The Emergence of Seapower in the Yuan Dynasty

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by John J. Trombetta and Steven C. Ippolito

John Keegan views the Mongolian war-making polity as a fusion of the “horse and human ruthlessness[.]” The great khans, Chinggis, Ogodei, Mongke, and Khublai Khan, gathered the martial energies of the steppe nomad in the quest for Empire, and released them like so many dogs of war upon Asia, Europe, China, Korea, the Middle East of Persians and Arabs, and Japan. Results were startling: extraordinary political changes that reworked the map of the thirteenth century Asia, and a transformation of war in the Asian steppe “making it for the first time,” in the view of Keegan, “‘a thing in itself.’”

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15,245 words

For an in-depth picture of medieval Chinese military history see War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900-1795 (Warfare and History)
by Peter Lorge