Agricultural Policies. As the first nomadic conquerors to rule over China, the Mongols have been blamed by traditional historians for the damage to and destruction of the agriculture-based Chinese economy during the Yuan period. The more recent, revisionist studies, however, suggest that the Mongol rulers encouraged agriculture. In 1261 Kublai Khan established an Office for the Stimulation of Agriculture and named eight officials to start programs to improve the agricultural economy. Kublai Khan also initiated policies to help recover land in northern China, which had been damaged by warfare for half a century. These relief measures included tax remissions and emergency grain provisions for farmers. To protect agriculture Kublai Khan issued an edict to prohibit the nomads' herds from roaming in the farmlands. Kublai Khan and his advisers also founded the state-sponsored rural organization called she, which organized...