Review, David M Robinson's Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia under the Mongols

(Review originally posted on Amazon)

Curiously, the Mongol regime in China is a period of scholarly neglect. Ironically, this may be partly the result of the amazingly cosmopolitan nature of the Great Yuwan ulus [nation], since primary research requires fluency in many East Asian languages (several of which are defunct, such as the then-prevailing dialect of Mongolian).¹ The Mongol state in China was to remain uneasily poised between complete embrace of Chinese civilization, and attachment to its Mongolian roots in language and custom.

The Yuan Dynasty of Chinese history is exceptional in so far as it was not a Chinese dynasty at all, but a Mongolian empire that survived its expulsion from China. Also, the Mongol state was characterized by competing centers of power that maintained rival foreign policies. This complicated its relationship with neighbors such as Koryo (present-day Korea); the rulers of Koryo were obligated to intrigue with factions in Beijing in order to preserve their regime.There are several threads to follow in this story: the role of Buddhist holy men, the rival contenders for power, the array of warlords with their changing relationship with Beijing, the Red Turbans and their invasion of Koryo, and eventually, the struggle between Emperor Toghon Temur and his son for the future of the Yuan Empire.

Through all of this, Koryo's elites were unable to do much besides react. The big shock is King Kongmin's celebration of his victory over the Red Turban invaders with a massacre of his most successful commanders.

Readers need to know that this book is mostly about Korea; it's not about the transition to the Ming Dynasty, which is a Chinese matter, and it's not about the Red Turbans, whose ideology is barely touched upon. There is brief explanation of the main crises of the Mongol regime, as it experienced a sort of "heat death": the change in course of the Huang He, efforts to restore navigability, and regime paralysis in the face of rebellion. But the main point is that Korea would be integrally connected to China's regime until it changed entirely.

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NOTES

1. On the uniqueness of a English-language work on the transition, see review by Edward J. Shultz, The Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 206-210; Prof. Robinson himself discusses this in the introduction. One point that bears noting is that there were many different languages of the Asian steppes: Mongolic (e.g., Old Mongolian), Tungusic (e.g., Manchu), and Turkic (e.g., Old Uyghur), and most of these languages are now extinct.