hey guys coach pop here thanks for joining me for the videocast today today we are looking uh at uh continuing to look at land empires in eurasia during the late agrarian early modern period but today we're going to look at comparing imperial expansion uh in russia and china and to begin before we get to the russian empire let's remember in the post-classical period the political system that was used was called principalities uh each of these was run a state that was led by a prince um and then when the mongols exert their influence over uh the kiev and ruse one of the changes they make is instead of the grand prince of kiev being the most powerful prince instead they put the grand prince at moscow and it is he who is supposed to collect tribute from the rest of the uh principalities and then deliver it to the mongols that's a key factor because it's a transitional figure leading to the rise of what will become the russian empire in this guy ivan the great he was the grand prince of moscow and he was you know the the tribute collector for the mongols but he is using some of that money to build himself a particularly strong army which he then eventually turns on the mongols and kicks them out of the area and then conquers the other russia's that is to say the other principalities to form a a unified state in order to do this he uses his ties to the uh orthodox church as a kind of of religious uh authority giving weight to his notion that he should be the guy in charge and he takes the title czar which is the sort of russian variation of the word caesar and again you see very much this idea that he's trying to connect himself to byzantium which is itself connected back to rome um this is a constant theme throughout russian history this notion of being the third room which again giving some legitimacy uh to the the idea that he should be the guy who's running it later on though he will be succeeded by another ivan but he's known in history as ivan the terrible uh he is the guy that really consolidates the power and so these czar ends up becoming a kind of autocrat that is to say self-rule um it is rather like an absolute monarch in that regard there are literally no checks on his power but one of the conflicts during his reign has to do with extending that power over the boyars and you might remember the boyars were the wealthy landowners who had owned the land outside of the cities uh for generations and they were sort of the ones that ran the rural life and the uh the power of the tsar uh is is being exerted over them in ways they don't particularly like particularly like a consequence though is as the czar is raising taxes on the boyars the boyars in turn raise taxes on the peasants and what starts to emerge in russia at this time is something that will lead to full-blown serfdom um even as it's on its way out in western europe uh during the late agrarian early modern period in russia serfdom is starting to become more and more prevalent as the boyars are putting more and more of the demands on the peasants uh because they are taxed so heavily by the tsar and attempt to control them he is uh ivan the terrible is also the guy who really increases the imperial expansion this is an image we're going to see again and again and again but what i want to point out if you can find moscow here this is the first area that is conquered by ivan the great the other russian areas and then it's extended to the green area the orange area is mostly what is conquered by ivan the terrible and you can see the empire is continuing to expand but then this is what i want to focus on now this eastward expansion what is exactly going on there well first of all let's think about motive and method like why are they doing this how are they doing it and we can break it down into two separate waves in the first wave they're attempting to move into central asia and the the motive the reason for that is security from invading pastoral nomads this is the territory that the mongols the golden horde came from and then eventually exerted their influence so part of their justification is let's go out and conquer those pastoral nomads in central asia so they don't do that anymore the method for this is they're going to conquer them using some degree of gunpowder technologies not a great deal certainly not as much as some of the other empires that we have seen during this time period but then they're going to put settlers there they're going to move people from different parts of the empire to go settle into um central asia the second wave though is the part that extends uh into siberia the northern part of asia in fact all the way to the pacific ocean so their motive there is very very different yeah there's some security issues but the the herders uh reindeer herders mostly of the siberian area are not necessarily a military threat however they do have uh furs and this is something we'll talk about more later on the value of fur has gone up dramatically throughout the world due to something called the little ice age but it's also to expand markets that is to say they want to be able to sell their stuff to more people including these uh pastoral nomads who are herders in siberia the way they do this is first of all they conquer them with military force but then they send these people called the cossacks who are originally from uh the uh western part of the russian empire they're known as being really uh hardy uh you know strong uh they can survive in any conditions including in siberia so they send those people out to sort of start settling then once they get their villages set up and everything else then they start sending russian settlers and then eventually they start sending sending merchants to sell their wares to all of the people who are now settling there now part of what's driving this is the word yasak which in russian is tribute but it's in the form of animal pelts fur so that the conquered people are required to pay tribute in the form of fur which again is a really valuable commodity in a global market at the time but it also is creating a situation where the people that are there because they were originally herders they are now dependent on the manufactured goods that are being sold to them by russian merchants they don't have the ability to make these things and they want them and i will go ahead and throw out one of those in particular is vodka and i say this because it's something in a couple of weeks we'll look and compare how this is how the introduction of alcohol to these indigenous people who didn't ever drink alcohol how that affects their society in a way very similar to what happens with uh fur trappers in north america and the introduction of alcohol to the native peoples there the effect of this eastward imperial expansion is russification and as you can imagine just like signification or hellenization russification means the spread of russian language and culture as these settlers are moving in they're bringing with them the russian language russian culture orthodox christianity and very much transforming the local peoples to be more like russian people they're also bringing with them a new crop the potato which if you remember originally comes from south america but it turns out in siberia because it the potatoes can grow well in cold weather that's one of the few crops that grow well and so the potato uh is is fueling this settlement into the east as well but again only as a consequence of the uh colombian exchange because that was a product that was native to the americas and then in terms of converting the conquered people to orthodox christianity they um they offer something called the uh christianity tax that is that there's a tax that you pay if you are not a christian and they you know tell them hey if you convert to orthodox christianity you don't have to pay this tax it's a system very much like the jizya in dar al islam and very much like the jizya for many people it turns out paying taxes is a a worse fate than having to convert one's faith so again if you look the the purple area is the this wave um again they're they're moving into this part of central asia originally for security and then extending all the way into the pacific ocean but later on there will also be oh i want to back up one moment i apologize uh this is the region where the cossacks were a veg originally from and again they would be moved by the empire and be among the first people to try to settle siberia because they were so well known for being really strong people who could endure any sort of of of harshness in the environment or or among indigenous peoples or anything like that so now let's look at how the empire expands westward it begins with uh peter the great who he was educated in western europe he is familiar with the the ways of of the world in in the west and he is uh called back he has made the czar but once he becomes in power his plan is to westernize the empire to make it more like western europe this is an image we'll spend some time on in class but what you see here is the boyar on the left and uh having to cut off his beard and the guy on the right while he is an agent of the russian state does look very much like a western european at the time he's the guy though that expand initiates the third wave expansion westward towards western europe part of the reason he does this is to focus on maritime ports he sees that the maritime empires of the western europeans is leading to all sorts of greatness and he feels like russia should have access to ports and so most of those are on the west he is the guy that increases the use of gunpowder which was not uh so overwhelmingly used in the first two waves of imperial expansion and he moves the capital west to saint petersburg named after him of course as a kind of sign that they're moving closer to the west he will eventually be succeeded by catherine the great um and if you notice her her reign like continues over the timeline into the next time period so we'll come back to her later on but she rules as what's known as an enlightened despot she is a czar she's an autocrat but she imagines herself sort of influenced by enlightenment ideas the extent to which that's even possible is something again we'll come back to you after the christmas break because it really is a question about how enlightened she was even though she imagined herself to be that way she does however uh continue westward expansion again closer towards western europe but the end result after these three waves is a multi-ethnic empire that encouraged assimilation in other words what their strategy is we've got a whole bunch of different people but we're going to encourage everybody to be as russified as possible we're going to promote speaking russian promote orthodox christianity promote russian ways of doing things even though there's all sorts of different ethnic groups within this empire now so again this uh in very short period of time goes from the system of principalities a very decentralized system to a very very large empire uh in eurasia so now let's compare that then to what's going on in china and if you remember in the post-classical period the ming dynasty takes over after the wan dynasty and their main attempt their main goal is to try to eliminate the mongol influence they do this by restoring the confucian system that includes the examinations that includes the scholar bureaucrats the whole social order is reinstated um the way most new dynasties will do it's also worth remembering though that at this point the kind of confucianism they're practicing is what we call neo-confucianism because it's blending elements of taoism and buddhism within it um they keep the capital city at beijing which the the capital was moved there during the time of kublai khan because it was closer to karakoram the the capital of mongolia but they build the forbidden city it's like a city within a city uh to provide uh further security because it is so close to the northern border the the in the forbidden city uh is like an extra layer of protection for the emperor and for the key bureaucrats of the capital you may remember too it was the yongle emperor who sends jung-ho out on his voyages to spread chinese influence throughout the indian ocean he is very successful in doing this uh and yet nonetheless the fleet is recalled and if you remember part of the reason was after the angle emperor dies the confucian scholars never really believed they should be going out and trying to make contacts everybody should be coming to them but there's also a calculation that the money and resources would be better spent on uh reinforcing the great wall and you know after the reign of the one when the mongols took them over there are a lot of people who think this is the wise thing to do so they do they just shut the whole project down everything is redirected towards rebuilding and expanding the great wall they also institute a new tax policy that we'll look at much more closely in a couple of weeks called the single whip system single whip meaning everybody gets beat with the same whip and that whip is silver every single person has to pay their taxes in silver now think about this for a moment because peasants for example would pay their taxes in grain or if you were a silk if you made it silk or you were an artisan you would pay in whatever it is that you make but now everyone has to pay in silver and as we'll see there's going to be all sorts of significant consequences there they also then start limiting contact with europeans they limit all trade with europeans to the ports of macau and canton that are in the southern part of china so even as uh earlier on the the the jesuits in particular had uh access to the emperor and his court more and more they're starting to eliminate all european contact we'll come back to this again later on but then they start experiences a series of famines start to see revolts they're getting threats of invasions from other people throughout east asia and uh as you can imagine people start scratching their head and start wondering uh you know what's going on here do they really have the mandate of heaven and then finally a manchu warlord that is to say he's from manchuria on the other side of the great wall um the the savages the barbarians that the wall was supposed to keep out he leads an army that actually defeats the ming army and then he claims the mandate of heaven so again we see this dynastic cycle progressing the way it always does but despite all the efforts of the great wall to keep out the bar so-called barbarians the manchus end up coming right over the wall taking over and then claiming the mandate of heaven and establishing the last of the chinese dynasties the qing dynasty which will stay in power until the 20th century again founded by manchurians these people uh on the other side of the wall in the northeastern part of the empire they're not ethnically chinese they also want to keep the part of manchuria where they originally came from separate from the ethnically han chinese the manchuria four manchu's policy is a kind of separation of their homeland from the rest of the people there they do enforce manchu style and there's a couple of things i mean about this if you look at this image this is from a contemporary martial arts movie there's two things i want to draw your attention to the two guys on the left if you notice that hairstyle that's called a cue the front part of your head is shaved and the back part you cannot cut and it's kept in a braid that was a manchu hairstyle that they then forced on everybody else within the empire the other thing to note though is the hat the guy on the right wearing that hat that has a kind of bead and there's a feather coming off the back this hat which is a manchu style becomes associated with the confucian bureaucrats who are now called mandarins because the version of chinese they speak is mandarin but that hat becomes associated with the confucian scholars even though it originally is a style that came from the manchu nonetheless though they are going to rule as much like a traditional chinese dynasty as they can they're going to keep the exander examination system again now the people passing at the bureaucrats are called mandarins he's going to keep the social order they're going to keep doing the confucian public rituals expected of the emperor even though they're not necessarily raised to be confucians again they're very conscious of the fact they're not ethnically chinese but they want to promote an image that they are being as much like the han chinese as possible in terms of their political policies they're going to continue much of what the ming instituted including the single whip policy and again the the that's going to have dramatic consequences as we'll see in the future during the qing dynasty the early parts of it though china experiences another huge bump in population if you look at it more than doubles in the period of 250 years but if you notice like when that is happening that is a result of the colombian exchange as we'll see all sorts of new food items that originated in the americas are going to make their way to east asia and they're going to have a huge impact on allowing the population to grow but in terms of their imperial expansion let's focus on that for just a moment their motive is security from invaders particularly the people from central asia the pastoral nomads the barbarians now there's something kind of ironic about this because the manchus themselves were those people at one point even though they are now ruling as the uh as a chinese dynasty the method military conquest but again a kind of irony here they're not using gunpowder weapons um in fact it's horseback and archers and swordsmen uh that are mostly doing the fighting and there's a reason for that that we'll get to here in just a moment so the the question is this though these people uh particularly from central asia how are they going to control them as new members of this expanding empire well the way they do it is they create something called the bureau of colonial affairs this is an office in beijing the capital city that is responsible for ruling over the territories in central asia that they acquire think about that for a moment they're not actually in the regions that they're supposed to be controlling a very unusual uh solution there the local leaders though are left in place of the local leaders of the conquered territories provided they do three things they got to accept chinese authority including cow towing to the emperor they have to provide warriors and they have to pay tribute so in effect what we've got is uh sort of a reformulation of the old chinese tributary system the providing warriors part though is especially interesting because these warriors are really good uh on horseback with bows and arrows and yet then they are used by the uh qing dynasty to go out and conquer other uh pastoral nomads throughout central asia using the exact same means they absolutely do not send any chinese any ethnic chinese out to these conquered territories to settle their approach is they want to keep the people of central asia while they are technically part of the empire separated um the which again it's you know if you stop and think about it the the the manchus were not ethnically chinese themselves but they're going to perpetuate a system sort of keeping the different ethnic groups uh separated by promoting a policy that forbids settling out into the new territories so the result of all of this then is a multi-ethnic empire of many different ethnic groups that are conquered but that discourages assimilation unlike what happens in russia russification was promoted signification is actually discouraged in the qing dynasty theirs is a policy of you conquer people but you kind of keep them separated this has a dramatic impact on the people of central asia because if you think about it they are sandwiched in between an expanding qing dynasty on the one hand and an expanding russian empire on the other hand and so more and more the pastoral peoples of central asia are being swallowed up into larger empires and despite their you know long-standing tradition uh as pastoral nomads they're more and more turning into parts of larger civilizations this map is interesting because you can see the the territories that are added and then run by the bureau of colonial affairs out into central asia remember here is manchuria uh the great wall is is like i don't know it's right about here and um but so again they're the barbarians from from without um one of the things though i really want to point out we tend to think of china as like this unified state because of its dynastic cycle but the the area of that we call china is in fact a bunch of different ethnic groups who practice all sorts of different what david christian called life ways and in this image if you look at each of the pictures each of these is a different language group a different ethnic group that's subdivided into different sub-ethnic groups this is a giant multi-ethnic empire even though we do have this tendency to sort of see china as some sort of unified state system i want to thank you for your attention uh again i apologize this one's a little bit longer but i appreciate it and we'll see you in class