SIA: 1 5 175KEY CONCEPTS

!J11 In China, the return of indigenous rule following the Mongolconquest brought about a resurgence of traditional Chinese social,political, and economic practices. However, without the unifyingMongol presence, China retreated from contact with lands to theeast and west during. the Ming Empire.

!\1'~ Following the Ming Empire's collapse, the Manchu-ruled Qing 9

Empire expanded China's borders while continuing carefulregulation of outside trade and other influences.

!)!J The Tokugawa Shogunate, which emerged after a long period ofcivil war in Japan, centralized authority over the entire archipelago;like China's emperors, Japan's shoguns maintained strict controlover contact with European merchants and missionaries tominimize destabilizing influences in their society.

!)!J While Islam continued to spread around the Indian Ocean, the ageof Muslim-dominated trade in the region gave way to Europeancontrol, with Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French commercialventures laying the foundation for a coming era of colonialdomination.

I!!I On the Indian subcontinent, the Mughal Empire emerged. Under itsgreatest ruler, Akbar, policies of religious toleration supported theempire's expansion, but his successors would fail to maintain thecentralized authority necessary to withstand European involvementin India.

KEY TERMS

~ Canton system[II daimyo~ Dutch East India Company~ Jesuitm kabuki theater

20'1

202 9:->Chapter 13

Little Ice Age

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ManchuiFiJ

RajputssamuraishogunWJ

Sikhs

Asia in this period is discussed in depth in The Earth and Its Peoples,3rd and 4th eds., Chapters 12, 13, 15, 19, and 20.

CHINA DURING THE MING EMPIRE

Shortly after seizing power and ending the Mongol-ruled Yuan Empirein 1368, the first Ming emperor, Hongwu, moved to isolate China fromoutside influence and shake off the "foreign" practices of the Mongols.These extreme reactionary policies did not stand very long. Hongwu'ssuccessor, Yongle, revived the Yuan provincial government structure,hereditary professions, and the use of the Mongols' Muslim calendarand moved the capital back to Beijing. There Yongle expanded theForbidden City begun under Khubilai Khan.

But the Ming Empire retreated from any plans of expansion orincreased global contact following Yongle's death in 1424, when Chinafaced growing pressure to defend its borders against Japanese pirateattacks from the east and Mongol raids in the north and west. In fact,the Ming Empire entered a period of stagnation or even decline by themid-HOOs, with shrinking agricultural yields, a lack of innovation inbronze and steel weapons production, and few steps forward inshipbuilding and printing. The return to Confucianism-and its civil­service examination system-begun by Hongwu attracted the mosttalented young Chinese men to intensive scholarship, pulling themaway from commercial ventures. Meanwhile, the pressures of feedinga growing population forced many farmers to focus on staple cropssuch as wheat and rice; this also reduced the commercial progressassociated with crops such as cotton, which had stimulated earliereconomic and technological growth in related areas. Populationpressures were particularly acute in southern and central China,where heavy deforestation occurred as more and more fields werecleared for growing crops.

The need to defend China's borders led Ming officials to restrictaccess to technology they feared would get into enemy hands. Thishad the converse effect of actually stimulating new steelmakingprocesses in Japan, while Korea emerged as a regional leader inprinting, shipbuilding, firearms production, weather prediction, andcalendar making. Nevertheless, the bustling cities of Ming Chinacontinued to produce masterpieces of literature, opera, poetry,painting, and other artistic pursuits. Novels such as Romance of theThree Kingdoms reflected the resurgent Chinese n'ational pridefollowing the overthrow of Mongol rule. A similar source of pride wasthe strong demand for Ming products such as furniture, silk, andespecially blue-and-white "Ming ware" porcelain throughout Asia,India, the Middle East, and East Africa. By the mid-1500s, Ming Chinawas awash in silver from Japan and the Spanish and Portuquesecolonies in Latin America, thanks to its high volume of exports. This

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Asia: 1450-17 50 ~:~ 203

fueled rapid economic expansion as the Ming Empire progressed, butthe government's poor monetary policies, along with corruption andmismanagement in the huge government-run ceramics factories, led toinflation and strikes in China's urban areas. Meanwhile, the Little IceAge of the seventeenth century, along with epidemics of disease andstagnant agricultural productivity, led to unrest in the countryside.

THE QING EMPIRE EMERGES

By the late 1500s, the Ming Empire faced both serious internal

disorder and anumber of external threats. In the southeas!, repeated /'raids by Japanese pirates led manyChinese to migrate to Southeast yAsia, where they found opportunities to participate in the growing

/ Indian Ocean trade network. To the north, the Mongols, bonded bytheir Tibetan Buddhism faith, retained a firm hold on their homeland;Mongolia regained its status as a regional military power by 1600 andcompeted with China for control of territory along their mutualborder. Meanwhile, a group known as th~ Manchu was consolidatingpower in its homeland northwest of Korea and would soon emerge asa dominant force in the region. For Ming China, a crisis developed in1592 when the Japanese warlord Hideyoshi attacked Korea, thenadvanced through Manchuria and into China with a force of 160,000men. The resulting upheaval created an opportunity for the Manchu,who first allied with Ming troops but then-after Hideyoshi's death in1598 and the subsequent Japanese withdrawal-proceeded to conquerKorea and set their sights on China itself. ,

The cost of defending the empire through this period created a

~severe economic crisis in China; internal rebellions erupted by the, 1630s, and a rebel army captured Beijing in 1644. The Ming emperorhanged himself, and in desperation a Ming general turned to theManchu for aid in retaking the capital. They did so, but instead ofreturning control of the empire to Ming officials, the Manchu held onto Beijing and soon established an empire of their own-the Qing­capturing all of China, the island of Taiwan, and even parts ofMongolia and Central Asia.

The Manchu-ruled Qing Empire would retain control of the Chinesegovernment and military until the twentieth century, but mostbureaucratic officials, soldiers, merchants, and farmers were ethnicChinese. As a small minority ruling China, Manchu leaders quicklyrealized that they would have to adopt many of the practices, customs,and institutions of the land they had conquered. At the same time, anever-growing European interest in Asian trade brought additionalinfluences into the region.

TRADE AND EXPANSION IN THE MING AND QING ERAS

Ming rulers initially were cautious about regulating contact withEuropean voyagers, who were drawn to China in the sixteenth centuryby the promise of trade and access to technological information. ThePortuguese and Spanish were forced to establish trade outposts inMacao and the Philippines, respectively, thus limiting the volume of

204 ~:<> Chapter 13

commerce they could conduct with the empire. The Dutch, through theDutch East India Company, were somewhat more successful ingaining the trust of imperial officials, as the company's representativeswere willing to perform the rituals of respect and submission asked ofthem by the emperor himself. The Dutch East India Company came todominate European trade with East Asia for nearly a century.Meanwhile, the Spanish and Portuguese traders who, did gain accessto China were accompanied by Catholic missionaries; by sharingEuropean scientific and technological advances, Jesuit missionaries inparticular were able to gain more and more status in the late Ming andearly Qing periods. In fact, when the Qing emperor Kangxi, who ruledfrom 1662 to 1722, contracted malaria in the 1690s, quinine suppliedby the Jesuits helped to bring about his recovery-and bolstered thestatus of Christianity among imperial officials in China at that time.

Kangxi recruited Jesuit advisers to fill key positions in the imperialgovernment; among their duties was the creation of European-stylemaps of the newly conquered territories of the Qing Empire. Kangxi'sQing predecessors had pursued the restoration of internal order andprogress following the chaotic end of the Ming Empire by repairinginfrastructure; lowering taxes, rents, and interest rates; and resettlingareas disturbed during the peasant rebellions. Upon assuming controlof the empire at the age of sixteen, Kangxi found China entering anage of remarkable peace and prosperity, which allowed him to focusmuch of his attention on continued expansion. China's northernborder remained an area of concern, with both the Russians and theMongols vying for control in the Amur River region. Following severalclashes, Russia and the Qing Empire (with the help of Jesuitinterpreters) signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, which establisheda firm border and regulated trade between the two empires. Turninghis attention to Mongolia, Kangxi himself led troops in defeating theMongol leader Galdan, adding Inner Mongolia to the Qing Empire in1691.

To maintain continued economic growth through this period Of) ..,/'

territorial expansion, the Qing happily accepted European silver in j/exchange for Chinese silk, porcelain, tea, jewelry, and furniture, whilecontinuing to restrict European trade to the port of Canton and

'placing severe restrictions on the import of European goods. By thelate 1700s, however, the British (having displaced the Dutch East India ../'Company as China's dominant trade partner) faced an enormousdeficit. Hoping to create a market. among China's. enormouspopulation and thus restore a balance of trade, Britain would soonlead the other European powers in forcing an end to the QingEmpire's "Canton system" of restricting international commerce. Thelate eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would bring an end to the eraof remarkable growth, wealth, and peace of the early Qing era.

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