Mongolian influence had first penetrated China in the eleventh century, when the Song emperors paid tribute to separate Mongolian states to keep their armies from invading. But these individual fiefdoms were unified by Genghis Khan in 1206 to form an immensely powerful army, which swiftly began the conquest of northern China. Despite Chinese resistance and dilatory Mongol infighting, by 1278 the Yuan dynasty was on the Chinese throne, with Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson, at the head of an empire that stretched way beyond China's borders. From their capital at Khanbalik (modern Beijing ), the Yuan's emperors' central control boosted China's economy and helped repair five centuries of civil war. The country was also thrown wide open to foreign travellers, traders and missionaries; Arab and Venetians were to be found in many Chinese ports, and a Russian came top of the Imperial Civil Service exam of 1341. The Grand Canal was extended from Beijing to Hangzhou, while in Beijing the Palace of All Tranquillities was built inside a new city wall, later known as the Forbidden City . Descriptions of much of this were brought back to Europe by Marco Polo, who put his impressions of Yuan lifestyle and treasures on paper after living in Beijing for several years and serving in the government of Kublai Khan.

 

The Yuan retained control over all China only until 1368, their power ultimately sapped by a combination of becoming too Chinese for their northern brethren to tolerate, and too aloof from the Chinese to properly assimilate. After northern tribes rebelled, and famine and disastrous floods brought a series of uprisings in China, a monk-turned-bandit leader from the south, Zhu Yuanzhang, seized the throne from the last boy emperor of the Yuan in 1368.