne el temur and his party backed tug's heir the young prince el tegus whereas the faction led by the powerful merkit warlord bayan pushed for tugon's candidacy

after months of manoeuvring bayan's faction succeeded and togon temur was enthroned on the nineteenth of july thirteen thirty three as the fifteenth

of the mongol empire at first glance his reign you might think was a model of stability he ruled for almost forty years from thirteen thirty three to thirteen seventy which was certainly a change after the succession of short-lived rulers who preceded him but as they say appearances can be deceptive and although he remained the great kaan and emperor of the yuan dynasty his actual control over the domains in china eroded with every passing year

he is similar in some ways to the roman emperor honorius who ruled for twenty-eight years in the early fifth century one of the longest reigns of any roman emperor but during that time the empire he controlled disintegrated now we won't go into detail about the difficulties that faced trogon when he took office we've covered those in previous episode

particularly cracks in the empire but to briefly summarize the last twenty years had seriously eroded the political authority of the dynasty A succession of short-lived rulers had followed the death of Temur Khan.

this resulted in constant shifts in policy disputes amongst the various powerful factions in the yuan elite and a growing distance from the chinese population as we have seen a succession of warlords from outside the direct imperial dynasty began to enjoy increasing influence the political instability though was secondary to the economic issues which had beset china

the need to fund a large standing army a problem since the days of kublai had created budget deficits and the solution of printing additional paper money resulted in inevitable inflation and currency devaluation the challenge of creating a stable paper currency so important to international trade had bedevilled successive yuan emperors so the

task of pulling things together was by no means an easy one i mentioned the rising power of the warlords from outside the imperial family and indeed in the early years of his reign togon's administration was dominated by the powerful merkit warlord bayan bayan had been an important figure in yuan politics for many years

he had served in administrative posts dating back to kulug's reign in the thirteen tens and had remained a significant figure even when he was not in favour in thirteen thirty two he found himself as king-maker opposed to the other powerful warlord of the era his former ally the kipchak el temur bayan supported togon as his candidate for great

and was instrumental in placing his nominee on the throne el temur died in thirteen thirty three and bayan made sure to consolidate his power by pursuing and executing El Temur's sons in 1335. Bayan is not kindly treated by the sources, who regard him as a reactionary with a cruel streak. We should always take this assessment with a pinch of salt, because the Chinese chronicles are never fans of the Yuan advisers who came from outside the Chinese elite.

however bayan was certainly a mongol traditionalist who tried to reduce the chinese influence in the administration and this alone would have been enough to get the thumbs down from the chroniclers essentially his idea was to roll back the administration to the days of kublai when the empire was at its height even going so far as to change the title of thogon's reign to that which kublai had used

during his reign of course the situation in thirteen thirty two was not the same as it had been in twelve sixty four or even twelve ninety four but bian was determined that the solution to the many problems facing china was to reset the dynasty some parts of his reform package were eminently sensible

reducing palace expenditures and the overall size of the bureaucracy were both designed to help the financial problems facing the yuan he also continued the yuan policy of providing relief to areas hit by famine or natural disaster however this was only one part of his vision bayan also wanted to reimpose a version of kublai's governmental system that marginalised the chinese

in both the military and civilian spheres reversing fifty years of change was always going to be difficult and frankly the dynasty in its current state could ill afford a measure that was guaranteed to alienate the ethnic chinese bayan's measures included edicts requesting all chinese be disarmed and their horses confiscated he also attempted to reserve key posts in the administration for mongols or other foreigners

even more controversial was his decision in thirteen thirty five to cancel the imperial examination system although this measure was aimed at the chinese population it actually affected all major ethnic groups in thirteen thirty five fifty per cent of all positions in the service had actually been allotted for mongols and other foreigners so it hit their prospects for promotion as well as those of the Chinese.

to compound the unpopularity of his reforms bayanne seems to have believed that he could play the role of the conquering warlord and began to gather great personal wealth and to take control of a range of offices that helped centralise power in his own hands in thirteen thirty nine by an's anti-chinese sentiments became more extreme and a massacre of officials in hunan province

convinced bayan that there was a wide-ranging chinese conspiracy against the yuan and he began a purge of chinese officials from the government his success though was short-lived as togon he came to disapprove of bayan's autocratic rule and sought to assert his own authority in thirteen forty the now twenty-year-old togon allied with bayan's nephew who was opposed to his uncle and banished bayan in a coup bayan died later in thirteen forty while in exile in southern china

tagon also took the opportunity created by bayan's fall to reorganize the succession he removed eltegus who had been appointed crown prince when tagon had come to the throne and instead appointed his own son with his korean wife ji as his heir tokto who now took on the role of chancellor vacated by bayan proved an energetic and innovative minister and it would certainly be entirely wrong to suggest that the yuan simply stood by while their dynasty collapsed togto would be a key figure

in government between thirteen forty and thirteen fifty five during which time he held office twice he was a younger man than bian of the same generation as togon and far more willing to adapt to the realities of the situation tugto quickly reversed the most unpopular of bayan's changes cancelling the purges opening up senior roles to the ethnic chinese and restoring the civil service exams the essence of both his periods in government was trying to strengthen the central administration

his first ministry lasted until thirteen forty four when tughon dismissed his chief minister after a series of rebellions broke out he returned to power five years later and still tried his best to save the disintegrating dynasty he issued a new paper currency in thirteen fifty but as we've seen many times paper money that was not backed by silver quickly lost its value

and by thirteen fifty six paper currency had become so worthless it largely passed out of circulation altogether togto though was able to use the notes to pay for the last major engineering project of the yuan era in the thirteen thirties and thirteen forties the yellow river the great artery that ran through china flooded regularly and catastrophically it goes without saying that this was a huge problem the floods devastated the fertile agricultural land that fed so much of central china

more than this the yellow river was an important link in the transport network that fed goods across china and ultimately on to central asia and beyond khan had made control of the yellow river one of his first priorities recognizing its importance to controlling china togto attempted to solve issue of flooding permanently by rechanneling the river along its lower course so that it would again flow into the sea south of shandong in may thirteen fifty one

a hundred and seventy thousand troops and laborers began work on the project which was completed and inaugurated barely six months later in december of the same year

in the five years that togto was out of office an administration led by burke buya attempted a more devolved approach to dealing with chinese problems burke a provincial official by background sent out twelve investigation teams across the country to correct abuses and attempt to engage local people in tackling the disturbances and natural disasters

that were an increasing problem during the thirteen forties none of these approaches although they were all well-intentioned was able to stem the tide of problems one of the things that differentiates the fall of the yuan from the problems encountered in the other carnates is that the yuan faced increasing civil unrest that eventually coalesced into a rebellion

that forced them out of china completely why the yuan dynasty collapsed is a genuinely difficult question to answer this is one of those times where the macro and the micro come together to create the circumstances for widespread rebellion we've talked a lot about the big picture factors plagues famine and the inevitable agricultural and economic decline that was a consequence of this afflicted china as much as it affected europe and the middle east what is much less clear

is how these factors played out at a local level what provoked rebellion and resistance was it opposition to the foreign yuan regime a response to the economic hardship or just opportunistic local commanders and brigands trying to generate power and wealth amongst the chaos sadly there is a dearth of information about the true situation on the ground

so we don't really know exactly how and why the trouble spread although it's very clear that it was concentrated in the south initially the lands that had been the heartland of the sung dynasty in the thirteen thirties the first of three major epidemics documented during togon's reign struck yunnan province we don't know definitively whether this was plague

although this is the most likely explanation the second great epidemic in the mid thirteen forties was associated with a period when the yellow river flooded catastrophically in fact the weather throughout the fourteenth century was unusually bad with thirty-six years having unusually severe winters

the result was a succession of famines that are reported in almost every year of togon's reign and as the population experienced hardships governmental control was starting to break down creating conditions that were ideal for rebellion now if you read the histories you'll often get the impression that the yuan were brought down by the red turban rebellion with the future ming emperor hong wu playing a leading role this though doesn't really capture the overall breakdown of order across china

the red turbans were just one of the groups who took advantage of the situation to fight against the yuan and of course they were the most successful rebellions had occurred at various times dating back to the later period of kublai's reign but by the thirteen forties they had become an epidemic chancellor managed to pull together a force to defend territory during his second ministry this was cobbled together from the mongol forces still loyal to the yuan supplemented by local militias

and as late as thirteen fifty two he led a successful expedition against rebels in the northern province of jiang shu but it was simply not enough commanders across the country often abandoned their loyalty to the central administration and in effect became independent warlords rebel armies and bandits also operated in many areas

and if that wasn't enough pirates disrupted the crucial maritime grain supplies to the north these had already begun to decline from a peak of three point three four million bushels in thirteen twenty nine to two point six million in thirteen forty two but from thirteen forty eight they were at the mercy of pirates whom the authorities could not defeat

togto actually explored a radical solution to this particular problem and brought several thousand rice farmers from the south to develop rice farms in the north which had no tradition of cultivation at least three of these experiments were attempted including one as far north as manchuria but togto was dismissed before they could take root he was actually removed from office

while he was in the process of commanding another major military operation against one of the rebel armies along the yellow river accounts suggest that togon's decision to remove his chancellor was a particular misjudgment as togto actually had the upper hand and was besieging the rebel army when news of his dismissal occurred

it's doubtful whether he could have made any real difference in the fate of the yuan but it is true that once tog to was forced out of power in thirteen fifty five things went downhill rapidly one figure curiously absent from the events engulfing the yuan is the emperor togon himself by thirteen fifty five he would have been thirty-four or thirty-five years old a mature man

but there is barely a mention of his involvement in the fall of the dynasty most sources suggest that he withdrew into a state of virtual retirement surrounded by dancers and musicians rather than concentrate on the business of state he involved himself in vanity projects like commissioning the construction of a huge pleasure boat of his own design and designing an elaborate type of water clock

a more charitable reading might suggest that he appointed competent ministers like togto and gave them the leeway to follow their policies but the utterly limp response of the yuan to the growing rebellions after togtow's dismissal suggests that the first explanation is nearer the truth it says something that togon remains a peripheral figure

to the collapse of the dynasty he actually ruled so the uprising against the yuan was not initially an organized movement but from this chaos one group in particular emerged as the opposition yuan rule in china the red turbans before we talk a little bit about their role in the downfall of the yuan we should first clear up the name here at least there is very little mystery

the supporters of the red turbans wore red handkerchiefs around their heads or carried red banners as a sign of their support for the movement exactly what the red turbans believed is harder to pin down the movement is tied quite closely to a radical religious and political movement known as the white lotus this apparently first appeared during the yuan period and mixed elements of buddhist philosophy with the old persian religion manichaeism

perhaps more important than the religious elements of the society it encouraged practices like the free association of men and women that were frowned upon and it conducted its ceremonies largely in secret as a result it was outlawed by the yuan but the prescribed secret meetings formed an ideal focal point for rebellion

in the thirteen forties and thirteen fifties many of the early red turban leaders were followers of the white lotus society but the exact relationship between the two is not clear to this day

subsequent dynasties though clearly saw the white lotus as a subversive threat because it remained banned until the twentieth century the red turbans probably originated in the but it really took shape as a movement in the early thirteen fifties particularly in guang jo when a buddhist monk zu yanzang took on the idea of rebellion and quickly gathered significant support across the region within a few years the red turbans were a national force already taking territory from the beleaguered yuan

one of the key supporters of the movement was the man who would ultimately succeed togon as the ruler of china he would be known as the hong wu emperor founder of the ming dynasty and a hugely important figure in chinese history but in the early thirteen fifties he was simply tzu the future emperor was born in thirteen twenty eight a tzu to a desperately poor peasant family north of nanjing in the plain of the hui river this land although fertile was prone to flooding and when he was sixteen the

and yellow rivers flooded disastrously this led to a series of epidemics probably plague which killed zewe's parents and left him a penniless orphan to survive he became a monk at the local huang chui temple not an uncommon choice for impoverished young men like ziu however this did not last as he was forced to leave due to the monastery's lack of funds and spent the next few years as little more than a common beggar eking out a living in all he spent three years travelling in this way

before he was able to return to the relative safety and security of the monastery under the tutelage of the monks he learnt to read and write and he remained there until he was twenty-four years old it was the destruction of his monastery by yuan force that encouraged ziu to take up armed opposition to the ruling dynasty he rose rapidly in a local rebel army led by

until he was effective second in command eventually he took the decision to attach his force to the rapidly expanding red turban movement in thirteen fifty six commanded the force that captured the key city of nanjing which became his personal base and would be the capital of his new dynasty

it is a mark of how much central authority had collapsed that the yuan were unwilling or more likely unable to make any attempt to turn back the rebel armies by thirteen fifty eight most of south and central china had fallen to the rebels without a major battle or even much resistance

amazingly the key battle in hong wu's rise to power was not a cataclysmic conflict against the yuan but instead a fight with another faction within the red turbans ziu's faction now known as the ming squared off against the larger armies of another leader chen yu lang this conflict lasted almost three years before zhu's ming navy was able to rout chn's larger fleet in a key battle on the vast inland lake

now in control of most of southern china ziu was unstoppable in thirteen sixty seven he won control of the yangtze delta and the land either side of the great river giving his forces control over the most important artery of communication in china the other former mongol generals and rebel warlords realized the inevitable

and often switched their allegiance to the new rising power and on the twentieth of january thirteen sixty eight ze felt himself confident enough to be proclaimed emperor of the new ming dynasty in nanjing and adopted the name hong wu later in

the armies of the new ming emperor headed north into the territory still under yuan control togon khan chose not to fight something that would no doubt have disgusted his most famous ancestor jenghis instead the remnants of the yuan administration including the great khan himself abandoned

the capital kublai had built in september thirteen sixty eight and simply retreated to mongolia without a fight the yuan dynasty and with it the mongol empire was finished to himself continued to rule until may thirteen seventy when he died aged forty-nine or fifty he was the fifteenth and last of the mongol empire and the eleventh and final emperor of the yuan dynasty his successors would still continue to claim their authority over china but there was no hope of a return for the yuan

by thirteen eighty two ming forces had completed the final conquest of all lands under yuan control and their new dynasty was secure they would rule until sixteen forty four

so what was the legacy of the dynasty founded by kublai it's fair to say that the yuan period sandwiched between two of china's most famous and culturally rich dynasties the sung and the ming tends to get rather short shrift this is extremely unfair in one hundred years of rule the yuan left an important mark on china that marked a transition from the medieval to the early modern period

one of the key elements was the unification of china kublai as i mentioned was the first foreigner to rule all china but the unification of the country under one administration outlived the end of the dynasty the ming and kuing dynasties that succeeded the yuan ruled over a unified state well into the modern age of course there were rebellions loss of territories during this long period

but the days of competing dynasties in north and south were gone allied to this the yuan period created new centers of power in china kanbalik kublai's new capital formed the basis for modern beijing the port cities of fudan and guangzhou took on new importance as international trading posts during his reign secondly

The Yuan period helped internationalise China. We've already talked about the role that the Yuan played in encouraging international trade. Chinese goods found new markets in Russia, the Middle East and Europe. and as well as goods marco polo's account of his travels in china helped to popularise the idea of the orient in europe and to inspire future travellers

to try and gain access to the riches he described. Ironically, in the immediate aftermath of the Yuan's fall, the new Ming emperor Hongwu chose to break with their policies of international trade, he wanted a return to traditional confucian principles and government by the han chinese so international trade led by foreign merchants was suddenly discouraged other than a famous series of voyages led by the explorer zeng hui china took a more inward-looking approach

this though did not discourage europeans from searching for a sea route to the orient the most immediate result of these voyages was of course the european discovery of the americas but by the mid sixteenth century portugal had established a chinese trading base in macao and a flood of chinese goods began to enter europe we also talked about yuan imperialism in southeast asia

in largely negative terms the costly military expeditions in vietnam and burma did not lead to conquest and they certainly drained the resources available to kublai and his successors however as many of these areas chose to become vassals of the yuan they did serve to open up new markets for chinese goods pottery always an immensely popular export is a good illustration of this

vietnam indonesia and other states in the region all imported chinese ceramics during the yuan period and each developed their own unique relationship to these goods

Vietnam, for example, developed their own domestic production, mirroring Chinese styles. Harder to fully estimate, but probably more significant, were the demographic changes that occurred during the century of yuan rule as outsiders they tended to encourage other ethnic groups or religions that had previously been marginal in china there was a significant influx of moslems to northern china particularly to yunnan province buddhism also flourished under the patronage of kublai and his successors

and even christianity began to find a firm foothold in china envoys from the papacy traveled to the mongol capital kanbalik and a number of pilgrims made the journey from china to the west by the early fourteenth century this interchange had grown to such a point that the italian john of monte corvino was appointed archbishop of peking

in thirteen o eight with other franciscans taking on a similar role in zayton the mongols in general supported successive popes in building a network of catholic churches across their empire including in yuan china and after the death of john of monte corvino in thirteen twenty eight to actually issued envoys to the pope in thirteen thirty six

requesting a new spiritual guide and the pope obliged sending a mission back to china in thirteen thirty eight that remained at the yuan court for several years so china in thirteen sixty eight was a very different place from the divided country it had been in twelve o six when genghis khan had first begun the conquest of the western

we should not forget that those initial conquests had had devastating consequences for the population of northern china and i don't want to give the impression that the arrival of the mongols was an entirely positive experience for the region but i hope over the last twenty-odd episodes i have shown that it was not a disaster either it's safe to say that early modern china which was for perhaps two hundred years the pre-eminent world economic power

would not have developed as it did without the influence of the yuan with the retreat of the yuan emperor to mongolia the once great mongol empire was reduced to an uncertain hold over the lands of the golden horde and the territory of their homeland in mongolia itself mongol power itself was not dead and various mongol tribal leaders

including direct descendants of jenghis would rule at various times in central asia over the next three hundred or so years but the imperial project undertaken by jenghis definitively died in thirteen sixty eight he had wanted to create a universal empire with all the known world under the rule of a great khan many rulers have dreamed the same dream

but none have come closer to success than jenghis and the mongols in twelve seventy eight his descendants did rule over the vast majority of eurasia if we take into account vassal states the only areas not under mongol control were western europe the western parts of the middle east the indian subcontinent and japan and all of these areas felt the fear of mongol invasion

at times in the thirteenth century so while the project failed it left an indelible mark on huge areas of eurasia that helped shape the modern world next week before we leave the mongol empire behind we'll look at the legacy of the mongol invasion started by jenghis and assess their place in history so join me one last time as we say good-bye to the largest land empire in history.