[Music] In the year 1405, a Chinese explorer by the name of Jung Hur set off on the first of what are believed to have been seven voyages of discovery that he would lead over a period of 28 years. Scholars remain deeply divided as to where he went to. One book has even argued based on the appearance of elements of far eastern flora and fauna in various places around East Africa and the Americas that Jung-hur and his armadas traveled across the Pacific Ocean, perhaps even traversing across Central America to the Caribbean. This theory is not widely accepted, though there is no doubt that Jon Hur did lead expeditions that traveled widely around the South China Sea into the East Indies and beyond into the Indian Ocean. His mission was trade and the development of diplomatic ties with foreign powers. Here was a major expression of the strength of Ming dynasty China. The family that had come to power a half century earlier and which was rejuvenating China into a major power in the Far East after a century and a half of domination by the Mongols and their descendants. China was back in the world and affirming its power. Yet many challenges awaited. There were all sorts of groups waiting to attempt a press on China's borders. Whether from Manuria in the northeast, the Turks and the Mongols to the west, or the pirate fleets that dominated the South China Sea for centuries, soon the first Europeans with their sophisticated technology and guns would also arrive. Could the Ming dynasty survive all these challenges? This is the story of that dynasty and how it first prospered and then declined, ushering in huge changes in the history of China. [Music] By the time the Ming dynasty came to power in the middle of the 14th century, China had been home to one of the world's oldest civilizations for thousands of years. There were four main regions along the Tropic of Cancer that the first advanced cultures began to develop within the 4th and 3rd millennia BC because climactic conditions here were ideal for agriculture after the last ice age. Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China. Certainly, there were other formidable societies elsewhere in the thousands of years prior to this. But it was in these four areas that writing systems began to evolve, as did the use of the wheel for both producing pottery and transporting goods. Advanced agriculture also led to the emergence of the first cities with tens of thousands of inhabitants and a high degree of commerce, government organization, and an organized religious belief system. In China, this culture was centered on the east of the country along the coast of the Yellow Sea and the course of the Pearl, Yellow, and Yangsu rivers. Early Chinese history is a mix of myth and law. We do know that after an era known as the seven waring states period in the middle of the first millennium BC, much of the country was unified into the Qin dynasty empire that ruled most of eastern and central China for just over 400 years. Thereafter, Chinese history is divided up into periods depending on which dynasty ruled over it. For instance, the Tong dynasty ruled over most of what is now eastern, central, and northern China between their rise to power in 618 AD and the fall of the dynasty in 9007 AD. The Ming dynasty would be just one of these dynasties, though a very powerful and consequential one amongst many. These Chinese dynasties always faced threats from outside and it was this spectre of foreign intervention which facilitated the rise to power of the Ming dynasty in the first place. Taking the example of the Tong dynasty though ruling much of China for several hundred years. The tongue had faced attacks from invasions of Turkish groups during the Turk migrations that saw these people of Siberia and outer Mongolia migrating east and west to conquer and occupy large parts of Asia. In the case of China, the Tong finally managed to stave off their attacks. Though much of northwestern China to this very day remains primarily inhabited by weaguer Turks rather than HanChinese people. It was in order to limit the threat posed by these nomadic invaders from the north and west that successive Chinese dynasties had built sections of the Great Wall of China across the north of their lands in ancient times. In the 13th century, a new and much more deadly foe descended on China. The Mongols had been united by Genghaskhan and were in the process of conquering all of Asia from the early 13th century. They made their first incursion into China in 1205. It was a slow process to conquer all of China as Genghis and his successors were often distracted by events far to the west where the rich cities of Central Asia and the Middle East were just as valuable as targets. Eventually, Beijing was taken in the mid 1210s, though elements of the southern Sun dynasty managed to hold out in southeastern China for another half a century after this. By the 1270s, the Mongols completed the conquest of China and a new Mongol dynasty headed by the famous Kubla Khan was proclaimed as the new dynastic line of China. This was the Yuan dynasty which transliterates as great Mongol state. Although Kubla was an enlightened ruler who encouraged trade and adopted many elements of Chinese culture, the Han Chinese never forgot that they were ruled by a foreign people. Soon the Ming would liberate them from their metaphorical chains. While Kubla Khan's reign had been a golden age of Mongol rule in China, the 14th century that followed was an era of change and strife all across Eurasia. Plagues and famines were rife as extreme weather conditions and the spread of the black death or bubonic plague brought mass death to broad parts of both Asia and Europe. China was no exception. As the difficulties the Chinese people were experiencing multiplied, dissatisfaction with Mongol rule or the UN dynasty increased. This mirrored a pattern found elsewhere across Eurasia. As Genghaskhan's great grandsons and great great grandsons emerged, often as poor rulers in line with donastic decline, opposition to their rule grew and new dynasties emerged. For example, on the other side of the Himalayas in central Asia, a Turk Mongol warlord named Timour would soon overthrow the Chagatai Carnate and other successor states to Genghis' empire there and build new empires of their own. In China, by the 1350s, the leading members of the UN dynasty had lost all claims to lands in Mongolia and further west, while waring members of the dynasty had effectively descended into civil war. Several Yuan emperors came and went, often only ruling for a few months or years before they were overthrown. In this crisis, a new native Chinese warlord by the name of Ju Yuan Jang, a son of a poor peasant from eastern China, emerged to begin conquering a substantial block of territory in southern and eastern China. He was a former monk with a strong understanding of the traditions of Chinese society and how to build up a new power base there. It was during the red turban rebellions that began in 1351 in China and during which Jews monastery was burned down that he began his ascent to power. Ju rose through the ranks of a local peasant army in the years that followed. By the middle of the decade, he was in command of his own small army and used this to conquer the city of Nanjing in 1356. Nanjing is a highly important city. At various times in Chinese history, the capital has been located here and it is a southern counterpoint to the primacy of Beijing in the north. At this stage, J continued to offer his allegiance to the Red Turban leadership against the Yan government. As things progressed though, over the next few years, this loyalty wore down. Ju continued to conquer more and more territory until he had built up a state for himself within southeastern China. Eventually, divisions emerged and Ju came to blows with his urswall allies at the battle of Lake Pu Yang, which played out over several weeks in the autumn of 1363. Thereafter, he declared himself to be king of the state of Wu. Further campaigns followed and in 1368 Ju largely unified southern and eastern China under his rule. It is from this year that the Yuan dynasty is typically said to have ceased to exist as the rulers of China changed and a new era began. The name of the dynasty which Jew founded in 1368. The Ming dynasty derives from a Chinese term which transliterates as shining or luminous. A title designed to instill hope in the Chinese people after decades of crisis at the end of Mongol rule. It also reflected Jews religious background and his time as a Buddhist monk. Je also claimed an imperial title. a long practice of Chinese emperors. He would be known as the Hung Wu Emperor, a term which translates roughly as very marshall in reference to his military conquest of Yuan China. Hung Wu went on to rule for three decades down to 1398. Most of his reign was concerned with cementing his control over the more weward parts of China and ending the Mongol threat. While others involved establishing a new system of government after a century and a half of foreign rule. It is important to get a sense of the empire which the Hungu emperor and his successors ruled over and how they contributed to its changes. Demographic information at this time is largely guesswork. Nevertheless, most historians of Ming Dynasty China argue that the Chinese government ruled over somewhere between 90 and 100 million people. Most of these were subsistence farmers who produced rice and other crops in the provinces, though there were substantial cities and towns as well. They needed to be managed in order for a state like Ming China to function. Without taxes, government either would have to resort to theft or die out. Luckily, in the case of Imperial China, there were centuries of experience of bureaucratic activity. A civil service, professional military and the imperial staff provided the means to try and govern the country effectively, collect taxes and rule with a firm hand. In Nanjing, the first capital and later Beijing, the primary capital throughout most of the Ming dynasty era, the government had a small council or secret council of advisers, much like the privy councils that appeared in parts of Europe in the 15th century and which became the basis for much of the idea of the modern government cabinet. Below this was a highly complex system within the imperial palace where for instance specific individuals within the military and civil service were granted an audience with the reigning member of the day to seek red address on a particular issue. The court was a closed environment in which ideas and debates on policy matters could take place without much delay. But when it came to managing the vast country as a whole, a system soon came into being whereby post could be transported from somewhere like Beijing to Nanjing in a matter of a week or so. Such was the effectiveness of Ming government. A succession had characterized the last years of the Hungu Emperor and questions remained over who would succeed going forward even after he died in 1398. This was because the Hungu Emperor's eldest son and heir designate, Jubao, predesceased his father and died in 1392. Opening the succession question up, Juba had a son himself, Ju Yunan. But he was only 14 years old when his father died. A young age for someone to succeed to the throne, especially when Ming Rule had only been so recently established. The emperor had other sons who were older and more competent, but also stressed their claims to the throne. One of these was Jude D, who was born in 1360 and who was in his 30s by the time the succession question became an issue. His father had sent him north to Beijing to oversee the full reduction of the northern provinces to Ming rule in the 1380s and he therefore had many years of experience of government too. Nevertheless, the idea that the firstborn son should always succeed prevailed. And since Ju Yun Wun was the eldest son of the Hungu Emperor's eldest son, when his grandfather died in 1398, the throne passed to the younger man. He took the title of the Genuan Emperor. His uncle never accepted the succession and war broke out almost immediately between the Janu Emperor and Judi. This culminated in Judi marching on Nanjing which the Hungu Emperor had established as the early Ming capital in 1402. The city was seized after the imperial precinct was set on fire. The genuine emperor allegedly died in the fire, though he may have been simply murdered. Then Judi claimed the throne and pronounced himself as the Yunglur emperor, the third Ming ruler. This background on the rise of Jud to the throne is important for the Yungla emperor went on to become arguably the most important and successful ruler of the Ming dynasty. The name Yungl means perpetual happiness. And so Judi in choosing it as his imperial name was proclaiming that the era of strife that had overthrown the UN dynasty established the Ming and then seen him replace his nephew as emperor in the succession crisis was at an end. It was not an empty statement as we will see presently. His reign was important in terms of China reaffirming its position as a great Asiatic power and engaging in a series of remarkable explorations as well as for the building work and infrastructure development which he oversaw. Elsewhere, the Yungl Emperor reformed elements of Chinese society, rehabilitating a number of tribes and clans that had been marginalized through the collapse of Yuan rule and the civil war. He promoted several of his most loyal followers as regional lords and he established new levels to the nobility. New ranks and titles were created for those who served the state in the army or otherwise over a long period of time. The idea of all this was to cement Ming rule and bring about stability. He also rehabilitated the system of civil administration whereby skilled bureaucrats and scholars were actively cultivated and then drafted into the government to run it either centrally or regionally. This is necessary for a large state to function properly. Without skilled civil servants, things as elementary as the collection of taxes collapse and problems start to mount as the state cannot pay for its business. Finally, the Jungla Emperor also introduced a number of military reforms. The early modern era in Europe is known for the military revolution as firearms and cannon were introduced across the continent. The same process was playing out on the other side of the world. Rudimentary hand cannons were introduced and new training schools and methods to professionally train soldiers were established. Amongst the most significant of all the Jungla Emperor's works was his development of the Forbidden City. The Ming capital had been established at Nanjing in the south during the reign of his father, the Hungu Emperor. This decision was largely taken because it was the first major city which he had conquered all the way back in 1356 on his ascent to power. Later he established the Ming government there. But the Jungla Emperor wanted to relocate to Beijing in large part because he had ruled part of his father's realms on his behalf from there in the 1380s. It also allowed him to prioritize the power base he had built up there over many years. As a centerpiece of the new capital, he constructed a grand palace complex, what is known as the Forbidden City. Construction on this began in 1406 and was not completed until 1420 when the Jungla emperor moved the government to Beijing permanently. To have called it the Forbidden City rather than the Forbidden Palace was apt. This was not a palatial complex but an entire sprawling network of buildings meant to hold the rooms, offices and buildings of everybody involved at the Ming court. It is comparable in ways with the palace which Louis the 14th of France ordered the construction of at Versai outside Paris 2 and a half centuries later. There were upwards of 8,900 rooms in many buildings within the Forbidden City. It is believed that up to a million workers endeavored on its construction at any one time. As imposing as the amount of buildings are, the core of it is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, which makes up about 15% of the entire complex. While there are an immense array of other buildings north thereof, the Forbidden City would remain the seat of government almost without interruption down to the early 20th century and still plays an important role in Chinese political history to this day. Another key development in the early days of the Jungler Emperor's rule was the restoration of the Grand Canal and the expansion of the canal system. The origins of this go back to ancient times. China is a land of rivers, three great ones, especially the Pearl, Yellow, and Yangsy rivers, which run from the coastal regions in the east, hundreds of kilometers westwards into the interior. Smaller rivers branch off these and have made extensive agriculture possible in China since ancient times. The country's great cities were also built along the course of these rivers. Transport around the country was aided from early on by the building of artificial rivers or canals between various rivers. This made it much easier to travel north and south in the country in the way which the rivers already allowed one to do from east to west. The Grand Canal had been built as far back as the fifth century BC and eventually ran all the way south to Ning Bo on the southern side of Hangjo Bay from the city of Shanghai. Over the centuries, it had been damaged in a variety of ways, both through neglect and natural disasters. The Jungla Emperor consequently ordered a complete restoration of it beginning around 1411. This was for practical purposes. Difficulties were being encountered transporting grain around the river and canal system and work needed to be carried out. What took place went beyond remedial repairs. Records suggest that over 150,000 workers were employed for several years to dig new artificial lakes and dams to dredge parts of the existing canal and erect new canal locks. The work transformed the canal system, updating it after a millennium of neglect. It also facilitated the Yungla emperor's political agenda. As he began work on the Grand Canal, he was already considering moving the capital from Nanjing in the south to Beijing in the north. By redeveloping the Grand Canal, the terminus point of which in the north was Beijing, he recalibrated the trade networks of his empire as well and orientated the economic life of China towards Beijing. The Grand Canal project was undertaken at the same time that the Yungla Emperor was overseeing one of the most remarkable episodes in preodern Chinese life. Beginning in 1405, the Yungla Emperor financed the sending out of seven so-called treasure voyages far and wide around Southeast Asia and beyond to the Indian Ocean. These were led by a Chinese court figure by the name of Jung Hur who was a favorite of the emperor. A former Muslim who had been captured by the Chinese in his youth and who had later converted to Chinese social mores and ideas. He was a good choice for these overseas voyages as someone familiar with other cultures. The voyages had multiple aims. The Jungler emperor evidently wished to extend Chinese diplomatic connections and foster the imperial power of the Ming dynasty around Asia. They were also information gathering exercises perhaps with the goal of expanding Chinese power further west or south into the East Indies or towards India. A lot of hearsay and myth has become attached to the voyages with some studies arguing that Jon Hur explored the Americas long before Christopher Columbus did so at the end of the 15th century. But there is no actual evidence to support this theory. Instead, Jung-H's first voyage, which left China in 1405, sailed south to the East Indies and then west to Sri Lanka before returning home in 1407. The others followed similar paths. In 1414 and 1415, one tiptoed around India and then along the coast until reaching the mouth of the Persian Gulf. In the early 1420s, Jungher's most ambitious of all voyages arrived at the Horn of Africa around modern-day Somalia. What was perhaps most spectacular about these voyages was the sheer size of the ships and the number of ships and men involved. The roots themselves were well established and the Chinese knew a lot about the Indian Ocean from Indian and Arab explorers who had been using these as trade routes for hundreds of years. Here was a clear demonstration to the world though of Ming power a half a century after the dynasty had claimed power in China from the Mongols. [Music] Jungher's expeditions were ultimately about establishing or renewing contact with rulers around Asia. As he went along, Jungh stopped in various places to hold embassies with leaders in Southeast Asia, India, and parts of the world further a field. Several of these were within zones of interest that China considered part of their imperial dominion. For instance, Chinese interference in parts of Indochina, particularly around modern-day Vietnam, stretched back hundreds of years. This was a feature of Ming rule. the idea of presiding over an empire that was centered on China but which had tributary states further a field either in Indochina, the South China Sea towards the East Indies or on land towards Tibet, Mongolia and north towards Siberia. The degree to which the Ming actively controlled any of these places or were able to extract tribute from perceived vassels there is a matter of debate. Clearly at certain points they were ruling more effectively over lands to the west and north. European visitors to China sensed this when Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch ambassadors, missionaries, and merchants like Mateo Richie, an Italian Jesuit, first began arriving to China in the early 16th century. They perceived it to be a kingdom. Yet their views evolved so that before long they suspected that the emperors expressed a form of imperium, that is a multilevel empire in which parts were ruled directly and more peripheral parts were held in obedience using local rulers who paid tribute to the emperor of the day. The most tangible element of this was Ming incursions into Tibet. Chinese designs on conquering Tibet or at least establishing its rulers as vassels dated back to the Tong dynasty. Relations were established between the Tongue rulers and the Tibetans in the 7th century AD and thereafter the Chinese tried to exert influence in the region. They managed to acquire tribute from the Tibetans from time to time. It was not an easy process as the Tang dynasty often faced threats to its own security from the Turks invading their western and northern borders. Tibet was geographically challenging to control as well. In China, most of the profitable farmland and the major cities are in the eastern half. Cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. The further west one goes, the more one enters desert-like, thinly inhabited lands that then gives way to mountainous terrain towards the Asian step. It was difficult for all preodern Chinese rulers to exert control over lands this far into the interior. Tibet proved such a case for the Ming. Ming influence here was fragmentaryary. From time to time, emperors sent out missions to exact tribute or to more comprehensively establish Chinese rule. The history of Ming, a large historical work written inQing dynasty times, argued that the Ming established a kind of imperial government in Tibet, complete with a government bureaucracy, taxation, and the like. We also have a number of maps which the Chinese made of Tibet. This is important. Maps were instruments of imperial control in the early modern period. If you wanted to more effectively rule over a land or conquer it, you needed to know its geography. There were also frequent missions over and back between Beijing and Tibet. Several Ming dynasty emperors had llamas which are native to Tibet at their court. Invitations to come and pay homage to the emperors in Beijing were extended to numerous Tibetan leaders. But despite all of this, the definitive sense we get is that Tibet was not a constantly conquered part of the Chinese Empire under Ming rule. It was an independent nation on the periphery of China that paid tribute to the Ming rulers from time to time, most likely to simply avoid them exerting greater direct control over Tibet. The Ming era certainly saw a distinct art and culture emerging in China. Furthermore, this was shaped by imperial patronage. It did not happen organically and was the byproduct of an explicit artistic sense amongst the rulers of the Ming dynasty and the senior figures at their court who provided patronage in the form of bed and board materials and training while they attended the artists school of Beijing. As is the case with any period of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean history over the last several thousand years, calligraphy, whether in the shape of calligraphic art or writing, was absolutely central to this. The ability to write elegantly or producing art that had calligraphic elements to it was one of the highest expressions of culture in the Far East. A number of emperors are even known to have trained and practiced as calligraphers themselves and it was central to court culture. Across the three centuries of Ming rule, there were very esteemed calligraphers employed at the Ming court from Sunkur and Shunan in the earliest days of the Ming to Dongchi Chang at the end of the Ming era. The latter was a particularly revered character. His calligraphic landscape paintings were sophisticated expressions of the form. He also wrote about the theory of Ming culture and art. The abilities of these calligraphers were promoted through schools where they were trained in Beijing under imperial patronage. Ming culture was not simply about calligraphy. There was a vibrant literary and material culture beyond this. For instance, there was a lot of poetry and short stories composed in China between the late 14th and early 17th centuries. The Ming emperors were also interested in patronizing both historians and scholars of various other subjects. An immense work in line with the Jungler emperor's enormously active and productive reign was the Jungler encyclopedia. This was more of an act of archival construction rather than a multi-olume study. Nearly 23,000 manuscript roles making up over 11,000 volumes of different texts were collected together over many years. Though almost unknown about outside specialist circles, this vast collection was a major Mingled effort to construct a library of all of China's pre-existing literature and scholarship. At the same time, new texts were being prepared by the Ming on a number of subjects. The Chinese were particularly informed about medicine and had their own tradition of this, one that still exists today. A Chinese scholar Lee Jun compiled the Bunsao Gangmu in the late 16th century, a name which transliterates to the basis of medicine. It was basically an encyclopedia of Chinese medicine. Though they would never take off as a popular medium of writing and publishing in the way which they did in Europe during the exact same time period, newspapers of a kind were also produced in Beijing in the late Ming era. Finally, the Ming continued the tradition of producing fine porcelain in the shape of vasees and crockery and with the distinctive blue and white or green and white, red and white or yellow and white designs. This Chinese porcelain was one of the most sought after goods from Asia in Europe during the 16th and early 17th centuries. a fascination which continued down to the 19th century. All of this is not to suggest that the Ming state did not face crises and threats. While it was a strong state and ruled powerfully for over two centuries, it was also a very large one and this made it vulnerable to local rebellions and insurrections. A good example is the crisis of the Tumu fortress. This occurred in the late 1440s when an Oat Mongol leader by the name of Essent Taiishi launched a multi-pronged attack into northeastern China. The Ming dynasty adviser and government leader at the time, Wong Jun led an army westwards to meet the threat only to be soundly defeated in the battle near the Tumu fortress in September 1449. The emperor Yingzong had campaigned with him and was captured after the fighting. This began a period of grave internal conflict. Not only as Yingong needed to be rescued, but also because a violent faction arose within the court to try and remove Wong Jun and his followers from power in Beijing. Hence, the Ming government was mired in a civil war for much of the 1450s. Sporadic elements of this continued into the 1460s. On the 7th of August 1461, a general by the name of Tao Chin launched a brief rebellion in Beijing itself. This was after the Ying Tong Emperor, who had fallen from power after being captured back in 1449, had reclaimed the throne. Tao Chin was one of several generals who feared reprisals for his past disloyalty. The rebellion was quickly crushed that day and many were executed or ordered to take their own lives. The whole series of revolts and setbacks from the late 1440s down to the early 1460s points towards how a crisis of leadership and regional revolts could destabilize even a powerful dynasty like the Ming temporarily. The Ying Tong Emperor is just one example of a Ming dynasty emperor whose rule brought instability and weakness. There were others, the most notable in the 16th century being the Jaing Emperor. What was worse, he ruled for 46 years from 1521 to 1567, a huge length of time for a tumultuous reign to have been playing out. It all started inospiciously. The new emperor had never been in the direct line of succession and was a cousin of his predecessor, the Chungdur emperor. A kind of constitutional crisis erupted when the Junga emperor died in 1521 and it was 3 years before the Jaing emperor cemented his rule in the forbidden city at the end of what became known as the three rights controversy. Perhaps it was owing to these negative early experiences with court intrigue that the Jajing Emperor took the peculiar decision to move the court to a new palace which he had built in the West Park in Beijing. He relocated there in 1542. A telltale sign that court divisions and intrigue continued to shape the reign even 18 years after the three rights controversy had ended. In the north, there were incursions along the borders by the Mongols and others. We must remember that directly north of China in those days in Siberia were lands that no Russian would try to claim for a very long time. Wild nomadic tribes often emerged out of the cold wastelands here to raid southwards. Yet all of these issues were eclipsed by the dramatic escalation in piracy in the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea during the Judging Emperor's reign. Thousands of boats prayed on shipping here on an almost constant basis during the reign. In the midst of the Judging Emperor's reign, Ming Dynasty China was also hit by one of the worst natural disasters of the early modern era. On the 23rd of January 1556, an earthquake measuring between 7.5 and 8 magnitude, depending on the barometers used, struck the province of Shani in central China, well inland to the west of major cities like Shanghai. This was one of the worst earthquakes to ever occur in terms of sheer destruction and mortality. Natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis are more destructive based on the built environment where they occur. If a relatively weak earthquake occurs in a city full of skyscrapers, it will cause more damage than a much stronger earthquake that happens in an uninhabited part of Alaska or Siberia. In the case of the Shanchi earthquake of 1556, there was a tradition in this part of China in the 16th century of adapting Los cliff plateaus with cave mouths into housing. This is where entire towns are often built into hillside caves and the like. The earthquake hit these communities very badly. Cave homes collapsed in. In other cases, the mouths of such homes were sealed and people were trapped inside. In the weeks that followed, with tens of thousands of people having been killed or displaced, agricultural production collapsed and famine conditions set in. It is always highly speculative to try and work out estimated deaths from a natural disaster like this when it occurred centuries ago at a time when there were no demographic records with which to assess the number of dead and living afterwards. But historians believe the earthquake could have caused upwards of 100,000 deaths immediately in late January and early February 1556. While in the months that followed, hundreds of thousands more died from famine and associated issues. Local rivers were even rrooted by the earthquake, destroying irrigation methods used to grow staple crops like rice. It was one of the foremost calamities the Ming dynasty had to deal with in its three centuries in power in China. The Shanchi earthquake occurred right around the time that China was experiencing a new form of contact with the people of Europe. This was happening in large parts of the world in the 16th century like the east coast of North America, Central and South America, parts of coastal Africa, India, the East Indies, and Japan. Unlike most of these other regions, though, China had long-standing contacts with the people of Europe. European traders like Marco Polo had voyaged across the silk roads of Central Asia to China in the era of the Yuan dynasty. While the Mongol Empire had been so large that it connected China all the way to the Mongol territories in what are now southwestern Russia and Ukraine in the 13th century. A different form of European contact began though in the middle of the 16th century. The Portuguese had found their way around Africa and across the Indian Ocean to Asia by sea right at the end of the 15th century. After decades of tiptoeing their way further east to the East Indies, they began showing up in the ports of southeastern China like Macau. These were also a new kind of European. In Marco Polo's day, the Europeans who traveled thousands of kilometers across Eurasia were primarily traders. The Portuguese in the middle of the 16th century were more often led by Catholic missionaries or aggressive agents of the Portuguese crown. Later they were joined by Spanish, Dutch and English explorers who all wanted to get their hands on the silk and spice trade and also to try and convert the rulers of the far east to their own brand of Christianity be Catholic or Protestant. It took a long time but eventually in the 1580s Italian Jesuits like Mik Rieri managed to gain entry to Beijing. problems would emerge before long. Centuries later, the Europeans would invade and begin carving off bits of China's coast as their own personal trading colonies in the Far East. That lay in the 19th century, though, and the Europeans were actually a fairly congenial element in Ming Dynasty, China, although eventually the Portuguese were restricted to trading through one port in the southeast, Macau. The same could not be said for some of the adversaries the Ming emperors faced in the north of their realms. After the collapse of the successor states to Genghaskhan's vast empire, new groups emerged along the Asian step. The Empire of Timur and his successors sometimes tried to raid eastwards into the western extremities of China. New confederacies of Mongolian tribes people raided into northern China. As the Chinese suffered serious defeats from time to time from these attacks, the Ming emperors began investing in repairing and expanding the Great Wall of China, which had first been built in antiquity to guard against attacks from the north and which had periodically been restored by various dynasties over the centuries. The Ming expansion of the Great Wall was amongst the most significant. It's difficult for historians and archaeologists to precisely establish which sections of the Great Wall of China date to which period, but it's clear all the same that thousands of watchtowers and hundreds of kilometers of the wall were either built or significantly restored under the Ming dynasty. The late 1560s saw a few years of intense work as the Ming government sought to protect the agricultural land to the south in places like Liaoong province from incursions by the Mongols and others. So successful was the defensive investment that for a time in the second half of the 16th century, the Ming rulers were not just able to defend their northern frontier, but even captured further land north of the wall. The investment in rejuvenating the great wall was primarily undertaken to protect against incursions from the Asian step and Mongolia. However, the crisis of Ming rule and the Ming dynasty when it finally came did not emerge from there. It came from within the Chinese state itself and from Manuria, the region of China which lies north of the Korean Peninsula and south of eastern Russia. The crisis began with the accession of the Wan Lee emperor in 1572. He was just 8 years old when he succeeded his father, the Lungqing Emperor, who had died prematurely after a short reign. The accession of an emperor who was just a child created problems in and of itself while the state was also facing multiple crises brought about by the fallout from the Shani earthquake, agrarian crisis, and other issues. At first, things stabilized. China experienced a growing level of trade as the Portuguese and others desired to acquire large amounts of silk, jade, and Chinese pottery from the southern ports. The rise of the Mughal Empire in northern India had also created more stability in the subcontinent which facilitated trade there too. However, once the emperor came of age in the 1580s and began to rule in his own right, problems began. He was a weak ruler who relied on poor advisers and created unrest in the provinces. In 1592, the Ordos campaign or Ningsha campaign began, a major revolt in the northwest of China. The Japanese also attempted several attacks on mainland China and tried to prize the Korean Peninsula into their sphere of influence. It was the beginning of a period of escalating crises and rebellions which over a period of half a century would bring about the end of the Ming dynasty and the rise of a new power to rule China. The Wii emperor ruled until 1620 after a 48-year long reign, the longest of any emperor of the Ming dynasty. He was succeeded by his son, the Tai Chong Emperor, who died after only a few weeks under possibly suspicious circumstances. He was then succeeded by the Tiani Emperor, an eccentric ruler who spent much of his time studying carpentry. It was no time for woodwork. In Manuria, the region north of the Korean Peninsula, the Jen tribes, who considered themselves to be ethnically distinct from the Han Chinese people of eastern China, were uniting to become a powerful confederacy. Surviving accounts by both Chinese and Korean writers from the 16th and early 17th centuries described the Jud Chen as a distinct people who look different and followed different customs. In this sense, what was about to play out between the 1610s and 1640s was similar in some ways to the Mongol conquest of China back in the 13th century. It had the feel of a foreign people from the north invading and conquering China. In the case of the Juren people, they had been largely united in a substantial confederacy around the turn of the century by a ruler named Nurhhatchi. He was succeeded by his son Hung Taii around 1626. These rulers referred to themselves as the Jin orQing dynasty. It was also around this time that references appear to them as not just the Juren people, but as the Manchu, reflecting their origins in the Manuria region. Around 1635, Hungai would formally announce the creation of a Manchu empire and aqing dynasty, one which was rapidly beginning to challenge the Ming for control over northern China. It was the apex of a quarter of a century long period in which the Ming dynasty would be brought to an end and replaced by theQing dynasty of Manuria. The Juren of Manuria and theQing dynasty did not replace the Ming dynasty as the rulers of China overnight. It was a gradual process that occurred over nearly three decades, beginning in the mid610s as the Juren began to unify and only finally concluding in 1644 when theQing era is officially designated as beginning in Chinese historioggraphy. A major event in this process occurred in May 1618 when Nurhachi Hung Taii's father announced the seven grievances. a series of complaints through which he renounced Ming rule over Manuria. He argued that the Ming had violated the terms through which they ruled Manuria and that any loyalty to them was now voided. This began a gradual war of attrition in the northeast of China that led to the expansion of the fledgling Manchu state. Much like any quai nomadic state without a history of ruling over large trackcts of territory, at first this was a small affair. But through the early 1620s, the Juren co-opted experienced bureaucrats and more soldiers into its ranks and began acquiring more and more territory. By the time Nurhachi died in 1626 and was succeeded by Hong Tai, the Juren were conquering large parts of Ming China. He also set up the banner system which would come to dominateQing Chinese society down to the early 20th century. At first, Hungai's priority was moving west out of Manuria, and so much of the late 1620s and early 1630s was spent moving across northern China towards outer Mongolia. He also expended some resources on sending expeditions north to the Amur region of what is now the far east of Russia and also south into the Korean Peninsula. But he acquired much of northern and central China as well. In the process, a legacy Ming dynasty state known as the Southern Ming developed in southern China. TheQing dynasty gradually conquered all of northern China in the 1630s and early 1640s. The conclusion of this was the Jashan incident of 1644. Known in some studies as the battle of Beijing, it is known as the Jashan incident as the attack on Beijing was led by a peasant leader who had allied with theQing and whose name was Ja Shan or Lee Chung. TheQing cause had suffered a setback a year earlier when Hungai Ji died and was succeeded by his son, the Shuner Emperor. The only problem was that the Shuner emperor was 5 years old and not exactly well placed to act as a military commander who could complete the war against the Ming. The responsibility consequently fell to severalqing commanders and to Ja Shun as the head of an allied peasant army. There was no real battle to speak of in order to seize Beijing. The Ming Dynasty government was so low on morale by that time that an agreement was reached with one of the palace unuks to open one of the main gates of the city and Ja Shun led his men in. The last of the Ming dynasty emperors to fully rule over China. The Chongjun Emperor is believed to have taken his own life and the Shunjur Emperor who had turned six by then was proclaimed as the firstQing dynasty emperor of all of China. It wasn't quite so clear-cut. Supporters of the Ming did manage to carve out their own state in southern China after 1644 and managed to continue the war down to 1662. But after 1644, theQing dynasty was effectively in power and the Ming were at an end. The last of the southern Ming fled to the island of Taiwan, where the prince of Ning Jing continued to express his rightful claim to rule China as the Ming dynasty emperor until his death in 1683. In what is an interesting parallel to the nationalist flight to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war. TheQing dynasty would rule China for just over two and a half centuries down to 1911. They encountered mixed successes. TheQing are usually characterized as reflecting China's comparative decline by comparison with Europe. typified in the manner in which the European powers, Britain, France, and Russia in particular, began interfering in a nakedly aggressive way in China's affairs from the late 1830s onwards, even occupying Beijing in 1860. Thereafter, China completely failed to modernize in the manner which Japan did. Instead, it descended into half a century of crisis and decline, which led eventually to the end of theQing and the inception of several long-running civil wars. But this is only half the story of theQing. In the 18th century, after solidifying their control over China, they actually expanded quite aggressively, launching wars towards the Himalayas and commanding enormous fleets in the South China Sea to try and curb the huge pirate armadas that were operating there. The long rule of the Chenl Long Emperor between 1735 and 1796 was in particular a golden age ofQing imperial rule. Thus, like the Ming before them, the story of theQing would be more complex than is sometimes suggested. The Ming dynasty was an era of contrasts in China's long history. It began in less than apicious circumstances. China had come under foreign rule by the Mongols in the 13th century and then Mongol rule after a brief golden age and a Kubla Khan had descended into famine, regional war, instability and periodic plague pandemics. The crisis created the conditions for Ju Yuan Jang to build up a power base in southern and eastern China and then claimed control over all of China. In the century that followed, he reasserted China as a great power, the foremost in the Far East. The peak of this was seen during the reign of his son, the Jungla Emperor, who launched the voyages of Jungh over a period of nearly three decades in the early 15th century. Many myths have become attached to these voyages. While we can probably dismiss the more outlandish claims about the Chinese voyaging to the Americas, it's reasonable at the same time to conclude that these voyages were an expression of Ming imperial power around the Far East and south and westwards to the East Indies to India and beyond to the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. This was the heyday of Ming power. In the 16th century, natural disasters like the Shanchshi earthquake of 1556 and the arrival of the Portuguese and other Europeans to the ports of southern and eastern China or ill for Ming China. In the end though, it was not earthquakes or foreign adversaries which scuppered Ming rule. Instead, it was the emergence of a rival power from Manuria. After decades of instability, the Ming dynasty collapsed in the middle of the 17th century and theQing dynasty came to power, the last major dynasty of Chinese imperial history. What we should not assume is that the Chinese closed off their nation from the world under Ming rule. They attempted like the Josong Kingdom of Korea and the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan to limit their exposure to European missionaries and culture. But ultimately, China's isolation from the West and its later crisis from the late 1830s onwards were the result of a much more complex set of historical circumstances. Before any of that happened, the Ming dynasty was one of the last eras during which China was a more formidable power that expressed its imperial claims all over Asia. What do you think of the Ming Dynasty? Was this the last great era of imperial China or did theQing dynasty manage to have its own golden age for a time in the 18th century? Please let us know in the comment section. And in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]