Yuan Dynasty
Mongol-ruled China
01
Yamen and the End of Song
Kublai finishes the Mongol conquest with a child emperor drowning in the sea
1271–1279
02
Kublai's New Capital
Khanbaliq, the Grand Canal extension, and the four-class ethnic system
1264–1294
03
The Failed Japan Invasions
Bun'ei, Kōan, and the typhoons that became Japan's founding myth
1274–1281
04
Marco Polo and the Pax Mongolica
Polo, Sauma, and the most connected Eurasian moment of the pre-modern era
1271–1295
05
Drama, the Novel, and Yuan Vernacular Literature
Guan Hanqing, the rise of the novel, and what dispossessed literati produced
1280s–1340s
06
Pax Mongolica's Plagues and Trade
Zayton, Ibn Battuta, paper money, and the Yersinia pestis trail
1280–1346
07
The Long Decline
Yellow River disasters, hyperinflation, and the millenarian uprising that finished the dynasty
1294–1351
08
Zhu Yuanzhang and the Ming Founding
the peasant-monk founder, the 1368 expulsion, and what the Yuan left permanently behind
1351–1368