The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 623
control, only
to
fight among themselves;
and
thus ad
hoc
arrangements
to
maintain peace and order in some places emerged from the local society.
This general instability in north China began to change in the 1250s when
Khubilai, grandson
of
Chinggis
and
younger brother
of the
great khan
Mongke,
was
delegated
to
deal with problems
on the
China
rim of the
Mongolian world empire. Khubilai campaigned
in
southwest China
in
1253—4
anc
^
conquered Yunnan,
and in the
late 1250s
he
became deeply
involved in north China, not as conqueror but as governor, utilizing Chinese
and other assistance. Then, after the death of Mongke and succession
to his
title as great khan
in
1260, Khubilai became the actual ruler of China north
of the Huai River boundary with
the
Southern Sung,
and the
claimant
to
universal rule over the Mongolian world. This claim he never substantiated,
but
his
increasing involvement
in
China, including
the
completion
of
the
Mongolian conquest of the Southern Sung
in
the 1270s, led to longer-range
planning
and
more responsible governing
in
China. Ruling over that vast
sedentary nation
-
then
as
always
the
largest society
in
the world
-
was
to
prove
a new
kind
of
challenge
for the
remarkable Mongolian conquerors.
Successive phases of the conquest brought differing Chinese responses.
This alien conquest meant conflicting things
to
the Chinese, especially
to
the literati
who
understood
it
best.
On the one
hand, China was again
unified
for
the first time since the tenth century. After the fall of the South-
ern Sung to Khubilai's generals, some Chinese joyously observed that people
in
the
long-separated southern
and
central provinces could again travel
to
such venerated sites of Chinese antiquity
in
the north as the tomb of Confu-
cius
in
Shantung and the capitals of Han and T'ang in Shensi. The reunifica-
tion of all Chinese under one regime bearing the Mandate
of
Heaven was
a
fact
of
momentous psychological import.
At the
same time, however,
the
fallen Sung dynasty
was
revered
as an age of
civil virtues
and
cultural
florescence. In all-too-stark
a
contrast, the Mongols were aliens whose mili-
tary prowess,
not
cultural achievement, was what most impressed the con-
quered. Whether these steppe warriors would
in
time succumb to civilizing,
that
is, to
Chinese ways, appeared
at
best uncertain. Some Chinese
of
the
time rejected Mongolian rule, declined
to
serve
the new
regime,
and re-
mained resentfully loyal
to the
fallen Sung
in
ways supported
by
Chinese
tradition. Fear
of
the Mongols' military might
and the
initial rejection
of
them as unworthy rulers over the center of civilization undoubtedly intensi-
fied such reactions through
the end of
the thirteenth century
and
perhaps
thereafter.
Nevertheless, Chinese civilization knew only one criterion for legitimating
a new dynasty,
and the
Mongols could
be
seen
as
meeting that test.
The
Mandate
of
Heaven theory
did not
demand that China's rulers
be
Chinese,
624 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE
only that they accept the conceptual framework on which the Chinese impe-
rial institution rested
{cheng)
and that they bring all the Chinese under one
unified rule (t'ung).
9
The
mandate theory implied
a
common ground
of
humane ethical and social values, the adherence
to
venerable ritual norms,
and a well-worked-out pattern of civilian rule through a bureaucracy of merit
as measured by the standards of Confucian cultivation.
Khubilai claimed this mandate for his Mongolian imperial house, though
he might otherwise have ignored its demands and ruled simply by force.
He
claimed
the
mandate formally
in
1272 when
the
new Yuan dynasty was
proclaimed, and his claim was validated when he succeeded a few years later
in ending
the
Sung dynasty
by
conquest.
At
that juncture, Khubilai
de-
manded
the
formal abdication
of the
last Sung ruler,
to
whom
he
then
granted
a
minor title and income. The Mongols possessed clear-cut military
superiority; nonetheless, they were punctilious
in
meeting these Chinese
formalities. They may have calculated, correctly, that this would weaken
further Chinese military and psychological resistance, by demonstrating that
the Sung ruler had acknowledged the transfer of the mandate.
It
also paved
the way for Chinese to serve in the new civil government.
The manner
in
which all this was done, contrasting with earlier Mongo-
lian practice, shows
how far
Khubilai
and his
generation
of
Mongolian
leaders then on the scene in China had adapted to conditions there. Nonethe-
less,
the Mongolian government thereafter failed
to
measure up
to
Chinese
ideal norms. Khubilai was
the
one Mongolian ruler who best understood
China,
and he
made brilliant beginnings
in
devising
the
accommodations
that might meet both Mongolian imperial needs and Chinese expectations.
Nonetheless, despite serious efforts by some outstanding Mongolian adminis-
trators,
a
corps
of
Inner Asian and Western Asian assistants (the
se-mu
Jen),
and large numbers
of
officials drawn from the Chinese elite,
all
striving
to
bring reasoned and orderly governing
to
the Chinese nation
-
albeit under
the necessity
to
maintain Mongolian prerogatives
-
the Yuan dynasty never
became
a
normal age
in the
long political history
of
China. There was
an
unresolved incompatibility between
the
military structure
of
power that
directly served Mongolian imperial interests, and the gradually more fully
established Chinese forms of civil government.
Another problem was that after Khubilai's long and politically percipient
reign, the succeeding Mongolian emperors to the end of
the
dynasty in 1368
were mostly short-lived and ineffectual, often puppets of competing factions.
9 Richard L. Davis, "Historiography as politics and Yang Wei-chen's 'Polemic on legitimate succession',"
T'oung
Poo,
59
(1983),
pp.
33—72. For background
on
the "legitimate succession" issue, see Hok-lam
Chan, Legitimation
in
imperial China:
Discussions
under
the
Junhtn-Chin dynasty
(u
13—1234) (Seattle,
1984)-
SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS 625
Mongolian power was thus weakened by being used in an increasingly disor-
derly fashion. The quality of civil government declined. The glaring discrep-
ancies between nominal standards and actual practices induced cynicism and
despair among many of the governed and governors alike. Only a few Chinese
took this as grounds for expressing their doubt that the Mongols had gained
the mandate legitimately; many more began to foresee their early loss of it.
To say that the Chinese elite accepted the legitimacy of the Mongolian
overlordship may be going too far, although no doubt many merely acqui-
esced in it, in an effort to make the best of a bad situation. That circumstance
was not unknown under Chinese dynasties. In any event, Confucian ideas
about the importance of serving the legitimate rulers and of loyalty to ruler
and dynasty from which one has accepted appointment to office continued to
provide binding norms of behavior. The anomalies in Chinese responses to
Mongolian rule are intricately convoluted.
10
Modern historians, who must see the Yiian dynasty as an extraordinary
period, get less direct assistance on this point than they might have expected
from contemporary observers and traditional Chinese historiographers. In
claiming the Yiian dynasty as an era in their own history, the Chinese have
always overlooked the fact that Yiian China was an appendage of a larger
world empire. They have been oblivious to the fact that Mongolian history
had its own integrity quite apart from the movement of Chinese history, even
when the two histories overlapped to the great extent that they did during
the Yiian dynasty." Today we must acknowledge that both the China-
centered and the Mongolian empire—centered histories of the period are valid
and that we should attempt to transcend the limitations of both. Nonethe-
less,
it is the Chinese record that provides the principal documentation for
both. And that record must be used perceptively in order for us to under-
stand the relationship of the two societies and the way in which their juxtapo-
sition generated special conditions in China.
We cannot expect the Chinese of the past, even those of the recent past, to
have analyzed the Chinese—Mongolian relationship in ways that we will find
completely appropriate today. For example, the Chinese record often ex-
presses dismay at Mongolian social delinquencies and political shortcomings.
At the same time, it is committed to upholding Chinese cultural faith in the
role played by Chinese institutions and ideals and to expressing confidence
that what formed the familiarly Chinese component of Yiian period govern-
10 Frederick W. Mote, "Confucian eremicism in the Yiian period," in
The Confucian
persuasion,
ed. Arthur
F. Wright (Stanford, i960), pp. 202-40.
11 The contemporary Chinese scholar Li Tse-fen called this the first of the three "defects" (pi) of Chinese
historiography on the Yiian period; see the preface to his Yuan shih hsin
chiang
(Taipei, 1978), vol. 1,
p.
2. Contemporary scholarship in Taiwan and mainland China shows increasing awareness of this
shortcoming but has not overcome it.
626 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE
ment constituted its essential element. We, however, can see that it counted
for far less than they believed and that the special elements stemming from
Mongolian norms also must be given their true weight.
Most Chinese professed to believe that the Mandate of Heaven had been
justly bestowed on the Mongolian great khans, enabling them to win the
Chinese throne. We today perceive that Mongolian military effectiveness
gave them their unaided victory, and we are apt to see the Chinese view of
that as
post facto
rationalization, if not naivete. The Chinese believed, or
hoped, that the conquerors undertook in some measure to govern in tradi-
tional modes because they acknowledged the superiority of humankind's
single civilization. We, on the other hand, perceive that the Mongols in
China, as in the steppe, in Central Asia and Persia, and in Russia, adapted
fluidly to various civilizations in all the realms they conquered. What the
Chinese have observed as obeisance to their universal culture was in fact
pragmatic decision about how best to serve Mongolian interests in all places
and times.
12
Thirteenth- and fourreenth-century Chinese writers and officials often
professed to see childlike virtues of simplicity and honesty, generosity and
trust, in the Mongols: They were to some degree "noble savages" while at the
same time they were backsliders on the road to civilization. But we can
perceive that the Mongols, whatever their endearing or awesome qualities,
had a shrewd understanding of how to best exploit their conquered popula-
tions.
Khubilai khan led in identifying Mongolian long-range interests with
the China base of their international power, but not to the abandonment of
the Mongolia-centered concerns. Subsequently, some degree of adaptation to
China at the expense of Mongolian mastery of the steppe may have been
under way by mid- and late-Yuan times; modern historians disagree about
how far the process may have gone or what the eventual outcome might have
been had the Mongols continued to rule from Peking for another
century.
•»
That question, however intriguing, is historically irrelevant. The Mongols
were driven out from China in 1368 at a time when they still were, essen-
tially, aliens
—
people of
the
steppe. That largely explains the failings of their
governing in China, as well
as
their subsequent existence as a powerful nation
12 Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol imperialism:
The policies
of
the
Grand Qan Mongke in China, Russia, and the
Islamic lands, 1251—1259 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), pp. 221—5.
13 In a pioneering study of Mongols during the Yuan dynasty who acquired some measure of Chinese
learning and cultural skills, Hsiao Ch'i-ch'ing studied seventy-eight individuals whose attainments
are attested to in Yuan period writings. He concluded that toward the end of the Yuan dynasty,
significant numbers of Mongols from the elite strata had become "Confucianized" and that had the
dynasty not fallen, the trend toward cultural adaptation would have grown stronger. See his confer-
ence paper "Yuan tai Meng-ku jen te Han hsiieh," in Kuo chi
Chung-kuo
pien chiang
hsiieh
shu hui i tun
wen chi
(Proceedings
of the international
conference
on China
border
area
studies'),
ed. Lin En-hsien (Taipei,
1985).
PP- 369-428.
SOCIAL CLASSES: TRADITIONAL AND NEW ELITES 627
in Mongolia. Their failings in governing China, however, were the most
telling of the special conditions of life for their Chinese subjects. The Chinese
adaptations to those special conditions will be the focus of what follows.
SOCIAL CLASSES: TRADITIONAL AND NEW ELITES
It has long been customary to see in the Sung dynasty era (960-1279) a
significant lessening of all lingering barriers to upward and downward social
mobility. That is, in Sung society, elite status was individually achieved
through merit as measured by the civil service examinations or by other
displays of personal energy and ability. The older pattern by which great
family wealth and advantage ensured de facto elite status and political posi-
tion through successive generations, by the Sung period gave way to a more
Confucian ideal of an open society in which a new kind of elite of merit was
recruited from a broad social base to rise into personally achieved, non-
hereditary official rank and so to dominate society. '*
Recent scholarship has modified this view somewhat but has not invali-
dated it. The open society ideal had a lively impact on social consciousness,
and to greater extent than in other premodernized societies in both East and
West. China before the Mongolian conquest had become a society having no
aristocracy by ascription, no legally privileged or legally disfranchised (in the
sense of being denied access to upward mobility or official status) closed
classes, and no segment of its population bound to place or to occupation.
There are, to be sure, some small exceptions to these generalizations, at both
the top and the bottom of the social scale, but they are insignificant. The
awareness of living in an open society was pervasive; it contributed much to
the social expectations and behavior of all, rich and poor, urban and rural,
official and commoner.
Enjoying the greatest measure of social prestige and favor from the state
that the scholar-official elite had ever known in history, the Sung period
literati could not doubt that they were the proper leaders of society and
government. They had benefited from the revived Confucianism, or Neo-
Confucianism, and for three centuries had triumphed over previously com-
petitive Buddhism and Taoism, gaining great self-assurance concerning the
Tightness of Confucian norms.
Scholars and officials - expectant, actual, or retired - all were designated
ju (pronounced "rue" and meaning, in this period of Chinese history, men of
Confucian education or just men of cultivation); to be a ju was the most
14 That view of the Sung period is best summarized in Saeki Tomi and Chikusa Masaaki,
So no
shin bunka,
vol. 6 of
Toyo
no reikisbi, ed. Saeki Tomi (Kyoto, 1967).
628 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE
gratifying and most highly rewarded condition
of
the individual
in
Sung
society. Even beyond
its
expected application
to the
scholar-official elite
group, the most honored painters became ju artists; the most learned physi-
cians became ju doctors; and even military leaders strove to merit the appella-
tion
ju
general (with, however, no noticeable improvement
in
the military
strength of the Sung state). The state recognized and encouraged this trend
by means
of
various legal, economic,
and
institutional adaptations. This
group of natural social leaders thus had the most at stake in the Sung period
status quo. They had seen their ideals strongly supported even by the alien
Chin or Jurchen dynasty of conquest in north China. Despite the loss of the
north to those precursors of the Mongols, self-confidence marked the South-
ern Sung elite mind-set; they had the most
to
lose, the most
to
be bitter
about, from the social changes that the Mongolian conquest effected.
15
Nomadic societies of
the
steppe were organized quite differently. Although
in actual practice the fluid demands for able military leadership kept the elite
status relatively open
to
men
of
exceptional ability, these tribal military
societies were nonetheless organized
on
the principles and ideals
of
closed
social classes, of hereditary privilege even when individually earned, of inher-
ited occupations and statuses, and of differentiations among people based on
real or mythical blood lines. The Mongols brought such a social system with
them into China and struggled
to
make
it
work
to
serve their interests
as
conquerors.
Among them, too, ideal and actual patterns diverged in some degree, but
the contrast between their social expectations and those of the Chinese was
stark. For the Chinese at that stage in their social development to have come
under the rule of
a
conquering nation bringing with
it
such different experi-
ence in organizing society was a greater shock than
it
might have been at an
earlier time
in
Chinese history. The social history
of
the Yuan turns
on
matters such as how, through successive modifications, the Mongols applied
their ideas of rule, to what extent those ideas were realized when applied
to
Chinese society, how the Chinese resisted and adapted to Mongolian govern-
ing norms,
and to
what extent
the
unprecedented circumstances brought
lasting changes to the Chinese social base.
The Yuan dynasty was an interval of alien rule between the native Chinese
Sung dynasty and the native restorationist regime of the Ming dynasty.
It is
clear that the tone and modes
of
politics
in
early Ming contrasted sharply
with those
of
the Sung, and one can ascribe this
in
no small part
to the
cumulative effects of Mongolian rule.
It
is much less clear that the structure
15 See Hsiao Ch'i-ch'ing, "Yuan tai te ju hu: Ju shih ti wei yen chin shih shang te i chang," Tung fang
wen
hua, 16 (1978), pp. 151—78; repr. in his Yuan tai
sbih bsin
fan (Taipei, 1983), pp.
1-58.
SOCIAL CLASSES: TRADITIONAL AND NEW ELITES 629
or spirit
of
Chinese society underwent profound
or
enduring alteration,
despite some observable influences for change (not all of which were dysfunc-
tional
or
counterproductive). To be sure, many Chinese
of
the literate elite
deplored the interruptions that Yiian rule brought
to
venerated patterns
of
social and political life, but
at
the same time they were strongly inclined,
in
their focus
on
ideal forms and
on
continuities,
to
overlook
or
discount
the
cumulative consequences of such interruptions. To repeat
a
point made ear-
lier, we must read their reflections on their times with care and insight.
Soon after
the
Mongols' conquest
of
the Chin
in
north China between
1215
and
1234, Mongolian governors
in
that part
of
China, under
the
distant leadership
of
the great khans Ogodei (r. 1229-41) and Mongke
(r.
1250—9), began
to
devise systems
for
maintaining the distinction between
conquerors
and
conquered
and for
exploiting
the
latter
to
support their
Eurasia-wide military campaigns. "Census taking was the key to Mongolian
efforts to mobilize the human and financial resources of
the
sedentary regions
of the empire. The object of the registration was to facilitate the assessment
of
taxes,
to identify skilled craftsmen and technicians, and to recruit military
personnel."
16
The
idea
of
census registration
for
fiscal management
was
Chinese; the Mongols probably first encountered
it
in their contacts with the
Khara-khitan (Western Liao) state founded
in
the early twelfth century
by
sinicized Khitans fleeing the Jurchen conquest of the Liao empire, or among
the Uighurs
of
Chinese Turkestan who provided administrative experts
to
both the Khara-khitan and Chinggis khan early
in
the thirteenth century.
I7
In China the Mongols made adaptations of their own governing methods
and their borrowed administrative systems.
In the
earlier decades
of
their
conquests
in
China, they applied principles common
to
their conquests
everywhere: They regarded captive peoples and conquered nations as booty,
as mere property, and so they enslaved them. Seizure and plunder on the field
of battle were rights
of
Mongolian soldiers. Real estate
and the
people,
animals, houses, and goods on
it
were granted as rewards to leading military
commanders and associates
of
the ruler.
At the
highest level those formed
appanages of the principal military associates, often enfeofTed as princes.
Within
the
conquering hordes,
the
Mongols
of
course held
the
ruling
positions,
but
they rapidly came
to
accept many associates
in
their empire
building. Already
by the
death
of
Chinggis khan
in
1227 the Mongolian
war machine included many Inner
and
Western Asian peoples from
non-
16 Thomas T. Allsen, "The Yiian dynasty and the Uighuts of Turfan
in
the 13th century,"
in
China
among
equals: The Middle
Kingdom
and its
neighbors,
10th—14th
centuries,
ed.
Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1983),
p. 262.
17 Allsen, "The Yiian dynasty and the Uighurs of
Turfan,"
pp. 246—8
et
passim.
See also Huang Ch'ing-
lien,
Yiian
tai
hu chi chih tu yen chin,
pp.
128-35.
63O CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE
Mongolian nomadic steppe groups, from the great oasis communities of
sedentary peoples, and from other states. Some had been conquered and
forcibly incorporated, and others had voluntarily associated themselves with
the Mongols. Many of those were granted privileged status, along with
duties and obligations, as companions in the great tasks of conquest. In the
Chinese records they are referred to as the peoples of
the
various nations
(chu-
kuojen)
or people of varied categories (se-mu
jen).
Those terms are often loosely
translated as "Western Asians," for in fact most of them were natives of the
regions to the west of China.
Of unusual importance among these Western
Asians,
numerically and func-
tionally, were the Uighurs, who had gained a special relationship with the
Mongols in 1209 by voluntarily declaring themselves vassals, before Chinggis
khan subjected them to any form of coercion.
18
Previously the Uighurs had
created one of the great nomadic states, in the eighth and ninth centuries,
when they were in close but hostile relationship to T'ang China. In the middle
of the ninth century they were driven west into Turkestan (modern Sinkiang),
where they underwent several kinds of transformations. They became seden-
tary peoples, farming and trading in the rich
oases.
They also began to give up
their ardent Manicheism for Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity, and by the
thirteenth century some were beginning to convert to Islam.
The Uighurs brought with them considerable knowledge of Chinese ad-
ministrative practices, becoming specialists in trade, finance, and civil gov-
erning and serving in the partially sinicized Khara-khitan (Western Liao)
state as well as in their own territories. They also had become literate, having
adapted to their Turkic language an alphabetic script derived from the Syriac.
The Uighurs' close association with the Mongols as trusted allies and able
warriors as well as masters of technical services demanding literacy meant
that the Mongols were predisposed to rely on them for aid in governing
China. Among the twenty or more groups covered by the classification
se-mu
jen,
the Uighurs were preeminent.
The
se-mu
jen,
Western Asians, came to constitute a legally acknowledged
second class in the Mongolian state. As that state absorbed, first, north
China and then all of China, two more legally established class distinctions
were created. Under the Mongols the conqueror—conquered differentiation
was given a breadth of meaning and a declaration of permanence that it had
not received under earlier conquerors. Within the twenty years after the Chin
18 Allsen, "The Yuan dynasty and the Uighurs of Turfan"; and Igor de Rachewiltz, "Turks in China
under the Mongols: A preliminary investigation of Turco-Mongol relations in the 13th and 14th
centuries," in China among equals: The Middle Kingdom and its
neighbors,
10th—
14th
centuries,
ed. Morris
Rossabi (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), pp. 281—310. Uighur leaders had received the Mongols'
favorable attention as early as 1204.
SOCIAL CLASSES: TRADITIONAL AND NEW ELITES 631
state was conquered in the years 1215—34, twenty million or more sedentary
people
—
primarily the Chinese of north China but also the Tanguts (Hsi-
hsia),
Po-hai (Parhae), Koreans, and others resident in the region - were
brought under Mongolian rule.
19
These newly conquered subjects were designated, for administrative pur-
poses,
as the Han jen. To the Chinese that term meant (as it does today)
themselves, the entire Chinese cultural or ethnic community, and of course
most of the Mongols' subjects given this legal designation at this time were
Chinese. But the term also was used to categorize all others who had been
subjects of the Chin state in north China, whether Chinese or not and
whether sedentary or not.
20
With the further conquest of the Southern Sung
in 1275-9, a fourth classification was instituted -
nan
jen, southerners - to
accommodate the fifty million or more Chinese who had been subjects of the
Southern Sung.
21
This was the notorious system of four legal classes by which the Mongols,
in the earlier years of their rule in China, tried to create by the promulgation
of laws, a social order that ran counter to all the features of Chinese social
structure and social ideology. No systematic proclamation of the fourfold,
ethnically defined stratification - Mongols, Western Asians, Han jen, and
Nan jen - seems ever to have been issued. Yet even before the conquest of the
fourth and largest category, the tables of organization and the regulations for
the conduct of civil governing worked out early in Khubilai's reign fully
incorporated those distinctions and gave them legal force. Indeed, they held
legal force until the end of the Yuan dynasty a century later. These regula-
tions were applied with discriminatory effect in all matters regulating the
lives of people relative to the state: They affected taxation, determined qualifi-
cation for appointment to office, differentiated rights and privileges in adjudi-
cating civil and criminal disputes at law and in determining penalties,
established exemptions from liabilities, and were the basis for granting many
kinds of privilege. Some of the advantages offered by this system to the
favored two upper categories matched the privileges and favors that civil
service official status had formerly given to scholar-officials in the Sung
dynasty, but civil service official status was won through merit examinations.
The Yuan system was imposed on all without regard to merit; it was heredi-
tary; and in principle it allowed the individual or family no escape from an
assigned status.
19 Earlier in this chapter, a figure of more than 50 million was given for the registered population of the
Chin state in 1207; less than half that number can be accounted for in early Yuan census registrations.
20 Ch'ien Ta-hsin, Shib chia chai yang bsin lu
(Pref.
1799; repr. Shanghai, 1935, 1957), 9, pp- 205—6,
"Han jen pa chung," identifies eight ethnic groups included under the category Han jen.
21 Yao Ts'ung-wu, "Hu-pi-lieh p'ing Sung i hou te nan jen wen t'i," in vol. 7 of
Yao Ts'ung-wu hsien sheng
ch'iian
chi, ed. Ch'en Chieh-hsien and Cha-ch'i Ssu-ch'in (Taipei, 1982), pp. 1—86.
632 CHINESE SOCIETY UNDER MONGOL RULE
From the ruler's point of view, the system of four classes possessed its own
rationality. It was an expedient way of maintaining the rulers' interests, of
gaining assistance from and giving reward to reliable associates so that they
would perform basic military and civil tasks, and of keeping the conquered in
safely subordinate roles. This system appears to have come about through a
series of ad hoc measures for dealing with the ever-larger set of pressing
governing tasks while the Mongols continued their focus on conquests far
and wide. It thus represents an advance over the stage of conquering for
immediate plunder, as it displays a perceptive sense for giving to constituent
groups in society clearly defined functions and obligations, rewards and
duties.
This system of four classes must be seen in relation to the highly complex
household registration system put in place by the Mongols.
22
That device
both complemented and extended the fourfold system of ethnic social classes.
It granted certain functional (occupational) household classifications to Mon-
gols and all their subjects. Most important, it classified the conquered popu-
lations, especially the Chinese, in either the
Han
jen or the
nan jen
classes,
according to their productive significance to the rulers. One scholar tabulated
eighty-three household classifications.
23
These classifications mainly desig-
nated specialized skills and productive functions and were designed to ensure
that successive generations of the families so categorized would continue in
those occupations. This was without precedent in the history of Chinese
institutions. Here we see that a nomadic, wholly militarized tribal society,
selectively using many kinds of advice and experience, was able to work out
and supervise an elaborate system of social statuses and productive functions
for the management of an entirely different kind of
society.
Even though the
fourfold social class system and the interlocking one of occupationally differ-
entiated household registration classifications were short range in social vi-
sion and ad hoc in their evolution, they represent a not-inconsiderable
achievement. That should be assessed from the ground of Mongolian history
as well as within the context of Chinese social history.
24
One must, in any event, conclude that the Yuan design of imposed social
classes and hereditary occupational statuses did not work well, probably
could not have been made to work well, and was not rigorously maintained
because its anomalies were obvious. But it was not abandoned. It frustrated
the best administrators, irritated the governed, stood in the way of needed
22
Huang Ch'ing-lien, "Yuan tai hu chi chih tu yen chiu," pp.
13-18.
23
Ibid., pp.
197-216.
24
Meng Ssu-ming's
Yuan
tai
she hut chieh chi chih
tu
(Peking,
1938) is now fifty years old and has not been
superseded.
It leaves many issues unresolved. See the comment by Hsiao Ch'i-ch'ing in his Yuan tai
shih hsin
fan
(Taipei,
1983),
pp. 43-4, n. 25.