4 Mongol expansionism
Chinese attention during the Southern Song was always directed
north, and with good reason. The Song policy of using the Mongols to
oppose the Jurchen ended in disaster, however, when the Mongols
swept into northern China. By 1236 Mongol armies were ready to
thrust south of the Yangze, though it was not until the accession
to power of Khubilai Khan in 1260 that the Mongol conquest of
the Southern Song was pressed to its conclusion. Six years earlier, the
kingdom of Dali, successor to Nanzhao in the region of Yunnan, had
fallen to the Mongols and been incorporated within the Chinese
empire. Hangzhou was captured in 1276, and Canton, whence the
Song court had fled, succumbed the following year. Two years later,
destruction of what remained of the Song fleet gave the Mongols total
control over an expanded Chinese empire.
This was not the end of Mongol expansionism. The next target
was Southeast Asia. The incorporation of Yunnan into the empire
provided a base for operations against mainland Southeast Asian king-
doms. Burma and Vietnam both suffered invasions that were Mongol