84 China in World History
Ironically, during this period of “foreign rule,” the Mongol court
came to sponsor the very ideas of the Song Neo-Confucian scholars who
had failed to protect the Southern Song from collapse and conquest.
Perhaps even more important for the future of China, the Mongols
managed to create a much larger land empire than even the Han and
Tang and a very much larger empire than the northern Song. By making
strategic alliances with the Khitans, Tanguts, Uighurs, and Tibetans and
integrating offi cials from each of these groups into their government,
the Mongols incorporated these peoples into one large empire in ways
the Chinese had never previously managed. Consequently, when the
Yuan dynasty collapsed in the fourteenth century, it was replaced by a
Chinese dynasty of much greater extent than anything dreamed of by
the Song emperors.