4. Reflexiones finales
4.4. Criterios de calidad de la investigación
(b. 1162, near Lake Baikal, Mongolia—d. Aug. 18, 1227)
O
ne of the most famous conquerors in history is the Mongolian warrior-ruler Chinggis Khan. He was also known as Genghis Khan, although his original name was Temüjin. He consolidated tribes into a unified Mongolia and then extended his empire across Asia to the Adriatic Sea.The chronology of Temüjin’s early life is uncertain. He may have been born in 1155, in 1162 (the date favoured today in Mongolia), or in 1167. According to legend, his birth was auspicious because he came into the world hold-ing a clot of blood in his hand. He is also said to have been of divine origin, his first ancestor having been a gray wolf,
“born with a destiny from heaven on high.” Yet his early years were anything but promising. When he was nine, his father, Yesügei, a member of the royal Borjigin clan of the
Mongols, was poisoned by a band of Tatars, another nomadic people, in continuance of an old feud. With Yesügei dead, the remainder of the clan—led by the rival Taychiut family—abandoned Yesügei’s widow, Höelün, and her children, seizing the opportunity to usurp power.
Temüjin was later captured by the Taychiut, who, rather than killing him, kept him around their camps, wearing a wooden collar. One night, when they were feasting, Temüjin knocked down the sentry with a blow from his wooden collar and fled. Although the Taychiut searched all night for him, he was able to escape.
Temüjin rose to defeat several rival clans, including the Merkit, Jürkin, Kereit, and the formidable Tartars, ruth-lessly crushing them and leaving him master of the steppes.
In 1206 a great assembly was held by the River Onon, and Temüjin was proclaimed Chinggis Khan. The title proba-bly meant Universal Ruler. He distributed thousands of families to the custody of his own relatives and compan-ions, replacing the existing pattern of tribes and clans by something closer to a feudal structure.
The year 1206 was a turning point in the history of the Mongols and in world history, when the Mongols were first ready to move out beyond the steppe. Mongolia itself took on a new shape. The petty tribal quarrels and raids were a thing of the past. A unified Mongol nation came into existence as the personal creation of Chinggis Khan and has survived to the present day, despite many chal-lenges. Chinggis Khan was ready to start on his world conquest, and the new nation was organized, above all, for war. His troops were divided up on the decimal system, were rigidly disciplined, and were well equipped and sup-plied. The generals were his own sons or men he had selected and were absolutely loyal to him.
The great conquests of the Mongols, which would
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now, China was the main goal. Chinggis Khan first secured his western flank by a tough campaign against the Tangut kingdom of Xixia, a northwestern border state of China.
His forces then fell upon the Jin empire of northern China in 1211. In 1214 he allowed himself to be bought off, tempo-rarily, with a huge amount of treasure, but in 1215 operations were resumed, and Beijing was taken. Subsequently, the more systematic defeat of northern China was in the hands of his general Muqali. Chinggis Khan himself car-ried out the conquest of the Muslim empire of Khwārezm, in the region of the Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya (Jaxartes). This war was provoked by the governor of the city of Otrar, who massacred a caravan of Muslim mer-chants who were under Chinggis Khan’s protection. War with Khwārezm would doubtless have come sooner or later, but now it could not be avoided. During this war the Mongols earned their reputation for savagery and terror.
City after city was stormed, the inhabitants massacred or forced to serve as advance troops for the Mongols against their own people. Fields, gardens, and irrigation works were destroyed as Chinggis Khan pursued his implacable vengeance against the royal house of Khwārezm. He finally withdrew in 1223 and did not lead his armies into war again until the final campaign against Xixia in 1226 and 1227.
Chinggis Khan’s military genius could adapt itself to rapidly changing circumstances. Initially his troops were exclusively cavalry, riding the hardy, grass-fed Mongol pony that needed no fodder. With such an army, other nomads could be defeated, but cities could not be taken.
But before long the Mongols were able to undertake the siege of large cities, using mangonels, catapults, ladders, burning oil, and even diverting rivers. It was only gradu-ally, through contact with men from the more settled states, that Chinggis Khan came to realize that there were
raiding, destroying, and plundering. It was a minister of the khan of the Naiman—the last important Mongol tribe to resist Chinggis Khan—who taught him the uses of lit-eracy and helped reduce the Mongol language to writing.
It was only after the war against Khwārezm, probably in late 1222, that Chinggis Khan reportedly learned from Muslim advisers the “meaning and importance of towns.”
And it was another adviser, formerly in the service of the Jin emperor, who explained to him the uses of peasants and craftsmen as producers of taxable goods. He had intended to turn the cultivated fields of northern China into grazing land for his horses.
Chinggis Khan chose his successor, his son Ögödei, with great care, and passed an army and a state in full vigour on to him. At the time of his death in 1227, Chinggis Khan had conquered the landmass extending from Beijing to the Caspian Sea, and his generals had raided Persia and Russia. His successors would extend their power over the whole of China, Persia, and most of Russia.
honGWu
(b. Oct. 21, 1328, Haozhou [now Fengyang, Anhui Province], China—d. June 24, 1398, Nanjing)
H
ongwu is the reign name of the Chinese emperor who reigned from 1368 to 1398 and who founded the Ming dynasty, which ruled China for nearly 300 years.During his reign, the Hongwu emperor instituted military, administrative, and educational reforms that centred power in the emperor.
The future Hongwu emperor was born as Zhu Chongba, a poor peasant in 1328. Orphaned at 16, he became a monk to avoid starvation—a common practice for the sons of poor peasants. In 1352 he joined a rebel
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force and changed his name to Zhu Yuanzhang, rising from the ranks and eventually taking over leadership of the group. Zhu Yuanzhang attacked and captured towns and cities in eastern China and, on reaching the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) delta, encountered educated men of the gentry class. Some decided to join his movement, and Zhu had the foresight to seek their guidance. From them he learned the rudiments of the Chinese language and stud-ied Chinese history and the Confucian classics. More significant, he learned the principles of government and built up an effective administration in local areas along-side the military structure. Moreover, he was persuaded by his scholars to present himself as a national leader against the Mongols rather than as a popular rebel.
After defeating rival national leaders, Zhu proclaimed himself emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1368, establishing his capital at Nanjing. Hongwu (“Vastly Martial”) was adopted as his reign title, and he is usually referred to as the Hongwu emperor, though Taizu (his temple name) is more strictly correct. He drove the last Yuan (Mongol) emperor from China that year and reunified the country by 1382.
The Hongwu emperor was cruel, suspicious, and irra-tional, especially as he grew older. Instead of eliminating Mongol influence, he made his court resemble the Mongol court and established himself as the autocratic ruler for the rest of the dynasty. He eliminated the posts of prime minister and central chancellor and had the next level of administration report directly to him. He restricted cer-tain groups that were prone to intrigue in the past. He prohibited eunuchs from participating in government, forbade the empress to meddle with court politics, and appointed civilian officials to control military affairs. Of lowly peasant origins, he always was aware of the popular
misery that administrative corruption could engender, and he savagely punished malpractices.
The Hongwu emperor felt that, after the Mongol expulsion, the scholars were the most dangerous group in country. Nevertheless, his interest in restoring traditional Chinese values involved rehabilitating the Confucian scholar class, and from experience he knew that effective government depended upon the scholars. He therefore encouraged education and purposely trained scholars for the bureaucracy. At the same time he used methods to deprive them of power and position and introduced the use of heavy bamboo as a punishment at court, often beat-ing scholar-officials to death for the slightest offense. He felt that scholars should be mere servants of the state, working on behalf of the emperor. Because of the emper-or’s attitude, a great many members of the gentry were discouraged from embarking on official careers.
In foreign relations the Hongwu emperor extended the Ming Empire’s prestige to outlying regions. Southern Manchuria was brought into the empire. Outlying states, such as Korea, the Liuqiu Islands, Annam, and other states, sent tribute missions to acknowledge the supreme rule of the Ming emperor. Not satisfied with the expul-sion of the Mongols, he sent two military expeditions into Mongolia, reaching the Mongol capital of Karakorum itself. Ming forces even penetrated Central Asia, taking Hami (in the Gobi) and accepting the surrender of sev-eral states in the Chinese Turkistan region. When Ming emissaries traversed the mountains to Samarkand, how-ever, they were met with a different reception. Timur (one of history’s greatest conquerors) was building a new Mongol empire in that region, and the Chinese envoys were imprisoned. Eventually, they were released, and Timur and the Ming exchanged several embassies, which
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emperor was less successful with Japan, whose buccaneers ravaged the Chinese coast. Three missions went to Japan, armed with inducements and threats, but all were unable to curb piracy—because the Japanese authorities were themselves helpless.
After the Hongwu emperor’s death in June 1398, he was succeeded by his grandson, Yunwen. The Hongwu emperor’s posthumous name is Gaodi.