The Yuan Dynasty
Discover the Yuan Dynasty — Kublai Khan's Mongol-ruled Chinese empire that united China, welcomed Marco Polo, and bridged East and West.
The Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368 CE) was the first foreign-ruled dynasty to control all of China. Founded by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, it represented the easternmost khanate of the fragmenting Mongol Empire — and arguably its most sophisticated, governing a population of over 80 million people.
Kublai Khan was a different kind of Mongol ruler. He adopted Chinese court customs, moved the capital to Dadu (modern Beijing), and patronized Chinese art, astronomy, and engineering — while maintaining a Mongol military aristocracy and employing foreign administrators, including the famous Venetian Marco Polo, who claimed to serve as a Yuan official for seventeen years. The Grand Canal was extended, connecting the rice-producing south to the northern capital.
The Yuan era was marked by extraordinary cultural exchange. Chinese technologies — gunpowder, printing, the compass — flowed westward. Persian and Central Asian influences enriched Chinese art and architecture. But the Mongol rulers never fully won Chinese loyalty. Ethnic hierarchies placed Mongols at the top and southern Chinese at the bottom. Devastating floods, famine, and plague in the 1340s fueled rebellion. The Red Turban movement eventually produced Zhu Yuanzhang, who drove out the Mongols and founded the Ming Dynasty in 1368.