Well hey everybody and welcome back to Handler's History. In this video we begin our exploration of AP world history proper. And what better place to begin than by figuring out what was going on in China from 1200 to 1450. Now in terms of world history, China has always been kind of a big deal. For all sorts of reasons that will become clear in the span of this video, China was kind of like the Texas of the ancient world.
Don't mess with China. So by 1000 CE, China was still the world's pre-eminent power. By 960 China was split into regional kingdoms as the power of the Tang Dynasty was gradually waning.
Now let me introduce you to Zuo Quangyin. He was the ruler of one of those kingdoms and took it upon himself to gather all of them up into a unified dynastic empire known as the Song Dynasty, which remained in China from 960 to 1279. And when it comes to state building, the Song rulers knew what they were doing. Building on the innovations of the Tang Dynasty, the Song emperors would build a state structure that would last well over a thousand years.
And here's what that state structure looked like. They divided oversight of that state into six departments. Personnel, Finance, Rights, Army, Justice, and Public Works. And then overseeing all of these departments was the censored who made sure that no one in these bureaucratic departments was behaving like a turd. If they were behaving like a turd, they got flushed.
One of the chief things that helped organize the Chinese government during that time was Confucianism. This would be one of the great continuities in Chinese culture over the years. So what you really need to know about Confucianism is that according to Confucian thought, when they looked at the world, they understood reality as fundamentally hierarchical. Everyone has their different place in society and it only works if everyone in their place behaves rightly. The people had to be subject to their rulers, women had to be subject to their husbands, children had to be subject to their fathers.
Now as such, one of the major achievements of the Song government, deeply influenced by Confucian ideals, was the revival of the Civil Service Examination. This was a test that you had to pass in order to work in the imperial bureaucracy. And a major part of that exam was being well-versed in Confucian ideals. And the implementation and expansion of that exam had the effect of shifting power from a hereditary form of aristocracy to a new class of scholarly leaders. And now, with such a highly organized government, the Chinese empire could focus on what every empire wants to focus on, namely...
the accumulation of the boom boom. Chinese merchants participated heavily in the robust system of long distance trade across Afro-Eurasia. Okay, stop. What is Afro-Eurasia?
Despite what it sounds like, it's not Eurasia with a 70's style haircut. It's referring to the African, European and Asian land mass, which when we're talking about world history, we often treat as an interconnected whole and call it Afro-Eurasia. So as I was saying, Chinese merchants criss-crossed Afro-Eurasia carrying goods to be bought and sold en masse.
The result of this trade was an increasingly commercialized Chinese society. And what that means is this. For a lot of world history, people produced goods for their own personal use, or if not for their own personal use, then for use in the general regional area. And when I say that the Chinese society is becoming more commercialized, what I mean is that now people are producing goods not for their own personal use, but for use and sale in distant markets.
And as a result of this, Chinese manufacturing flourished during this period. For example, China's iron production in 1200 rivaled Europe's iron production in the 18th century. But I get ahead of myself. But by the 11th century, alright, stop again. When I say the 11th century, I mean the 1000s.
The 12th century is the 1100s, the 13th century is the 1200s, and on and on and on. Okay, we good? Let's get back to it.
By the 11th century China's iron industry, according to their meticulous records, was producing 32,000 suits of armor and 16 million iron arrowheads annually. And because Chinese commerce was expanding rapidly during this time, it also transformed the role of money. As the economy grew, there was not enough precious metal for the minting of coins to keep up with the demand and this led to the introduction of paper money.
which soon became more popular than minted ones. I've always wondered, who was the first guy to try to buy a bunch of stuff with paper? Alright, that'll be 4,000 gold coins.
Well I don't have no gold coins, but what I got is this piece of paper. I will cut you. Also during this period of great technological innovation, the Chinese gave us a new kind of boom boom, namely gunpowder.
It was actually an accidental discovery by some Taoist alchemists who were trying to discover the elixir of immortality. And one day when that mixture blew up in their faces, they knew they had discovered something explosive. Now, despite what you may think, the immediate application of this newfound concoction was not in a military context. The first application was fireworks and pyrotechnic displays for the imperial court. But eventually, Song military leaders got wise and as they watched these great explosions in the sky they thought, wait a minute.
I wonder if we can use that stuff that blows up in the sky to blow people up. Spoiler alert, the answer is yes. They found a way to blow up a lot of people with gunpowder. And because China was sort of the grand poobah of this region during this time, we should expect that their culture would influence people around them.
And wouldn't you know it, they did. Let's take Japan as an example. Japan being in close proximity to China was always contending with the growing influence of Chinese culture. and the Japanese worked hard to form their own identity in order to keep from getting swallowed whole by Chinese influence.
Even so, China's influence was all over Japanese culture. For example, here's a picture of the architecture in Japan's capital city, Heian. And here's a picture of the architecture in Japan's capital city, Hanoi.
China's capital city, Shang-An. I'm just kidding! That's Heian and that's Shang-An.
How did you not catch that? The point is, as much as the Japanese tried to resist Chinese influence, if you were standing in their capital city it'd be hard to know whether you were standing in Japan or China. Now let's briefly talk religion. Because China was at the crossroads of major trade highways, there was a significant fusion of cultural and religious influences.
And that means that China was not only influencing other people, but they themselves were influenced as well. One of the most significant influences was Buddhism, of course, came to China from India. But new forms of Buddhism found their way into China along those trade routes. There was a Vietnamese form of Buddhism, known as Mahayana Buddhism, that was maybe among the most significant. Now Buddhism in its original form was strictly atheistic.
But the Mahayana form of it had transformed into a religion consisting of many deities, veneration of relics, and multiple heavens and hells. And as merchants from Vietnam carried this new form of Buddhism into China, it found many willing converts. Alright, so let's just sum everything up. China's huge population, plus their strong agricultural base, plus their innovations in manufacturing made Song China the wealthiest empire on the planet. But a common language, plus Confucian ideals, plus a culture with deep roots made China the most unified nation on the planet.
And for my money the biggest takeaway from this video is as follows. Don't mess with China. Thanks everybody for coming along, subscribe if you're not already and hit that like button if this video helped you out.
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