China During the Yuan Period

That part of the Chinese ruling class, which went to cooperate with the conquerors, retained its economic and partly social positions. In addition, the situation in the South again was different from what was in the North of China. The North was subjected to great devastation, and here more Mongolian nobility settled down. In the South, despite the low status of the social status, large landowners as a whole retained their holdings and the economy was less directly ruined.

A characteristic moment in the economic history of the Yuan period was the massive issuance of bank notes. They, as before, were not secured and quickly depreciated, which laid an additional burden on the shoulders of the working population.

The Mongolian authorities favored the Buddhist church. During the Yuan period, many new monasteries appeared, church ecclesiastical ownership and exploitation of the peasants by monasticism grew significantly. China in the Yuan period ...

In the field of culture, the most vivid manifestation of that time is the flowering of classical Chinese drama. Among the authors of the plays are the most famous Guan Hanqing, Wang Shifu, and others.

The oppression of the conquerors and the deterioration of the social and economic situation of the Chinese population of the Yuan Empire led to frequent popular uprisings. By the middle of the XIV century. The discontent engulfed the most diverse strata, especially the peasantry, which suffered especially from the double oppression. Opposition sentiments were manifested in the creation of secret societies that took a religious color. In particular, the teachings of Buddhist and Manichean persuasion about the "Buddha of the future" and "the kingdom of Light", reflecting the people's desire for a better future, became very influential.

The secret "White Lotus Society", led by Liu Futong and Han Shantong, was actively preparing an uprising. In 1351, individual unrest escalated into a mass action against the authorities. The movement spread, provincial detachments and armies emerged in different provinces: insurgents of Liu Futuna acted in the interfluve of the Yellow River and Huaihe, which were called "red troops" (in terms of the color of the bandages worn by them on their heads), in Hue-bey, and then Sichuan are the compounds of Xu Shouhuei and Ming Yu-chien, in Anhoe-Go Zixin, in the lower reaches of the Yangtze and on the southeast coast-Zhang Shichen and Fan Guozhen, etc. The success of the insurgents was facilitated by feuds in the ruling Yuan elite.

China in the Yuan period