Kaidu, The Grandson Of Okkodai Who Had Been The Successor Of Chinghiz In
The Kaanship, Refused To Acknowledge The Transfer Of The Supreme Authority
To The House Of Tuli, And Was Through The Long Life Of Kublai A Thorn In
His Side, Perpetually Keeping His North-Western Frontier In Alarm.
His
immediate authority was exercised over some part of what we should now
call Eastern Turkestan and Southern Central Siberia; whilst his hordes of
horsemen, force of character, and close neighbourhood brought the Khans of
Chaghatai under his influence, and they generally acted in concert with
him.
The chief throne of the Mongol Empire had just been ascended by Kublai,
the most able of its occupants after the Founder. Before the death of his
brother and predecessor Mangku, who died in 1259 before an obscure
fortress of Western China, it had been intended to remove the seat of
government from Kara Korum on the northern verge of the Mongolian Desert
to the more populous regions that had been conquered in the further East,
and this step, which in the end converted the Mongol Kaan into a Chinese
Emperor,[3] was carried out by Kublai.
[Sidenote: China.]
11. For about three centuries the Northern provinces of China had been
detached from native rule, and subject to foreign dynasties; first to the
Khitan, a people from the basin of the Sungari River, and supposed (but
doubtfully) to have been akin to the Tunguses, whose rule subsisted for
200 years, and originated the name of KHITAI, Khata, or CATHAY, by which
for nearly 1000 years China has been known to the nations of Inner Asia,
and to those whose acquaintance with it was got by that channel.[4] The
Khitan, whose dynasty is known in Chinese history as the Liao or "Iron,"
had been displaced in 1123 by the Churches or Niu-chen, another race of
Eastern Tartary, of the same blood as the modern Manchus, whose Emperors
in their brief period of prosperity were known by the Chinese name of
Tai-Kin, by the Mongol name of the Altun Kaans, both signifying
"Golden." Already in the lifetime of Chinghiz himself the northern
Provinces of China Proper, including their capital, known as Chung-tu or
Yen-King, now Peking, had been wrenched from them, and the conquest of the
dynasty was completed by Chinghiz's successor Okkodai in 1234.
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