The Mongols

move around. That is why in the year 1211 the Mongolians attacked China and conquered it.         The leader of the Mongols was Genghis Khan. He led the Mongols during their conquests. He learned how to survive in Mongolia from his mother because his father was assassinated when he was 9. His knowledge helped him to become aggressive and to become a leader. He was strict in what he did and prepared the Mongols for fighting by having them practice in groups of 10,000; 1,000; 100; and 10. In doing things like this they were able to fight in any situation and succeed.         In order to conquer china Genghis Khan fought the Jin Dynasty of North China and the Tanguts of the Xia Dynasty of Northwest China. Genghis attacked both these areas because of trade disputes. The Tanguts had imposed taxes on the Mongols for trading and the Jin wouldn’t trade items that the Mongolians needed with them. The Mongolians quickly won against the Tanguts and reduced the tariffs. Then by 1215 the Mongolians seized the area known as present-day Beijing and defeated the Jin and got what they wanted from trade.         The Chinese were different from the Mongols. They weren’t hunters and gatherers or nomads. Instead they were farmers and their culture was centered on agriculture. They were also traders and traded their surplus crops and iron. It was a good thing that they were able to trade iron because iron was very useful to people because the people needed it to make weapons and armor and such. They weren’t violent or aggressive peoples which is why it was so easy for the Mongols to sweep in and conquer them. The only protection the Chinese had was the Great Wall which didn’t help them much because the larger part of the wall was built during the Ming Dynasty in the late 16th century after the Mongols had already left so that they couldn’t attack again.         But the Mongolians were tolerant and didn’t expect much when they conquered an area. They just wanted tribute from those that they conquered. After the Mongolians conquered china they allowed some Mongolians to stay and rule the Chinese. The Mongols did things to control the Chinese such as not allowing them in the government, and speaking in their own language instead of Chinese in order to have a sense of power. They also didn’t allow the Chinese to do things the Mongols could do such as intermarrying with Mongols. This put the Mongolians above the Chinese. But this was during the beginning of the Mongol rule of china because later on the Mongols and the Chinese assimilated and the Mongols created a language that everyone could read and understand. But the Mongols and Chinese didn’t have that much contact with each other so the Mongols had a successful time ruling the Chinese.         Because the Mongols were tolerant, and only wanted control of the area they conquered, they didn’t care much about the religions that people practiced. There were a lot of religions and beliefs in china because of this. People in china practiced Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity and Confucianism. The Mongols themselves were attracted to Buddhism and Islam. But because they were tolerant, they didn’t oppress people who followed other religions except for later on during the Mongol Empire when they had an Islamic government with rules and laws following Islamic law but not Shari‘a law.         The Mongols changed a lot of things in China. They changed the caste system to the way they thought and with their values. The Mongols thought that the peasants, merchants, and artisans deserved more respect and appreciation than they got from the Chinese value system. The Mongols respected the merchants the most because of the similarities they had with the Mongols in that they were nomadic and traveled and traded. They also favored the artisans because they made the things that the Mongols needed and the things that china traded. The artisans’ goods (such as iron, ceramics and jade) provided an economic source for the Chinese and the Mongols understood this. They also understood how important the peasants were to society because they created the foods and the surpluses that the Chinese traded for money. The Mongols believed that the artisans, merchants, and peasant made society stable. They gave the peasants, merchants and artisans more rights and the respect that they deserved because of their value to society.         The Mongols also had a bad effect on the Chinese in that they ruined the trading in china. The Mongols were mainly conquerors and nomads—they weren’t that good at being government officials. They controlled the government but wouldn’t allow the Chinese in government. This was a mistake in that because since they couldn’t run government that well, they couldn’t control the trading and because of this trading declined. This was very much true with the iron industry. Iron was one of China’s main industries at that time. Few countries produced iron and iron was very important in that time period. Because so few countries produced iron the Chinese were able to prosper from that industry. But during the Mongol rule, China’s iron industry wasn’t as successful as before because the Mongols couldn’t control the industry and this hurt the economy. The Mongol rule hurt trading in China and hurt the economy.         After a while the Mongols weren’t able to conquer any longer and they lost control in a lot of places that they had conquered. But in China some of the Mongols left and some stayed and assimilated. They intermarried with the Chinese and stayed there as Chinese citizens. The Mongols quickly lost power and their military lost most of its power also and the Mongols went back to their native land and continued on living there. Their military skills allowed them to create the largest land empire but only because they were good conquerors. But although they couldn’t continue their empire and succeed in China, they had a lasting effect on Chinese history and changed China forever.