Main Points

History is Now

The Medieval Era was not kind to the Chinese, though without question the Middle East suffered far worse from the last terrible barbarian invasions. While the Chinese were the first to emerge from the Medieval Era into the Renaissance, this would only be the first time that China would make the transition. Yet, while the Arab invasions swept over the Middle East, and Rome fell apart leaving the Germans to seize control of Europe, the Chinese survived. Though barbarian invasions in 280 AD swept across Northern China, the South remained in Chinese hands, grew, developed and eventually allowed Chinese generals to take back the North.

Reunification and Rebuilding

In 589 AD, the Chinese were reunited politically by general Yang Chien. He took the name Sui Wen Ti when he became emperor, inaugurating the Sui Dyansty. Wen Ti was not only an able general, but an efficient administrator. Though harsh, he reduced military service while maintaining military effectiveness. He also initiated a campaign of infrastructure building with special attention to increasing irrigation agriculture. The combined effects of these changes was to reinvigorate farming and rebuild the internal strength of China. Wen Ti was succeeded by his son, Yang Ti who continued in his father's footsteps, but less wisely.

Yang Ti continued building up the nation's infrastructure with the greatest project ever attempted in Chinese history, the Grand Canal. With brutal and strict conscripted service, the Grand Canal was built in only a couple of decades and for the first time truly united North China with South China. The service he demanded however made him deeply unpopular, the construction methods used were sound but highly dangerous and thousands died on the project. The taxes he levied into the future to pay for his construction were near ruinous.

He was already in political difficulties because of the Grand Canal, but he continued all these practices after it was finished. The enforced labor and taxes continued, and not for any national program but for building palaces and other luxuries for himself. Whether he could have avoided rebellion is an open question, but Yang Ti practically embraced it and unsurprisingly he was swept from power leading to a new round of civil strife in 618 AD.

Rise of the Tang

In 202 BC, the brutal Qin Dynasty saw the less competant heirs of a ferocious ruler lose their power to the more tolerant Han Dynasty. The parallels with the rise and fall of the Sui Dynasty are unavoidable. When the Sui Yang Ti fell to rebellion in 618 AD, it was not fragmented for long. A wise general, Li Yuan, Duke of Tang swiftly reestablished control, reunifying China under the Tang Dynasty in 624 AD. The Tang Emperors expanded Chinese power into the Middle East, respected Buddhism, and restored the Confucian scholars to their traditional role running the government bureaucracy. To support this, Tang Dynasty education was characterized by a broad liberal arts program in the Confucian style.

The Tang Emperors also created one of the most enduring institutions in Chinese history. Civil service exams were instituted forming the entry point for anyone of high or low birth into the university system and the large Chinese government. Test scores were one crucial component not only for entry into government service, but determining how highly one's service began. This system was one of the most progressive meritocracies ever instituted in practice. Yet the Tang was also a period when the wealthy enlarged their estates generation by generation leaving a swelling population with little to no place to live.

None of these things are why the Tang is still remembered by the Chinese today. The Tang Dynasty was a golden age in the Chinese consciousness; the time not only of China's greatest power, but its finest culture and greatest artists. Just like the Rome of Caesar Augustus which produced Vergil, Catallus, and Horace, or the London of Elizabeth I which produced Shakespeare and Marlowe, Xian under the Tang emperors saw China's greatest poets Du Fu, Li Bai, and Wang Wei write the greatest verses in Chinese history, poems every Chinese school child learns to this day.

The Tang Dynasty also distinguished itself in other important ways. Artisans produced porcelain so beautiful, that today the art is still referred to simply as, fine china. Movable type was created using wood blocks enabling the first printing of books, both text as well as fully illustrated pages. Chinese armies also ruled unchallenged under a succession of Tang Emperors, including the only woman to bear the title of Di, emperor, and rule China. These emperors conquered all the territory controlled under the Han Dynasty and charged along the Silk Road, taking Afghanistan and provinces of what had once been the empire of the Persians and Alexander the Great. The Tang Dynasty was the most dynamic empire of the Medieval Era and the Chinese still look back on it as a golden age in their history.

Downfall of a Dynasty

All good things come to an end, however, and as the Chinese tell the story the end was neither long nor sweet. China's first - and last - female emperor was brilliant and strong. She ruled by her wits and her force of will over a court that did not approve of her but proved incapable of removing her. When she grew older she attempted to have her daughter groomed for the succession, and this finally succeeded in uniting her many disparate enemies who staged a coup and had her packed off. The compromise candidate to succeed her was her own son who became the emperor Ming Huang. Ming ("brilliant"), was an excellent description of his early reign which saw the peak of Tang power. However, in his old age, Ming Huang became obsessed and subservient to his favorite court concubine, Yang Guifei. Sources are quite specific that the collapse of the Tang Dynasty began at this moment.

In 751 AD, the Tang fought one of the epic battles in history. Facing the armies of the Abbasid Caliphate, Chinese and Muslim forces clashed at the Battle of the Talas River in Central Asia. The Abbasid victory secured Central Asia for Muslim culture and brought a halt to the Chinese advance in the Middle East. In the turmoil which followed this defeat, Ming Huang succumbed to the advice of his concubine and entrusted the Chinese frontiers to a Turkish general, named An Lushan, whose greatest gift was his ability to flatter the self-centered Yang Guifei. The reason for his flattery was soon apparent to all; in 755 AD, An Lushan revolted.

The An Lushan rebellion was ultimately put down but it effectively broke Tang power. The court was forced to flee Xian and plot the recovery of North China from the South. However, not before they had to cross the arduous mountains which separate them; a journey on which Ming Huang's soldiers finally became outraged and forced the emperor to watch as they executed Yang Guifei. It was the greatest and most terrible humiliation for the greatest emperor in Chinese history. Ming Huang's flight through the mountains would become a symbolic theme in many poems and paintings of later dynasties.

Although the capital would be recovered, the emperors never again ruled with the same power; henceforth they had to vie with local nobility to exert imperial control in fact rather than just theory. In 791 AD, the Chinese clashed with the Tibetan kingdom of Tufan at the Battle of Tingzhou. The Tibetan victory marked the high point of their empire and the continuing contraction of Chinese power. From 874 - 884 AD a series of especially violent peasant rebellions rocked China and effectively broke whatever power the Tang emperors retained. By time the last Tang emperor was deposed in 907 AD, it was noteworthy but politically unimportant.

Like the Age of Division the years that followed were marked by intense political fragmentation. The period from 907 - 960 AD is known as the Five Dynasties and 16 Kingdoms; the name alone gives a good analysis of the politics of the time. However, in 960 AD one of the rival warlords, Zhao Kuangyin, emerged victorious, and founded the Song Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty was powerful and romanticized afterward. It was an important cultural peak in Chinese history, but the Song emperors showed levels of restraint and fostered the development of China in new and revolutionary ways, even if they were not completely understood at the time. Thus, 960 AD marks the beginning of the Renaissance in China.

Catastrophe

Yet that is not the end of the Medieval story in Chinese history. It should be, but it isn't. Sometime around 1160 AD, the wife of a minor chieftain of a minor barbarian tribe had a son; his name is all but forgotten to history, Temujin. Their tribe was part of a group called the Mongols, the rivals to the more successful Tatar tribes. Together the Tatars and Mongols represented the main barbarian challenge to China in the 13th century AD. As was typical however, these ferocious warriors were far more eager to vie with each other for supremacy among the tribes.

Temujin, however, quickly proved himself not only a capable warrior but a capable leader. He began an unprecedented series of campaigns subduing the other tribes of Central Asia and forming a barbarian confederation. In 1204 AD, he conquered his last rivals and united the Mongols for the first time; he thereafter took a new title to indicate his supremacy over the tribes, the name by which he is known to history, Genghis Khan.

Like the Muslim Arabs they reshaped the world. However, where the Arabs had been cultured, highly religious, and tolerant to a fault, the Mongols were ruthless and brutal. They dealt leniently with states that surrendered immediately upon their arrival. But for the Middle East, Central Asia, and China, the appearance of yet another group of unknown and uppity barbarians was nothing new and nothing to be alarmed about. Only after they leveled the brightest cities of Islam and laid waste to the entire Middle East, did it become fully clear that the Mongols were an altogether different kind of threat. Defeated enemies were considered weak and dealt with harshly. But any city which revolted after being once defeated was simply razed to the ground and the skulls of their victims were stacked up in pyramids. Not since the Assyrians had such a devastating and brutal army marched across Asian soil. The Mongol rape of cities and civilians was so frequent and so widespread that today the DNA of Genghis Khan's bloodline runs in approximately 20% of the world's populace.

The Mongols quickly adapted their brilliant horse-mounted archers and evolved simple but effective siege warfare techniques. The Mongols were known for mounting scaling ladders against enemy walls and driving hundreds or thousands of prisoners up them; this swamped enemy defenses and allowed the Mongols to gain the walls from whence they slaughtered defenders and prisoners with complete equanimity. They also practiced full scale biological warfare; while Mongol catapults did plenty of damage to the walls of besieged cities, they were routinely used to fling the rotting carcases of their enemies over the battlements to allow disease to devastate encircled populations.

Few states stood up to the Mongols effectively. There were several major battles fought across the Middle East; each was a titanic struggle that could have shattered Mongol power in a day. However, in each engagement the Mongols emerged victorious. They swept across Asia more swiftly even than the Arabs, the only equivalent series of conquests in world history to which they can be compared. When Genghis Khan's children succeeded him they stormed across Eurasia. They entered Europe in 1241 AD; the Europeans rallied two major coalitions to defeat them, and both were broken within days of each other. Only the death of the second Great Khan, Ogodei, saved Europe. The Mongol armies turned around to contest the succession among the grandchildren of the original Khan. In 1258 AD, they would sack Baghdad, execute the Caliph, and complete the total destruction of the Middle East - excepting only Egypt - by 1259 AD. Their lightning campaigns were as successful as they were unprecedented.

Yet despite being one of the first nations invaded, China survived throughout this entire series of campaigns. Powerful Mongol armies were still battling foot by foot, city by city, decade after decade against the armies of the Song emperors. But finally, even the Song Dynasty fell to the Mongol advance. In 1279 AD, the greatest successor of Temujin, Kubalai Khan – subject of the journals of Marco Polo, and ruler the largest of the Mongol Khanates – defeated the last Song emperor. Kubalai was cultured for a Mongol. He did not wipe out China's cities, he did not massacre all the inhabitants though the Mongols never really absorbed Chinese culture in the way that other barbarian invaders had. So Kubalai's victory in 1279 AD marks the beginning of the Yuan "foreign" Dynasty. To an extent even Genghis had appreciated scholars and craftsmen, but mostly appreciating their usefulness in performing tasks to which his warriors were too inexperienced... and too proud to do. Things like governing a massive empire, which the Mongols suddenly found themselves in possession of with little idea of what to do with it. The results are predictable. While the Mongols ruled an empire that existed in relative peace and security it was a brutal dictatorship that imposed either the peace of the sword or the peace of the grave from region to region.

There was little culture, and virtually no important advances under the Mongols. China continued to produce quality porcelain and even some art, but the first and most important product that the Mongols traded throughout all their realms was a brutal police state. The Mongols continued the Chinese civil service exams, however the bureaucracy was a joke. While the most able Chinese still advanced to positions in the government, only half of government positions were filled by the Chinese while half were reserved for Mongols. Unsurprisingly, Chinese bureaucrats were virtually all consigned to the lesser posts of the government, forced to answer to Mongol superiors who were rarely even literate. This did nothing to ease tensions, an idea that seemed wholly alien to the Mongols anyway; so the Mongols and Chinese "enjoyed" a hate-hate relationship for all 89 years of the Yuan Dynasty. It will, therefore, come as no surprise that the Chinese generals who finally threw off the Mongol yoke in 1368 AD founded one of the most beloved dynasties in Chinese history. In 1402 AD, Ming Yong Le became Emperor and China reentered the Renaissance Era.

If there is one great legacy of this period it is the Formative era principles of unchallenged authoritarian leadership which the Mongols brought with them. These ideas, so alien to the sophisticated Tang and Song Dynasty emperors, have never again been significantly challenged. From the Ming and Qing dynasties which succeeded the Mongols to the Chinese communist leaders, iron fisted authority has been a distinguishing feature of Chinese government ever since.

These Mongol traditions permanently weakened the cultural advancement and governmental institutions of China. The Song Dynasty emperors were poised to become the world's first global superpower. Even after the Mongol occupation, the Ming Dynasty had a more sophisticated economy, a richer state, and more advanced technology than Europe; they were in a much stronger position with a decade head start before the Italian Renaissance was a glimmer in Donatello's eye. China's failure to rise above Mongol concepts of rulership, therefore, must bear much of the blame for the stunning failure of China and the emergence of Europe onto the world stage.