The Limits of the World

CHAPTER 11 · 1274–1293 · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

After Yamen the machine keeps rolling — off the map’s edges. Japan first: the shogunate has beheaded Khubilai’s envoys (it knows the script and refuses the role), and in 1274 a Korean-built fleet mauls Tsushima and lands at Hakata Bay, where samurai accustomed to announcing individual duels meet massed volleys and thunder-crash bombs. The landing force withdraws to its ships; a storm punishes the fleet home. Japan spends seven years building a two-meter stone wall around the bay (find the marker); the Mongols spend them conscripting the largest seaborne invasion force in history before 1944 —

The turn: Hakata Bay, August 1281.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.