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This thesis approaches two perennial and interrelated problems in the historiography of China - the question of the openness or self-isolation of (Ming) Chinese society, as well as the nature and extent of the Mongol legacy in the (early) Ming - from a new angle. In spite of a growing body of scholarship on political, military, and institutional aspects of the transition from 'foreign' Mongol Yuan (1271-1368) to 'native' Ming (1368-1644) rule, there is one aspect that has received little attention so far: language, or rather languages in the plural, and translation between them. By bringing the various multilingual dimensions of the early Ming to the foreground of analysis and studying them against the backdrop of the Mongol legacy, this thesis covers new ground. While recognising that not all activities with which it is concerned would have been seen as connected by early Ming actors, this thesis argues that they do collectively constitute a realm of action with a common purpose, which we can comprehend as 'language policy.' This perspective is significant, because Yuan continuities on macro levels (administrative, institutional, political) can only be truly grasped through a systematic investigation of micro levels, such as language. To achieve these aims, the thesis blends concepts and methods from history, sinological philology, and Linguistic Landscape Studies (LLS). My argument is threefold. First, the Mongol heritage was not just perceptible in institutions and newly absorbed territory but also on the level of language. Second, the early Ming, far from being 'fiercely anti-Mongol' (as one authority recently put it), consciously attempted to imitate and surpass the Yuan, and multilingualism - for both communicative and emblematic reasons - played an important part in this endeavour. Third, and most importantly, the year 1368 marked neither a 'revolutionary' rupture nor a 'business as usual' continuation of Mongol legacies. Rather, the new dynasty attempted to strike a difficult balance, in which language and translation policies were instrumental in harmonising the needs for both continuity with and a break from the past. The Ming continued Yuan traditions such as the production of multilingual steles and edicts to symbolise and enforce their universal imperial claim, while Chinese was (not de jure, but de facto) reinstituted as the major imperial language, as opposed to one imperial language among many, as in Mongol times. The very notion of universal empire, continued from Yuan to Ming, would beat odds with monolingualism, and consequently, the Ming could not have been monolingual, even if they had so desired. While the distinction between 'multilingual foreign' dynasties (Yuan, Qing) and 'monolingual Chinese' ones (Ming) is not outright wrong, it does need considerable refinement, in order to understand the Ming's place in the larger Yuan-Ming-Qing transition. 'Translation of empire' has a double meaning in this thesis. First, it is meant literally in the sense of language mediation: textual legacies of the Yuan were translated from languages such as Mongolian or Persian into Chinese, while the new empire translated its claim to power into other languages. Second, it is a metaphor alluding to the political concept of translatio imperii, known from Western Eurasian history and comparable to the Chinese 'dynastic cycle' narrative: fundamentally the idea of cultural mobility, with knowledge and power moving from empire to empire. How did the Yuan-Ming transition work as a translatio imperii in both senses of the word and what can we conclude from it regarding the nature of the early Ming?

The advent of the hordes of HUlegU Khan into Persia in the mid thirteenth century marked not only a new era for the peoples of the Iranian plateau and the surrounding lands but for the invaders and settlers themselves, The coming of HUlegU Khan was in sharp contrast to the visitations of his father, Tolui Khan, and grandfather, Chinggis Khan, and the two generals, lebei and SUbodei, some three decades earlier This dissertation explores the establishment and development of the early ll-Khanate concentrating on the period of HUlegU and his son Abaqa's reign from 1256 until 1282, roughly covering the period of the luwaynis' ascendancy After a survey and review of the primary sources used in researching this dissertation, chapters two three and four look at the main events of the first two ll-Khans' reigns and the problems they faced as their armies moved west Chapters five and six deal with the threats that the emerging kingdom suffered from fellow Mongols in the north and in the east, and how these tensions and conflicts were indicative of events and developments elsewhere in the Mongol Empire, Chapters seven, eight and nine deal respectively with the semi-autonomous provinces of Kirman, Shiraz, and Herat Each of these provinces dealt with the central Mongol power in a different way and these contrasting relationships is examined. Chapter ten is concerned with a phenomenon often associated with the later thirteenth century, namely the growth in the incidence of Sufis, Qalandars, and poets, all of whom flourished under the II-Khans This chapter creates a picture of a world not always associated with Mongol Iran. The final chapter summarises the conclusions drawn from the preceding chapters and attempts to portray a fresh, more positive image of these early II-Khanid rulers and paint a more balanced and less cynical picture of conditions under HUlegU and his son Abaqa. The illustrations are intended more for their aesthetic appeal than their historical revelations.

Sensing Empire assembles a new literary history of the Mongol empire (1206–1368) by exposing the epistemological intersections between disparate cultural productions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Stemming from an interest in medieval philosophies of mind and cultural phenomenology, the dissertation explores how Mongol imperialism formed and reformed notions of self and the world across Middle English, Latin, and Classical Chinese “contact” literatures. Through a methodology that centers the perceptive body as the locus for cross-cultural encounter, Sensing Empire demonstrates the intimacy of the Mongol empire as a medieval global network. This work challenges Eurocentric approaches to medieval studies as it contributes to the burgeoning fields of medieval affect studies, premodern critical race studies, and the Global Middle Ages.