Person1215 – 1294
Kublai Khan (Emperor Shizu of Yuan)
Fifth Great Khan and founder of the Yuan dynasty, who made peace with Goryeo and launched the invasions of Japan
Where they went
6 related events
- 1
Yuan forces took Xiangyang and received the surrender of the Song capital Lin’an. In 1279 the last Song fleet was destroyed at Yamen, and all of China came under the rule of a northern nomadic people for the first time.
For some eighty years after the return to Gaegyeong, Goryeo was a son-in-law state of the Yuan under its interference: its institutions were downgraded, territory lost, and pro-Yuan magnates rose to power.
- 2
Having made peace with the Mongols, Goryeo moved its capital back from Ganghwa to Gaegyeong once the military regime fell, ending a century of military rule and beginning the period of Yuan domination.
- 3
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.
- 4
The Venetian merchant Marco Polo came to Yuan China with his father and uncle and stayed seventeen years in Kublai’s service. The book he left, The Travels, introduced the East to Europe.
- 5
The Yuan, using Goryeo as its spearhead, twice invaded Japan, and both times its fleets were wrecked by storms. Supplying ships, troops and grain placed a heavy burden on Goryeo.
Related works
- Book: The Travels of Marco PoloBook · 1300 · Marco Polo, Rustichello da Pisa · Il Milione
People who appear alongside
- King Chungnyeol1236 – 1308
Twenty-fifth king of Goryeo and the first to marry a Yuan princess; Goryeo was drawn into the invasions of Japan
- Bayan of the Baarin1236 – 1295
Kublai’s general who led the conquest of the Southern Song from 1274 and received the surrender of Lin’an in 1276
- Lu Xiufu1236 – 1279
Last chief minister of the Southern Song, who leapt into the sea with the boy emperor Zhao Bing on his back after the defeat at Yamen in 1279
- Wen Tianxiang1236 – 1283
Southern Song chief minister who resisted the Yuan to the end, was captured, and refused to submit, writing the Song of Righteousness before his execution
- King Chungseon1275 – 1325
Twenty-sixth king of Goryeo, who founded the Mangwondang library in Dadu where Goryeo and Yuan scholars met
- Empress Gi
Goryeo woman sent to Yuan as tribute who became empress of Emperor Shun; her brother Gi Cheol and the pro-Yuan faction rode on her power
- King Wonjong1219 – 1274
Twenty-fourth king of Goryeo, who made peace with Kublai and returned the court to Gaegyeong in 1270
- Marco Polo1254 – 1324
Venetian merchant who spent seventeen years in Yuan China and on his return left The Travels of Marco Polo
Themes this person appears in
- 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
- Turkic-Islamic Empires and Other Civilizations1000 – 1533
From the Ghaznavid raids on India to the Mughal Empire and Suleiman I — five centuries in which Turkic-led Islamic empires took western Asia and India, while Africa, Southeast Asia and the Americas raised civilisations of their own
- 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
- Central Government Through the AgesAD 250 – 1899
From the noble councils of the Three Kingdoms to the State Council, the Border Defense Council and the Gabo cabinet — how central government shifted between aristocratic consensus and royal power
- GaeseongAD 901 – 2003
From Wang Geon, lord of Songak, to the Kaesong Industrial Complex — Gaegyeong, Goryeo’s capital for five centuries, and home of the Song merchants
- Jeju Island1270 – 1948
From Tamna to Jeju — the Sambyeolcho’s last stand, Yuan horse ranches, castaways and exiles, and the island of April 3