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Politics1271

Founding of the Yuan Dynasty

Also called: Great Yuan, Pax Mongolica

Kublai adopted the dynastic name Great Yuan and made Dadu (present-day Beijing) his capital. The Mongol Empire divided into the Yuan and several khanates.

Kublai Khan, Emperor Shizu of Yuan — from the Yuan imperial portrait album
Kublai Khan, Emperor Shizu of Yuan — from the Yuan imperial portrait album

Araniko · Public domain · Source

After Möngke’s death Kublai was proclaimed Great Khan at Shangdu (Kaiping) in 1260 and defeated his brother Ariq Böke, enthroned at Karakorum, in a four-year war. The Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and Ilkhanate, however, only loosely acknowledged him and went their own ways. In 1271 Kublai adopted the Chinese-style dynastic name Great Yuan and the next year made Dadu his capital. The Yuan ranked its subjects as Mongols, semu (western and central Asians), Han and southerners, and relay stations, the Grand Canal and sea routes linked Eurasia in a great age of exchange (the Pax Mongolica). Goryeo, having made peace in 1259, became a son-in-law state of the Yuan and came under its interference.

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States and rulers at the time
Yuan · established — Kublai Khan (Shizu)
Mongol Empire — Kublai Khan (Shizu)
Places
Beijing, Shangdu (Xanadu)

People

Before and after

Earlier
1270 Sambyeolcho Resistance
Later
1271 Travels of Marco Polo

Themes that include this event

  • Song, Ming and Samurai JapanAD 960 – 1500

    The age when the civil-minded Song bought peace from Liao, Western Xia and Jin while the lower Yangtze boomed and Neo-Confucianism took shape, and the Ming, having driven out the Yuan, rebuilt the East Asian order through imperial autocracy, the sea ban and tribute — as Japan passed through the Kamakura and Muromachi warrior governments into the Warring States era, and Korea from Goryeo to Joseon

  • The Mongol Conquests1206 – 1294

    From the rise of Genghis Khan to the Yuan conquest of the Song — eighty years in which the Mongols swept Eurasia from Goryeo to Hungary