How Did Chinggis Khan Influence His Government

Chinggis Khan was one of the greatest Mongol rulers. As one of his many descendants, his grandson Kublai Khan (1215-1294) conquered one of mankind’s greatest civilizations, China, to become emperor of the Yuan dynasty (1272-1368). After the Song Dynasty and its ruling scholar-gentry class, Kublai turned out to be a very cosmopolitan ruler who introduced many different kinds of foreign people along with religions such as Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity into his court and consequently into China. Although he kept many customs and traditions from the Mongolian steppes, he became fascinated with the cultural aspects and traditions of this great civilization to eventually adopt them into his own court at Dadu, once known as The Great Capital
The first and highest position belonged to the few hundred thousand Mongols, followed by many multi-ethnic advisors consisting of Persian Muslims, Confucian scholars, Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Turks known as semu ren (special status), furthermore followed by northern Chinese (han ren), and finally the southern Chinese (nan ren) as the fourth level. This social policy distributed Kublai’s power through his many advisors onto the easily conquered north, and the southern part which was not as easily conquered and more difficult to rule; however, the south forming the last class made them subject to essentially ethnic oppression, with the counterbalance of his advisors, asserting the Mongolian dominance over the whole of China. The southern part once made up the earlier Song Dynasty, and because it showed resistance to conquest with its advanced warfare techniques (Rossabi, 178), unlike the north did, it inevitably had to become the last class to Kublai. The Chinese were not able to own or make weapons as evidenced by Marco Polo journaling, “They know nothing of handling arms, and keep none in their houses. You hear of no feuds or noisy quarrels or dissensions of any kind among them” (187), and because bamboo was restricted from Chinese hands by Kublai (Rossabi, 128). Polo’s account suggests
The Song economy in the south had its own paper money (hui-tzu) and initially the Khan and his advisors wanted to impose the new Chung-t’ung currency, used by the north, onto the south; but the ban would have wreaked havoc on the Song economy, so Kublai allowed a period of eventual conversion for the Song economy (Rossabi, 186). Now as one entity, the Yuan developed a paper currency common among the north and the south without damaging existing economies, which enabled the prosperity for all of China. It must have also made collecting taxes, trade, and political control easier for the Mongols if all had adopted it; essentially the Mongols used the existing Chinese paper currency system to facilitate their dominance. Trade did ensue as Marco Polo once wrote that in the Chinese city of Fuju, “There flows through the middle of this city a great river, which is about a mile in width, and many ships are built at the city which are launched upon this river. Enormous quantities of sugar are made there, and there is a great traffic in pearls and precious stones. For many ships of India come to these parts bringing many merchants who traffic about the Isles of the Indies” (213). The Mongols with their other conquests and experience helped revive the Silk