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For centuries before the Mongol conquest of northern China, Turkic nomads like them had threatened China from the north. Much of China's national policy, from the unifying Qin Dynasty onward, was oriented toward the defense of the northern border. The 13th century Mongol conquest justified that focus, and pointed out the cost to China's rulers of letting down their guard.

Even longer than the threat from the north, Chinese rulers thought of their land - the land of Chinese-speaking peoples scattered throughout several kingdoms - as "all under Heaven." In the Confucian world-view, a wise ruler would be able to unite all under heaven - all the world that mattered - and from this notion came the idea of China as the middle kingdom, zhongguo, which is also the modern Chinese name for the country.

As a result, China had no need of outsiders, and little interest in them. Barbarians who threatened their security were the only concern from outside the borders of the middle kingdom.

The Mongol invasion caused much of the court to flee to the south, along the Yangzi River. The old courtly language left its mark on modern Cantonese. Mandarin is the northern court language, heavily influenced by Mongolian, a Turkic language.

Yet during the Mongol interregnum, the Yuan Dynasty adopted Chinese clothing, customs, religion, and even to some extent language. Ethnic Chinese were employed in government to help ensure stability and a continuation of the strengths that made the Middle Kingdom such an attractive target of the conquerors. (The Mongols did discriminate against ethnic Chinese by keeping most key posts in Mongol hands.)

The Mongols influenced northern court and common culture, but not by displacing China's native culture. They may have added a few minor elements, and left the bulk unchanged. For instance, the Mandarin accent is heavily influenced by Mongol, a Turkic language, but the underlying language is still Chinese, and the Mongols, being minimally literate themselves, did nothing to change the writing system.

Once the interregnum was over and China was unified again under an ethnic Chinese emperor, the preference for isolation from outside was if possible even stronger. With the end of the Pax Mongolica, Silk Road trade declined, but contacts with the western world were still present.

Consequently, China had to determine what was to be done about western travelers and missionaries. It chose to contain them, limit their access, and restrict their activities. And this preference - a prejudice justified by China's periodic conflicts with outside powers - formed the core of China's official stance toward the expanding West.

As a result, when the Xianlong (Ch'ien-lung) emperor in 1799 dismissed the British envoy Macartney and his king as irrelevant peddlers of trifles, closer to beggars than to ambassadors and kings, it was out of a centuries-old and repeatedly reinforced preference to keep the outside world out.

And who is to say that Xianlong was not right? Within two decades, England had launched a war on China to force open the country to opium imports. China suffered a humiliating defeat at the outset of the 19th century, leading to a disastrous civil war, the collapse of the last dynasty at the beginning of the 20th century, more strife, horrific loss of life in the invasion by Japanese forces, and terrible upheaval and suffering under the first half century of Communist rule.

The legacy of the Mongols may be the reinforcement of a justifiable but doomed policy preference, to isolate China against barbarian invaders.

Learn more about this author, Stephen Shea.
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