4 _Social situation_

The results, however, of conditions within the country were of much more
importance than events abroad. The Mongols made Peking their capital as
was entirely natural, for Peking was near their homeland Mongolia. The
emperor and his entourage could return to Mongolia in the summer, when
China became too hot or too humid for them; and from Peking they were
able to maintain contact with the rest of the Mongol empire. But as the
city had become the capital of a vast empire, an enormous staff of
officials had to be housed there, consisting of persons of many
different nationalities. The emperor naturally wanted to have a
magnificent capital, a city really worthy of so vast an empire. As the
many wars had brought in vast booty, there was money for the building of
great palaces, of a size and magnificence never before seen in China.
They were built by Chinese forced labour, and to this end men had to be
brought from all over the empire--poor peasants, whose fields went out
of cultivation while they were held in bondage far away. If they ever
returned home, they were destitute and had lost their land. The rich
gentry, on the other hand, were able to buy immunity from forced labour.
The immense increase in the population of Peking (the huge court with
its enormous expenditure, the mass of officials, the great merchant
community, largely foreigners, and the many servile labourers),
necessitated vast supplies of food. Now, as mentioned in earlier
chapters, since the time of the Later T'ang the region round Nanking had
become the main centre of production in China, and the Chinese
population had gone over more and more to the consumption of rice
instead of pulse or wheat. As rice could not be grown in the north,
practically the whole of the food supplies for the capital had to be
brought from the south. The transport system taken over by the Mongols
had not been created for long-distance traffic of this sort. The capital