12. Life under the rule of Khubilai Khan

Every “she” consisted of 50 families, they were encouraged to self-support through the means of planting trees, irrigation and flood control, to fill lakes and rivers with fish and to promote the production of silk. They should supervise their own members and reward those that were diligent and punish those who were lazy. The collective also helped with the promoting of better agricultural techniques and a fundamental ability in reading and writing.

Even if many of Khubilai’s people wanted to establish the nomadic life that they were used to inside the city walls, Khubilai put forward a decree that would stop the livestock of the nomads to roam freely over cultivated land. He also filled great granaries in the event of future famine disasters, especially in the northern part of China where the land had been devastated by the constant wars. The capitol had 58 granaries, which together could hold about 9 million tons of grain. Marco Polo tells us that Khubilai gave food to 30,000 poor people everyday in his capitol.

The main roads were also expanded during the days of Khubilai Khan, avenues were planted on both sides of the road to give shade during the summer and also served as guidance marks during the winter. He also improved the yam (postal system), at first its main purpose was to forward official news and reports. Under good circumstances the couriers could ride about 400 kilometers per day, it was a remarkably efficient postal system for the thirteenth century or any other century at all. They also could follow as escorts, transport goods or also to gather information from all the corners of the empire.

The couriers had a form of identification that was called a “paiza”, these were about 50 centimeters long and usually made of wood, even if a paiza that represented someone of high rank could be made of silver or even gold. They were also beautifully decorated and ornaments of tigers or falcons - which also told the rank of the holder. There are reports about couriers that covered incredible distances. At one occasion when a message was sent from Karakorum to Russia, the couriers covered a distance of 1,600 kilometers per month. These express riders galloped day and night from one position to another, and had a ring of bells that signaled their arrival. The responsible supervisor could then hear the approaching rider and had the time to put out fresh and saddled horses for the courier.

Soon the merchants also began to use the yam as well. Magnificent post stations in junction with inns were constructed with some ten kilometers in between, between these a large number of smaller more modest stations serviced with food and lodging and fresh horses. At the end of Khubilai’s era as a ruler the imperial postal service had access to over 1,400 postal stations, 50,000 horses, 8,400 oxen, 6,700 mules, 4,000 wagons, 6,000 boats, 200 dogs, 1,150 sheep, 10,000 buildings and an unknown number of employees.

Khubilai also organized a new tax system, the people would no longer pay to local tax collectors but needed only to pay once a year to the central government. The government then paid money to the nobles. He also demanded a lot of forced labor, especially for the construction of the Grand Canal that would be linked to the capitol, but also for the construction of the postal system and the building of palaces and temples. He also demanded that the people not only would supply him with labor but also with horses and supplies. At the same time he also decreed to his supervisors that they were not allowed to be oppressive. He never used the forced labor clause to get the peasants of their land so that the land could become pastureland instead.

In comparison with earlier conquerors, the Mongolians in China were a rather large group, perhaps a million, but compared to the total population of China (approximately at this time 45-50 millions), they were just a small minority. To secure their position of power a “nationality law” was put in force. The population was divided into four groups: 1. Mongolians, 2. Central Asian allies (Naimans, Keraits, Uighurs, Tanguts and other Turkish people), 3. North Chinese and 4. South Chinese. All higher military and civilian offices were reserved in principally to Mongolians, and the large number was billeted in military garrisons around the country. Officials were also recruited from the second group, but their main importance was in the economical privileges.

The main part of Chinas trade came to be dominated by Uighurs and Persian-Turkish merchants from West Turkmenistan. The Chinese from the south was a pariah class, with no rights whatsoever. The Chinese landlords lost their traditional political rights, but by building up a close collaboration with the ruling groups they still managed to hold their economical rank as landowners.

The peasantries position worsened severely through heavier taxes and through the forced labors. The support of the great army and the war campaigns against Khaidu and also against Japan and Indochina consumed enormous sums as well as salaries and pensions to the greatly bulging bureaucracy, to the court and to clients. The source of revenue began to gradually lessen since Mongolian and other non-Chinese landowners got exemption from taxes. Another reason was also that the land that belonged to the temples and monasteries increased in proportion.

Several Mongolians changed their religion to Buddhism, and individuals and landowners favored in newly converted zeal temples and monasteries with great donations of land, which were exempted from tax by the state. Further, great areas of cultivated lands were laid to waste in northern China because of the great levies of forced labor. The consequences of all this were of course that more and more of the increased tax burden came to depend upon a lesser basis of peasants.

The grand constructions (palaces, temples) both in the capitol of Beijing and on other places came to with help of forced labor, mostly peasants that for a longer or shorter time were forced to leave their land. An even greater extent had the forced labor on the ways of communication, which under the Mongolian era got to an extent never suspected. The network of roads were tied together with Central- and West Asia to accommodate the needs of commerce, the network of waterways were heavily extended. The later came from among other things that the city of millions, Beijing, must be supported by the great centers of productions in the middle and southern parts of China. Huang Ho and Yangtze were tied together with large navigable canals and the Grand Canal was completed all the way to Beijing.

The trade was an object for the later Mongolian rulers’ great care and prospered like never before, not only in China but also between this country and Central- Western Asia. Hangzhou (south of Shanghai) and Ts’üan-cho (straight across Taiwan) was the large ports for the traffic to India and the islands of Indonesia. The trade by land was promoted by the fact that almost all of Asia enjoyed a long period of peace, “Pax Mongolica” (apart from the dynastical feuds, which in this matter was less important).

“Pax Mongolica was a reality that made it possible for people to travel fairly safe from Crimea to Korea, that allowed ideas and inventions as well as merchandise to be moved from one part of the known world to the other. Venetian merchants in Beijing, Mongolian emissaries in Bordeaux and Northampton, Genoese consuls in Tabriz, French craftsmen in Karakorum, Uighur and Chinese subjects in French art of painting, Arabian financial officials in China and Mongolian law in Egypt are proof of that the world indeed became smaller in the thirteenth century. In this way Marco Polo’s famous book was more than a catalog over rare and wondrous things: it was the sign of a new era. The contacts between east and west contributed surely to expand the horizons of the later medieval and renaissance Europe, and the Portuguese and Spanish voyages in the 15^th and 16^th centuries was an immediate cause of the knowledge that Marco Polo and other travelers during the Mongolian era had through the distribution of their publications about the Middle East.” (G. Hambly, 1969, taken from a Swedish encyclopedia.)

The mercantile prosperity contributed with the exception of trading goods also an intensified exchange of cultural impulses, for example between China and the Iranian area, that during the 13^th and 14^th centuries were strongly influenced by the Chinese civilization. In China Islam became a stronger factor than before, especially in the southern ports of China. Since almost solely non-Chinese merchants handled the trade, this signified that they brought the profits with them to their home countries.

The consequence of this “flight of capital” became a decreased supply of precious metals, which the state already under Khubilai tried to rectify by the transition to paper money. At first the issue of bank notes was of moderate proportions, but under the pressure of the financial demands the issues increased strongly, especially for the successor of Khubilai. The state could not longer cash in the notes at the nominal value and the confidence in them decreased. The result was a malign inflation that inflicted both the taxpaying peasants and the commerce.

The numbers of population can give one an idea of how much the Mongolian conquest had cost. In 1290 CE, Khubilai Khan ruled over in all 59 million Chinese taxpayers, while the Song dynasty, which was just a part of his domain, had over 100 million inhabitants. That the foreign power not could have been very popular is obvious, and unrests and violent acts occurred occasionally; thus the Muslim finance minister Ahmad was murdered in the imperial palace in 1282 CE, by a patriotic subject.

On the whole the Chinese historians are nonetheless rather acknowledgeable towards the Mongolian conqueror, because he reunited China and was a brilliant potentate whom was as good as any of his subjects when it came to humanity or efficiency.