China

The Yuan dynasty

The history of Genghis Khan and Ögödei Khan is given in the Chinese rendition of the Mongolian historical literary narrative, Yuanchao bishi, which is known in the West through several translations, such as The Secret History of the Mongols, trans. and ed. by Francis Woodman Cleaves (1982); and The Secret History of the Mongols, adapted by Paul Kahn, expanded ed. (1998). The Mongol operations against China are described in Igor de Rachewiltz, “Personnel and Personalities in North China in the Early Mongol Period,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 9:88–144 (1966).

The sociopolitical history of the later Yuan is described in John W. Dardess, Conquerors and Confucians: Aspects of Political Change in Late Yüan China (1973); Franz Schurman (ed. and trans.), Economic Structure of the Yüan Dynasty (1956, reissued 1967); Herbert Franke, From Tribal Chieftain to Universal Emperor and God: The Legitimation of the Yüan Dynasty (1978); Ch’i-ch’ing Hsiao, The Military Establishment of the Yüan Dynasty (1978); Paul Heng-chao Ch’en, Chinese Legal Tradition Under the Mongols: The Code of 1291 as Reconstructed (1979); and John D. Langlois, Jr. (ed.), China Under Mongol Rule (1981).

Religious and intellectual life of the period is the subject of Arthur Waley (trans.), The Travels of an Alchemist (1931, reprinted 1963), on the Daoist monk Changchun; Frederick W. Mote, “Confucian Eremitism in the Yüan period,” in Arthur F. Wright (ed.), The Confucian Persuasion (1960); Wm. Theodore De Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (1981); and Hok-lam Chan and Wm. Theodore De Bary (eds.), Yüan Thought: Chinese Thought and Religion Under the Mongols (1982).

Works on Yuan culture include Sherman E. Lee and Wai-kam Ho, Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yüan Dynasty, 1279–1368 (1968); James Cahill, Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yüan Dynasty, 1279–1368 (1976); and J.I. Crump, Chinese Theater in the Days of Khublai Khan (1980, reprinted 1990).

Chinese contacts with Asia and the West are discussed in Leonard Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia: An Introduction to His “Description of the World” called “Il Milione” (1960; originally published in Italian, 1957); and Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (1971). Benjamin Elman