Ming Dynasty Expels Mongols

In 1368, the rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang captured the Yuan capital of Dadu (modern Beijing) and drove the Mongol court out of China, ending nearly a century of rule by the dynasty Kublai Khan had founded. Zhu proclaimed himself emperor of a new Ming dynasty, which would govern China for almost three centuries. The change returned the country to rule by a native Han Chinese house and set the political and strategic course of the following era.

The Yuan dynasty had been weakening for decades. Mongol rule had brought China into a vast Eurasian trading world, but by the mid-fourteenth century the regime faced court infighting, heavy taxation, inflation from overprinted paper money, and devastating floods of the Yellow River. Famine and unrest spread, and a series of rebellions broke out, many of them tied to millenarian religious movements such as the Red Turban groups. Historians still debate how far epidemic disease and environmental disruption contributed to the collapse, since the evidence is patchy.

Zhu Yuanzhang rose from extraordinary obscurity. Born into a poor peasant family, he is traditionally said to have lost relatives to famine and to have spent time as a Buddhist monk before joining a Red Turban band. He proved a gifted organizer and commander, gradually absorbing rival forces. He took Nanjing in the 1350s, made it his base, and defeated competing warlords in the central and lower Yangzi region. In 1368 he proclaimed the Ming ("bright") dynasty, with Nanjing as capital, and sent armies north. As they advanced, the last Yuan emperor, Toghon Temür, withdrew from Dadu toward the steppe without a prolonged defense of the city.

The expulsion was not the end of the Mongol threat. The Yuan court survived in the north as what is often called the Northern Yuan, and Ming forces continued campaigning against it for years. Mongol groups remained a persistent military concern throughout the dynasty. The early Ming emperors answered with garrisons, offensive expeditions, and fortifications. The Yongle emperor later moved the capital to Beijing, placing the court close to the frontier.

The popular image of the Great Wall largely comes from this period. Earlier states had built walls across the northern frontier, but the most substantial and best-preserved stone and brick sections were constructed or rebuilt by the Ming, especially from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onward. Rather than a single continuous barrier, it was a system of walls, watchtowers, and garrisons. The dynasty's founding in 1368 thus shaped China's borders, its capital, and its enduring landmark.