Chinese culture and society were more affected by, and more comfortable with, their place within the cosmopolitan world empire of the Mongols than has generally been understood. In many ways the commercial prosperity and openness to the world of Southern Song continued under the Yuan. But the turmoil of the Yuan-Ming transition produced a decisive break with those trends, and stability was achieved only on much less commercial and much more “Neo-Confucian” foundations. The Ming system of foreign relations, the only real "tribute system" in all of Chinese history, can be read as a Neo-Confucian systematization of the experience of world empire under the Mongols. It also provides the type cases, in the building of the Great Wall and the persis¬tent refusal to deal with the Mongols because of their "in¬sincerity", for concepts of defensiveness and dogmatism in Chinese foreign policy.
Cambridge History of China,Vols. 7, 8.
Edward L. Dreyer, Early Ming China
Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China, Ch. 9, 10.
Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History.
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