Yong Wan Bryan Choi한국어Chapter 9: The Adolescence of Modern Humanity Brought by Genghis Khan
Translated from the Korean original. Read the Korean original
- The Adolescence of Modern Humanity Brought by Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan, who conquered the world between the 11th and 13th centuries, was feared by every nation he subdued as a wolf racing across the steppe. In the Dark Ages of the medieval era, Europeans learned for the first time of East Asia on the far side of the globe. As recorded in Marco Polo's The Travels of Marco Polo (Divisament dou monde), in 1274 he arrived at Shangdu (上都, in the southern part of today's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), where the summer palace of Kublai Khan, Emperor Shizu of the Yuan (元) dynasty, stood. During his seventeen years in Yuan China he traveled not only to the capital Dadu (大都, Beijing) but also through Shanxi (山西), Shaanxi (陝西), Sichuan (四川), Yunnan (雲南), Hebei (河北), Shandong (山東), Jiangsu (江蘇), Zhejiang (浙江), and Fujian (福建). While serving as an official in Yangzhou (揚州), he joined the escort of a princess, and passing through Sumatra, Malaya, Sri Lanka, and Malabar in southwestern India, he returned to his hometown of Venice in 1295. His tales of the immense wealth and abundance of the East were more than enough to stir the curiosity and the thirst for exploration of Europeans.
Over long ages, East Asian culture began as the farming culture of the coasts, changed into the nomadic culture of the interior, and then the two cultures came together and fused; adapting to the four seasons, it achieved a complete culture and civilization. The East Asian culture of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) spread along the convenient Silk Road into Southwest Asia and Europe, and it was the culture and civilization of a great world empire that connected even to Africa and the Americas. After the Tang had ruled for 300 years, in East Asia the Jin dynasty ruled by the Manchu people grew up in the north, and the Yangtze River culture of the Song dynasty grew in the south. The Mongol nation, which had grown up in the north, had long competed with the Jin, fellow descendants of the Dongyi people; then it united the peoples of the same blood in the remaining Manchurian and Tibetan regions, and at last East Asian power set out on its history of conquering the world.
The Mongol society into which Temujin (Genghis Khan) was born in 1167 was in an age of endless war and hardship, as the growing population of nomadic society fought to secure pastureland to produce food. It was under constant pressure from neighboring nations of the same Manchurian blood: the Jin to the east and the Uyghur state to the south. Temujin, who grew up from childhood as a child of storm and fortune, gathered soldiers, won the competition, and cultivated the pleasure of conquering and possessing. In his thirties he unified the Mongol nation, and in 1209, the year he turned forty-two, he conquered the Uyghur state on the upper Yellow River, which held the old riches of the Tang dynasty, and secured its resources.
In 1215 he conquered the Jin, which held the old riches of the Han dynasty down to the lower Yellow River, and established a great Mongol state uniting three kingdoms that shared a language. Soon after, in 1918, he invaded the Pakistan region, the old Persian cultural area, and the Caspian Sea region and Eastern Europe. Continuing on, in 1223 he subdued the lands around the Black Sea, the old domain of Rome, and his military attained the greatest strength of all, equipped with powerful weapons and manpower. While handing over the leadership system to his sons and kinsmen as his health weakened, Temujin returned to his Mongol homeland of Karakorum, and in 1227, at the age of sixty, having built a great empire stretching from Manchuria in East Asia to the Black Sea region of Eastern Europe, he entrusted it to his son Ögedei Khan and his kinsmen and departed this world.
The transcontinental road on which Genghis Khan rode with his cavalry was the great highway his ancestors, the Huns, had already opened when they destroyed Rome, so he was easily able to accomplish the great feat of seizing Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe in five years. Ögedei Khan, who inherited his father's great undertaking and returned to Europe, attacked southern Europe, the white people's base between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, in 1230, and from 1236 plundered the whole of Eastern Europe thoroughly for six years. At the same time he attacked Tibet, Vietnam, and the East Indies.
On the Korean Peninsula, the Mongols captured Kaesong, the capital of Goryeo, in 1231, occupied Donggyeong (Gyeongju) in 1260, and attempted to invade Japan twice, in 1274 and 1281, but suffered from the sea winds and failed. From this time on, Japanese culture, which had belonged to the Korean cultural sphere, independently preserved the Tang-Song culture that Korea had possessed, while the Korean Peninsula, following changes in continental culture, shifted from a Tang-Song cultural orientation to a Yuan-Ming cultural orientation.
In 1254, the Catholic Church, which had played the leading role in medieval European culture, felt threatened, and the Holy See in Rome sent envoys to the Mongol capital of Karakorum to petition for protection of the Holy See. In 1258 the Mongols attacked Baghdad, Turkey, and the whole Mediterranean coast; then in 1260 Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, took power, and over thirty-four years he occupied the island nations of Southeast Asia, southern India, and Sri Lanka, expanded his territory further into Southwest Asia and Europe, made every invaded country pay tribute, and named his state the Yuan dynasty. He moved the capital to Dadu (Beijing), enlarged the Forbidden City, re-established in Beijing the world capital once enjoyed at Chang'an in the Tang dynasty, and made it once again the center of world culture and civilization. Though he built an empire far greater than the Roman Empire, beyond comparison, this is little known because for a long time the world ignored the history of Asians.
European countries paid tribute, and merchants from every continent came and went. Among them, Marco Polo and his father, who came bearing a letter from the Pope, worked as subjects of Kublai Khan and, traveling back and forth to their homeland, introduced the culture and civilization of East Asia to Western Europe. The advanced conditions, such as the Mongols using paper money while Europe still used coins, astonished them. In East Asia people wove clothing from cotton, silk thread, and wool, and paper and woodblock printing were well developed for exchanging knowledge and information; such culture and civilization were marvels to them.
The maritime industry flourished; the Mongols explored the world's geography, developed sea routes, and received tribute from continents and island nations, and Marco Polo visited Sri Lanka and brought back Mongol taxes. The land and sea routes linking Beijing to the East Indies had long been the passage between East Asia and South Asia, connecting politics, religion, and economy, including Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, between East Asia and India. This road was opened before the Silk Road connecting East Asia to Europe existed, and together with the man-made canal linking the Yellow River and the Yangtze, it shows that it was the world's earliest developed link between farming culture and nomadic culture. Later, in the Ming dynasty, a world navigation chart was drawn up, and together with the compass, East Asian navigation technology spread to Europe, which spurred maritime industry in Western Europe.
Mongol soldiers developed cannons using gunpowder explosions, which were passed on to Europe and brought change to the history of warfare. Woodblock printing, and later metal movable-type printing developed in Korea, were long the means by which East Asia developed its culture and civilization. The printing technology passed to Western Europe at this time resulted in bringing the Renaissance to Europe. It woke Europe, which was going through the Dark Ages of the medieval period, from its sleep, and maritime activity began in Western Europe. The European interior and coastal regions underwent revolutionary changes in daily life after the Mongol invasions, and from this time world history began to change from a history led by East Asia to a history led by Western Europe.
The Xiongnu Empire, formed by the Huns, conquered Rome and Europe and, ruling the nomadic belt stretching from Eastern Europe through East Asia, competed with the Han dynasty. Around the 7th century they built the Uyghur Empire and competed with the Tang dynasty, and Genghis Khan, born in AD 1167, again united the nomads and founded an empire that unified the Eurasian continent, bringing the greatest change in human history. It gave Europeans, who were passing through the Dark Ages of the European Middle Ages, the opportunity to learn again the culture and civilization of Asia that they had forgotten since the Xiongnu invasions. From that time, modern civilization began in the world.
The Mongol Empire's unification of the world showed the process by which modern humanity, in its period of growth, changed into the adolescence of teenage boys and girls. The character of that period was like a boy and a girl feeling attraction to the opposite sex seen for the first time: it was a time when Asia saw the populated regions of other continents, including Europe and Africa, and felt drawn to them, and Europe saw Asia for the first time and was drawn to it. The changes of adolescence are the most violent changes of life, both physically and emotionally. Mongol history shows that part and character of world history.
Mongol soldiers developed cannons using gunpowder explosions, which were passed on to Europe and brought a revolution to the history of war. Woodblock printing, and later metal movable-type printing developed in Korea, were long the means by which East Asia developed its culture and civilization. The printing technology passed to Western Europe at this time resulted in bringing the Renaissance to Europe. This led on to the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, and humanist thought drove out imperialism, and democratic society, capitalist economics, and socialist economics began. Led by Western Europe, the Reformation broke away from the Catholic Church of Eastern Europe, and social religion, Protestantism, began.
Meanwhile, the Han Chinese of central Asia, who had suffered the Mongol invasion, recovered and founded the Ming dynasty. The Ming inherited Yuan culture and reorganized all the decayed government policies and facilities. The British naval explorer Gavin Menzies, in his book 1421, explained that the flagship of the world expedition used by the Ming admiral Zheng He, under orders from the Ming Yongle Emperor, was a huge vessel 151 m long and 61 m wide, and that with some 200 accompanying ships and some 27,000 men he left Taicang in Jiangsu Province in 1405, passed through India and Africa, and arrived on the American continent in 1421. After returning home, he continued, finishing his seventh expedition in 1433 and making navigation charts, it is said. In 1525 the Ming closed down all maritime industry and established an isolationist policy. This navigational information spread to Europe, and at this time East Asia handed world hegemony over to Europe.
Nurhaci, born at Baekdusan on the upper reaches of the Yalu River, founded the Qing dynasty in Manchuria and invaded the Ming in 1644; what the Xiongnu and Mongols of the north had done in seizing leadership from the Han Chinese, this time the Dongyi, the Manchurian and Korean Peninsula peoples, repeated. On the Korean Peninsula, when Silla was invaded by Goryeo, Silla's royal family founded the Jin dynasty in the old territory of Goguryeo, and the Jin destroyed the Northern Song. Afterward, Genghis Khan of Mongolia first of all joined the Jin into the Mongol Empire. After the Qing unified China, rebellions around its borders and within the country continued again, and the Japanese Wa people started the Imjin War on the Korean Peninsula during the Ming period and went on harassing the Qing coast. The isolationist policy set up in the Ming continued in the Qing, and East Asia's long history of connection to the world ended here.
9.1 Europe's Advance into the World
In 1493 the Portuguese navigator Columbus crossed the Atlantic and reached the North American continent, and in 1598 Vasco da Gama passed Africa and arrived in India, and Europe opened its eyes to the world. The competitive society among nations in East Asia, brought about by Genghis Khan's invasion, now passed to Europe, and fierce civil wars and reforms in politics, society, and economy began in Europe. In a competitive society, urban populations grew, specialized fields developed, and education, industry, trade, and finance grew rapidly, leading to expansion overseas. By 1650, expeditions and trading ships from countries such as Spain, England, Holland, France, and Portugal began to travel to North America, Central America, South America, Africa, India, China, and many island nations of Southeast Asia. Asian silk, porcelain, fur garments, and many precious metals were imported into Europe, and vegetable, fruit, and grain seeds came in, bringing about the agricultural and industrial revolutions in Europe.
The world's knowledge concentrated in Europe, science and invention flourished, and industries such as textiles, transportation, and military weapons developed; the east coast of North America was divided into the Thirteen Colonies, and England, France, Spain, and Russia divided up the continents and bought and sold ownership. At last the Europeans who had immigrated to America established the American government, and in 1776 George Washington was chosen as the first president. England colonized India, Australia, and New Zealand and grew into a world empire on which the sun never set. Russia expanded its territory to possess all of Siberia, and the shape of the map of Europe and the world changed greatly. With the expansion of farmland, in regions needing labor, the business of kidnapping Africans and selling them as slaves flourished.
The native peoples, who had lived there for tens of thousands of years, were mercilessly slaughtered, driven out of their living areas, and confined to restricted areas, becoming victims of the white Europeans' land expansion in the greatest tragedy of human history. This phenomenon was the violent behavior humanity went through in the adolescence of its growth, and the rapid growth of world population from the 17th century on was a phenomenon showing the physical growth of adolescence. The Civil War on the North American continent was a clash between desire and conscience. The North won, and slavery was ended. Edison discovered electricity, and electric communications and electric machine power, together with the rail connections of steam locomotives, brought the world to the point of showing the appearance of a physically grown adult.
The growth of adolescent humanity continued, and there was also the violence of the First and Second World Wars. Ford invented the automobile, and cars running on burned oil crossed the continent on highways. Mass production linking supply and demand brought a gap between rich and poor in the capitalist economy, and in contrast to it communism and socialism also appeared. Europe's drive for territorial expansion began with the First World War within Europe from Italy, and stopped through the intervention of the United States and France. In 1939 the Second World War began again. While Korea and China practiced isolationist politics, Japan modernized sixty years ahead of them and succeeded in occupying and colonizing Korea and Chinese Manchuria. Intending to expand into Southeast Asia, Japan joined Germany in the Second World War, attacked Hawaii, and challenged the United States.
9.2 The Japanese Invasion
East Asia, settling on the Korean Peninsula and around the Yellow Sea, pressed on with farming while battling winter, used coal as winter fuel, and found metals; it is the homeland of human culture, where the morning sun of human civilization rose. Political competition and disputes over expanding power among the peoples of East Asia, the birthplace of world civilization, continued without end.
Japan was a nation founded by Baekje people who crossed over to the Japanese land that had been Baekje territory, after Silla's unification of the Korean Peninsula, and it was an extension of Baekje culture. Around the time Baekje was invaded by Silla, Baekje people migrated there in great numbers, the Japanese state was founded, and the Asuka civilization began. The Nihon Shoki (日本書紀) explains well that Japanese culture was transmitted from Korea. While language and customs continued almost identically with the Korean Peninsula, Korea underwent change under continental influence, and Japan preserved the original Baekje form well. It is just as the Korean Peninsula, somewhat isolated from China's continental changes, preserved the original culture better than China did. Just as Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters preserves the original pronunciation well, Korea's ancient history has preserved the original foundations of Chinese history well. Japanese culture preserves the culture of the Korean Peninsula well.
The difference between the cultures of the Korean Peninsula and Japan arose from the time when the Yuan dynasty made Goryeo on the Korean Peninsula a colony and brought in continental culture, while Japan did not receive continental influence as heavily as the Korean Peninsula. As the Yuan grew into a world empire, East Asian culture left the Tang-Song cultural sphere and changed into the Ming-Qing cultural sphere. Unified Silla culture had been influenced by Tang culture, and as the continental culture of the Yuan reached Goryeo, Korea and Japan began to be separated.
The descendants of Baekje people in Japan inherited their ancestors' longing and carried out their will to return home to the Korean Peninsula, and so throughout a long history they harassed the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula in the guise of pirates. Whenever Japan's national power grew strong, it carried out an invasion of the Korean Peninsula. The Imjin War of 1592 and the Eulsa Treaty (乙巳條約) of 1905 are the greatest historical events in Korea-Japan relations. Because of Joseon's isolation, it could not pay attention to the modernizing reforms and efforts taking place in Japan. The Qing declined greatly through the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion. Japan first annexed and colonized Joseon, and Joseon's coal and iron ore helped Japan's ever-expanding industrial base.
The Sino-Japanese War (淸日戰爭) was a war fought from July 25, 1894 to April 1895 between the Qing and Japan in a contest for supremacy in exercising political influence over Joseon. In Europe it is also called the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1894 Kim Ok-gyun, a pro-Japanese reformer, was assassinated in Shanghai, and Japan tried to take his remains to Japan, but the Qing prevented it. The Japanese government took this as a direct insult. Japan sent an expeditionary force of 8,000 to Joseon. On July 23 it occupied Gyeongbokgung Palace, where King Gojong resided, and the dispute began between the two countries, the Qing having broken off diplomatic relations with Japan.
Joseon at that time had been paying tribute to the Qing; the conservatives wanted to maintain relations with the Qing, and the Enlightenment Party wanted to establish solidarity with Japan and the Western nations. After fighting two wars, the Opium War and the Sino-French War, the Qing had become weak and could not resist the interference and encroachment of the Western powers. Japan removed Qing influence from Joseon, invaded the Qing, occupied China's three provinces of Shengjing, Jilin, and Heilongjiang and put them in Japanese hands, advanced as far as Beijing, and looted precious treasures such as jewels and old books. Through the naval Battle of the Yellow Sea, the Battle of the Yalu River, the massacre of 20,000 at Port Arthur (Lüshun), the Battle of Ugeumchi, and the fall of the Weihai fortress, it succeeded in occupying the East China Sea.
At the request of the Qing, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was concluded between the Qing and Japan on April 17, 1895. Through it the Qing confirmed Japan's complete international position within Joseon, paid Japan an indemnity of 200 million taels (兩), and ceded the Liaodong Peninsula, Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, and so on. The Qing's powerlessness was exposed, the competition among the world powers to partition the Qing became more blatant, and Japan inevitably came into collision with Russian power. Later, however, the Liaodong Peninsula was returned due to the Triple Intervention of Russia, France, and Germany.
Just as Europe seized Asian territory, controlled colonies, and made today's world map with the ideology of white supremacy, Japan too tried to keep up the same invader's conduct toward Korea, but it surrendered to the United States in the Second World War, and East Asia is developing within the American sphere of influence.
9.3 The First and Second World Wars
The First World War was a great European war lasting from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918, in which more than 9 million soldiers died. Before the Second World War broke out, major political changes took place, including numerous revolutions in the participating countries. The war was triggered when, on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, and it began on July 28 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire invaded Serbia.
It was a struggle for supremacy in Europe between the Allies of the British Empire, France, and the Russian Empire and the Central Powers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Later, as the Ottomans and Bulgaria supported Germany and Italy, Japan, and the United States supported the British Empire, it became a world war in which 70 million soldiers took part. After the Russian government collapsed in March 1917, the Central Powers acquired Russian territory. After the German November Revolution, Germany agreed to an armistice on November 11, 1918, and the Allies won the war.
During the war, four major empires, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottomans, came to be dissolved. Germany and Austria-Hungary gave birth to successor states but lost much territory, while Russia and the Ottoman Empire were completely dissolved. The map of Europe and Southwest Asia was drawn with new independent states. The settlement of the First World War failed as the situation worsened with the revival of European nationalism and the establishment of dictatorship in Germany. From here the Second World War began.
The Second World War was the largest and worst war in human history. It was the second world war in human history, lasting from 1939 to 1945. After Germany annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Nazi German army ruled by Hitler tried to gain territory by invading Poland's western border, and it grew into another great war when Britain and France declared war on Germany. On the other side, in East Asia, Japan, which had massacred hundreds of thousands of Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War of 1937, began war with the United States in 1941 with a surprise attack on the American military base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii.
Before the war, the United States supported China, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union through Lend-Lease, and gave integrated support with Britain through the Atlantic Charter. The United States was also supporting China in its war with Japan, including moving the U.S. Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Hawaii to actively deter the Japanese threat. With Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor the United States entered the war, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The United States, which drove out the Native Americans who originated in East Asia, was a colony of England, fought the War of Independence against England, and became independent in 1976. Going through the growing pains of the Mexican War and the Civil War, it freed the Black slaves and achieved the unity of the people of North and South. During the First World War, with the rapid development of industry in oil, steel, manufacturing, and finance, it accumulated the experience of economic depression, and a social security system developed.
In the course of fighting two world wars, the United States invented electricity, the automobile, the airplane, and the atomic bomb, received the surrender of Germany and Japan, and secured its position as the world's superpower. As a result, the regional nations of East Asia that had been Japanese colonies became independent and returned to self-rule, and the colonies of the world's many empires disappeared. The countries directly involved in the First World War were mostly Germany and its neighbors, while in the Second World War not only Europe but also nations of Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and Australia were actively involved. Through the Second World War many nations experienced changes in politics and policy, and nations and regimes perished or were reborn. Through disputes and trade, nations grew closer, and the world gathered under one roof. The United Nations was launched, bringing about the result of the world becoming one.
Europe saw Genghis Khan's firecrackers and came to invent the gun, and learning from Genghis Khan's cannons, Napoleon marched as far as Africa. They began to seize the territory of native peoples who shot bows. Europe made the present world map and made textbooks teaching as though human history began at the Mediterranean. Since olden times it has been said that history is the record of the winner. Because I wanted to see the record of the loser, I came to look with new eyes for the truth hidden in the shadows, and I began writing this essay to share a view of history fitting for a new age.