A long-running and very violent insurrection known as the Red Turban uprisings, which took place between 1351 and 1367, finally destroyed the Yuan dynasty as a regional force. In 1368 a new dynasty—the Ming—came to power, and the survivors from among the Yuan fled back to the Mongol steppe, where a small and unremarkable rump state known as the Northern Yuan endured until the seventeenth century. And the
