5/16/2023 0 Comments Marcopolo bridgeThe Mongols even raided lands in southern Russia. From then on, state after state across China and Central Asia was absorbed into the expanding Mongol empire. They first turned east, to the kingdoms of north and western China, eventually reaching Beijing, which fell to them in 1215. With the accession of this fearsome leader, the federation of tribes began expanding their strongholds beyond the Mongolian steppe. Temüjin enjoyed unprecedented control over what is now Mongolia. In 1206 a single leader, Temüjin, was elected Genghis Khan (meaning “Universal Ruler”) after he won a series of victories over his rivals. The largest contiguous land empire the world had ever known emerged from a group of warring tribes. The easternmost part of the empire stretched to Asian shores of the Pacific. Its northwest component, the Khanate of the Golden Horde, stretched as far west as the Danube River in central Europe. By the time of the Polos’ great journey 17 years later, the Mongol empire had reached its maximum. By this time, Mongol hordes had reached Hungary. Marco Polo was born in 1254, at a time when Europe was looking not westward to the Atlantic, but eastward with fascination and trepidation. Polo’s book reawakened Europe to the possibilities of international trade and expansion, and became a text that heavily influenced the age of discovery that dawned in Europe two centuries later. His book became a best seller, spreading throughout the Italian Peninsula in a matter of months-a remarkable feat in an age before Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1439. (See also: Silk for horses: History of the Silk Road.) He wrote of fabulous things, but also of everyday matters relating to commerce. Although fantastic legends and rumors from such far-off places had filtered through to Europe on the numerous east-west trading routes of the Silk Road, Polo’s eye brought them alive in a new way. The names of the places they traveled-Hormuz, Balkh, and Kashgar-became for Europeans indelible parts of a new mental map of the world. It tells the story, beginning in 1271, of an odyssey undertaken by a trio of Venetians, who traveled through extraordinary lands and into places where few Christians had ever been, all the way to the court of the Mongolian emperor, Kublai Khan. Gorgeously rendered, the Bodleian copy contains what many scholars consider to be an authoritative text. The Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, holds one of the earliest versions, dating from about 1400. The conflict continued until it blended into the Second World War.Please be respectful of copyright. By the end of 1938 much of northern and eastern China had been overrun, including the eastern seaboard. Victims were buried or burned alive, dismembered alive or drowned. As many as 100,000 Chinese may have been slaughtered in the so-called Rape of Nanjing, including thousands of Chinese women raped before being murdered. The fighting was accompanied by vicious atrocities. (According to one theory the whole thing was stage-managed by the Chinese Communists to embroil the Kuomintang in a war with the Japanese.) Beijing and Shanghai fell in 1937, as did Nanjing, where Chiang Kai-Shek had established his Kuomintang capital. Hundreds of thousands of troops were sent in. Both sides sent more troops to the area and early in the morning of July 8th Japanese infantry and armoured vehicles attacked the bridge and took it, but were driven off again.Īttempts were made to settle things, but the incident gave Japanese hawks the excuse to mount a full-scale invasion of China. Japanese infantry then tried to force their way into Wanping, but were driven back. The Chinese said they would do the searching themselves, with one Japanese officer accompanying them. The Japanese discovered that one of their soldiers was missing, thought the Chinese might have captured him and demanded to be allowed to search Wanping for him. What happened that July night is not entirely clear, but the Japanese were carrying out training exercises without giving the customary notice and a few shots were exchanged between them and the startled Chinese troops. Small numbers of both Japanese and Chinese soldiers were stationed near what in the West was called the Marco Polo Bridge, because the explorer had seen and described its predecessor, near the town of Wanping outside Beijing. Under agreements going back to the beginning of the century countries with legations in China had the right to keep troops there in modest numbers for protection. In 1931 they took over Manchuria altogether, before expanding south.Ī key moment came in 1937. They soon infiltrated Manchuria, which had rich reserves of coal and other minerals, and began to build up industry there. They defeated the Chinese in war in the 1890s and took away Korea. The Japanese drive to become a great power required the domination of China.
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