Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [69]
In short, Khubilai's approach to governance reflected cosmopolitanism far more than intolerance. (He repeatedly sent envoys to the pope and the rulers of Europe, inviting them to send their best scholars, but the Europeans declined.) From this perspective, Khubilai's laws prohibiting the Chinese from marrying Mongols, learning the Mongol language, or occupying top government posts can be seen in a different light. Rather than driven by chauvinism, they were most likely political expedients designed to protect the tiny handful of ruling Mongols from being swallowed up or overthrown by the vast Chinese population. They may also have been, as some historians suggest, part of a larger strategy that allowed Khubilai to play different ethnic groups against one another.
In any event, the result of Khubilai's policies was a remarkable motley of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions. Within the walls of the imperial palace, the Mongol ruling family continued with their Mongol ways, speaking Mongolian, eating and drinking like Mongolians, and sleeping in gers on the palace floor. Outside the palace, the capital city—known as Dadu or “great capital” by the Chinese, and as Khan Balik or “city of the khan” by Europeans—overflowed with Arabs, Armenians, Tanguts, Turks, Tibetans, Persians, central Asians, and Europeans. These international sojourners filled every imaginable role: hawkers, physicians, prostitutes, chefs, hydraulic engineers, astrologers, sculptors, gatekeepers, scribes, translators, spiritual advisors, merchants, and traders.
Virtually every religion in the world was represented. On the thronging streets of Dadu, rabbis and Hindu sages mingled with their more numerous Buddhist, Muslim, Nestorian, and Catholic counterparts. Although Khubilai himself favored Buddhism, many in the royal family were Mass-attending Christians, while other Mongols in China continued to practice shamanism. Meanwhile, some of the Mongols’ most esteemed advisors were Taoists and Confucians.40
Although the Confucian-trained upper classes of southern China probably always found barbarian rule loathsome and humiliating, the Mongols brought to China a peace and political unity not seen since the overthrow of the Tang in 907. China's port cities became leading centers of import and export, Hangzhou specializing in sugar, Yangzhou in rice, and Zaytun (modern-day Quanzhou) in pearls and precious stones.
The new Grand Canal cut by the Mongols, stretching 1,100 miles from Hangzhou to modern Beijing, linked north and south China economically. Chinese commercial vessels called frequently at Vietnam, Malaysia, Java, Ceylon, and south India, usually returning with heaps of sugar, ivory, cinnamon, and cotton. International trade, both overland and maritime, between China and Mongol-dominated Persia, central Asia, and Europe boomed as never before. Throughout the Middle Kingdom, merchants of every religion and ethnicity made fortunes under the Pax Mongolica.41
Meanwhile, China's peasantry, the bulk of the country's population, probably experienced little change in their daily lives. They simply paid taxes to a different imperial family and continued to be exploited by their landlords. (To win their support, Khubilai left the estates of southern China's great landowners essentially intact.) On the other hand, if imperial records are to be believed, Khubilai created more than 21,000 public schools designed to promote universal education. In addition, peasants likely benefited from Khubilai's reform of the Chinese penal code, which had been exceptionally harsh under the Song. Khubilai granted amnesty to minor criminals who demonstrated remorse, and in other cases substituted fines for corporal punishment. While his European counterparts were ordering more and more people stretched on the rack or crushed with huge wheels, Khubilai opposed