@Ximmi 08 Nationalistic drivel. Youre grabbing numbers from your ass and selling it as truth. Turks conquered the north of China, as had been done before a few times up to that point. Mongols conquered it all. And yes, they had many turkic troops but it was a Mongolian empire, not Turkic. Why do Turks always come up with the most bullshit historical claims?
Good history. But not enough said about the White Lotus Sect and the red turban revolt. And nothing said of the monk Chu yuan Chang who was a former beggar and led the revolt in 1355. It's almost as though the documentary says 'oh, you Chinese beat us only because of the bad weather and we were fighting among ourselves".
@@charlesbetancourt7337 The Red Turbans, Zhu Yuanzhang and Battle of lake Poyang will get their own video; it was simply too much information to condense into one single video, and not have both topics be dealt with in any level of detail.
That Temur was different from the conqueror Tamerlane . Tamerlane the conqueror was not really a Mongol but a Mu:slim Turk from Uzbekistan who claimed Mongol descent but it was fake . Central Asian Mus:lim Turks from Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan have nothing to do with the Mongols .
Toghto gives me the same vibe as Flavius Aetius. A competent and loyal leader that was trying to hold things together while hit with disaster after disaster but was betrayed by his own incompetent superiors that feared his popularity and influence.
Yes isn't that tragic! Often throughout history, being too good at your job was a sure way to lose your head! You would expect it to be the other way around! :)
Quite normal in China's history. Han and Ming dynasties founders also did those. That's why we got proverbs that literally means too much accomplishments will alert your superior/masters. Also, even with common proverbs, we have minimum two for "you have outlived your usefulness" which by literal meaning is "cook your hunting dog when rabbits are gone" and "shelved your bow when all the birds are gone" By the way, one of the reason Song dynasty is so weak in military is due to their emphasis on pen rather than the sword, and those third rate militia led by admin officials.
I've always been partial to the tragic figure of Taiwu of Northern Wei, a guy who wanted peace with everyone, only to end up fighting and beating the world when peace wasn't possible. Died a broken shell of a man after being betrayed (and assassinated) by his own court. Echoes of Aurelian.
I see a lot of europeans say this and all I have to say is don't feel bad. We also learn nothing about you. Most asian schools are also very asiancentric.
Toghto's de facto regency of the government should really be looked deeper by other historians. He was thrown into a state that was almost beset by Heaven and nature itself and still managed to wrangle much back in the Yuan hands. He had to almost play a stable, parental figure while his own monarchs are beset by drunkenness and pettiness (and literal short lifes too short to truly rule the people and mend their pains.) And despite literally larger than life forces and endless rebellions (for legitimate grievances) he tried to reform the state so that it could better the condition of the people (his people, for as he saw the Han Chinese as his people too.) Only to have himself wronged by his Emperor, and then killed, dying loyal to the state that killed him because he still believed in it. Such figure reminds one of tragic figures such as Flavius Stilicho, and (either ironically or perfectly befittingly) many tragic *Confucian Chinese officials who tried to do the best for his dynasty and the people but were Ned Starked in the end.
Btw he's regarded as the last straw of the Yuan dynasty by many Chinese historians and was seen as a great scholar. Some of his literary works, especially that of the Liao dynasty's history might have a bit of discrepancies, but he was still regarded as an able figure who as at once an administrator, reformer, a commissioner of titanic infrastructural projects, a military marshal, and also an avid scholar.
To have the wisdom to rule a people in their own customs and learn what works and what doesn't. There is so much modern people and especially colonial powers could have learnt from the Mongol Dynasties.
Man, the always common trend of getting rid of the most adept person for a role even though they are loyal to you, due to paranoia or other people forcing your hand, and are surprised when everything falls apart without them
The other half of the story, however, is leaving the adept and skilled general in charge so long that he decides that he should rule himself, thus becoming an enemy. History is full of examples of such betrayals, and you can't exactly know that someone is loyal for sure, or that he will remain so in future.
It doesn't matter if the general is loyal to the emperor or not. The soldiers will force the general to revolt against the emperor for their personal gain
It seemed what did in the Yuan dynasty was a perfect storm of events brought about by Kublai Khan's death. And it seemed that Toghto's dismissal and death was what broke the camel's back. Without him the Yuan's fall would happened eventually. My compliments to all those who made this video a reality.
The reason for the demise of the Yuan Dynasty was that her loose management led to official corruption, the system implemented throughout the country was very chaotic and class contradictions However, the laws of the Ming Dynasty were too harsh, which plunged the national political environment into darkness and blood, and finally could not escape extinction. Finally, the Qing Dynasty learned the lessons of the demise of the first two dynasties and made her politics more mature. She achieved the dream of all feudal dynasties in China, but she naively thought that the feudal agricultural civilization could compete with the Western civilization after the industrial revolution. She lost to the development of the times
@@linshitaolst4936 I would say the demise of the Qing Dynasty was due to its early success. The Kang-Yong-Qian era gave the Dynasty more than 150 years of relative peace as stability, allowing Qing China to become the preeminent power in East Asia. Victory breeds complacency so by the end of Qianlong's era the vision of Kangxi and the diligence of Yongzheng had been lost.
@426mak When Qianlong heard that his pen pal Louis XVI was beheaded, he became irritable and depressed. He thought that no one could challenge the emperor's authority, so in the later years of Qianlong's rule, he became more and more closed and conservative
Upon the mention of the Ming dynasty, it made me realized this one thing. Why would the members of the Tiandihui wanted to revive the Ming dynasty so much and did not go with the general trend of replacing one dynasty with their own leader's dynasty? What made the Ming dynasty so special to them and not those like of the Tang and Song dynasties despite that they were of Han origins as well. Heck, the Tang's regime was even considered as the Golden Age of China by many people.
Yuan and Qing were Mongolian and Manchurian/Jurchen dynasties respectively. Revival of the Ming meant bringing the region back to Han (ethnicity) rule via descendents of the Ming emperor (Han) bloodline for legitimacy purposes - easier to achieve as a propaganda goal. Ironically, many of the minorities such as the Khitan people (former Liao dynasty during the Song dynasty period, who was replaced by the Jin dynasty of Jurchens in the region; both along with Song fell to the Mongolian conquest) were absorbed and categorized as the Han ethnicity by the Mongolian Yuan dynasty to ease public administration. The Khitan culture was lost. During the Ming revival period under Qing, many of the rebels were a mix of Han and former Khitan. Side note: the Tiandihui eventually became various Triads (as in organized crime) in Asia after the Qing collapse.
It's quite possible that the dual invasions of the Jurchens (the other Jin dynasty) and then the Mongols (the Yuan dynasty) into the Central Plains created the first vestiges of "national identity" in the region, so when people thought of one China, they thought of the Ming dynasty. This is just speculation, though.
You're assuming the leaders are being entirely honest instead of just using it to rouse public sentiment. There's a long history of dynastic founders initially using the skin of an older dynasty to public support. This goes back to the very first Dynasty, during the collapse of the Qin, the rebel leadership pretended to support the restoration of the preQin Kingdoms, particularly Chu since that was the source of many of the rebels. They even stuck a Chu royal descendant as a puppet King, but it was all very much fake and no real attempt at restoration was ever made.
Yeah it's more symbolic more than they actually wanted to bring Ming back. It's kind of like Casus belli, they needed a flag for ppl to unite under. As to why pick Ming dynasty, I think it's because Ming was the most recent memory where ethnic Han still rules and were at least not treated as inferiors--remember Chinese dynasties are ancient, Ming dynasty by itself lasted 3 centuries--Tang is about 7 centuries ago and Song is 4, both of which are a bit too distant for ppl to recall.
The Mongols' major weakness was that their population was tiny. Even at their height, and despite the West always referring to them as "hordes" their army rarely exceeded 10 Tumens (all fronts combined), and even that required heavily drawing upon non-mongols - like the Tartars and the Naimans etc. - to fill out the ranks. When a conquering administrator is outnumbered by the locals by more than 1,000 to one, ejection and/or reverse assimilation is pretty inevitable. This happened everywhere. The Ilkhanate became Islamized, the Golden Hordre were gradually replaced by the Rus warlords they themselves had raised up to administer/collect tribute for them etc.
I always thought that if they made an Assassins Creed game set in China, they should set it during the fall of the Yuan and rise of the Ming Dynasties.
@@laqueenawilliams4762 he worded it pretty bad, but the core message is not wrong. Egypt and Ethiopia are the only countries that truly have significance in ancient worlds history, as in how much influence it brought to the world and the region.
@@laqueenawilliams4762 kingdom mali and Hausa songgai zulu congo All Colony and Destruction by westerners and Slave hunting is really damaging curse of resources. Too
Togho reminds me of Stilicho who tried to save Rome but was betrayed and assassinated by his emperor. In both the cases the Empire ended after them. Stilicho's death led to the Sack of Rome and Togho's death led to the fall of the Yuan Dynasty.
10:59 That's not the Mongolian writing system at the time. This is the original Mongolian writing system: ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ᠌ What you showed there is using the Cyrillic alphabet to spell Mongolian language, which was implemented by the Soviet Union in 20th century.
@@riza-2396 What the hell are you talking about? Pre-Cyrillic Mongolian writing systems were all based off of scripts decended from phoenician, I.E. the Arabic and Tibetan scripts. None of the scripts ever used for Mongolian have their origin in Chinese characters. Once again an example of Chinese people claiming other cultures?
No history class ever talked about how climate changes have affected the course of history, or geography determined the fate of nations. Even in the modern era with so much technology, we are still very much at the mercy of nature. Just because people in the developed world don't think they are one loss harvest away from starvation, doesn't mean it cannot happen anymore.
Video sounded like the recent years. Uncontrollable money printing, the masses slowly getting fed up due to economic decline. Question now is how long until rebellions start.
While it can be an influencing factor, to say that climate change or geography determined an event isn't typically reasoning that's seen as particularly sound in history (or political science, or most other social sciences for that matter). It's considered deterministic. That's why scholars like Jared Diamond are so heavily criticized by historians, anthropologists, and more.
It was a stroke of luck due to the unification of mongols and collapse of the song dynasty from decades of war with jin. But as expected they could not hold it for long, less than 100 years.
Chinese cities and regions are most of the time self sustaining. If there's no wars the regions can pretty much operate on their own without the emperor's guidance
Well, Mongols did well at first because of their military power, after they defeated Song with houses they had forbidden the Hans to raise horses on a large scale. During the Han dynasty, after purchasing the middle east's Dawan war-horses the Han had won many battles on horseback against the famous Mongolian riders. But due to climate change and deliberated separation policy of Mongols, the quality and numbers of war horses had dropped significantly during the Song dynasty. After the Yuan was established, Mongolian did forbade the Hans to raise war houses, but they had built many ranches to raise houses in central China out of convenience. Most of these ranches had been falling into the hands of Hans during the uprising (because usually these ranches are located in flat areas meaning that it would be very hard to defend). Anyways, in the early days of Yuan, Mongolian did what they do the best, using horses to gain control over other Regions. Unfortunately, like the old saying of China:打江山容易守江山难， meaning it is a lot easier to conquer than to maintain a place. The great Yuan empire started to fall apart when they try to go back to the"good old days" on horseback and lose the support of the Han officials. Do you honestly believe the "doctors" of Han couldn't heal or at least advise all of those short-lived Mongolian Emperors on their health? Song's doctors at the time were at least far better than the Mongolian ones. Kublai Khan, who trusted Han's doctor had lived till his late 70s. There were nine southern Song emperors in total with an average age of 48 (the last two Emperors died at the age of 11 and 9, otherwise the average age of Southern Song was well above 50 years old). But not only the most of the Mongolian Imperial family members at the time love to kill each other, but a lot of them also didn't have the full support of Hans. Including the help of Yu Yi(the Imperial doctors). The average age of the Yuan emperor was around 38 years old at least 10years shorter than the Hans.
@@Jake-dh9qk well… as the saying goes: “Heaven is high and the emperor is far”. China had always had a large bureaucratic system, with different levels governing different portions, because China has always been too large to not have the governance be split up into different areas.
Heroes die of overwork. Petty people who have more power than their powers hate and fear them. It was rather predictable that a man as great as Toghto would eventually end up like he shouldn't.
Can we have more videos on Tang Taizong, Tang Xuanzong, Yongle Emperor, as well as Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperor. All these history videos are by far the most sophisticated and intriguing on youtube!
Qianlong is a fool. Yongzheng is extremely hard working, Yongle is very good at wars but his wars costed too much, if he could pay more attention to developmen many problems in middle and late Ming would not appear, Tang Xuanzong could be a great emperor if he did not live for so long, Tang Taizong might be one of the greatest emeperors in the history of China.
Amazing video and I love the Mongol era and Chinese history. All those of factors played a role in overthrowing the Yuan Dynasty but the ecological and economic ones could have been adapted had the central leadership were competent considering many other areas suffered the same issues but managed to ease onward. Traditional Mongolian script is a lot harder to represent so I don't blame you for choosing the easier showing of the language with the Cyrillic script. My major question is why is southern China in pink with the Southern Song? It was defeated in 1279 and incorporated into the Yuan Dynasty beyond that the video was a great representation of the overthrow of the Yuan.
Let's sum it up, CLIMATE CRISIS, INFLATION, DOMESTIC UPRISING, LACK OF GOVERNMENT CONTINUITY, all these factors lead to the fall of Mongol ( US ) empire...
@@prastagus3 that's not true. US propaganda is still very strong in the english speaking world (which is literally the majority of the world). Not to mention, US has its many allies to reinforce such propaganda.
@@prastagus3 It may be wanning but for sure alternative like RT, CCTV showed how much worse they are so I think it is more of rising of alternative NGO.
@@Illevium Admiral Yi was more like a Hannibal. Because he wasn't very popular in court but he was never killed by the king of korea. While Stilicho and Toghto were. And I wouldn't put Surena in the same category as these two though. The guy literally won only one battle while Stilicho and Toghto did much more. They literally carried their empires on their backs just to be backstabbed and unsurprisingly their empires literally fell with them.
You know you are a powerful and well-established civilization when you invented examinations (civil service examinations) to determine whether you'll be worthy of a government title and not true aristocratic and heirarchial lineage as what other civilizations would do.
Great content, but shouldn’t the Mongolian language be represented by the Mongolian script, considering the Cyrillic Alphabet was only adopted much later by the Mongolian People’s Republic?
You are quite correct sir, we study the script starting from 3rd grade until we graduate highschool. It is the official state alphabet, its just easier and less complicated to use Cyrillic alphabets.
There's a book called "The Secret History of Mongols" written by the official state Prime Minister when Genghis declared the Mongol Empire, starting from his own childhood and the struggles of the different tribes and ethnicities at the time living in Central and East Asia, and the story ends with him having a triumph over all of them from being the weakest tribe to the absolute "Universal Ruler"- "Chinggis Khaan". So yeah it was his decision to adopt the Mongolian script as the state official alphabet, and the Secret History of Mongols being written in the script. In the video however, it definitely should be Mongolian script considering it was still Yuan dynasty time.
@@ononrentsenbat727 while Magna Carta was written in Latin, but by the time of the US constitution, that was already written in vernacular English. While Genghis Khan may had promulgated written Mongolian from the Uighur Script, Yuan Dynasty was based on 'Phags-pa script, an alphabet designed by a Tibetan monk by that name and State Preceptor Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yuan.
@@kenh758 I appreciate the fact that you know more than a native Mongolian who lived basically his entire life over there. Impressive. We are taught Mongolian history from early age and it is often exaggerated and ultra nationalistic. Survivors of the cruel Qing dynasty rule over us left us with barely any population and absolute loathing towards the Chinese and the Manchurians. When it comes to Yuan dynasty history class in our country, we don't often discuss it comparing to what we discuss how Genghis basically is the sole reason why this state has come to exist. He is like the Jesus of us, the Divine Godfather in our history books and Khubilai Khaan "Хубилай Хаан" is considered to be somewhat of a traitor of his ethnicity to declare a united state with the chinese and claiming the Heaven's Mandate. Not to mention he moved the empire's capital to Beijing which most of us Mongols are still salty about. My uproots are from Arig Buh's side, the one Khubilai was fighting a civil war with, which he ended up winning, and in today's Mongolia we still consider it to be a major blunder.
Yes. There could have been a Renaissance in song dynasty. Although Chinese turned over the Yuan dynasty, but in many aspects they succeeded the way Mongolian used to rule them...
@@alexsolosm It's not entirely just that. You have to consider the size of China as well. Generals are charged with a great deal of autonomy due to the fact that they often defend the borders or raise forces to fight. They have a great deal of "cult of personality" with them that lets them command troops to fight for their own political agendas. Soldiers recruited into general's armies have their loyalty tied to the general most of the time, since majority of the common folk/soldier have never seen the Chinese emperor nor cared about the Imperial dynasties. When a dynasty rise or fall, farmers still farm and live a life of hardship regardless. The size of China made it even harder for Emperors to keep track of their subject's loyalties and have to always deal with a certain level of uncertainty; imagine playing a strategy game but the entire map is covered by fog of war. As such, Chinese Emperors have to be weary of generals since they can easily garner support and use their charisma to form alliances that the Emperor can't do. Emperors are essentially sheltered 2nd Lieutenants who has almost no connection with their generals and troops that fight for them.
@@boomboomboom9297 how do you know that they patriotic to China. If China collapse just like 1911 they will certainly trying to declare they independence
@@boomboomboom9297 Half of the Mongols in China are almost completely sinicized while the other half of them are not as much sinicized. In my experience the ones who are sinicized are very patriotic towards China while the others who are not are extremely hateful.
Great video a bit undermined by two immersion-breaking details: 1. The Mongolian modern Cyrillic Russianized language is not the one used by the ancients. They used their own writing systems, which was sadly misrepresented in the video. (The Mongolian language symbol is in Cyrillic 2. The map constantly showed “Southern Song,” it has been destroyed by the Yuan when it conquered china, but the map in video keep showing that glaring pink which does not exist no more. I watch this channel for its incredible details and care to history, and I hope it will keep on the effort and not getting lazy and ignore historical accuracy.
This channel is anything but “details and care to history”. One can watch its videos to have a rough understanding of the big picture, but the credibility of details, at least when related to anything even remotely Chinese, should not be taken seriously.
@@michaeldaniel4701 No, they didn't ban it. Nothing will happen to you if you speak it at home no one is gonna arrest you for it and local tv stations with Mongolian scripts or dialects are still there. The ban was on school textbooks, all textbooks are only allowed to be printed and taught in Mandarin. (Same policy had been applying to all languages in China, but you can still pick courses at local universities to study local languages) In my opinion, culturally it is still not a good thing for inner Mongolians and other local ethnic groups, but a standardized language being implemented is good for a country as a whole. Also, it is a lot easier for ethnic residents to find better jobs and get better paid. But it is still highly debatable, if you keep using different languages it might make everything chaotic, inefficient and make policies(good or bad) a lot harder to execute. For example, India kept all of its regional dialects, and not much had changed since the independence, but the northern states or the non-Hindi speaking regions are often a lot less developed than the Hindi speaking regions. This situation to me is inequality or even discrimination as well. But as a design major student speaking, the diversity of these well-preserved local cultures is a lot of fun to enjoy, it was like walking into different countries within the country. So there are pros and cons to this.
Dear King & Generals, thanks for the video but there is error with your map. Southern Song in pink should be removed as it was already destroyed by Kubilai Khan to create Yuan Dynasty.
I really need to learn more about Chinese history apparently. This was a fascinating (albeit rather tragic) period I know virtually nothing about. Thank you for the informative video! Stay well out there everybody, and God bless you friends! :)
For hundred of years prior to Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols had always attacked or raided China, took all the goods and left the destructions behind. They were good at hunting or fighting on battlefields. But it's very difficult to govern over the people and their land especially when they are different ethnics.
They had a simple foreign policy, surrender and pay tribute and send troops when it's time to campaign, you'll be fine but if you didn't surrender when the opportunity to surrender was offer, typically before battle, de population would ensue, which was actually sound military strategy, if there I no population behind you and no enemy before you, you just keep pushing forward.
study history, mongols did not even formally existinng before 800 years ago, they did not attack china, the ancestors of mongols were small tribes and had been under ruling by different chinese dynasties, before yuan dynasty, the nomads that had powerful military were khidatns and jurchens, not mongols
the environment around the Huang river is always a problem. In case you did not know, the Han, Sui, Tang & Ming dynasties all experienced yearly environmental crises, that's the reason behind each time the Emporer moved from the capital to vice capital, to survive starvation. The Yuan dynasty is just like the Jin dynasty, its power comes from massacres and cruelty of the ruling class. No end justifies the means, that is what you can get from Chinese history.
Great video, but why do you have the Southern Song still labeled over the territory of the Yuan dynasty during the reign of Toghon Temur Khan? The Southern Song had been destroyed decades before he took the throne. It looks like it's just an honest mistake, though, and you guys did a good job on everything else.
Toghto: Carefully keeping everything in place and preventing the collapse of the entire system. Toghon Temur: "... This is a problem. Get him out of here."
never knew that the weather was so chaotic in various regions of northern and Central Asia during the first decade of the 13th century. this factor would have surely enhanced the value of stoicism throughout china and Mongolia. Anyways another fascinating, factual and highly educational video from you guys- can't wait to watch videos on the great Northern war and Abbasid revolution
Not just Asia but Europe was also dealing with its own inclement weather. Flooding, Drought, Freezing temperatures, etc etc. Its one of the many reasons the Black Death wiped out so much of Europe's population.
Wonderful episode, thank you for the upload. Can I please mention that the maps in the video still label the lands of "Southern Song" Dynasty - which already fell 1279 in the Battle of Yamen which has a video made by Kings and Generals.
Basically the finance of Yuan Dynasty had problem at the very beginning, since Mongols pretty much destroyed the economy of north China during their invasion and Kublai had to worry about the budget deficit when he was trying to conquer Song Dynasty. When Song was conquered, Kublai had once considered his Han advisers' suggestion to recover the economy by lowering taxes and reforms, yet rebellion of Mongol princes and war in northwest requested instant financial income for the government. So eventually he chose the policy of notorious Muslim minister Ahmad Fanakati's advice of state monopoly and printing cash. Nearly all of Kublai's successors were incapable except Ayurbarwada, and Mongol nobles always had conflicts, which made reform unsuccessful. When Toqto’a came into power, it was too late.
Agreed. None of the rulers of the Yuan were in any way interesting in terms of statecraft. They were, in the end, incapable of ruling a large, settled population and collapsed under the weight of their own political and economic illiteracy.
The Mongols killed most Chinese people in a large area or in a city when they defeated the Chinese army. The Mongols killed most people in their way of conquor.
@@CN_SFY_General When Chinese look to the pan-Asian heritage of China's history, they can easily look to steppe nomads like the Xianbei or Khitan who contributed great works to the cultural canon and amalgamated into the nation. But the Mongol Yuan Dynasty always held themselves up as foreigners and were only interested in maintaining an apartheid state for the extraction of plunder.
@@megakedar Mongols killed more than 80% of Chinese and placed the Chinese at the lowest level, with 4 total levels in total. They have a mongol in every village to have sex with a new bride before the groom has any chance. This is how most Chinese have mongolian gene now. The russia mush have similar experience, because most russia have mongolian gene.
Not only this. According to Yuan Shi, lots of Mongolia nobles who are enfeoffed in south China were trying to keep their lifestyle by destroy the farm land to rangeland, lot of peasants lost their land and starving to die. this is one of the very important reason for yuan’s collapse very quick. The first emperor of Ming, zhuyuanzhang，was suffer from starving during his whole childhood； his familly members were all starving to die；
When a country or kingdom falls usually its because of the greed of a few people that's always blew my mind. I also wonder how many of these people get punished for it.
It doesn't help that the mongol converted high yielding farmland to low yielding pastureland. The move was to depopulate Chinese via famine. Because Chinese vastly outnumber the mongol, they know they couldn't hold on if that ratio isn't brought more in their favor. considering that, it's amazing they held on as long as they have.
not only because of the number，they are doing great in India for example. (Tamerlane empire). The reason of Yuan fail is because Chinese have the one of most steady government organization system in that time and a scholar focused very unique social mobility system. kubalai tries to learn the system， however，he failed because most mongol nobles are against him. in another way to explain，it is more likely the Visigoths conquered Rome. In addition, as a puppet states of Ming, Manchu did very well for ruling China. It is because they can accept Chinese culture much more easier than Mongolia,and they could understand what is the Mandate of Heaven for Chinese people. This is more likely Macedonian Alexander the Great conquered the Greece.
Mongolian general Esen Taish Khan had 15,000 soldiers, but on September 1, 1449, King Zhentung of Ming won a battle with 500,000 soldiers and took the King captive and left him to herd sheep for a year. In the battle of Tumu, only two soldiers, the majors of the Mongolian army, participated in a great victory that is rare in history. The battle was the biggest defeat in the 300-year history of the Ming Dynasty.
In 1444, the Ming Dynasty counted that there were all 660,000 field troops in the all country, distributed in 13 provinces,and most of which were attacking the Luchuan Kingdom in south. In battle of Tumu 20,000 just Oirats troops, also have 70,000 Tatar(mongolian) troops. And Esen not Mongolian ,he is Oirats people.
Didn't learn much about other continent due to the Eurocentric colonial effect, now people are learning that Ghana and Mali were ancient empire and rimbuctu was the land of gold, Songhai Benin empire etc
@5:00 Yuan Shee - Pronounced more like Yuan Sure (元史). Not a bad word to learn to pronounce properly as pretty much all dynasties write a history covering the previous dynasty.
I love all the coverage on Asian history as I am from Asian descent myself. The videos are quite Mongolian centric though, I think there should be more coverage on Ancient Chinese history. More than just the three kingdoms
@@Mongol1232 K and G has 25 Chinese history videos. They have 34 Mongol Invasion videos. Caesar himself has 22 videos. Russia only has 9 videos. The Ottoman Empire has 30. There is definitely room for new content and I think the point made is valid. The Chinese Three Kingdoms period alone has a good amount of content comparable to the Gallic Wars or the Roman Civil War
It also depends on the people available to K&G. With the writer of this video, they have an expert in Mongol history, so it's only natural that episodes on the Mongols or from a Mongolian perspective are easier to get for them.
I am surprised the video didn't mention the outbreak and the effects of The Plague. (I just looked into it. The plague only lasted approximately one year in China. This raises a number of questions.)
Dadu literally means big capital, 大都. And Beijing means northern capital, 北京. It's also interesting to compare Kyoto's name 京都 with those two. Kyoto's name translates as "capital city", but both characters mean capital, so it can be read as "capital capital".
The act of getting rid of the Mongols was so important that even today during Mid Autumn Festival Chinese people talk about the slip of paper inserted into Moon Cakes asking people to rise up and kill the Tartar invaders.
Hey Kings of generals I don't know if you remember but I asked her for this all of the yuan dynasty on your calls for American civil war video I just want to thank you for suggesting it
The nomads in northern China are the largest and most threatening force among all the nomads in Eurasia (The nomads in northern China include Huns, Xianbei, Khitan, Nuzhen, Turkic and Mongols, among which Huns and Xianbei are the ancestors of Mongols). But they are facing the extremely powerful agricultural empire in the South - the Chinese empires. When the Chinese empire remained strong, these nomadic peoples were strongly restrained and firmly fixed in the grasslands, deserts and neighboring areas of northern China. However, when the Chinese empire becomes relatively weak (for example, the Song Dynasty, which did not achieve great unity, ruled China at the same time as the Jin Dynasty, Xixia Dynasty and Dali Dynasty), the Chinese empire will lose its control over the nomadic peoples in the north, and these nomadic peoples will take the opportunity to leave northern China, And swept the world with its powerful nomadic force (such as the Mongolian conquest sweeping Eurasia). When the Chinese empire becomes too powerful (such as the Han Dynasty that defeated the Huns), the nomads in northern China will also leave northern China due to the loss of their homes and then sweep the world (see the whip of God of the Huns). In a word, the powerful Chinese empires take care of the largest group of nomadic monsters in human classical history. When this kind of care fails, the nomadic monsters in northern China will shock the world.
LOL dude read books other than chinese history books. Starting when The Huns and Sumbe /Xianbei / and other ancient empires land become northern china? Say me when that powerful Song dynasty conquered that land ?
First of all, Huns and Xianbei are Turkic not Mongol. Secondly, nomadic khaganates such as Göktürks attacked both China and eastern states (Byzantines and Sasanids) simultaneously. In other words, China in no way protected nomadic peoples from the west.
I appreciate the insights your channel brought to this topic, the gradual and subsequent precipitous fall of the Yuan dynasty. However there are several anachronisms and inaccuracies regarding the Red Turban rebellion. For example, the rebellions became consolidated around the Red Turban identity after the flood-work project; Zhang Zicheng was only lesser prominent warlord with coastal territories while more aggressive warlords were active in central China, ect.
I recommend reading James Waterson's, "Defending Heaven", 2013, which offers one of the best detailed histories of the decline and fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Cracks in the mighty Yuan Dynasty began to appear near the end of the great Kublai Khan's long reign in China. Kublai Khan finished the work his grandfather, Chinggis Khan and his immediate successors, Ogetai then Mongke had started, the conquest of China. Chinggis conquered the two, alien dynasties, the Liao and the Tanguts which ruled the northern 2/5ths of China since 1125 A.D. It was left up to Kublai to defeat the Song Dynasty, which held the remaining 3/5s of China and had prospered for 150 years, despite losing its northern territory. Kublai accomplished this and reunited all of China under Mongol rule. The Mongols were efficient conquerors and destroyers, but they proved inept at establishing a complex ruling and bureaucratic system as the native Han Chinese dynasties were capable. But such was the complete conquest of all of China that the Yuan Dynasty lasted 90 years before it fell. This does not tell the whole story, however. In the last decades of the Yuan Dynasty, almost all of China was fragmented between the Yuan, which effectively ruled only the territory around Beijing, and the rest of China split between a Mongol warlord and three Chinese warlords. To make a long story short, in the end one Chinese warlord prevailed over the overs and became the first emperor of the new, native Han Chinese MING (brilliant) Dynasty. The first Ming emperor was not a great man. His character and personality were more akin to the Qin Dynasty's first emperor, Shih Huang Di, recognized as the unifier of ancient China but a notorious, destructive tyrant. Yet the first Ming emperor laid the groundwork for the great Ming Dynasty, which lasted around 350 years. It would be China's last, native Han Chinese ruling dynasty.
90 years was a very short dynasty, illustrating the complete incompetence of the Mongol rulers. Their racist policies were doomed to cause an uprising of the entire population, and their brutality is not to be glorified as is typical by Kings and Generals, but condemned.
Sucker Punch should make a ghost of Tsushima style game based in China with a new ghost character after the second ghost of Tsushima game because after the mongols lost to Japan twice then the Chinese beat the mongols out of China.
@@MrGod47 Same goes to Yuan, it was pushed back by rebellions due to the discriminating law aimed to the Chinese people. And that's how the Yuan dynasty retreated back and named itself as Northern Yuan Dynasty it was never destroyed or conquered completely.
Great video. One question is why the over-use of the map showing the Southern Song even in the later parts of the video when the Southern Song was all over by 1279?
It's always surprising to me how long states survive in this environment of political chaos and economic hardship. You'd think society would collapse into total anarchy but they seem to limp along for generations still.
Finally this music on youtube and not only on podcast. Could somebody tell me what music is the one that starts the episode plz? Could listen to it all day but can't find it
I turned my dad on to this channel and now he wants his own tablet to watch it on. I showed him how to watch it on his pricey little smartphone and now the battery keeps dying!! LOL!! By the way, excellent work. Very nice, easy to understand graphics. Good design.
Red turban slogans: “Oust the Mongols and restore China” “Rebel against Yuan and Restore Song” “the Sun and the moon(Ming) will restore the eras of the Song”
@@mikejazz3001 The Chinese character for the Ming dynasty is 明, which is literally the character for sun (日) and moon (月) put together. Basically clever wordplay lol
@@razorsharpview9090 yes, but any structure in any old chinese city is built on the foundations of some other older building. they literally cant dig a tunnel in xian without running into a couple hundred old graves from previous dynasties. fact remains, the Ming built the forbidden city.
Students would learn so much more from youtube channels, i reckon one day schools will make them a big part of learning ( atleast for certain people as some people struggle to take in what their teachers say)
Anyone else seeing some uncomfortable parallels between the events in this video and what's going on in the US today? I get the feeling that we're one volcanic eruption away from civil war and partition.
wtf i started this documentary to watch something i thought i cared about but it seems i'm not that interested (in this one at least watched many others on both ur channels) but this runs in the background and i hear it but don't pay attention yet the god damn VOICE keeps me here... it's so relaxing
@ImperiumRomanum It did achieve somrthing, he gave hope for the Turks and the Turks fought back what later led to a new government. 2nd Gokturk Khaganate. During Jiesheshuai's time Turks were hopeles, inprisonated, getting asimilated by the chinese, Those 40 soldiers gave hope and strenght for the turks.
Zhu Yuanzhang is like a protagonist of some sort of fantacy novel,who evovled from a beggar into the emperor of Ming Dynasty😂And his generals,including Xu Da,who took Beijing(I remember watching the scene where Zhu Yuanzhang celebrating Xu Da's triumph in a TV drama,just didnt know it was about him taking the capital of Yuan Dynasty until I saw this vedio),had long been his friends since he was a little kid,which sadly,didnt make any difference over the fact that he killed almost every one of them after he built his huge empire😔.
It makes for quite a dark epic, considering how he turned into a murderous paranoid tyrant in his later years. Rising from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of accomplishment, only to become corrupted by power and turn into a monster, and, ironically, in the end, despite all his paranoia and cruelty, betrayed by his own brother after his death, who usurped his chosen heir and took over his empire.
@@adamwu4565 You are wrong. That is because his eldest son died, and he wanted his grandson to inherit the throne. He was afraid that his grandson could not suppress the founding generals and princes and ministers, so he began to help his grandson remove all obstacles. When he was about to die, he even wanted to kill the later Emperor Yongle, because someone reported to him that he might rebel and died before he could kill him! This also led to the later outcome. If he did not kill the founding generals, the rebellion of Emperor Yongle would never succeed , because those generals are more powerful than others, especially General lan yu!
some thing to rember: he last Mongol emperor, Togon-temür (reigned 1333-68), had become emperor at the age of 13. He had received the rudiments of a Chinese education and was, like some of his predecessors, a pious Buddhist and a benevolent though weak ruler. During the first years of his reign, however, power was in the hands of Bayan, a minister who belonged to the anti-Chinese faction and whose measures deepened the resentment of the educated Chinese against Mongol rule.
Ming dynasty Historian described Ming’s first emperor’s achievement in this way: "The house of Zhu’s merit is is often compared to the house of Confucius, Guan Zhong restrained the state of Chu, but Chu was a prince of China. The merits of the Han Gaozu and Tang Taizong were to replace Qin and Sui, but Qin and Sui were Chinese emperors. Our sacred Taizu emperor removed Mongol Yuan, restored the land of the Chinese empire and the correct faith. How important was his achievements compared to the previous two monarchs and minister?
Use KINGS55 to get 55% off your first month at Scentbird sbird.co/3sulJoL
@ThyPeasantSlayer “In the internet its called trolling”
@Ximmi 08 Nationalistic drivel. Youre grabbing numbers from your ass and selling it as truth. Turks conquered the north of China, as had been done before a few times up to that point. Mongols conquered it all. And yes, they had many turkic troops but it was a Mongolian empire, not Turkic. Why do Turks always come up with the most bullshit historical claims?
14:22 The Pog Rebellion has begun!
Good history. But not enough said about the White Lotus Sect and the red turban revolt. And nothing said of the monk Chu yuan Chang who was a former beggar and led the revolt in 1355. It's almost as though the documentary says 'oh, you Chinese beat us only because of the bad weather and we were fighting among ourselves".
@@charlesbetancourt7337 The Red Turbans, Zhu Yuanzhang and Battle of lake Poyang will get their own video; it was simply too much information to condense into one single video, and not have both topics be dealt with in any level of detail.
Death: Who are you?
Khan: I am Temur
Death: Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
I read this in the voice of Death from Horrible Histories.
And this was after leaving out many other important figures in the Yuan in this period who had Temür in their name.
@@DivaViews I read it in the voice of Death from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather movie!
Death is not a person
That Temur was different from the conqueror Tamerlane .
Tamerlane the conqueror was not really a Mongol but a Mu:slim Turk from Uzbekistan who claimed Mongol descent but it was fake .
Central Asian Mus:lim Turks from Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan have nothing to do with the Mongols .
Toghto gives me the same vibe as Flavius Aetius. A competent and loyal leader that was trying to hold things together while hit with disaster after disaster but was betrayed by his own incompetent superiors that feared his popularity and influence.
Yes isn't that tragic! Often throughout history, being too good at your job was a sure way to lose your head! You would expect it to be the other way around! :)
Quite normal in China's history.
Han and Ming dynasties founders also did those.
That's why we got proverbs that literally means too much accomplishments will alert your superior/masters.
Also, even with common proverbs, we have minimum two for "you have outlived your usefulness" which by literal meaning is "cook your hunting dog when rabbits are gone" and "shelved your bow when all the birds are gone"
By the way, one of the reason Song dynasty is so weak in military is due to their emphasis on pen rather than the sword, and those third rate militia led by admin officials.
Same as Scipio Africanus
I've always been partial to the tragic figure of Taiwu of Northern Wei, a guy who wanted peace with everyone, only to end up fighting and beating the world when peace wasn't possible. Died a broken shell of a man after being betrayed (and assassinated) by his own court.
Echoes of Aurelian.
Scipio wasn’t betrayed and assassinated, I would say Belisarius is better example even though he wasn’t assassinated
In European schools we don't lern about Asian history, thanks to Kings and Generals we learn it from you guys !
I agree
Same for Africa
What else don't you lern?
I see a lot of europeans say this and all I have to say is don't feel bad. We also learn nothing about you. Most asian schools are also very asiancentric.
@@sinoroman yeah pretty much and there is a lot of history to cover in Europe. You barely get a grasp of it in school.
Toghto's de facto regency of the government should really be looked deeper by other historians.
He was thrown into a state that was almost beset by Heaven and nature itself and still managed to wrangle much back in the Yuan hands. He had to almost play a stable, parental figure while his own monarchs are beset by drunkenness and pettiness (and literal short lifes too short to truly rule the people and mend their pains.) And despite literally larger than life forces and endless rebellions (for legitimate grievances) he tried to reform the state so that it could better the condition of the people (his people, for as he saw the Han Chinese as his people too.) Only to have himself wronged by his Emperor, and then killed, dying loyal to the state that killed him because he still believed in it.
Such figure reminds one of tragic figures such as Flavius Stilicho, and (either ironically or perfectly befittingly) many tragic *Confucian Chinese officials who tried to do the best for his dynasty and the people but were Ned Starked in the end.
Btw he's regarded as the last straw of the Yuan dynasty by many Chinese historians and was seen as a great scholar. Some of his literary works, especially that of the Liao dynasty's history might have a bit of discrepancies, but he was still regarded as an able figure who as at once an administrator, reformer, a commissioner of titanic infrastructural projects, a military marshal, and also an avid scholar.
To have the wisdom to rule a people in their own customs and learn what works and what doesn't. There is so much modern people and especially colonial powers could have learnt from the Mongol Dynasties.
Such is the life under dictatorships and their habits of throw ppl under a carriage. Sometimes literally.
To be nedstarked:
- being killed, usually executed, by legal officials or military of the state ones worked to make stable and/or prosperous.
@@cudanmang_theog wait I’m curious about this, could you say more? I feel like this is likely true, just wanna hear some more.
Man, the always common trend of getting rid of the most adept person for a role even though they are loyal to you, due to paranoia or other people forcing your hand, and are surprised when everything falls apart without them
The other half of the story, however, is leaving the adept and skilled general in charge so long that he decides that he should rule himself, thus becoming an enemy. History is full of examples of such betrayals, and you can't exactly know that someone is loyal for sure, or that he will remain so in future.
It doesn't matter if the general is loyal to the emperor or not. The soldiers will force the general to revolt against the emperor for their personal gain
@@williamyao5317 not if the general can keep them in line
Happens throughout history
@@coolthief8375 how about emperor taizu of song
It seemed what did in the Yuan dynasty was a perfect storm of events brought about by Kublai Khan's death. And it seemed that Toghto's dismissal and death was what broke the camel's back. Without him the Yuan's fall would happened eventually. My compliments to all those who made this video a reality.
I am interested to hear more about that camel. What's happened to the camel after it had had it's back broken?
@@ExploreLearnEnglishWithGeorge 😅😅😅
The reason for the demise of the Yuan Dynasty was that her loose management led to official corruption, the system implemented throughout the country was very chaotic and class contradictions
However, the laws of the Ming Dynasty were too harsh, which plunged the national political environment into darkness and blood, and finally could not escape extinction.
Finally, the Qing Dynasty learned the lessons of the demise of the first two dynasties and made her politics more mature. She achieved the dream of all feudal dynasties in China, but she naively thought that the feudal agricultural civilization could compete with the Western civilization after the industrial revolution. She lost to the development of the times
@@linshitaolst4936 I would say the demise of the Qing Dynasty was due to its early success. The Kang-Yong-Qian era gave the Dynasty more than 150 years of relative peace as stability, allowing Qing China to become the preeminent power in East Asia. Victory breeds complacency so by the end of Qianlong's era the vision of Kangxi and the diligence of Yongzheng had been lost.
@426mak When Qianlong heard that his pen pal Louis XVI was beheaded, he became irritable and depressed. He thought that no one could challenge the emperor's authority, so in the later years of Qianlong's rule, he became more and more closed and conservative
Upon the mention of the Ming dynasty, it made me realized this one thing. Why would the members of the Tiandihui wanted to revive the Ming dynasty so much and did not go with the general trend of replacing one dynasty with their own leader's dynasty? What made the Ming dynasty so special to them and not those like of the Tang and Song dynasties despite that they were of Han origins as well. Heck, the Tang's regime was even considered as the Golden Age of China by many people.
Yuan and Qing were Mongolian and Manchurian/Jurchen dynasties respectively. Revival of the Ming meant bringing the region back to Han (ethnicity) rule via descendents of the Ming emperor (Han) bloodline for legitimacy purposes - easier to achieve as a propaganda goal. Ironically, many of the minorities such as the Khitan people (former Liao dynasty during the Song dynasty period, who was replaced by the Jin dynasty of Jurchens in the region; both along with Song fell to the Mongolian conquest) were absorbed and categorized as the Han ethnicity by the Mongolian Yuan dynasty to ease public administration. The Khitan culture was lost. During the Ming revival period under Qing, many of the rebels were a mix of Han and former Khitan. Side note: the Tiandihui eventually became various Triads (as in organized crime) in Asia after the Qing collapse.
It's quite possible that the dual invasions of the Jurchens (the other Jin dynasty) and then the Mongols (the Yuan dynasty) into the Central Plains created the first vestiges of "national identity" in the region, so when people thought of one China, they thought of the Ming dynasty.
This is just speculation, though.
It was gewd ole Tang-Bang era on 'em Song who couldn't even hold an tune to that Dynasty, even wrote Song about it, huehue.
You're assuming the leaders are being entirely honest instead of just using it to rouse public sentiment. There's a long history of dynastic founders initially using the skin of an older dynasty to public support. This goes back to the very first Dynasty, during the collapse of the Qin, the rebel leadership pretended to support the restoration of the preQin Kingdoms, particularly Chu since that was the source of many of the rebels. They even stuck a Chu royal descendant as a puppet King, but it was all very much fake and no real attempt at restoration was ever made.
Yeah it's more symbolic more than they actually wanted to bring Ming back. It's kind of like Casus belli, they needed a flag for ppl to unite under. As to why pick Ming dynasty, I think it's because Ming was the most recent memory where ethnic Han still rules and were at least not treated as inferiors--remember Chinese dynasties are ancient, Ming dynasty by itself lasted 3 centuries--Tang is about 7 centuries ago and Song is 4, both of which are a bit too distant for ppl to recall.
This is so high quality that I feel weird not having to pay for this. I sincerely hope teachers are using you guys!!!
The Mongols' major weakness was that their population was tiny. Even at their height, and despite the West always referring to them as "hordes" their army rarely exceeded 10 Tumens (all fronts combined), and even that required heavily drawing upon non-mongols - like the Tartars and the Naimans etc. - to fill out the ranks. When a conquering administrator is outnumbered by the locals by more than 1,000 to one, ejection and/or reverse assimilation is pretty inevitable. This happened everywhere. The Ilkhanate became Islamized, the Golden Hordre were gradually replaced by the Rus warlords they themselves had raised up to administer/collect tribute for them etc.
That's why Heaven was right, Fall of Yuan dynasty saved Mongols from total assimilation.
@@huuchinduu As a Mongolian I think exactly same as you. Defeat saved us.
@@deegii0904 there is nothing bad to be assimilated
@@Brandonhayhew Chinese be like
10 tumens is 100,000. That is insane numbers for that time.
I always thought that if they made an Assassins Creed game set in China, they should set it during the fall of the Yuan and rise of the Ming Dynasties.
Nah. They gonna get it wrong. How come africa don’t get any love?
@Serbon Resurrected - that’s just ignorant.
@@laqueenawilliams4762 he worded it pretty bad, but the core message is not wrong. Egypt and Ethiopia are the only countries that truly have significance in ancient worlds history, as in how much influence it brought to the world and the region.
@@laqueenawilliams4762 kingdom mali and Hausa songgai zulu congo All Colony and Destruction by westerners and Slave hunting is really damaging curse of resources. Too
France Britons attak Africa
Togho reminds me of Stilicho who tried to save Rome but was betrayed and assassinated by his emperor. In both the cases the Empire ended after them. Stilicho's death led to the Sack of Rome and Togho's death led to the fall of the Yuan Dynasty.
10:59 That's not the Mongolian writing system at the time. This is the original Mongolian writing system: ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ᠌
What you showed there is using the Cyrillic alphabet to spell Mongolian language, which was implemented by the Soviet Union in 20th century.
The official writing in Yuan was ʼPhags-pa script, for all ethnic groups.
The second word looks like a bad drawing of a horse
@@privatebaldric8767 😂😂😂
@@riza-2396 What the hell are you talking about? Pre-Cyrillic Mongolian writing systems were all based off of scripts decended from phoenician, I.E. the Arabic and Tibetan scripts.
None of the scripts ever used for Mongolian have their origin in Chinese characters.
Once again an example of Chinese people claiming other cultures?
@@achmedaan lol you with your phony knowledge and bias you once again spread lies and bs
Yuan dynasty be using that Quantitative easing.😄
Less of the issue of that. Bigger issue was the weather. Printing or not printing money would not have mattered.
蒙古人不会治理国家管理经济没有没有满族人聪明😂😂😂😂@@preetjitsingh328
10:59 that’s not the traditional Mongolian script. That’s the Cyrillic based script enforced by the USSR.
That's in fact quite of a mistake. K&G is amazing but then fall on its face on these things.
@@onehope6448 And traditional Mongolian language is being purged by the ccp in inner Mongolia too.
@@leileijoker8465 Nope, they just wanted to make some school subjects to be taught in Mandarin, but the Inner Mongolians disagree with it.
@@leileijoker8465你们蒙古族人太少，你自己想想蒙古族的男人女人和其他民族不断通婚下去100年后会发生什么😂😂😂😂
Toghto reminds me of Stilicho who was also killed by a jealous emperor.
True
True. Another instance of cutting off one's right hand.
Belasarius?
@@shanzboy belasarius wasn't killed
@@amazinggaming9870 r8ght but Justanian was always paranoid
No history class ever talked about how climate changes have affected the course of history, or geography determined the fate of nations. Even in the modern era with so much technology, we are still very much at the mercy of nature. Just because people in the developed world don't think they are one loss harvest away from starvation, doesn't mean it cannot happen anymore.
Video sounded like the recent years. Uncontrollable money printing, the masses slowly getting fed up due to economic decline. Question now is how long until rebellions start.
While it can be an influencing factor, to say that climate change or geography determined an event isn't typically reasoning that's seen as particularly sound in history (or political science, or most other social sciences for that matter). It's considered deterministic. That's why scholars like Jared Diamond are so heavily criticized by historians, anthropologists, and more.
No climate change back then only warlords / empire that determined the progress of civilsation.
@@srpr2448 climate change, and black death that changed the world
Yeah after listening to this I'm no longer asking how they lost China. Now I'm asking how they managed to hold on to it for as long as they did
it was not long among chinese dynasties
It was a stroke of luck due to the unification of mongols and collapse of the song dynasty from decades of war with jin. But as expected they could not hold it for long, less than 100 years.
Chinese cities and regions are most of the time self sustaining. If there's no wars the regions can pretty much operate on their own without the emperor's guidance
Well, Mongols did well at first because of their military power, after they defeated Song with houses they had forbidden the Hans to raise horses on a large scale. During the Han dynasty, after purchasing the middle east's Dawan war-horses the Han had won many battles on horseback against the famous Mongolian riders. But due to climate change and deliberated separation policy of Mongols, the quality and numbers of war horses had dropped significantly during the Song dynasty. After the Yuan was established, Mongolian did forbade the Hans to raise war houses, but they had built many ranches to raise houses in central China out of convenience. Most of these ranches had been falling into the hands of Hans during the uprising (because usually these ranches are located in flat areas meaning that it would be very hard to defend). Anyways, in the early days of Yuan, Mongolian did what they do the best, using horses to gain control over other
Regions. Unfortunately, like the old saying of China:打江山容易守江山难， meaning it is a lot easier to conquer than to maintain a place. The great Yuan empire started to fall apart when they try to go back to the"good old days" on horseback and lose the support of the Han officials. Do you honestly believe the "doctors" of Han couldn't heal or at least advise all of those short-lived Mongolian Emperors on their health? Song's doctors at the time were at least far better than the Mongolian ones. Kublai Khan, who trusted Han's doctor had lived till his late 70s. There were nine southern Song emperors in total with an average age of 48 (the last two Emperors died at the age of 11 and 9, otherwise the average age of Southern Song was well above 50 years old). But not only the most of the Mongolian Imperial family members at the time love to kill each other, but a lot of them also didn't have the full support of Hans. Including the help of Yu Yi(the Imperial doctors). The average age of the Yuan emperor was around 38 years old at least 10years shorter than the Hans.
@@Jake-dh9qk well… as the saying goes: “Heaven is high and the emperor is far”.
China had always had a large bureaucratic system, with different levels governing different portions, because China has always been too large to not have the governance be split up into different areas.
Feels like how the third century crisis would've went for Rome without Aurelian and Diocletian
I was literally just talking to a coworker a few days ago about the Mongols ability to Conquer but how I didn't really know why they collapsed.
Inflation.
@@manofcultura Biden
Various factions fighting each other and a big empire that was hard and expensive to maintain.
Chaos is easy. Order is hard.
@@AlexKS1992 Basically like most empires back then, once the main guy died. Everything sort of fell apart.
Heroes die of overwork.
Petty people who have more power than their powers hate and fear them.
It was rather predictable that a man as great as Toghto would eventually end up like he shouldn't.
Can we have more videos on Tang Taizong, Tang Xuanzong, Yongle Emperor, as well as Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperor. All these history videos are by far the most sophisticated and intriguing on youtube!
Qianlong is a fool. Yongzheng is extremely hard working, Yongle is very good at wars but his wars costed too much, if he could pay more attention to developmen many problems in middle and late Ming would not appear, Tang Xuanzong could be a great emperor if he did not live for so long, Tang Taizong might be one of the greatest emeperors in the history of China.
I've always been partial to Taiwu of Northern Wei as one of the most tragic historical protagonists.
@@ruiwang8024 你这说法就不公允，没有乾隆，西藏和新疆都独立了，他对维护清王朝的版图贡献极大
@@ruiwang8024 还有西南少民的改土归流
Amazing video and I love the Mongol era and Chinese history. All those of factors played a role in overthrowing the Yuan Dynasty but the ecological and economic ones could have been adapted had the central leadership were competent considering many other areas suffered the same issues but managed to ease onward. Traditional Mongolian script is a lot harder to represent so I don't blame you for choosing the easier showing of the language with the Cyrillic script. My major question is why is southern China in pink with the Southern Song? It was defeated in 1279 and incorporated into the Yuan Dynasty beyond that the video was a great representation of the overthrow of the Yuan.
Let's sum it up, CLIMATE CRISIS, INFLATION, DOMESTIC UPRISING, LACK OF GOVERNMENT CONTINUITY, all these factors lead to the fall of Mongol ( US ) empire...
@@DanfuLiu mongolia sucked at propaganda. usa aint falling anytime soon. not until something better comes up.
@@prastagus3 not really.
@@prastagus3 that's not true. US propaganda is still very strong in the english speaking world (which is literally the majority of the world). Not to mention, US has its many allies to reinforce such propaganda.
@@prastagus3 It may be wanning but for sure alternative like RT, CCTV showed how much worse they are so I think it is more of rising of alternative NGO.
Toghto gets to join the "Loyal component general gets stabbed in the back by the very state he is trying to save" club with Sthilico and Surena.
Basilius,Aurelian?
Don't forget Yi Sun-sin from Korea
@@Illevium Admiral Yi was more like a Hannibal. Because he wasn't very popular in court but he was never killed by the king of korea. While Stilicho and Toghto were. And I wouldn't put Surena in the same category as these two though. The guy literally won only one battle while Stilicho and Toghto did much more. They literally carried their empires on their backs just to be backstabbed and unsurprisingly their empires literally fell with them.
You know you are a powerful and well-established civilization when you invented examinations (civil service examinations) to determine whether you'll be worthy of a government title and not true aristocratic and heirarchial lineage as what other civilizations would do.
Very true, very based.
China is still using civil service exams to select people who can enter the gov. Does any other country have such exams?
Great content, but shouldn’t the Mongolian language be represented by the Mongolian script, considering the Cyrillic Alphabet was only adopted much later by the Mongolian People’s Republic?
You are quite correct sir, we study the script starting from 3rd grade until we graduate highschool. It is the official state alphabet, its just easier and less complicated to use Cyrillic alphabets.
ʼPhags-pa script, the official Mongol Yuan writing
There's a book called "The Secret History of Mongols" written by the official state Prime Minister when Genghis declared the Mongol Empire, starting from his own childhood and the struggles of the different tribes and ethnicities at the time living in Central and East Asia, and the story ends with him having a triumph over all of them from being the weakest tribe to the absolute "Universal Ruler"- "Chinggis Khaan". So yeah it was his decision to adopt the Mongolian script as the state official alphabet, and the Secret History of Mongols being written in the script. In the video however, it definitely should be Mongolian script considering it was still Yuan dynasty time.
@@ononrentsenbat727 while Magna Carta was written in Latin, but by the time of the US constitution, that was already written in vernacular English. While Genghis Khan may had promulgated written Mongolian from the Uighur Script, Yuan Dynasty was based on 'Phags-pa script, an alphabet designed by a Tibetan monk by that name and State Preceptor Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yuan.
@@kenh758 I appreciate the fact that you know more than a native Mongolian who lived basically his entire life over there. Impressive. We are taught Mongolian history from early age and it is often exaggerated and ultra nationalistic. Survivors of the cruel Qing dynasty rule over us left us with barely any population and absolute loathing towards the Chinese and the Manchurians. When it comes to Yuan dynasty history class in our country, we don't often discuss it comparing to what we discuss how Genghis basically is the sole reason why this state has come to exist. He is like the Jesus of us, the Divine Godfather in our history books and Khubilai Khaan "Хубилай Хаан" is considered to be somewhat of a traitor of his ethnicity to declare a united state with the chinese and claiming the Heaven's Mandate. Not to mention he moved the empire's capital to Beijing which most of us Mongols are still salty about. My uproots are from Arig Buh's side, the one Khubilai was fighting a civil war with, which he ended up winning, and in today's Mongolia we still consider it to be a major blunder.
The destruction of the Song Dynasty was a pity, and China never recovered after the Song Dynasty
Yes. There could have been a Renaissance in song dynasty. Although Chinese turned over the Yuan dynasty, but in many aspects they succeeded the way Mongolian used to rule them...
so in short, Yuan suffered the one fatal mistake every Chinese dynasty had faced, the only competent generals distrusted by their own ruler
Incompetent leaders are generally jealous and suspicious of those who are competent. Insecure people has been a thing since ancient times.
I think the fall of many Chinese dynasties were due to the abusive power of eunuchs and an incompetent emperors.
@@alexsolosm It's not entirely just that. You have to consider the size of China as well. Generals are charged with a great deal of autonomy due to the fact that they often defend the borders or raise forces to fight. They have a great deal of "cult of personality" with them that lets them command troops to fight for their own political agendas. Soldiers recruited into general's armies have their loyalty tied to the general most of the time, since majority of the common folk/soldier have never seen the Chinese emperor nor cared about the Imperial dynasties. When a dynasty rise or fall, farmers still farm and live a life of hardship regardless. The size of China made it even harder for Emperors to keep track of their subject's loyalties and have to always deal with a certain level of uncertainty; imagine playing a strategy game but the entire map is covered by fog of war.
As such, Chinese Emperors have to be weary of generals since they can easily garner support and use their charisma to form alliances that the Emperor can't do. Emperors are essentially sheltered 2nd Lieutenants who has almost no connection with their generals and troops that fight for them.
Man Yuan is not chinese dynasty. Just read title of video man
@@michaeldaniel4701 I know, they're the Mongol, but they ruled China for quite a long time and is a Chinese dynasty in history book, look it up
The Mongol Conquest Of China was deeply brutal , tens of millions were slaughtered and many regions wwre heavily depopulated
Every great empires committed mass massacre and genocide.
Now, half of Mongol is part of China. And mongolian-Chinese are very patriotic to China.
@@boomboomboom9297 Very proud of being Mongol too. They also consider him a hero of the Mongols *and China* .
@@boomboomboom9297 how do you know that they patriotic to China. If China collapse just like 1911 they will certainly trying to declare they independence
@@boomboomboom9297 Half of the Mongols in China are almost completely sinicized while the other half of them are not as much sinicized. In my experience the ones who are sinicized are very patriotic towards China while the others who are not are extremely hateful.
Great video a bit undermined by two immersion-breaking details:
1. The Mongolian modern Cyrillic Russianized language is not the one used by the ancients. They used their own writing systems, which was sadly misrepresented in the video. (The Mongolian language symbol is in Cyrillic
2. The map constantly showed “Southern Song,” it has been destroyed by the Yuan when it conquered china, but the map in video keep showing that glaring pink which does not exist no more.
I watch this channel for its incredible details and care to history, and I hope it will keep on the effort and not getting lazy and ignore historical accuracy.
This channel is anything but “details and care to history”. One can watch its videos to have a rough understanding of the big picture, but the credibility of details, at least when related to anything even remotely Chinese, should not be taken seriously.
Scrolled through the comments to find someone saying this. I wish the Southern Song had survived longer, but alas, they did not.
@@mottscottison6943 Yey team China!
@@mottscottison6943 Actually after 1990 Mongolia teach original script in all schools, and in inner Mongolia original script is banned few years ago
@@michaeldaniel4701 No, they didn't ban it. Nothing will happen to you if you speak it at home no one is gonna arrest you for it and local tv stations with Mongolian scripts or dialects are still there. The ban was on school textbooks, all textbooks are only allowed to be printed and taught in Mandarin. (Same policy had been applying to all languages in China, but you can still pick courses at local universities to study local languages) In my opinion, culturally it is still not a good thing for inner Mongolians and other local ethnic groups, but a standardized language being implemented is good for a country as a whole. Also, it is a lot easier for ethnic residents to find better jobs and get better paid. But it is still highly debatable, if you keep using different languages it might make everything chaotic, inefficient and make policies(good or bad) a lot harder to execute. For example, India kept all of its regional dialects, and not much had changed since the independence, but the northern states or the non-Hindi speaking regions are often a lot less developed than the Hindi speaking regions. This situation to me is inequality or even discrimination as well. But as a design major student speaking, the diversity of these well-preserved local cultures is a lot of fun to enjoy, it was like walking into different countries within the country. So there are pros and cons to this.
Dear King & Generals, thanks for the video but there is error with your map. Southern Song in pink should be removed as it was already destroyed by Kubilai Khan to create Yuan Dynasty.
I really need to learn more about Chinese history apparently. This was a fascinating (albeit rather tragic) period I know virtually nothing about. Thank you for the informative video!
Stay well out there everybody, and God bless you friends! :)
9:20 "Enters like a king, leaves like a king."
Another satisfying history about Mongol empire. More content about mongols history please🙏
K&G is honestly one of the highest quality channels out there, bar none.
Second to historymarche
I appreciate how you elegantly include the social, economic, and political impacts climate precipitated and demanded of humanity and political leaders
I love how I recognize all the Civ 6 music in these videos
Fine Display Kings and Generals 🇨🇦
Great Work
I didn't know a lot of this information - thank you for sharing this video 👍🏻
For hundred of years prior to Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols had always attacked or raided China, took all the goods and left the destructions behind. They were good at hunting or fighting on battlefields. But it's very difficult to govern over the people and their land especially when they are different ethnics.
same is true for taliban, all barbarians are alike
They had a simple foreign policy, surrender and pay tribute and send troops when it's time to campaign, you'll be fine but if you didn't surrender when the opportunity to surrender was offer, typically before battle, de population would ensue, which was actually sound military strategy, if there I no population behind you and no enemy before you, you just keep pushing forward.
There's a reason why they more or less relied on the Chinese to run the dynasty for them
The Mongols had similar problems in their Persian and European Conquests. They couldnt control the areas they attacked.
study history, mongols did not even formally existinng before 800 years ago, they did not attack china, the ancestors of mongols were small tribes and had been under ruling by different chinese dynasties, before yuan dynasty, the nomads that had powerful military were khidatns and jurchens, not mongols
the environment around the Huang river is always a problem. In case you did not know, the Han, Sui, Tang & Ming dynasties all experienced yearly environmental crises, that's the reason behind each time the Emporer moved from the capital to vice capital, to survive starvation. The Yuan dynasty is just like the Jin dynasty, its power comes from massacres and cruelty of the ruling class. No end justifies the means, that is what you can get from Chinese history.
Great video, but why do you have the Southern Song still labeled over the territory of the Yuan dynasty during the reign of Toghon Temur Khan? The Southern Song had been destroyed decades before he took the throne. It looks like it's just an honest mistake, though, and you guys did a good job on everything else.
Great documentary! thank you Kings and Generals Team.
Awesome vid! I’ve been looking for good content on the Yuan dynasty and this is perfect, keep it up guys! God bless you!
Your series of podcasts on Spotify is excellent. Hope you also put up more podcasts on other topics.
Creative Assembly, give us a Genghis Total War game
A thousand YES! to this.
Toghto: Carefully keeping everything in place and preventing the collapse of the entire system.
Toghon Temur: "... This is a problem. Get him out of here."
never knew that the weather was so chaotic in various regions of northern and Central Asia during the first decade of the 13th century. this factor would have surely enhanced the value of stoicism throughout china and Mongolia. Anyways another fascinating, factual and highly educational video from you guys- can't wait to watch videos on the great Northern war and Abbasid revolution
Not south of the Yangtze. We enjoy life here.
Same everywhere.
Northern Europe vs Mediterranean.
Not just Asia but Europe was also dealing with its own inclement weather. Flooding, Drought, Freezing temperatures, etc etc. Its one of the many reasons the Black Death wiped out so much of Europe's population.
Volcano eruptions 🌋🌋🌋🌋 on islands of today!Indonesia
Stoicism，Zoroastrianism，祆教，明教
Wonderful episode, thank you for the upload. Can I please mention that the maps in the video still label the lands of "Southern Song" Dynasty - which already fell 1279 in the Battle of Yamen which has a video made by Kings and Generals.
Basically the finance of Yuan Dynasty had problem at the very beginning, since Mongols pretty much destroyed the economy of north China during their invasion and Kublai had to worry about the budget deficit when he was trying to conquer Song Dynasty. When Song was conquered, Kublai had once considered his Han advisers' suggestion to recover the economy by lowering taxes and reforms, yet rebellion of Mongol princes and war in northwest requested instant financial income for the government. So eventually he chose the policy of notorious Muslim minister Ahmad Fanakati's advice of state monopoly and printing cash. Nearly all of Kublai's successors were incapable except Ayurbarwada, and Mongol nobles always had conflicts, which made reform unsuccessful. When Toqto’a came into power, it was too late.
Agreed. None of the rulers of the Yuan were in any way interesting in terms of statecraft. They were, in the end, incapable of ruling a large, settled population and collapsed under the weight of their own political and economic illiteracy.
The Mongols killed most Chinese people in a large area or in a city when they defeated the Chinese army. The Mongols killed most people in their way of conquor.
@@CN_SFY_General When Chinese look to the pan-Asian heritage of China's history, they can easily look to steppe nomads like the Xianbei or Khitan who contributed great works to the cultural canon and amalgamated into the nation. But the Mongol Yuan Dynasty always held themselves up as foreigners and were only interested in maintaining an apartheid state for the extraction of plunder.
@@megakedar Mongols killed more than 80% of Chinese and placed the Chinese at the lowest level, with 4 total levels in total. They have a mongol in every village to have sex with a new bride before the groom has any chance. This is how most Chinese have mongolian gene now. The russia mush have similar experience, because most russia have mongolian gene.
Not only this. According to Yuan Shi, lots of Mongolia nobles who are enfeoffed in south China were trying to keep their lifestyle by destroy the farm land to rangeland, lot of peasants lost their land and starving to die. this is one of the very important reason for yuan’s collapse very quick. The first emperor of Ming, zhuyuanzhang，was suffer from starving during his whole childhood； his familly members were all starving to die；
Nice, i always thought about this
I love the throat singing at the beginning
When a country or kingdom falls usually its because of the greed of a few people that's always blew my mind. I also wonder how many of these people get punished for it.
Tend to die when their society falls apart
And it goes full circle as well when the Qing Dynasty formed against the Ming
@@anthonylopez2599 often especially in the modern world a collapsing regime's ruling class flees to a different country
It doesn't help that the mongol converted high yielding farmland to low yielding pastureland. The move was to depopulate Chinese via famine. Because Chinese vastly outnumber the mongol, they know they couldn't hold on if that ratio isn't brought more in their favor. considering that, it's amazing they held on as long as they have.
not only because of the number，they are doing great in India for example. (Tamerlane empire). The reason of Yuan fail is because Chinese have the one of most steady government organization system in that time and a scholar focused very unique social mobility system. kubalai tries to learn the system， however，he failed because most mongol nobles are against him. in another way to explain，it is more likely the Visigoths conquered Rome. In addition, as a puppet states of Ming, Manchu did very well for ruling China. It is because they can accept Chinese culture much more easier than Mongolia,and they could understand what is the Mandate of Heaven for Chinese people. This is more likely Macedonian Alexander the Great conquered the Greece.
Mongolian general Esen Taish Khan had 15,000 soldiers, but on September 1, 1449, King Zhentung of Ming won a battle with 500,000 soldiers and took the King captive and left him to herd sheep for a year.
In the battle of Tumu, only two soldiers, the majors of the Mongolian army, participated in a great victory that is rare in history. The battle was the biggest defeat in the 300-year history of the Ming Dynasty.
In 1444, the Ming Dynasty counted that there were all 660,000 field troops in the all country, distributed in 13 provinces,and most of which were attacking the Luchuan Kingdom in south.
In battle of Tumu 20,000 just Oirats troops, also have 70,000 Tatar(mongolian) troops.
And Esen not Mongolian ,he is Oirats people.
@@xlr9143 ойрд бол монгол үндэстэн. Эсэн бол Монголын нэг хаан байсан. Монгол бол халх, ойрд, буриад, үзэмчин гээд олон аймагтай. тэд бүгд монгол хэлээр ярьдаг тусдаа бие даасан нэг үндэстэн. Монгол улс тусгаар улс
15:48 randomly throws in the salt trade was 6/10 of government revenue 😯
idk I feel that should be emphasized more in history
Didn't learn much about other continent due to the Eurocentric colonial effect, now people are learning that Ghana and Mali were ancient empire and rimbuctu was the land of gold, Songhai Benin empire etc
Videos on Northern Yuan, will be fun.
@5:00 Yuan Shee - Pronounced more like Yuan Sure (元史). Not a bad word to learn to pronounce properly as pretty much all dynasties write a history covering the previous dynasty.
Yes
I love all the coverage on Asian history as I am from Asian descent myself. The videos are quite Mongolian centric though, I think there should be more coverage on Ancient Chinese history. More than just the three kingdoms
There’s literally hundreds of videos about the Chinese, i think there is enough
@Coolcuwl Cool may I ask a question
@@Mongol1232 K and G has 25 Chinese history videos. They have 34 Mongol Invasion videos. Caesar himself has 22 videos. Russia only has 9 videos. The Ottoman Empire has 30. There is definitely room for new content and I think the point made is valid. The Chinese Three Kingdoms period alone has a good amount of content comparable to the Gallic Wars or the Roman Civil War
It also depends on the people available to K&G. With the writer of this video, they have an expert in Mongol history, so it's only natural that episodes on the Mongols or from a Mongolian perspective are easier to get for them.
@@smellypatel5272 because many Asian countries don't use Latin script.
I am surprised the video didn't mention the outbreak and the effects of The Plague.
(I just looked into it. The plague only lasted approximately one year in China. This raises a number of questions.)
Other Conquerors: Try to force conquered peoples to learn and use their language.
Based Mongols: Ban the Chinese from learning Mongolian.
Great content! I love it!
Fascinating stuff!
Dadu literally means big capital, 大都. And Beijing means northern capital, 北京. It's also interesting to compare Kyoto's name 京都 with those two. Kyoto's name translates as "capital city", but both characters mean capital, so it can be read as "capital capital".
都 is more like metropolis.
@@raining_macondo so its "Capital Metropolis" no offense but the name looks like your average City name in a average Superhero Movie
The act of getting rid of the Mongols was so important that even today during Mid Autumn Festival Chinese people talk about the slip of paper inserted into Moon Cakes asking people to rise up and kill the Tartar invaders.
Hey Kings of generals I don't know if you remember but I asked her for this all of the yuan dynasty on your calls for American civil war video I just want to thank you for suggesting it
The nomads in northern China are the largest and most threatening force among all the nomads in Eurasia (The nomads in northern China include Huns, Xianbei, Khitan, Nuzhen, Turkic and Mongols, among which Huns and Xianbei are the ancestors of Mongols). But they are facing the extremely powerful agricultural empire in the South - the Chinese empires. When the Chinese empire remained strong, these nomadic peoples were strongly restrained and firmly fixed in the grasslands, deserts and neighboring areas of northern China. However, when the Chinese empire becomes relatively weak (for example, the Song Dynasty, which did not achieve great unity, ruled China at the same time as the Jin Dynasty, Xixia Dynasty and Dali Dynasty), the Chinese empire will lose its control over the nomadic peoples in the north, and these nomadic peoples will take the opportunity to leave northern China, And swept the world with its powerful nomadic force (such as the Mongolian conquest sweeping Eurasia). When the Chinese empire becomes too powerful (such as the Han Dynasty that defeated the Huns), the nomads in northern China will also leave northern China due to the loss of their homes and then sweep the world (see the whip of God of the Huns). In a word, the powerful Chinese empires take care of the largest group of nomadic monsters in human classical history. When this kind of care fails, the nomadic monsters in northern China will shock the world.
@@onehope6448 and seeded 90% of their women
LOL dude read books other than chinese history books. Starting when The Huns and Sumbe /Xianbei / and other ancient empires land become northern china? Say me when that powerful Song dynasty conquered that land ?
@@michaeldaniel4701 I think he means north side of China
First of all, Huns and Xianbei are Turkic not Mongol. Secondly, nomadic khaganates such as Göktürks attacked both China and eastern states (Byzantines and Sasanids) simultaneously. In other words, China in no way protected nomadic peoples from the west.
@@Asterix958 lol dont talk nonsense turk is turk dont try make other ethics to be turk
Mongols last holdout in Korea also get wiped out by in Jeju.
And korea attak Liáodōng
@@TV-jg2kj machu ? they were associates
@@ethanoyamawang no king is longed fro freedom empire weak this is chance. Attak
@@ethanoyamawang Choi Young and Lee seonggye(lee is Later on king of Joseon)
@@ethanoyamawang ki Empress Brothesrs is threeatened the king
King is angry and kill ki Empress. Brothers
Talk about having bad luck with the weather, what a nightmare!
I appreciate the insights your channel brought to this topic, the gradual and subsequent precipitous fall of the Yuan dynasty. However there are several anachronisms and inaccuracies regarding the Red Turban rebellion. For example, the rebellions became consolidated around the Red Turban identity after the flood-work project; Zhang Zicheng was only lesser prominent warlord with coastal territories while more aggressive warlords were active in central China, ect.
Thanks!
I recommend reading James Waterson's, "Defending Heaven", 2013, which offers one of the best detailed histories of the decline and fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Cracks in the mighty Yuan Dynasty began to appear near the end of the great Kublai Khan's long reign in China. Kublai Khan finished the work his grandfather, Chinggis Khan and his immediate successors, Ogetai then Mongke had started, the conquest of China.
Chinggis conquered the two, alien dynasties, the Liao and the Tanguts which ruled the northern 2/5ths of China since 1125 A.D. It was left up to Kublai to defeat the Song Dynasty, which held the remaining 3/5s of China and had prospered for 150 years, despite losing its northern territory. Kublai accomplished this and reunited all of China under Mongol rule.
The Mongols were efficient conquerors and destroyers, but they proved inept at establishing a complex ruling and bureaucratic system as the native Han Chinese dynasties were capable. But such was the complete conquest of all of China that the Yuan Dynasty lasted 90 years before it fell.
This does not tell the whole story, however. In the last decades of the Yuan Dynasty, almost all of China was fragmented between the Yuan, which effectively ruled only the territory around Beijing, and the rest of China split between a Mongol warlord and three Chinese warlords. To make a long story short, in the end one Chinese warlord prevailed over the overs and became the first emperor of the new, native Han Chinese MING (brilliant) Dynasty.
The first Ming emperor was not a great man. His character and personality were more akin to the Qin Dynasty's first emperor, Shih Huang Di, recognized as the unifier of ancient China but a notorious, destructive tyrant. Yet the first Ming emperor laid the groundwork for the great Ming Dynasty, which lasted around 350 years. It would be China's last, native Han Chinese ruling dynasty.
Ming was terribly vilified by Manchus. For example, Ming was brutal toward its court officials (and their families), but not so to common folks.
90 years was a very short dynasty, illustrating the complete incompetence of the Mongol rulers. Their racist policies were doomed to cause an uprising of the entire population, and their brutality is not to be glorified as is typical by Kings and Generals, but condemned.
Mongke 🦧
These chain of events sounds a little familiar right about now... well like they say, history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme.
Sucker Punch should make a ghost of Tsushima style game based in China with a new ghost character after the second ghost of Tsushima game because after the mongols lost to Japan twice then the Chinese beat the mongols out of China.
Nah, soon later another nomadic tribe called "Manchu's" dethroned Chinese Ming Dynasty completely and ruled it until CPP xD
@@MrGod47 The Khan died of illness. I wonder where you get your information.
@@aslof1069 "Soon" you mean almost 300 years? You have a warped preception of time.
@@MrGod47 Same goes to Yuan, it was pushed back by rebellions due to the discriminating law aimed to the Chinese people. And that's how the Yuan dynasty retreated back and named itself as Northern Yuan Dynasty it was never destroyed or conquered completely.
@@josh2482 The lost majority of their empire territory in 100 years and ruled under Northern Yuan Dynasty even marrying Mongolian concubine.
Great video. One question is why the over-use of the map showing the Southern Song even in the later parts of the video when the Southern Song was all over by 1279?
It's always surprising to me how long states survive in this environment of political chaos and economic hardship. You'd think society would collapse into total anarchy but they seem to limp along for generations still.
Finally this music on youtube and not only on podcast. Could somebody tell me what music is the one that starts the episode plz? Could listen to it all day but can't find it
Hmm... Not sure why the map still indicates the region as Southern Song as it was conquered completely in 1279 by the Yuan.
@listen2meokidoki you’ve got a few screws loose in your head…
I turned my dad on to this channel and now he wants his own tablet to watch it on. I showed him how to watch it on his pricey little smartphone and now the battery keeps dying!! LOL!!
By the way, excellent work. Very nice, easy to understand graphics. Good design.
Red turban slogans:
“Oust the Mongols and restore China” “Rebel against Yuan and Restore Song” “the Sun and the moon(Ming) will restore the eras of the Song”
Who is “the Sun” in that metaphor?
@@mikejazz3001 The Chinese character for the Ming dynasty is 明, which is literally the character for sun (日) and moon (月) put together. Basically clever wordplay lol
Nice
Korea slogans : The honor of Goguryeo!
(stuck in Liaodong.)
That's funny, considering the first Ming emperor considered the Yuan as legit and even took Mongols in his own court.
Nice work
Might be inaccurate to put the forbidden city as it was built during the Ming not the Yuan.
The Forbidden City's Foundation was founded on the Mongol Yuan's Old Summer Palace.
@@razorsharpview9090 yes, but any structure in any old chinese city is built on the foundations of some other older building. they literally cant dig a tunnel in xian without running into a couple hundred old graves from previous dynasties.
fact remains, the Ming built the forbidden city.
@@mxn1948 True, but to be fair, it did look similar to the Ming dynasty palace. lol
@@razorsharpview9090 The structure had not resemblence to what Forbidden City was today, it was a village hut.
Students would learn so much more from youtube channels, i reckon one day schools will make them a big part of learning ( atleast for certain people as some people struggle to take in what their teachers say)
Anyone else seeing some uncomfortable parallels between the events in this video and what's going on in the US today? I get the feeling that we're one volcanic eruption away from civil war and partition.
Good, the beast must die. The continent has become a immoral wasteland and an unnatural racial hellscape. It's a hideous dystopian nightmare.
@@soapmaker2263 and so would any collapse
Eh, people have been saying this for 20 years.
wtf i started this documentary to watch something i thought i cared about but it seems i'm not that interested (in this one at least watched many others on both ur channels) but this runs in the background and i hear it but don't pay attention yet the god damn VOICE keeps me here... it's so relaxing
To all history lovers 🖤 from Mongolia.
Hi from Chin
Do a video about spanish-ottomen wars , also video about Andalusia as well and ottoman algeria , and the algerian fleets.
The Algerian pirate?! Barbarian pirate War?
Battle of Lepanto??
Hey K&G , send us a link for your Mongols serier soundtrack ! Much appreciated
Make a video of "Ashina Jiesheshuai" He was a Göktürk Warrior who raided a Chinese castle with only 39 soldiers causing a bloodbath.
@ImperiumRomanum It did achieve somrthing, he gave hope for the Turks and the Turks fought back what later led to a new government. 2nd Gokturk Khaganate. During Jiesheshuai's time Turks were hopeles, inprisonated, getting asimilated by the chinese, Those 40 soldiers gave hope and strenght for the turks.
Zhu Yuanzhang is like a protagonist of some sort of fantacy novel,who evovled from a beggar into the emperor of Ming Dynasty😂And his generals,including Xu Da,who took Beijing(I remember watching the scene where Zhu Yuanzhang celebrating Xu Da's triumph in a TV drama,just didnt know it was about him taking the capital of Yuan Dynasty until I saw this vedio),had long been his friends since he was a little kid,which sadly,didnt make any difference over the fact that he killed almost every one of them after he built his huge empire😔.
FYI,that triumph scene was really warm,seemed that brotherhood was gonna last for like 1000 years,cant imagine he killed him anyway
Zhu Yuanzhang ended up as Stalin character, paranoid and murdery.
It makes for quite a dark epic, considering how he turned into a murderous paranoid tyrant in his later years. Rising from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of accomplishment, only to become corrupted by power and turn into a monster, and, ironically, in the end, despite all his paranoia and cruelty, betrayed by his own brother after his death, who usurped his chosen heir and took over his empire.
@@adamwu4565 You are wrong. That is because his eldest son died, and he wanted his grandson to inherit the throne. He was afraid that his grandson could not suppress the founding generals and princes and ministers, so he began to help his grandson remove all obstacles. When he was about to die, he even wanted to kill the later Emperor Yongle, because someone reported to him that he might rebel and died before he could kill him! This also led to the later outcome. If he did not kill the founding generals, the rebellion of Emperor Yongle would never succeed
, because those generals are more powerful than others, especially General lan yu!
Where's the Roman Civil war continuation?! It's such a pleasure to watch.
Do you guys plan on doing videos on the red turban rebellion and the Hongwu emperor?
The guy who this one thinks that will be coming soon; it was just too much to also include it in this video at the same time
great video
Do a video on the entire Ming Dynasty
The early Ming Emperors were badass !
some thing to rember: he last Mongol emperor, Togon-temür (reigned 1333-68), had become emperor at the age of 13. He had received the rudiments of a Chinese education and was, like some of his predecessors, a pious Buddhist and a benevolent though weak ruler. During the first years of his reign, however, power was in the hands of Bayan, a minister who belonged to the anti-Chinese faction and whose measures deepened the resentment of the educated Chinese against Mongol rule.
Emperor Yongle's life is also very legendary, can you tell us about him?
Thanks
This is like mongol equivalent of Roman's third century crisis.
@@masterdreadeye1865 actually north yuan survived
Ming dynasty Historian described Ming’s first emperor’s achievement in this way: "The house of Zhu’s merit is is often compared to the house of Confucius, Guan Zhong restrained the state of Chu, but Chu was a prince of China. The merits of the Han Gaozu and Tang Taizong were to replace Qin and Sui, but Qin and Sui were Chinese emperors. Our sacred Taizu emperor removed Mongol Yuan, restored the land of the Chinese empire and the correct faith. How important was his achievements compared to the previous two monarchs and minister?