China’s Dynastic Exchanges

EXCHANGE in EAST ASIA and THE INDIAN OCEAN HIST 1301 | History China’s Dynastic Exchanges In the seventeenth century, Japan was not the only country that became more inwardlooking. China also accomplished this after conquering the Mongols in 1368 and attempting to undo the ravages of foreign domination under the first Ming dynasty emperor, Hongwu. Hongwu made the decision that the majority of Chinese interaction with other countries would come via vassals from tributary kingdoms in order to guard against the disruptive influence of foreign ideas and any threats to his authority. China also intended to exert pressure on other countries, which were keenly interested in its products, to give in to its demands by restricting commerce to the exchange of tribute items. Among the most forceful of these requests was that the Ashikaga shoguns, who were helpless to stop the Japanese rulers, stop Japanese pirates from preying on China and its vassal state of Korea. All private international trade was outlawed in 1371. A few years later, the Maritime commerce Intendancies, which controlled the flow of all tribute commodities through their offices in the port towns of Ningbo, Guangzhou, and Quanzhou, closed, thereby ending all international commerce. To keep ships out of harbours, wooden stakes and rocks were placed there. Ships were demolished or allowed to decay in their piers. In order to apprehend anybody attempting to participate in commerce, a shore patrol was established. Even though traffickers faced the death penalty, they frequently broke the law. The Ming government's tax revenue was significantly decreased by blocking access to international trade outside of the tribute system, resulting in a persistent shortage of finances. Hongwu reduced the cost of government by putting the onus of tax collection and village order maintenance on richer farmer households rather than on government employees. To make the army self-sufficient, farms were granted to the families of soldiers. Elite scholars and businessmen were subject to high levies. Most of these measures were a failure. Soldiers frequently sold the property they had been granted or left because they could not grow enough food to maintain themselves. Not all wealthier peasants could always afford to perform the tasks required of them by the government. Due to a shortage of funding, local authorities started charging peasants more. The Yongle emperor, the third Ming dynasty emperor and Hongwu's son, was slightly more inquisitive about the outside world and more eager to pay homage than his father. He sent Zheng He, a dependable royal eunuch, on six expeditions across the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1421. By giving presents to other emperors, these expeditions aimed to show off China's wealth and might, influencing them to become vassals and pay homage to the Ming emperor. In 1405, the first fleet sailed. There were 27,000 individuals on board, including fortune tellers, sailors, warriors, and academics, among other occupations, and 317 ships. From the coast of Fujian in southeast China, it travelled by monsoon winds to the Kingdom of Champa in southern Vietnam, where her crew exchanged porcelain and silks for lacquer wood, rhinoceros horn, and elephant ivory. The ships then made port calls to many additional Indonesian city-states, including Aceh and Majapahit, home to numerous Chinese merchants. They then proceeded to Calicut and Sri Lanka. The crew traded for coral, jewels, peppers, and pearls at Calicut. Zheng He brought envoys from the nations he had visited to meet the emperor on the return leg. Later expeditions saw the ships go to East Africa, Arabia, and Persia; on one return voyage, a ship brought a giraffe as a present for the Ming emperor. The grandson of the Yongle emperor, the Xuande Emperor, gave Zheng He the command to set out on his seventh and last expedition in 1430. But for many years to come, these incursions represented China's final real attempt to establish diplomatic ties with foreign countries. Court factions were concerned about the expense of the travels as well as the impact of foreigners and their views on the empire. After Zheng He passed away, the fleet's ships were abandoned to decay and his maps and documents were destroyed. Nonetheless, China persisted in being interested in the affairs of the regions it shared. China invaded Vietnam in 1406–1407 in order to take the Tran emperor's throne and return it to him. In 1427, a Vietnamese uprising put an end to China's rule over the nation. Following their victory, the Lê dynasty swore allegiance to China as a vassal state. At the Battle of Tumu in 1449, a Chinese military mission into Mongol territory resulted in the Chinese being massacred. Ming army assisted Korean troops in fending off a Japanese invasion in 1592 and 1597. At other times, however, the Ming made every effort to stay out of confrontation. Following the Chinese loss at the Battle of Tumu in 1449 at the hands of the western Mongols, also known as the Oirat, work on a new Great Wall was initiated to reinforce the preexisting clay defences built by the Qin in the third century BCE. The new fortress was supposed to shield China from foreign threats. But China required money to finance this enormous undertaking as well as other initiatives like the Grand Canal's extension to Beijing, the capital of the Yongle emperor, and the construction of the Forbidden City, an enormous complex of palaces and imperial offices in Beijing. After the Ming dynasty overturned the previous regulation that forbade foreign commerce in 1567, European commercial ships started to arrive once more. Portuguese traders, who had previously been transgressing Chinese laws by dealing in the country, were granted authorization to open a factory in Macao in 1577. However, Spanish galleons from Manila that were transporting silver from American mines piqued the Chinese's curiosity even more. Along with ready-made garments, these ships carried Chinese silks, satins, taffetas, velvets, damasks, and brocades as they departed China. Fifty thousand pairs of silk stockings were transported on one ship. Together with other exotic products like ginger, cotton fabric, pearls, musk, and saltpetre to produce gunpowder, the Spanish also brought the blue and white Chinese porcelain that had grown popular in Europe. They also brought songbird cages. As China's economy expanded, a large number of its peasants turned their attention to making commodities for export. Some people focused on growing cotton and making textiles from it. Some cultivated mulberry trees and collected their leaves, which they sold to households that bred silkworms—which consume the leaves. Silkworm farmers would then sell their cocoons to other farmers, who would boil them to kill the larvae and unreel them to manufacture silk thread. This thread was sold to homes that sewed silk fabrics, which may then be distributed to homes that focused on needlework. Porcelain was mass manufactured at Jiangxi province's Jingdezhen. The population of Ming expanded along with its prosperity. Many peasants, particularly those who lived in mountainous, arid regions like Sichuan, embraced crops from the Americas, including as maize and sweet potatoes. For agricultural households, these crops produced a plenty of calories and flourished well. American sweet and spicy peppers transformed local cuisines, while peanuts provided a significant amount of fat for vegetarian diets devoid of animals. But in the end, these novel crops turned out to be toxic. For example, areas lost their important topsoil and became deforested when slopes were removed to cultivate maize. Additionally, there was not a significant expansion in arable land to feed the growing population, and in many areas, farmers were forced to work fewer fields as the generations went by. Many commoners emulated the nobility as a result of their newfound wealth; they built expansive homes with gardens and courtyards, bought exquisite rosewood furniture, gathered artwork and antiques, and employed tutors to help their sons get ready for exams that would get them jobs in the imperial bureaucracy. As individuals gained the means to engage in leisure activities, market towns and cities all across the nation saw an increase in the number of restaurants, inns, and taverns. In addition to agricultural handbooks and Confucian classics, a thriving printing industry created plays and novels, some of which had sensual plots and scenes. Guidebooks included information on historical sites of interest as well as recommendations for lodging and dining for business travellers. People started going on vacation for enjoyment more frequently. Prostitution grew rapidly in the cities, and at the pinnacle of a convoluted social structure, courtesans rented themselves out to affluent merchants to play music at parties or compete against them in poetry contests. The changes occurring in China did not delight every member of Ming society. While many people became wealthy as a result of the surge in commerce, not everyone profited. Resentments increased in tandem with wealth inequality. Noble family members were horrified that so many commoners could now live and look like them. Confucius's teachings were interpreted in a way that reflected changes in social structure and more chances for common people. All people are capable of leading moral lives, according to Confucius and Zhu Xi, a Confucian scholar from the Southern Song dynasty whose writings influenced the early Ming dynasty. However, Zhu Xi thought that morality could only emerge from within through a rigorous educational process. But the scholar Wang Yangming disregarded Zhu Xi's teachings in the middle of the Ming period. Wang believed that morality was innate and that individuals may develop their moral natures and engage in the routine activities of daily life at the same time. Moral truths might be understood even by the uninformed. Other Ming writers disapproved of the family, which Confucius had seen as the cornerstone of an ordered society, and advocated breaking social norms that were deemed "proper" behaviour. The more traditional elements of society were alarmed by these teachings. There were only so many Ming days left. A period of cold in the northern hemisphere known as the Little Ice Age began in the early seventeenth century, bringing with it low temperatures and droughts that in certain sections of the nation resulted in starvation. Other areas were destroyed by floods. Rent and taxes were unpaid by farmers whose harvests had failed or who had inherited land that was too small for their families to live on. Even those who could afford it had trouble locating the silver required by law to be used to pay taxes. More than ever, the government needed silver. The cost of maintaining the royal dynasty had skyrocketed; court officials had been abusing their positions to gain enormous fortune, frequently via corruption, and the cost of the Korean War had been enormous. Due to a shortage of silver, the emperor dispatched court officials to the provinces, purportedly for the purpose of examining mines. In actuality, the officers' duty was to seize merchants' silver. The Spanish, thinking China was about to assault the city, slaughtered 20,000 Chinese citizens and stopped doing business with China when a party of Chinese officials came in Manila in 1603 to seize silver from Chinese merchants there. Chinese troops were let go because the imperial government lacked the money to pay the army. A mutiny by famished, destitute, and enraged soldiers and peasants took place in northern China in 1627–1628. The unrest had reached neighbouring regions by 1632. This further incensed the populace by making it more difficult for government agents to collect taxes, which Beijing had increased in 1639. An army commanded by Li Zicheng was established by disgruntled peasants north of the Yellow River. Zhang Xianzhong was the leader of other rebels in the region between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Violence broke out in province after province. Beijing was taken over by Li Zicheng's peasant army in April of 1644. The last Ming emperor killed most of his family and then hung himself in the royal garden out of desperation. Li proclaimed himself the head of the Chinese people and the start of a new kingdom. But his reign was too short to create his dynasty. The Manchus were China's subsequent rulers. The Manchus belonged to an ethnic group that inhabited in southern Manchuria, northeast of the Great Wall. Their ancestors were the Jurchen pastoralists who founded the Jin dynasty, which governed northern China from 1115 until the Mongols defeated them in 1234. At that point, the Manchus had established themselves as farmers. The Manchu chieftain Nurhaci united the Manchu tribes to establish a kingdom that gave tribute to the Ming emperor in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Chinese settlers in the Liaodong Peninsula were assaulted by the Manchus in 1616, as the Ming dynasty started to fall. They made farmers produce food and craftspeople produce weapons for their army. Positions in the Manchu administration were awarded to officials and army officers who were prepared to submit to them. The rebels were slaughtered. Hong Taiji, the son of Nurhaci, declared himself the head of the Qing ("pure," "clear") dynasty after his father's death in 1626. He embraced Chinese administrative techniques and increased the proportion of Chinese bureaucrats in his government as he extended Manchu dominance over Chinese land. Chinese army soldiers and administrators started to desert in considerable numbers to the Manchus after becoming disillusioned with the Ming government's corruption and incapacity to address the nation's issues. General Wu Sangui of the Ming, who was tasked with defending the eastern end of the Great Wall, gave way to the Manchu army because he was afraid that anarchy would continue after Li Zicheng captured Beijing. Beijing was taken over on May 27, 1644, when Wu Sangui's and Manchu forces routed Li Zicheng's army. The Ming resisted the Manchu soldiers' onslaught in the south, and it took until 1683 for the Manchus to conquer all of China. As many Chinese had feared, the early Qing emperors turned out to be capable leaders. They welcomed Chinese culture while also fighting to maintain their Manchu identity. Kangxi, the first Qing emperor, travelled throughout China to become familiar with his new realm. He embraced the Chinese bureaucracy and mandated that Manchu and Han Chinese co-administrators oversee each of the six principal ministries of the government. Kangxi preserved the imperial examination system for government employment while governing in accordance with Confucian values. But the Manchus were cautious to hold onto their superior status and required the Chinese to be loyal. For instance, Manchus were typically assigned supervisory posts in the administration, whereas Han Chinese officials were typically assigned local jobs. In addition, all men had to wear the characteristic Manchu haircut, which consisted of growing long hair in the back that was braided into a single queue and shaving the front portion of their heads. Men who did not wear their hair in this manner after 1645 faced the death penalty. Kangxi, like other Chinese emperors, was a Buddhist sympathiser. As long as Chinese Christians remained filial sons and daughters who revered their ancestors—a habit the Jesuits encouraged—he would accept other religions, including Christianity. The Jesuits were more effective in gaining converts than the Dominicans and Franciscans because of their attempts to master the language and their respect for Chinese culture. However, when they saw how the Jesuits were willing to accept Chinese customs, members of these other orders became envious and protested to the Pope. Kangxi declared that missionaries who obeyed would have to leave China when the Vatican mandated that all church services must be held in Latin and that Chinese Christians would be made to give up their ancestral ceremonies. Kangxi, as well as his successors Yongzheng and Qianlong, made an effort to address the issues that appeared to be the cause of the Ming dynasty's collapse. They put China's economy back on solid ground, and Qing academics came back to Zhu Xi's teachings out of concern that the Ming had abandoned moral principles due to their excess and luxury. Traditional Confucian principles were highly valued, and morally dubious plays and literature were outlawed. For instance, Qianlong showed his mother how much he cared for her by going to see her every day. Female chastity was encouraged, and communities built so many memorial arches to honour "chaste widows," or women who had refused to remarry after their husbands passed away, that in the nineteenth century the government made an attempt to put an end to the practice by stating that the only widows who could be honoured in this way were those who had committed suicide. On the other hand, the Qing maintained the Ming strategy of minimising foreign relations. They did act in Asia when it appeared that their interests were under jeopardy, much like the Ming did. For instance, the island of Taiwan, which served as a base for pirates and a haven for Ming loyalists on the run, was annexed by China in 1683. Tibet's capital, Lhasa, was taken over by Qing forces in 1720. They conquered central Asia in the 1750s, defeating the Mongols and Uighurs, and joined China with the "new province" of Xinjiang. China's reliance on revenue from overseas commerce persisted throughout the Qing period, and European demand for Chinese goods did not decline. But the Qing continued to be leery of Europeans and wanted to avoid having as much interaction with them as the Japanese had. Although non-Chinese were permitted to live in Macao, they were only able to trade with the Co-hong, the official Chinese merchant guild, and through the port of Guangzhou starting in 1759. They had to remain in a designated European section of the city while they were there on business. They had to leave once their transactions were complete. The Chinese saw Europe as a lower world with nothing interesting to offer. When Lord George Macartney visited China in 1793 on behalf of the British king, Qianlong treated him with contempt, despite the fact that some Chinese merchants and officials found the scientific knowledge of Europe to be astounding. As the steward of a lesser kingdom, Macartney was required by Qianlong to show his subordination by kneeling and bowing his head, the customary salutation of vassals to the emperor. When Macartney declined, Qianlong declared that although he was prepared to recognise the British king as a vassal, he did not see him as an equal. Additionally, he turned down Britain's proposal to open a permanent embassy in China. He pointed out that Britain had nothing of value to give China, which already had everything it needed.