Subject: cavalryman
Culture: Mongol
Setting: Northern Yuan empire, Mongolia late 14th-mid 17thc
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* Hansen 2015 p345
"Although the Ming armies forced the Mongols back to Mongolia, the Chinese never succeeded in vanquishing them. After 1368, the Mongols divided into several confederations, one of which ruled in the name of the Yuan dynasty. The Chinese lived in constant fear that the Mongols would regroup under the leadership of a second Chinggis Khan and reconquer China. Although they never managed to do so, different Mongol confederations posed a real, if intermittent, threat to the Chinese throughout the course of the Ming. One such confederation, the Oirats, kidnapped the emperor in 1449, and a century later, the troops of Altan Khan (1543-1583), himself a descendant of Chinggis Khan, reached the walls of Beijing.
"Fixated on the Mongols, the Ming court built a series of fortifications that form the Great Wall as we know it today. They periodically forbade trade with other countries (although not successfully). These defensive measures did not tame the Mongols, and the pursuit of such a close-minded, narrow foreign policy -- so different from the approach of earlier dynasties -- blinded the court to another threat. Obsessed with the Mongols, the Ming ignored the Manchus in the northeast until 1619, when the Manchus had their first major victory. They went on to invade China in 1644 and establish the Qing dynasty (1644-1911)."
* Hansen 2015 p360-363
"The Mongols had posed a problem for the Ming founder and for the Yongle emperor, but they remained largely unorganized during the reigns of the first two emperors. Then, in the years after the death of the Yongle emperor, a new leader named Esen (d. 1455) unified a branch of Mongols called the Oirats, who began to make incursions into Chinese territory.
"[....] Although the Mongols did not realize any lasting gains from their victory [at Tumu], the focus of Ming foreign policy permanently shifted after 1449. All subsequent Ming rulers saw the Mongolian border as the real threat to the well-being of the empire and thought the dangers across the seas could be handled simply by forbidding Chinese contact with foreign nations. The Mongols made periodic requests to resume trade, but court officials, who viewed all trading missions as harboring potential spies, generally rejected such requests.
"In their continuing battles with the Mongols, the Chinese had the great disadvantage of trying to defend a border over a thousand miles long, while the Mongols enjoyed the tactical advantage of mobility. Their cavalry could strike the border at any point. Lacking the funds to send further expeditions into Mongol territory, Chinese officials opted to build individual sections of wall, starting in the far west of China and moving east. These walled constitute today's Great Wall, but no one in the Ming conceived of them as a single entity. As long and formidable as these wall were, they did not achieve their purpose of protecting the Chinese."
* Barfield 1990 p
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Archery
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Costume
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Saber
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