The passing role of the Mongols in this intellectual
drama brings us to
yet another theme that first becomes prominent in Chinese history with
the Ch'in, though in this case the timing may be somewhat fortuitous.
This is the menace of the barbarians on the northern frontier. The key
fact about the territory to the north of China was its suitability for
pastoral nomads. This meant that there was little scope for the Chinese
to expand in this direction; to conquer a nomadic society is a
thankless task for a settled state, and the lands that nomads inhabit
are normally unattractive to peasants. It is only in recent centuries
that Manchuria and Inner Mongolia have become a real part of China, and
not just an imperial fringe. So there was no northern equivalent to the
ancient expansion of China toward the south. Instead, China confronted
repeated military threats in this northern zone from the late third
century B.C. onward. In the period of disunity following the demise of
the Han dynasty, dynasties of barbarian origin from the north
were
established within the frontiers of China. There was more of this in
the tenth century, and again in the twelfth. In the thirteenth century
came the Mongol invasion, when for the first but not last time northern
nomads conquered the whole of China. The Ming dynasty represented a
proud restoration of native Chinese rule, but in the seventeenth
century the Ming succumbed to yet another pastoral people from the
north, the Manchus; it was they who established China's last imperial
dynasty, the Ch'ing.
This sounds like a rather disastrous record, and from
an ethnic Chinese
viewpoint it was so. But a crucial feature of such nomadic conquests of
China, whether partial or complete, was that the new rulers came to
terms with Chinese civilization, and in general did so sooner rather
than later. The major exception was the Mongols, who alone had a
geographical perspective that made them aware of alternatives. So the
Mongols for a while curtailed the role of the native Chinese elite and
patronized a motley array of Tibetan lamas, Muslim tax collectors, and
other miscellaneous foreigners. The Chinese detested the Tibetan lamas
for their arrogance and the Muslim tax collectors for their
rapaciousness, and in due course were glad to see the last of the
Mongols themselves; but in the meantime, as we have seen, the Mongols
had come to terms with the Chinese elite. From a military point of view
China's northern frontier was more dangerous than India's northwestern
gateway; but culturally China never experienced anything like a Muslim
invasion from that quarter.
