When the Mongols attacked China they had the advantage of all the arts
and crafts and all the new technical advances of western and central
Asia and of Europe. Thus they had attained a high degree of technical
progress, and at the same time their number was very great.


2 "_Nationality legislation_"

It was only after the Hsia empire in North China, and then the empire of
the Juchên, had been destroyed by the Mongols, and only after long and
remarkably modern tactical preparation, that the Mongols conquered South
China, the empire of the Sung dynasty. They were now faced with the
problem of ruling their great new empire. The conqueror of that empire,
Kublai, himself recognized that China could not be treated in quite the
same way as the Mongols' previous conquests; he therefore separated the
empire in China from the rest of the Mongol empire. Mongol China became
an independent realm within the Mongol empire, a sort of Dominion. The
Mongol rulers were well aware that in spite of their numerical strength
they were still only a minority in China, and this implied certain
dangers. They therefore elaborated a "nationality legislation", the
first of its kind in the Far East. The purpose of this legislation was,
of course, to be the protection of the Mongols. The population of
conquered China was divided into four groups--(1) Mongols, themselves
falling into four sub-groups (the oldest Mongol tribes, the White
Tatars, the Black Tatars, the Wild Tatars); (2) Central Asian
auxiliaries (Naimans, Uighurs, and various other Turkish people,
Tanguts, and so on); (3) North Chinese; (4) South Chinese. The Mongols
formed the privileged ruling class. They remained militarily organized,
and were distributed in garrisons over all the big towns of China as
soldiers, maintained by the state. All the higher government posts were