ABSTRACT
The seizing of a dominant role in world affairs by the Mongols is unique in history. In macrohistory, the Mongol period appears as a transition between China's Second Empire and Third Empire. With the Mongol period the need for macrohistory is even more compellingly evident. Today a 'Mongolian burial ground' on one of the beaches bears witness to the punishment of the kamikaze, or the divine wind. Nature had offered the hard-riding Mongols an opportunity to subdue the millions of agricultural Chinese working on small plots. The Chinese used to say that the Mongols, after conquering the world on horseback, intended also to rule it on horseback. Phags-pa and Lamaism had no more influence on the Chinese than Confucianism had on the Mongols and Tibetans. Japanese studies emphasize the ineffectiveness of the Mongol light cavalry in such campaigns as well as the low morale and poor equipment of the Chinese forces.
