Rebuilding China
 In
1368, a rebellion led by a warlord
named Zhu Yuanzhang brought an end to
the Yuan Empire
 Zhu Yuanzhang went on to establish one of
the longest-lasting and most famous
dynasties in Chinese history: the Ming
(1368-1644)
 Before becoming a rebel leader, Zhu
Yuanzhang had been a soldier, a thief, and
a priest
 After his victory in 1368, he renamed
himself Hung-wu (“vastly martial”)
 He
ruled until 1403 when
his son, Yongle (Yung-lo,
1403-1424) or “perpetual
happiness” took the throne
 Both father and son proved
effective at rebuilding
China and repairing the
damage done by the stress
and warfare of the early
1300s
 Abroad,
Ming China expanded its
borders
 It also forged alliances with the
Vietnamese states of Annam and
Champa, as well as the Yi kingdom in
Korea
 The Ming retained and expanded the
tributary system that Khubilai Khan
had created
 Under this system, many states in
East and Southeast Asia were forced
to pay tribute to the Ming
 When
the Mongol warlord Timur attacked
China in the late 1300s, he was decisively
repelled
 Not only was the Ming army large and
effective, the Ming navy was too
 During the late 1300s and early 1400s, the
Ming emperors used the navy as an
instrument of diplomacy and intimidation
 From 1405 to 1433, the Chinese admiral
Zheng He (Cheng Ho) made seven long
voyages to Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and
India, then as far west as the Persian Gulf,
the Red Sea, and the East African coast
 Zheng
He forced fifty nations and
city-states to pay tribute to China,
established trade relations with
many others, and gained a large
amount of knowledge about the
outside world
 Had the Ming chosen to continue
this tradition of naval excellence,
China might well have initiated a
wave of exploration and
colonization similar to the one that
made the Europeans wealthy and
powerful in the late 1400s, 1500s,
and onward
 After
the reign of Yongle, however, the Ming
rulers lost interest in the outside world, and
expeditions such as Zheng He’s ceased
 At
home, the Ming dynasty recentralized the
country
 Hung-wu and Yongle were able to rebuild the
economy and restore trade relations with China’s
neighbors and even countries farther afield
 During their reigns, the Chinese population
rebounded, reaching – then surpassing – its pre1300 level of approximately 100 million
 Although
few of the Ming emperors were
politically or militarily active as Hung-wu or
Yongle, the Ming state remained in place for
centuries, until 1644
 Yet by 1450, its might was at a peak
 Culturally,
the Ming years remain
famous as a time of artistic grandeur
and intellectual dynamism
 Confucianism was restored to its
place of prominence, rejoining
Buddhism as a guiding force in
Chinese philosophy and religion
 Some of the greatest works of
classical Chinese literature appeared,
including a new form of writing, the
novel (one example is The Golden
Lotus, a story about a wicked
landowner who mistreats those
around him)
 Ming
artisans produced some of the most
exquisite glassware, pottery, ceramics, and
especially, porcelain that the world had ever
seen
 It is no accident that the word china is
synonymous with fine dishware
 Another
major art form was
scroll painting
 Chinese painters depicted
landscapes, historical scenes,
and human and animal figures in
exquisite fashion on long,
vertical scrolls of silk and paper
 It
was also under the Ming that Beijing was
transformed into a breathtakingly
magnificent capital for the imperial family
 Although a southern capital was established
in Nanjing, Beijing remained paramount
 Yongle began construction of what is still
called the Forbidden City: an imperial
residence, fortress, government complex at
the heart of Beijing
 Surrounded
by moats and great vermillion
walls, the Forbidden City houses acres of
courtyards, gardens, and palaces
 It still serves as an important seat of Chinese
government
 Forged
from hundreds of thousands of
timbers felled in the remote corners of the
empire, and massive stones dragged across
ice from the frozen north, Emperor Yongle
marshalled a million workers to his vision for
a palace
 At 180 acres and with 9000 rooms, the
Forbidden City remains the greatest palace
on Earth
 For five centuries, what went on behind its
blood red walls was forbidden to all but the
intimate court of the Emperor
 While
the Ming dynasty represented cultural
grandeur and elegance, a major change was
taking place that not even the Chinese were
aware of
 Despite their cultural advancement and
tightly-knit societies, China was beginning to
slip in terms of the international balance of
power
 China
was losing the scientific and
technological advantages it possessed during
the period between 1000 and 1450
 The power shift, which resulted from a
certain stagnation on the part of China,
would leave it vulnerable to foreign
influence and domination during the 1800s
 In
1450, the Ming dynasty was almost a
century old
 As mentioned earlier, from its foundation in
1368 to the early 1400s, Ming China had been
a politically dynamic and militarily active
state, conquering neighbors and exploring
faraway lands
 Ming China was economically prosperous
 Its population grew steadily during the late
1300s and 1400s, recovering from the wars
and diseases of the late Yuan period
 Although
Ming China remained powerful
during the 1500s and 1600s, its principal
strengths during these years were cultural
 The Ming artistic and intellectual
achievements were impressive: literary
masterpieces, fine porcelain (“china”),
architecture, and the revival of Confucianism
 But foreigners from the West would begin to
change world history
 And these foreigners would often begin their
travels with a compass, an instrument which
had originally been invented in China
 During
the Ming period, the first
European explorers began to arrive
in China
 As Portuguese traders and captains
arrived in Southeast Asia and
colonized parts of it, they
established commercial ties with
the Ming
 The Spanish arrived later
 China was too large and powerful
for the Portuguese or Spanish to
conquer, but both nations
established embassies and trading
houses there
 Accompanying
European
traders and travelers were
frequently Catholic
missionaries
 Among the most famous
were Francis Xavier, who
worked in China during the
1540s and 1550s, and Matteo
Ricci, who was there in the
1590s and early 1600s
 Matteo
Ricci was an Italian Jesuit missionary
who introduced Christian teaching to the
Chinese empire
 He lived in China for nearly 30 years and was
a pioneer in the attempt at mutual
comprehension between China and the West
 By adopting the language and culture of the
country, he gained entrance to the interior of
China, which was normally closed to
foreigners
 Ricci
was a Jesuit, an order of the
Catholic Church that was known for its
missionary spirit and scientific
research as well as voyages to the
Americas and Asia
 When Ricci arrived, China was still
closed to outsiders; but the missionary
strategy of the Jesuits had undergone
modification
 Great stress was put on the importance
of learning the Chinese language and
of acquiring knowledge of the culture
 Previously, missionaries had attempted
to impose Western customs and the use
of the Latin language in religious rites
 Ricci
also produced a remarkable map of
the world, the “Great Map of Ten
Thousand Countries,” which showed the
Chinese intelligentsia China’s geographical
relation to the rest of the world
 Ricci became a close friend of the
Confucian scholar Qu Taisu
 Ricci taught him the rudiments of
mathematics, receiving in return an
introduction into the circles of the
mandarins (high civil or military officials
of the Chinese empire) and of the
Confucian scholars
 Noting
that Ricci wore the habit of a
Buddhist monk (which he had adopted upon
entering China), Qu suggested that it would
be better to dress as a Chinese scholar, a
suggestion that Ricci followed immediately
 Eventually, the emperor allowed Ricci to
move to Beijing, and he dedicated the rest of
his life to its people, teaching them science
and preaching the gospel
 The
secret of Ricci’s success was his ability
to go beyond cultural barriers and befriend
men of other cultures
 His remark about his friend Feng Yingjing
brings out well the spirit of this great
missionary: “He treated the affairs of our
fathers as if they were his own and our
fathers in turn treated his as if they were
ours.”
 Yet
by the 1600s, the Ming
dynasty was in decline
 The late Ming rulers were weak
and allowed the government to
decentralize, then unravel
 In addition, the Portuguese and
Spanish traded with silver from
North and South America, and
the sudden, massive influx of
precious metal triggered
inflation (rising prices), then
economic breakdown
 At
the same time, agricultural yields shrank
(perhaps because of a worsening of soil
quality or a general cooling of the climate)
 And the population was growing more quickly
than the land’s ability to support it
 Finally,
revolution and war drove the Ming to
collapse
 Serious military threats came from Central
Asia, Mongolia, and Manchuria
 The cost of defending China’s long borders
drained the economy, leaving the country
open to attack
 A massive peasant revolt, which lasted from
1636 to 1644, toppled the Ming dynasty
 The last Ming emperor, Chung-cheng,
committed suicide, after first having tried to
kill his family
 But
the victory of the peasant
rebellion was short-lived
 Within a few weeks of Chungcheng’s death, enemies from
the north, the Manchus, swept
into northern China, took
Beijing, and established a new
dynasty, the Qing dynasty, the
last dynasty of China