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Mid-Yuan Politics

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Mid-Yuan Politics CHAPTER 6 MID-YUAN POLITICS INTRODUCTION "Mid-Yuan" refers to the period between the death of the great dynastic founder, Khubilai khan (Emperor Shih-tsu, 1260—94), in 1924 and the acces- sion of the last Yuan monarch, Toghon Temiir khaghan (Emperor Shun-ti, r. 1333-68), in 1333. During these thirty-nine years, nine khaghans ascended the throne in quick succession, resulting in frequent bureaucratic turnovers and reversals of state policies. It was, therefore, a politically volatile and turbulent period, the events of which gradually but steadily emasculated the great and powerful empire left behind by Khubilai and paved the way for the downfall of the dynasty under Toghon Temiir. The mid-Yuan khaghans inherited from Khubilai not only a great empire but also its multifarious problems.1 Khubilai had successfully transferred to China the center of gravity of the previously steppe-based Yeke Mongghol Ulus or "Great Mongolian Nation" and made the Yuan the first dynasty of con- quest to rule the whole of China as well as the Inner Asian steppes. He had further provided his far-flung multiracial and multicultural empire with a workable institutional framework by synthesizing Chinese and Inner Asian systems and adorning it with the symbols of legitimacy drawn from Mongo- lian, Chinese, and Buddhist sources.2 Because of all this, Khubilai was subsequently regarded by his heirs as the most revered dynastic founder and ancestor whose mantle should be strictly preserved. The problems left by Khubilai to his heirs, nevertheless, were as great and complex as the empire itself. 1 The assessment of Khubilai's role and legacy in the following paragraphs is largely based on the following works: Yao Ts'ung-wu, "Yuan Shih-tsu Hu-pi-lieh han: T'a te chia shih t'a te shih tai yii t'a tsai wei ch'i chien chung yao ts'o shih," in vol. 6 of Yao Ts'ung-u/u hsien sheng ch'iian chi, ed. Ch'en Chieh-hsien and Cha-ch'i Ssu-ch'in (Taipei, 1972), pp. 399—416; Chou Liang-hsiao, Hu-pi-lieh (Ch'ang-ch'un, 1986); Zhou Liangxiao (Chou Liang-hsiao), "On Khubilai khan," Social Sciences in China, 2 (1981), pp. 177—94; Psi Kang, "Kuan yii Hu-pi-lieh fu hui Han fa te li shih k'ao ch'a," Chung-kuo shih yen chiu, 4 (1981), pp. 93—107; Otagi Matsuo, Hubirai han (Tokyo: 1941); Morris Rossabi, Khubilai khan: His life and times (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988). 2 Herbert Franke, From tribal chieftain to universal emperor and god: The legitimation of the Yuan dynasty (Munich, 1978). 49O Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 INTRODUCTION 491 Fundamentally, the position of the Yuan state in both China and the broader Mongolian empire needed to be carefully reconsidered and defined, and further adjustments made accordingly. Did China constitute the most important part of the empire and its primary object of rule? Or was it merely a part of the universal Mongolian empire to whose maintenance all of China's resources should be devoted? The problems of satisfactorily answering these questions had serious and far-reaching implications for the Yuan rulers. On the one hand, Khubilai's claim to be the khaghan of all Mongols was difficult to substantiate and was seriously challenged from the start by his Inner Asian cousins. The Yuan were still at war with the Ogodei and Chaghadai khanates at the time of his death. On the other, the pulls of the steppe tradition made Khubilai reluctant to strike deeper roots in China by completely basing his dynasty on the traditional Chinese model of government. This slowed down the process of acculturation within the Yuan state and left a number of important problems to his heirs. Politically, the system of government created by Khubilai was the product of a compromise between Mongolian patrimonial feudalism and the tradi- tional Chinese autocratic—bureaucratic system. Under the original Mongolian system, imperial relatives and the meritorious retainers of the imperial family all enjoyed hereditary political, economic, and military privileges. Even though Khubilai did try to curtail the privileges of these aristocrats, he did not go far enough in this direction, for fear of violating one of the fundamen- tal principles of the Mongolian state, the idea that the empire was the joint patrimony of all the descendants of Chinggis khan. Consequently, the aristo- crats continued to enjoy much influence and advantages in every sphere of public life, which proved to be a serious source of financial strain and political instability under his heirs. In the meantime, Khubilai's attempts to centralize and bureaucratize his government, however imperfect they were, enabled the bureaucrats to acquire a much larger share of power than had their predeces- sors in the pre-Khubilai era. The bureaucrats were to become an important focus of power, often overshadowing the imperial princes and even competing with the throne for power in the post-Khubilai era. Culturally and socially, the vast gap between the Mongolian and se-mu (Western and Central Asian) elites and their Chinese subjects needed to be bridged. This gap existed partly because the Chinese in general suffered political and social discrimination under an ethnically based system of social stratification. It was especially serious among the educated Chinese elite because Confucian learning and scholars were not given the degree of esteem that they had been accorded previously under native Chinese dynasties. The Yuan government recruited the members of its ruling elite on the basis of ascription rather than achievement. There was, therefore, little incentive for Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 492 MID-YOAN POLITICS the Mongols and the se-mu to absorb Chinese learning. Consequently, al- though the traditional Chinese elite (the Confucian scholars) were not given their share of power, the Mongolian and the se-mu elites remained, to a significant extent, strangers to the Chinese cultural tradition and socially isolated from the native populace. This dichotomy gave the Yuan regime a strong "colonial" coloration. Diplomatically and militarily, the Yuan foreign policy under Khubilai, as under the previous Mongolian khaghans, had been "imperialistic," always ready to mobilize all available human and material resources under its control in a continuous quest for a greater empire.3 It had become clear by the last years of Khubilai's reign, however, that foreign conquests had reached the point of diminishing returns, for the empire had already attained its maxi- mum geographical limit. Was it now the right time to begin to concentrate all energies on internal consolidation rather than on external expansion? Finally, the Yuan government had been plagued by chronic financial problems from the outset, owing to its excessive military expenditures, lavish imperial grants, and other court expenses and so had been forced to rely on se-mu financial experts to raise the necessary funds by exploitative methods. Consequently, there were recurrent conflicts between these finan- cial experts and the advocates of Confucian ideas of frugality in government and the lightening of the people's tax burden. A drastic curtailment of governmental spending would certainly have been financially desirable but would have been politically difficult to implement, as it would have affected the very basis of the Mongolian state in China. In sum, great as his achievements undoubtedly had been, Khubilai's lega- cies were not entirely positive. The challenges faced by his mid-Yuan heirs were not merely a question of preserving the mantle of his government but also one of responding creatively to the problems left behind by the great dynastic founder and also to the new stresses that appeared after his death. What was required was to strike deeper roots for the regime in China by reforming it further along traditional Chinese lines and ameliorating some of its colonial characteristics yet at the same time preserving dynastic security and the privileges of the conquering elites. THE REIGN OF TEMOR KHAGHAN (EMPEROR CH'ENG- TSUNG), 1294-1307 A more specific but still important problem that Khubilai failed to resolve for his heirs was that of the imperial succession, which had always been a 3 Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol imperialism: The policies of the Grand Qan MSngte in China, Russia and Islamic lands, 1251—1239 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), p. 7. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 THE REIGN OF TEMOR KHAGHAN 493 source of instability and tension in Mongolian imperial history. Khubilai's inability to clear up this problem was partly the result of the incompatibility of the Mongolian concept of the empire as the joint patrimony of all of Chinggis khan's descendants and the Chinese concept of autocratic rule. It was also partly the result of some specific incidents that occurred during his reign.4 Because Khubilai had not been able, nor had he intended, to recast completely the patrimonial—feudal Mongolian state in the Chinese mold of an autocratic system of government, the traditional claim of the imperial princes to elect a new khaghan in an assembly (khuriltai) could not be denied whenever the matter of succession arose.5 Khubilai's attempt to assert his prerogative as emperor in the Chinese fashion by designating his eldest son by his principal wife as the heir appar- ent had been aborted when his designated heir apparent, Chen-chin (1243- 85), died in 1285, nine years before Khubilai himself died.6 Consequently, in the post-Khubilai era, the throne was frequently and often bitterly con- tested between those who based their claims on the nomination made by the previous khaghan and those who claimed their rights to be "elected." The pattern of contention for the throne in the post-Khubilai era differed from that of earlier times in three ways.
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