How Kublai Khan made China the first Maritime Superpower

China is a great and longstanding empire. Now acclaimed historian and author of Emperor of the Seas Jack Weatherford describes Kublai Khan and the part he played in its maritime mastery.

Two dominant impressions came to mind when I began to write a book on Kublai Khan. One was the opium-inspired poem Kubla by Samuel Taylor Coleridge describing the Mongol emperors summer capital of Xanadu. The other, more serious one, was Kublai’s catastrophic effort to invade Japan by sea and his subsequent defeat, usually attributed to the Kamikaze (the Divine Wind) that destroyed his fleet.