The Mongol Conquest & the Yuan Dynasty

The Song dynasty's own genuine technological and economic achievements, covered in Chapter 6, did not protect it from a real, decades-long military campaign — the Mongol conquest, which brought all of China under foreign rule for the first time in this course's own story.

Genghis Khan & the Conquest of the North

Genghis Khan's real campaign against the Jin dynasty, which then ruled northern China, began in 1211. A roughly 90,000-strong Mongol cavalry force bypassed the Great Wall and split into separate armies, and by 1214 the Mongols had turned their attention to the Jin capital, Zhongdu — modern-day Beijing — capturing and sacking it in 1215, forcing the Jin emperor to abandon the north and relocate his own court southward. The war against the Jin dragged on for over two decades: Kaifeng fell in 1233, and the Jin dynasty's own final collapse came at the 1234 siege of Caizhou, under the command of Genghis Khan's own successor, Ögedei Khan (Genghis Khan himself had died in 1227).

Kublai Khan & the Fall of Song China

The conquest of the remaining Southern Song territory took decades longer, carried out under Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan and, earlier, Ögedei Khan — a real campaign lasting from 1235 to 1279. Kublai captured the crucial stronghold of Xiangyang in 1273, opening the rest of southern China to Mongol advance, and in 1271 had already formally proclaimed the founding of the Yuan dynasty, declaring himself Emperor of China even before the conquest was complete. The Southern Song's own final resistance ended at the naval Battle of Yamen in 1279, and Kublai Khan became the first non-Han ruler in Chinese history to govern the whole of China.

Ruling a Conquered China

The Yuan dynasty's own rule brought China formally into the vastly larger Mongol Empire, connecting it — at least for a time — to Mongol-controlled territories stretching across much of Eurasia, a real, unprecedented degree of Eurasian political and trade connectivity. Kublai Khan governed from a new capital, Khanbaliq (also built at the site of modern Beijing), and real, documented Mongol administrative practice deliberately maintained a distinct, stratified social hierarchy separating Mongols, other non-Han foreigners, and the native Han Chinese population.

Looking Ahead

Chapter 8 covers the Ming dynasty's own restoration of native Chinese rule following the Yuan's eventual collapse, and the real, remarkable early-1400s treasure-fleet voyages of Zheng He — expeditions that predated European oceanic exploration and were then, just as deliberately, brought to an end.

Reflect