Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

and the good of the empire itself. Moreover, the Mongols were in some sense the victims of their own adaptability. Regional commanders who had been sent into China, central Asia, Persia, and the Russian steppe had, over the course of a couple of generations, started to feel a stronger degree of affinity for their own patch of the empire than they did for the concept of the Mongol dominions as a whole. Some gained a fondness for urban living rather than life under the felt of the ger. Some adopted local religions, professing Tibetan Buddhism or Sunni Islam, abandoning the shaman-led paganism of the old country. This was, perhaps, only natural: not even the mighty Roman Empire had managed to prevent its regional commanders from going native sooner or later. But in the thirteenth century it meant that the Mongol empire could not stay Mongol forever. The four khanates that emerged out of the crisis years around 1260 were nevertheless massive power blocs by any standard. The first, and notionally the senior, was centered on China and known as the Great Yuan (or Yuan dynasty). It was established by Kublai Khan in 1271 and was—or quickly became—explicitly Chinese in character and culture, embracing Confucianism and the native Chinese aptitude for technological invention.