Khan and his court, as well as travelers in lands then
unknown to Europeans. Polo later wrote a major work
of his travels, which was a sensation in Europe when
published, and it became a major source of information
on the life and work of Kublai Khan. His was also the
first major description by a European of Khan’s capital
city of Khan-Balik in China. The author Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan: or, a Vision in a Dream
published in 1816, named Kublai’s summer capital at
Shandu (or Shangdu) as “Xanadu.”
Kublai Khan, whom the Mongols had called Set-
san Khan, or “Wise Leader,” died in 1294. Although
the Mongol Dynasty in China collapsed soon after his
death, nonetheless his legacy, both military and eco-
nomic, transformed China into a nation-state instead of
separate regions controlled by warlords. Perhaps the lon-
gest-lasting legacy of his time is the term kamikaze, the
“divine wind” that Japanese felt saved them twice from
Mongol invasions—and that became the name given to
suicide bombers who plunged themselves into American
ships during the Second World War.
References: Rossabi, Morris, Khubilai Khan: His Life and
Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988);
“Khubilai Khan,” in The Oxford Companion to Military
History, edited by Richard Holmes (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 476–477; Nicolle, David, The
Mongol Warlords: Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Hülegü,
Tamerlane (Poole, U.K.: Firebird Books, 1990); Marshall,
Robert, Storm from the East: From Genghis Khan to Khubi-
lai Khan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
Komroff, Manuel, The Travels of Marco Polo (New York:
The Heritage Press, 1934).
Kuropatkin, Alexei Nikolaevich (1848–1925)
Russian general
Born into a noble family in the Kholmskii district of
Russia, Alexei Kuropatkin was the son of a retired mili-
tary official. Because of his father’s status, Kuropatkin
was able to enter the Cadet Corps of the Russian mili-
tary, and in 1864 he was admitted to the Pavlovskoe (or
Pavlovsk) Military Academy. He graduated two years
later, and in 1874 he graduated from the Academy of
the General Staff. From 1866 to 1871, and again from
1875 to 1877, Kuropatkin served in the Turkestan
Military District, serving with the 1st Turkestan Rifle
Battalion. He saw action in the Russo-Turkish War of
1877–78, during which he served as the chief of staff of
the 16th Infantry Division. In 1885, he wrote Lovcha
and Plevna, an account of the war. He later served in the
Asiatic Section of the Russian General Staff, and then as
commander of the Turkestan Rifle Brigade during the
Russian war in Turkestan (1879–83).
During the 1870s and 1880s, Kuropatkin served
as an aide to General Mikhail Dmitreyevich Skobelev;
he became a major general in 1882. At the end of the
1880s, he served on the General Staff, and from 1890
to 1898 he was chief of the Transcaspian Oblast, or ad-
ministrative district. On 1 January 1898, he was named
by Czar Nicholas II as the czarist minister of war, serving
until 7 February 1904. In this position, he was respon-
sible for the growth of the Russian military; however, he
felt that perhaps the greatest threat to Russia was in the
west and that Japan was militarily too weak to challenge
Russian control of the area around what is now North
and South Korea. This miscalculation would prove ex-
pensive to Russia and to the czar.Alexei KuropatkinkuRopAtkin, Alexei nikolAevich