Tomic 4.1 China in 1500 for the next few videos we'll be examining three major 16th century empires in northern Eurasia first the Ming and then the Qing dynasties in China the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate and the establishment of the Russian Empire though each of these cases have strikingly different features there were several constant themes throughout the narrative of each firstly each of these empires experienced significant political conflict both internally and externally secondly these conflicts most frequently resulted in political growth and strengthening at least in the short term and finally each of these cultures experienced significant economic growth due to involvement in the international trade but that same trade often resulted in cultural conflicts with lasting impacts so as we explore these three case studies we'll be paying particular attention to the manifestation of these themes let's begin with China to provide you with some historical background on China you should know that Chinese civilization is one of the oldest worldwide and it is also one of the most advanced culturally and militarily for much of recorded history the Chinese were far ahead of the world and the development of things like paper movable-type printing the compass and gunpowder they were also one of the first civilizations in the world to use paper money starting in the 10th century the conventional view held by most Chinese historians is that of alternating periods of political unity and then disunity was China occasionally being dominated by step' people's most of whom were in turn assimilated into ethnically Chinese or the Han Chinese population the earliest of the unified Chinese dynasties dates all the way back to the 12th century BC with the shang dynasty and the territory covered by the various kingdoms and dynasties in china has varied quite widely depending on the reach and the ambitions of the various Chinese rulers the formation of what is the traditional structure of Chinese dynastic politics occurred under the three dynasties which reigned between the sixth and the ninth centuries during this period the Chinese made significant advances in agricultural production which led to massive population growth the population doubled from fifty to sixty million to 120 to 200 million in a period of about three hundred years during the same period the Chinese would build a state structure which would end up enduring for 1,000 years which involved six major ministries personnel finance rights or religion army justice and Public Works all overseen by a sensor in which was the eyes and ears of the Emperor and was responsible for checking officials at all levels of government to prevent corruption officials that staffed these ministries were always chosen based on an examination system and this system meant that getting a government job was usually or supposedly based on merit rather than on birth the same period also saw the establishment of a classical Chinese culture and therefore is often called the Golden Age of arts and literature now culturally China was often influenced because of his extensive international trade connections Buddhism for example took strong route there from India but still traditional Chinese religion remains strong and just adopted some elements of Buddhist thinking now since the Chinese religion Confucianism was not a major world religion let's take a minute to discuss it in more depth Confucianism is based on the philosophy of an ancient Chinese thinker Confucius and some won't categorize it more as a philosophy than an ethical system than a religion essentially Confucianism argues that in order to maintain social harmony a system of hierarchy and a strict code of morality are necess every member of society is expected to participate to create this harmony Confucianism emphasizes letting go of individual desires and pursuits and becoming unified with the larger order of things the particular duties assigned to each person arise from the specific relationships that that person has with other people it's meant that every individual is sort of simultaneously participating in several different relationships in which they have different duties for example while a young man might be the junior in relation to his parents and elders he would also be the senior in a relation to his younger siblings students and others and thus have more authority over them now while subordinates were to owe their superiors reference superiors also had duties of the neverland's and concern towards their subordinates overall Confucianism contended that if the superior party in a hierarchical relationship acted with sincerity and benevolence then the subordinate party would respond with respect and obedience Confucian tradition held the key to promoting and realizing this social harmony through human virtue was by good education the other thing that took on a really important role here was the veneration of ancestors since Confucianism was far more concerned with the here-and-now and less with achieving paradise in some period after death it was important that ancestors be remembered so that they did not vanish because of their cultural complexity their ability to unify under the same guiding principles of confusion ism and technological advantages throughout most of their history the Chinese people tended to dominate Central Asia and many of the adjacent peoples like the Koreans we're either controlled by or imitated the Chinese even so China occasionally proved vulnerable to military conquests and by nomadic peoples like the Mongols so where our story really begins is with the Mongol invasions of the 13th and 14th century which would then be rejected and pushed out by the Ming Dynasty which was founded in 1368 so during Mongol rule the ethnic Chinese or the Han Chinese had really suffered a lot of persecution mistreatment alongside a collapsing economy led Chinese peasants to rebel against Mongol control and their anger was harnessed and focused by the members of the White Lotus a Buddhist secret society that many Han Chinese had joined as a means of solace under Mongol rule among the many impoverished peasants who participated in this rebellion against the mongols was a man named juju on Jiang who quickly rose through the ranks of the rebel army after capturing the key city of Nanjing which will become the main capital in eliminating his rivals to power who became the uncontested authority in the Yangtze River in southwest China soon he had captured the Mongol capital in present-day Beijing as the founder of this new Ming Dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang took the name Hong loop which means vastly marshal and is mostly known to history as the haawoo Emperor although it was the Hong Luo Emperor who established the Ming Dynasty it was his son who after a period of Civil War immersed to consolidate Ming power as the young lay up or in 1402 emerging out of the period of Mongol domination and the resultant influx of foreign culture the newly established Ming Dynasty under the young laborer rejected all foreign influence and promoted a return to traditional Chinese customs as we've seen happen multiple times before with new Emperor's young late for the capital away from Nanjing to Beijing in 1403 he would employ thousands of Chinese workers to build a completely new city there and work lasted from 1407 until 1420 the center of this new city was the Imperial City a city within a city and the political heart of the Ming Dynasty and it's an at its center was the Forbidden City the palatial residence of the Emperor and his family young Lee also made use of the efforts of a Chinese military commander the eunuch Jing he to expand China's tribute system through foreign exploration early in this period Jing he undertook the largest and most impressive maritime explorations the world had ever seen before Europe got involved but in 1433 mysteriously these expeditions just stopped the government no longer funded for them the government no longer funded them reasons for the cessation of these explorations aren't really known but certainly contributing to was the conviction that China was self-sufficient and therefore had no need to really explore at the same time young lay worked to expand China's borders closer to home even farther than his father had making use of China's superior army and especially its cavalry the Ming Dynasty oversaw a flourishing in Chinese culture including literature poetry painting and music all of this was promoted encouraged by the use of Chinese movable type printing the Ming were also world famous for the beautiful ceramics and porcelain they produced in fact Europeans became so fond of Ming ceramic and porcelain which was far superior to anything that they could produce at home but by the time you get to the 16th century the Chinese were producing pottery specifically for export to Western Europe this cultural connection with Europe also offered the Chinese the latest in European scientific and technological advances economically the Ming like much of the rest of the world rapidly integrated themselves into the growing world economy which resulted in a domestic economic boom at least in the short term in addition to porcelain silk and cotton began to be produced from both for both domestic consumption and export abroad but Ming's success was relatively short-lived and already beginning in the 16th century the Chinese began to suffer from internal and external tensions that were result in the ultimate downfall of the Ming Dynasty a series of natural disasters swept the region which were environmental historians now believe the result of a global weather shift known as the Little Ice Age you've never heard of the Little Ice Age it's a period of global cooling which extended roughly from the 14th to the mid 19th centuries all across the world it manifested in harsh winters and the changing of crop viability in different regions in China specifically unusually cold and dry weather shortened the growing season and changed what crops were viable warm weather crops such as oranges were abandoned in the Shanxi province where they have been grown for centuries the resulting famines plagued the Empire and weakened the dynasty compounding matters the deadliest earthquake of all time the Shang Zhi earthquake of 1556 killed approximately eight hundred and thirty thousand people making matters even worse an epidemic swept across China as well we don't know exactly what this disease was or how many people had killed but we do know that it was devastating the Ming economy suffered during this period as well dependent on silver imported from Japan who got it from Europe who got it from South American silver mines for their currency the Ming economy went into shock when suddenly deprived the source following the Japanese suspension of trade with Europe and we will talk about why the Japanese suspend their trade with Europe in another video but with the sudden withdraw of silver taxes became almost impossible to pay and those who could manage to began hoarding their silver rather than spending it and any modern economist will tell you that it's a sign of doom in an economy when people would rather hoard their money than spend it economically attempts to issue paper money to replace the silver currency backfired and discontent began to rise among the military and the peasants peasants were starving and soldiers weren't being paid the government was too poor to provide relief to either group the increase of corruption and incompetence in the government only enhanced these calamities while traditionally those scholar officials that we talked about who were chosen based on an exam and their merit rather than their birth have been responsible for most of the administration they became increasingly supplanted by eunuchs who were castrated servants of the Emperor this was due in large part to a shift in the personalities of leader Ming Emperor's who chose to live reclusive lives kind of hidden away in the forbidden city rather than ever venturing into the Imperial City to directly manage the government so because they never wanted to leave the Forbidden City to go into the Imperial City and actually do their jobs they utilize their UNIX as go-betweens between them and their officials so any senior official who wanted to discuss important state matters like you know earthquakes and epidemics and that sort of thing had to persuade powerful Munich's with bribe simply to have their messages relayed to the Emperor at all this is not a very effective way of governing all of this encouraged internal rebellion and then when that rebellion broke out made it very difficult to contain so it was in that context that the Ming Dynasty would collapse and the Ching dynasty would take its place so in 1592 Japan sort of out of nowhere and again we'll talk about this when we talk about Japan decided to invade China now the Ming were doing pretty poorly by this point and didn't really have military they needed to repeal the Japanese and so they look to a nomadic group in Manchuria for military assistance and in came the Manchu Warriors happily to assist repelling the Japanese invasion but once the Ming had invited the Manchu warriors into China they were unable to restrain them remember the Chinese army itself was pretty much on a vote unmotivated to do anything because it wasn't being paid that's why they needed the Manchu Warriors in the first place so the Manchu Warriors show up they take care of the Japanese and then they don't really want to go home coinciding with this issue was a rebellion in the Shanxi province in the 1630s the Chinese army again remember that their unpaid and unmotivated did little to prevent the rebellion from spreading and by 1644 Beijing had fallen to the rebel army and the last of the Ming Emperor's hanged himself from a tree in the imperial garden which is actually still there that is a picture of the tree the remainder of the Ming Dynasty once again turned to the Manchu Warriors who were still hanging around to provide military assistance but once the rebellion had been put down predictably the Manchus declined to give control back to the Ming and instead established the Ching dynasty in its place so the Ching dynasty would be the last of the Chinese imperial dynasties it would last from 1644 all the way until 1912 when the Civil War that eventually produced the People's Republic of China would begin now that ching rulers were of course not ethnically Chinese they were from Manchuria and they sought to maintain that ethnic distinctiveness by forbidding intermarriage with the ethnic Chinese still though Shan elites also mastered Chinese language and Confucian teachings the huge Chinese bureaucratic systems to govern empire and they bestowed honorary titles and responsibilities on the descendants of Ming Emperor's who they had conquered all is a way of kind of enhancing their own legitimacy the Ching were also responsible for making China into a true land empire from about 1680 until 1760 they sought to consolidate control over nomadic regions like Mongolia and Tibet now the reasons for their expansion and desire to gain control over these regions was mostly because of security concerns rather than any economic need the Chinese have been trading with and receiving tribute payments from these regions for a long time but when the Qing Empire expanded they were careful to speak of this process in terms of unification as though it was this natural thing that was just sort of destined to happen rather than in terms of empire building but despite that claim it's important to note that the Ching takeover of central Eurasia was a conquest they used China's great a military capacity and resources to their advantage and they govern the new areas they gained separately through a new office called the court of colonial affairs that's pretty telling this isn't unification its colonisation they also didn't put a lot of effort into assimilating the new territories culturally and generally the areas weren't flooded with Chinese settlers this whole process is important for a couple of reasons one of which is that it created the modern borders of the Chinese state but at the same time it allowed for the continued maintenance of a separate identity in these territories which means that even now in China today there are still calls for independence from many of these regions right think of the Dali Lama and Tibet in addition to empire building the Ching also limited interaction with Western countries now Jesuit missionaries and Jesuits if you don't know are sort of a Catholic order of priests who's me is to spread the Catholic faith had been in China for a long time they had been there under the Ming but their interactions with the Chinese especially with Chinese emperors was sort of a one-way thing in which the Chinese sort of viewed them with mild interest and Europeans became fascinated by the Chinese wealthy and middle-class people back in Europe started buying Chinese styled goods in addition to Chinese porcelain and Chinese style government excited the interest of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire who believed that Chinese emperors were philosopher Kings but again this interest was mostly one way Europeans were far more fascinated by the Chinese the Chinese especially the Ching were interested in trading or interacting with the Europeans and so the Ching restrained external trade with the West by allowing one trading point to each foreign market now that restrictive attitude worked pretty well until the late 18th century when as well and we'll talk about this later but the British would find themselves deep in debt to the Chinese and want to open more trading ports in order to remedy this attempts to establish closer ties with China would completely fail though and the Ching failure to cooperate would frustrate the Europeans especially the British and their interest in China would fade we will be returning to discuss the Ching dynasty in a few weeks and when we do it will be in the context of their failure to maintain independence in the face of the overwhelming push of British imperialism