Kublai Khans Rise and Fall - Essay Example

?One of the most accomplished and intriguing rulers in history and the conqueror who established one of history’s largest empires, Kublai Khan is responsible for the unification of China through a rapid expansion across the Asian continent in what has come to be known as the Mongol Empire. The Grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai founded the Yuan Dynasty in China and acted as First Emperor of the united lands. He continued in the expansionary path of his predecessors and successfully converted conquered lands into a unified China that held more military strength and stability than virtually any empire in history. As Emperor, Khan initiated a symbiotic relationship between the Chinese and the Mongols, promoting a nation of tolerance and cross-cultural interaction that allowed for a flourishing of diverse arts as well as militaristic might. He exercised both military and political savvy in his actions, which contributed to a successful unification of the two primary peoples of his empire. Kublai’s power, military and political success attests to his military intelligence and daring. He was a strong man who understood strategy and possessed the ability to command respect and obedience from his subjects and people, ruling with a strong hand when necessary and promoting tolerance when possible. It was in this latter instinct that he gained perhaps his most lasting contributions, but it is also that instinct that nevertheless led to his downfall. Although he likely would not have been as successful as he was, had he not possessed political intelligence and agility, his instincts were often towards indulgence of this tendency. He well understood the profound importance of catering to the Chinese majority, and thus took on Chinese advisors and officials as well as made a point of upholding important Chinese traditions, cultural values, and administrative practices. He commanded all his concubines, sons, daughters, and all the royal family members to adopt the Han culture and acquire the Chinese language and customs. Thus, the new China flourished under Kublai’s rule and experienced a heavy restructuring of political configuration. However, although Kublai Khan overcame many difficulties and barriers and ultimately achieved what he endeavored to do, in the end he became a disillusioned and embattled man. Through the struggles to convince his own conservative Mongol community of the need for the tolerance he promoted with the Chinese culture, he was increasingly isolated and frustrated at the end of his life. Both his military and political strength portrays his capacity for leadership and as well as his ability to properly run a nation and allow it to flourish, but his personal failures and ideas eventually left lonely and embittered. In this essay, his contributions and legacy will be reviewed in order to see this in more depth. Family Background and Early Beginnings Genghis Khan, Kublai’s grandfather, united many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia and in that way founded the Mongol Empire. As Paul Ratchenevsky writes, the nomadic tribes in their territory were loosely linked tribal groups who would make stronger but still temporary confederations whenever some regional purpose called for it. Such purposes often involve war, but these were traditionally wars of a defensive nature. The tribal bands would come together whenever an outside force posed some impending danger, but their need for mobility as nomadic peoples generally prohibited any stronger or more lasting associations because of the nature of their lifestyles. Genghis Khan, through force of personality and visionary leadership managed to unite these tribes and begin offensive wars that allowed the empire to expand across Asia. Eventually, he initiated many invasions within Eurasia, thereby extending the reach and impact of his territory. In these ways, he was to be emulated by his grandson, with a combination of imaginary and charismatic leadership that led to the establishment of greater territories. Through the influence of Genghis Khan, the tribe was replaced as the dominant force within Mongol society. Ratchenevsky writes that the army came to be organized into a series of family units with a systematic structuring through which each head of an individual organizational unit maintained power but reported to a central authority. Genghis Khan thereby established a central rule that allowed for the beginning of empire building and allowed for his vision to be carried out through the control of his underlings. Such underlings, the ruling authorities of the family units were different from the tribal society in that they could be appointed or dismissed at the will of the khan or other higher commanders. Through this structure, Genghis Khan was able to establish a societal organization that allowed for political rule, but he was unable to divorce himself completely from the traditional influences of the nomadic society. Chief among the traditional influences that Ghenghis Khan had to deal with were the need to appease certain familial ties through the sharing of his power with the many members of his own clan. Ratchenevsky argues that he transferred much authority over to his own sons on the condition that his sons would expand the territories given them, thereby expanding the rule of his ultimate empire (Heilbrun Timeline of art History. 2011). Ratchenevsky points out one of the central difficulties of this traditional influence by stating that the Mongols considered themselves to be a fiercely independent and free people. They were opposed to special taxes being placed upon them and they believed in the superiority of their nomadic society. Genghis Khan was able to overcome much of the resistance to his visionary rule among his own people through personal charisma. His people loved him because he was magnanimous and inspiring. It was said of Genghis Khan: “He dresses his people in his own clothes and allows them to ride his own horses” (Ratchenevsky, p. 147). However, because the draw of his power was largely personal, the further that power got away from him, the weaker it became. This was made especially problematic because he viewed conquered peoples as his own subjects and treated them harshly, creating a kind of never-ending need to expand to satisfy his own people and an ever-weakening empire through the harsh treatment of non-Mongol subjects. Through passing down his rule through his family to his sons, therefore, Genghis Khan served to ultimately dilute the central ruling authority of his empire. His sons came to struggle over power in an effort to establish succession, and the empire split into four different khanates. These developments were driven by the fierce independence of the Mongol people and the ultimate failure of the power of Genghis Khan’s personality. The legacy of the grandfather was therefore the establishment of an empire and the beginning of a vision of empire that was passed down to young Kublai by his mother, a woman who believed the rule had been taken from her family by her husband’s brother during the struggle for succession (Nosotro, 2003). Young Kublai grew up under a family ambition to reestablish the empire and taken rule back to themselves. The mother was a Nestorian Christian and she believed that the harsh rule of the individual khanates, coupled with plundering of resources by the family rulers, would come back to haunt the empire (Nosotro, 2003). She taught your Kublai to have respect for not only his own people but the conquered people in the empire as well. When his older brother achieved power, Kublai established himself as a military leader in support of the family authority. He demonstrated military brilliance in a number of campaigns and came to be one of his brother’s leading advisers ("Kublai Khan In Battle, 1287," 2000; Nosotro, 2003). During one campaign, he received word that his brother had been killed in a battle between Buddhists and Taoists, and he remained at the siege he was conducted long enough to receive the peace treaty with the enemy he was engaging. By the time he made it home, his younger brother, Arigboge, had already made it home and attempted to gain succession to power. The brothers engaged in a tense military struggle over the next several years, a struggle made worse by the fact the two brothers were of different minds about where to lead the empire. The younger brother was more tradition-minded in his approach and appealed to the ruling Mongols for his authority and power. Kublai, looking forward, appealed to the Chinese majority for his authority and received many Chinese advisers into his inner circle (Craughwell, 2010). When Kublai eventually won the standoff, largely on the advice of the Chinese advisers, he came to humiliate his brother for having attempted to go around the usual lines of succession, further alienating the traditional elites and further establishing Kublai as an independent ruler not given to the formal traditions of his tribal Mongol society. In these early beginnings, by establishing connections to the Chinese ethnic majority, Kublai Khan showed himself to be a wily ruler who had a vision of rule that was driven by the exigencies of power rather than by Mongol traditions or force of personality (Chapman, 1969). In this manifestation, his eventual rising empire and his personal decline from the grace of his own people was firmly foreshadowed. Rule and Legacy When he took power, Kublai Khan effectively became a Chinese emperor. It is in China that his main feats were established and his most important struggle occurred. He came to be involved in a prolonged conflict with the Chinese Sung rulers that lasted for much of his reign and that defined much of the society he came to rule over. While he also made attempted entries in to Japan, and even pushed the Western and southern boundaries of his empire into Europe and the Middle East, his most important contributions and the center of his power came from China (Rossabi, 1988). Just as the Chinese had helped Kublai Khan win the battle with his brother, Arigboge, to establish his rightful control of the empire, they also helped him to establish rule of the empire once he took the reins of power. Rossabi (1988) claims the following: They set up governments and bureaucracies, devised systems of taxation, and promoted the interests of farmers, herdsmen, and merchants. (p. 2) Along with advisers from the other far reaches of his territory, including Turkics and Persians, among other, the Chinese advisers came to represent for Kublai Kahn a civilizing and modernizing force that had been partly absent in his grandfather’s power structure. Kublai Khan came to promote tolerance of religious worship and ethnic expressions of artistic work and literature, and even to promote those Chinese artists whom he found particularly interesting. In his promotion of the Chinese art and culture, especially, Kublai created a society division not just among the Mongols, but also among the Chinese. In an innovative ruling structure, Kublai Khan had allowed the local authorities and cultural powers to remain in place across China and throughout much of his empire, merely placing ethnic minority Mongols at the head of the power structure. His tolerance, however, for allowing the society to go on mostly as normal below those ruling elites did not always sit well with the Mongol people (Rossabi, 1988). Even though he was tolerant and even promoting toward the Chinese, in fact, this structure was also not entirely embraced in Chinese culture. One history writes, as regards the development of art specifically: Kublai encouraged the Chinese to preserve their culture and traditions and advocated for Chinese artists and scholars to join his court. Some accepted this invitation, others refused, not wanting to serve a foreign master. Those that accepted were known as the innovators whilst those that refused and lived in retirement were named the traditionalists, thus representing the two principal trends of Yuan artworks. (Lysianassa, 2009) Of course, it is not unprecedented that there are those in conquered lands who are unwilling to go along with their new ruling structures, as much of Chinese history has been predicated upon suspicion of outside invaders (Fox, 1937). Rossabi (1988) claims that at least one of the reasons for this suspicion in Kublai Khan’s case is that the Mongol armies, when conquering new territories were often brutal and unforgiving. He writes, “Their armies so devastated some of the regions they conquered that recovery took years, even decades. Toward those who dared to resist them, they showed no mercy” (p. 2). Further, some of the ruling elites who were placed in charge of the local authority structure were indifferent to local culture and art, unlike Kublai Khan in the case of the Chinese society. In such cases, the Mongol rulers showed themselves to be dependent on the subjugated people for taxes and resources but not entirely supportive of the ideas and structures that were necessary in order to maintain the society and generate the economies that supported those resource extractions. Rossabi (1988) argues that some of these darker tendencies within Mongol culture were among the reasons that not all Chinese embraced the rule of Khan. He claims that the Mongols “increased the brutality of Chinese court life” (p. 2). By remaining insensitive in some cases to Chinese cultural values and cynical as regards the influences of their power, they showed themselves at time to be “inept heads of Chinese government” (p. 2). For these reasons, some in Chinese society came to resent the ruling minority, despite the fact that Kublai Khan himself largely embraced Chinese culture and admired the values of the society to the point that is worked to his detriment among his own people. Nevertheless, it is because of the “innovators” who did participate in Kublai Khan’s outreach efforts into Chinese society that the exploits of the Mongol Empire came largely to be known. As Rossabi argues, the Mongols left almost no written records from the 13th Century, and therefore, “most of our knowledge of them derives from the chronicles of the peoples they subjugated” (p. 2). So what do we know of Kublai Khan? What are his exploits? The list of his general accomplishments have been summed up in numerous accounts such as the following: [U]nlike other rulers he encouraged that the traditional institutions should continue, cities were built and new technologies exploited for the benefit of his subjects. He proved himself to be a fair and just ruler, even while ruling with an iron fist. (Lysianassa, 2009) A more specific account would include a list of the following: 1. He adopted the Chinese style of civilization and encouraged artistic endeavors that flourished under his rule 2. He made Buddhism the state religion of China. 3. He established the Chinese capital in what is present day Beijing. 4. He established the Yuan Dynasty and expanded the Mongol Empire to become the largest land empire in history. 5. He established overland trade routes and networks that extended to Europe and eventually established overland trade between Asia and Europe, even receiving envoys from the Pope. 6. He established cultural interactions that led to diverse local fluctuations combining local traditions and the Mongol influence. (Rossabi, 1988; Chapman, 1969) In short, Kublai Khan proved himself a wise and sophisticated ruler (Chapman, 1969) that, despite the occasional tendency of his own personality and his people’s culture to revert to physical brutality, led to many cultural, economic, and artistic developments and a cross-continental influence linking world trade and politics to the largest extent seen to that point. Kublai’s ultimate downfall was largely personal, but the seeds of his undoing were found in the way he ruled his empire. Having established himself largely on the backs of the Chinese advisers who carried him through the confrontations that led to his assuming power and eventuated his most pressing organizational needs throughout his reign, Kublai Khan faced strong resentment among his own Mongol people who sometimes felt he was too close to the Chinese. When he assumed power, he took a Chinese name, and forced his court and family to practice Chinese values (. However, because the conservative Mongols were no more willing to embrace Chinese culture fully than the Chinese were to embrace Mongol brutality, Kublai Khan was faced with a dilemma. He solved this in much the same way that his grandfather had, by expanding his empire and giving the Mongols elite ever-increasing riches and power to soothe their resentment. This brought about a number of competing interests. As the Mongols expanded into the Middle East, for example, a number of them converted to Islam, while those who expanded into Europe converted to Christianity. The Mongol practice of placing small elites in power and leaving local traditions and power structures in place had the ultimate effect, therefore, of diluting the empires power and deepening the divisions in its ruling class. These divisions eventually came to be too difficult for Kublai Khan to overcome as the reach of his rule, partly contained within the cultural contexts of his Chinese holdings, ultimately failed. Further, the enormous costs of this ever-expanding policy of empire building came to be too much to bear even for the wealthy ruler. The campaign in Japan was particularly costly and devastating, as the effort to subjugate the Japanese ultimately failed yet the costs to the Kublai Khan were enormous. In addition to his own inability to ultimately manage his empire without resorting to costly and divisive expansions, Kublai Khan also faced personal troubles near the end of his life that saw a further weakening of his power. The death of his wife, as well as his son and successor, caused Kublai Khan to sink into a deep depression that lasted for most of his final years. He turned to alcohol and overeating as a way of soothing his feelings and became morbidly obese and dissolute. His empire began to crumble around him, as he sank under the weight of his private troubles, driving him further into misery and disillusionment. His personal inability to overcome these troubles was made worse by the fact that, as a result of his efforts to marry two different ideologies, Mongol and Chinese, throughout his long career, he had alienated many around him, and he found himself alone in his misery. In the end, Kublai died a weakened ruler of a weakening empire, a shadow of his former self (Nosotro, 2003). Conclusion Kublai Khan’s rise and fall are symbolic of the rise and fall of his empire. In a brief and enigmatic career, he came to represent a flourishing of culture and power that proved to be one of the most successful and rapid advances in political society the world has witnessed. However, through the same internal strife that led him and his empire to grow with such wild ambition, the inability to develop internal resources to deal with requirements of longevity saw, in the end, both a society and a man that expanded beyond their ability to cope. Through his contributions to Chinese history and in his embrace of Chinese culture, Kublai Khan made great advances in civilization and commerce and political organization. However, in the end, with his own brutish lineage never receding too far in the distance, he found himself alone and his empire found itself overextended. References Chapman, Walter. "Kublai Khan: Lord of Xanadu." Pacific Affairs. 42.2 (1969): 229-230. Craughwell, T. 2010. The Rise and Fall of the Second Largest Empire in History: How Genghis Khan's Mongols Almost Conquered the World. New York: Fair Winds. Fox, Ralph. "Genghis Khan." Pacific Affairs. 10.1 (1937): 93-95. Heilbrun Timeline of art History. 2011. The Legacy of Genghis Khan. [online] Retrieved November 28, 2011 from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/khan1/hd_khan1.htm "Kublai Khan In Battle, 1287," 2000. EyeWitness to History [online] Retrieved November 28, 2011 from www.eyewitnesstohistory.com. Lysianassa. 2009. The Legacy of Kublai Khan. [online] Retrieved November 28, 2011 from http://www.bukisa.com/articles/154295_the-legacy-of-kublai-khan. Nosotro, R. 2003. Kublai Khan. [online] Retrieved November 28, 2011 from http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b3khankublai.htm Ratchnevsky, P. 1991. Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy. Rossabi, Morris. 1988. Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times. Berkeley: University of California Press. Read More