FREEMAN SEMINAR
TEACHING ABOUT EAST ASIA
THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICAL TO TRADITIONAL CHINA
GOALS:
To consider the decline of the T'ang, the Period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and the rise of the Sung Dynasty as reflective of a fundamental transition between the Classical and the Traditional eras in Chinese history.
THEMES:
Although particular factors new to the period contribute to the decline of the T'ang, the process also illustrates an example of "dynastic decline" at work as well.
The larger cycle evident in earlier periods of Chinese history is repeated in the Period of the Five Kingdoms and Ten Dynasties but the resulting disarray lasts but a "mere" seventy years, indicative of the growing resilience of the evolving Chinese political, economic, social, religious and cultural mix.
The institutional and cultural transition illustrated in the move from the late T'ang to the early Sung represents the emergence of the forms of the "traditional" configuration to remain current in Chinese history until the fall of the Ch'ing in 1911.
OBJECTIVES: Students should be able to
discuss differences and similarities present in the idealized dynastic cycle, the collapse of the earlier Han Dynasty and the declining years of the T'ang as illustrative of the power and impact of the concept of the dynastic cycle in the recounting of traditional Chinese history;
account for the relatively short-lived nature of the Period of Five Kingdoms and Ten Dynasties which follows the T'ang (when compared with earlier periods of political disarray);
describe and account for the transition from Classical to Traditional occuring during this time period and characterize the resulting cultural configuration.
I. The Political Transition: Late Tang to Sung
A. New peak of wealth, grandeur and cultural brilliance reached under Hsuan-tsung (712-756) but problems abounded: financial needs, an internal bureaucratic stuggle between aristocrats and scholars, taxation (equal field system distribution problems with increased population growth, the growth of permanent holdings and large manors, an increased per capita tax burden brining more transfers to large landlords or flight to avoid taxes; corvee decline; more, household and commercial taxes improvised; monopoly increase) and military (corvee decline affects militia; long term barbarian mercenaries replace peasant-soldiers; Regional Commanders, formerly Imperial Commissioners for military affairs, become civil / military governors in eight border regions in the north, Szechwan, Canton; many of foreign origin and not as interested in defense of the land.
B. Military setbacks in 751 (Nan-chao success; loss of Central Asia to Arabs) followed by internal revolt under An Lu-shan.
1. Adopted son of Yang Kuei-fei (imperial consort since 745) and favorite of Hsuan-tsung; a fat general.
2. Unsuccessful in wresting central government control from the brother of Yang Kuei-fei; revolt followed, lasting from 755 - 763.
a. captured and destroyed Loyang and Ch'ang-an.
b. caused Hsuan-tsung to flee to Szechwan.
c. brought death to Yang Kuei-fei and her brother in defeat.
C. Inevitable decline followed under weak central government, growth of Regional Commandaries as independent satrapies, increased power of eunuchs; population growth, famine, flood and eventual revolt follow (Double Tax reform).
D. The Period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-979)
1. Complete political breakdown; military confusion complete; but only lasted seventy years (not over 350 as under Six Dynasties) with underlying cultural continuity; by T'ang, China had become an indestructible political and cultural unit.
2. In the North, the Five Dynasties of Later Liang, Later T'ang, Later Chin, Later Han and Later Chou existed briefly under military leadership with underlying administrative and cultural continuity and stability.
3. In the South, the Ten Kingdoms of Wu, Wu Yueh, Ch'u, Early and Later Shu, Southern P'ing, Southern and Northern Han, Min and Southern T'ang existed under stable government through-out the period; cultural and economic growth evident.
4. On the borders, the Khitan (Mongols) developed a unified empire and staged incursions into North China.
II. Institutional and Cultural Transition: Late T'ang to Sung
A. Eighth century a period of change into forms of traditional current until the twentieth century, genrally obscured by domination of cyclical pattern and tendancy to read back into history present developmental emphasis.
B. The reunited, perfected classical empire was technologically advanced, more integrated, peaceful and stable on the basis of a profound shift in cultural and institutional forms and values allowing growth and a breakthrough to a new plateau which came to characterize "Unchanging China" until the impact of the West -- no periods of overt disunity and chaos, no sperate reunification period, no collapse under barbarian control.
C. Cultural and Institutional Changes: A Discussion
1. Questions for consideration:
a. Was civilian or military control paramount in Ancient China? (founder of Sung, last usurper)
b. Where was the new civilian control centered?
c. What happened to the aristocracy? On what basis was social and political dominance predicated in Traditional China? What ideal thus adopted?
d. What philosophies employed in Ancient China? Which came to dominate the traditional state?
e. What was the tax basis in Ancient Chinas? What shifts evident by end of T'ang?
f. Who lived in cities in early China? What new element can be expected at this tiem? What accompanies urbanization? (sophistication; secularization; a commercial and monetary economy)
g. In early China what characterized the position of women? Did this continue into traditional times?
SUNG CHINA
I. The Sung State
A. Chao K'uang-yin, Chinese general, usurped later Chou throne, named emperor by troops -- as T'ai-tsu, established Sung with capital at Kaifeng at the head of the Grand Canal system, reunited the majority of the empire and successfully resestablished civilian control of the political state:
1. Increased imperial control:
a. local governments and military placed under central control; bureaucracy subordinated to emperor; T'ang administrative forms strengthened or modified: councilors, censors; Secretariat - Chancellery, Bureau of Military Affairs, Board of Academicians; circuits established: fiscal, judicial, military and commodity.
b. Empress / consort families forbidden employment or business contacts with blood relatives or those related by marriage -- aristocratic control lost to autocratic - bureaucratic coalition.
c. financial control centralized and increased: Finance Commission given control over both treasury and accounts; land regestration, population census and taxation rolls; state monopolies -- Empire on strongest fiscal base ever.
2. Increased social mobility from use of the examination system:
a. a series of three examinations held once every three years; between one and ten percent at lowest level passed, ten percent at second level and nearly all following palace exam; several fields with chin-shih most prestigious; rank in final exam of utmost important -- entrance also possible by special examination, nomination, sale or transfer.
b. civil service appointments on basis of tenure, merit ranking, special exams (for special fields of expertise), examination ranking and official sponsorship (assuming responsibility for candidate's accomplishments or lack thereof).
3. Military subordinated by restricting power, forcing early retirement, replacing strongest with civilian officials, relocation to small, isolated commands or to the capital guards.
a. resulting weak military leadership and ingrained pacifist sentiments leads to general military weakness, tribute missions to Khitan Liao and Hsi Hsia (Tangut) and the utilization of "barbarians to fight barbarians" (Jurched alliance).
b. Foreign invasions by Tungusic Jurched following an alliance to defeat the Khitan Liao brings an end to the Northern Sung and the removal of the capital to Lin-an (modern Hangchow), the beginning of the Southern Sung and the founding of the barbarian Chin Dynasty in the north (with underlining cultural and economic continuity).
THE REFORMS OF WANG AN-SHIH AND NEO-CONFUCIANISM
GOALS:
To establish the reform model (as it emerged during the Sung dynasty under Wang An-shih) which came to be utilized through-out the remainder of traditional Chinese history in response to periods of dynastic decline.
To discuss the addition of cosmological and metaphysical elements transforming Confucianism into Neo-Confucianism during the course of the Sung, thus establishing the philosophical basis for "traditional" Chinese culture and civilization thereafter.
THEMES:
Paternalism, authoritarianism and "agriculturalism" characterize the nature of the specific political, economic, educational, agricultural, commercial and administrative programs associated with Wang An-shih's reform "package" as advanced in the Middle Sung.
Although defeated by a coalition of powerful establishment forces in the Sung, Wang An-shih's reform program became the model followed in all subsequent periods of attempted dynastic reform through-out the remainder of traditional Chinese history; some elements, in fact, were never abandoned.
Neo-Confucianism adds a concern with cosmology and metaphysics (thus coopting "universal" Buddhist principles in support of already-established Confucian norms) to a growing concern with the practical application of Confucian philosophy to the ethical governance of social, economic and political relationships.
By redefining Confucianism as a set of universally-applicable standard principles, Neo-Confucianism enables the Chinese to claim their cultural beliefs, patterns and institutions as the norms governing "civilized" behavior everywhere for all time; the emerging dominance of Neo-Confucian thought, however, also cuts off subsequent philosophical developments and eventually gives rise to rigid dogmatism, robbing Chinese "culturalism" of its resilience.
OBJECTIVES: Students should be able to
define the historical context giving rise to Wang An-shih's reform program in the Middle Sung;
characterize the basic premises on which Wang An-shih's reform package was based and the nature of the specific programs advanced in his attempt to forestall dynastic decline during the Middle Sung;
account for both the initial failure of Wang An-shih's reform program and its eventual emergence as the model for reform in traditional China;
describe the nature of the cosmological and metaphysical additions made to Confucian philosophical principles during the Sung;
discuss the consequences of the emergence of Neo-Confucianism on subsequent traditional Chinese culture and civilization.
I. Introduction: Traditional models for reform and philosophy established in the course of the Sung Dynasty.
II. Reform in Middle Sung
A. Dynastic decline in Northern Sung, revival of interest in the Confucian Classics and growing conflict between Traditionalists and Reformers mark the period of reform in the Middle Sung.
1. Traditionalists called for moral reform and better leadership through example, for return to "well-field" taxation system.
2. Reformers called for positive action in face of specific current problems (state revenue decline; usury; military weakness; land and examination reform need; an inefficient, wasteful and oppressive administration) in terms of specific political, economic, educational, agricultural, commercial and administrative reforms.
B. Wang An-shih, son of a new family from Kiangsu in the South, served as Chief Councilor under the sixth Emperor of the Northern Sung from 1069 - 1076 as a representative of the Reform faction: sincere, public-spirited, egotistical and assured of own correctness; aim: financial and military reform but in reality affected much greater area under personal philosophical conception of government paternalism, authoritarian control and concern for China's agricultural base (motivation similar to earlier Legalist Ch'in and Wang Mang reform efforts); influenced by Mencius, justified by Confucian Classics, but innovative.
1. Took control of Finance Commission functions:
a. instituted budgets with built-in surplus;
b. allowed local sale of taxes paid in kind to finance local government operations; soon expanded to program of government purchase, transport and resale of crops and products which served to guarantee markets, facilitate exchange, stabilize both prices and availability, and profit government;
c. instituted state trade monopolies and undertook attempts at price regulation.
2. Undertook new land survey, assessment of wealth; instituted graduated land taxes by productivity; wealth taxed in five grades; corvee abolished with state hiring labor directly from tax revenue.
3. Made government agricultural loans at 20%, established government pawnshops to curb usury; with water control projects, designed to insure peasant independence, payment of taxes and profit for the government.
4. Established pao-chia (ten families = one pao; five pao = one chia) mutual responsibility system to provide for militia (one man for frontier, one man for local defense from each chia), cavalry (horse and feed provided by government) and local control.
5. Instituted practical examinations, revised Classics, opened government schools to widen chances for education and increase administrative ability, applicant pool.
C. Opposition to Wang An-shih's reforms:
1. Conservative Confucianists questioned efficacy of administrative over moral reform; disliked return to Ch'in Legalism, challenge to Confucian primacy.
2. Career administrators unable and unwilling to reform, indicative of underlying inertia and inflexibility of bureaucratic system; mismanaged and sabotaged Wang's programs.
3. Large landowners upset at further decline in status and economic privilege.
4. Wealthy merchants, particularly those involved in moneylending, incensed at curbs on freedom and intrusion of government into commercial activity.
D. The fate of Wang An-shih's reforms:
1. unsuccessful but not failures because of inability, unwillingness to give them a fair trial;
2. aided peasants but injurious to those who held power; supported more by South than North (where large land holdings were more the rule);
3. castigated by traditional historians, adored by Socialists but basically concerned with current problems not long range effects;
4. reforms revived continually by Reformers through-out the remainder of the Sung and occasionally thereafter: the model for reform in traditional China;
5. state paternalism never disavowed: care of aged, burial for poor, orphanages, medicine shops and restaurants and taverns for state revenue.
III. Neo-Confucianism:
A. Arose in an era newly concerned with the past, idealization of history, urge to reform the present; growing anti-foreignism (anti-Buddhism).
B. Addition to Confucian philosophy and religion of (Buddhist-like) concern with cosmology, metaphysics:
1. the Supreme Ultimate: the fundamental underlying principle of form; a moral force discovered in an obscure passage in the I Ching; representative of a move away from an anthropomorphic concern with Shang-ti to a more abstract underlying philosophical set of principles and concerns.
a. expressed in (traditional Chinese) terms of the Five Elements and of yin-yang.
b. expressed in (Buddhist) precise diagrammatic mantra-like formulation.
2. li: individualized expressions of the Supreme Ultimate, like "reflections of the moon in a thousand streams;" good and pure principle; origin point for the Five Virtues (love, uprightness, propriety, knowledge, reliability).
3. chi: material force or matter; the expression of li through chi is "human nature;" chi hides li as "dust obscures a mirror."
4. through education and, particularly, self-cultivation, enlightenment concerning one's li is possible; the distortion of li corrected by sincerity and reverence.
C. Practical ethical, social and political applications stressed.
1. The five relationships, the centrality of the family, benevolent paternal rule by a virtuous and exemplary Emperor over a state family still emphasized.
2. Renewed emphasis on ruler's sincerity; reverence for the past; for knowledge, the bureaucratic ideal and "the investigation of things".
3. Development of moral authority for the universe, no longer just for government and society.
D. Chu Hsi (1130-1200): synthesis into a clear, coherent whole; a rational, traditional intellectual whose work (the Four Classics) accepted as orthodox in education and the examination system by 1313, cutting off subsequent philosophical development and giving rise to rigid dogmatism.
IV. Conclusion: The characteristics of traditional reform and the influence of neo-Confucianism on traditional China after the Sung; the transition (from Classical to Traditional China) completed.
BARBARIAN DYNASTIES IN CHINA
GOALS:
To discuss the nature (and consequences) of political, military and cultural interaction between the Chinese and their non-Chinese "barbarian" neighbors to the north and west.
THEMES:
Nomadic cultures on China's northern and western borders have been an influencing factor in Chinese history since at least the Han dynasty.
Over the centuries barbarian interactions with the Chinese came to be governed by a firmly established set of mutual expectations based on pragmatic readings of "reality", eventually leading to two dynastic periods in Chinese history actively controlled by barbarian outsiders (the Mongol Yuan dynasty and the Manchu Ch'ing).
The pastoral "steppe efficiency" gave rise to a distinctly "non-Chinese" nomadic cultural response among those seeking survival within its purview, one eventually granting to its practitioners military superiority over the neighboring Chinese; coupled with the emergence of large scale political organization and basic sinification (and accompanied by growing military weakness among the increasingly pacifist Chinese), these strengths permitted periods of external conquest and "barbarian" political control over all or parts of China proper.
The ability of Chinese "culturalism" to absorb barbarian threats, even barbarian conquest, led to a sense of cultural invulnerability and ethnocentric chauvanism as well as an increasingly ingrained concern with maintainance of the cultural status quo.
OBJECTIVES: Students should be able to
discuss the nature of pre-Mongol political, military and cultural interaction between the Chinese and neighboring pastorialists;
explain the circumstances leading to the establishment of two barbarian-controlled dynastic periods in traditional Chinese history;
contrast the evolving cultural style of the "steppe efficiency" with that of neighboring Chinese culture and civilization and account for the ability of these "outsiders" eventually to conquer and rule the Middle Kingdom;
detail the pattern of barbarian conquest established by the Mongols during the Yuan and account for both successes and failures experienced;
deliniate consequences and lessons learned by the Chinese as a result of the Mongol "experience".
I. Introduction: Barbarians as a Force in Traditional Chinese History:
A. Hsiung-nu (the Huns) in the Han Dynasty; T'u-chueh (the Turks) in the Period of the Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties.
B. Khitan (Liao Dynasty, 947-1125), Tanguts (Hsi Hsia Dynasty, 1038-1227) and Jurched (Chin Dynasty, 1122-1234) in the Sung Dynasty.
C. Mongols in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and the Manchus in the Ch'ing (1644-1911) as barbarian rulers in China proper.
II. The Culture and Society of the Barbarian Steppe:
A. A distinct physiographic region characterized by vast steppe lands, volcanic plateau, deserts leading to development of pastorial "steppe efficiency," an appropriate technological response to the surrounding environment.
B. A Nomadic cultural style:
1. Outdoor, independent, self-reliant, unspecialized herdsmen (sheep, horses; some camels, oxen), hunters, gatherers, warriors + trade (for grain, metal, tea, textiles).
2. Characterized by seasonal mobility, economic instability, poverty; no cities, little higher culture; shamanistic medicine man religion; tribal political and social organization under young, strong, military leadership with personal loyalty base.
3. Superior, easily mobilized military (between 400 and 1400, the best military organization in the world); knew use of both iron stirrup and composite bow.
4. Interaction and instability marked border relations; walled out but a threat to bordering sedentary populations only when organized and unified; often placated with "tribute" in material goods and wives; used as military allies by disaffected Chinese scholar-bureaucrats; bordering populations absorbed aspects of Chinese political and cultural organization; later successes in China proper assured when underlying sinification coupled with Chinese allies and Chinese administrative organization.
IV. The Pattern of Barbarian Conquest.
A. As established prior to the Mongols:
1. Cavalry invasion is a period of dynastic instability and disorder establishing territorial control within the Great Wall.
2. Need for Chinese advice and guidance in governing a sedentary agricultural population (recognizing impossibility of imposition otherwise), absorption of Chinese military units leads to tolerance of local Chinese leadership and of Chinese customs and culture.
3. Need to maintain separate identity (for continued control without absorption risk) leads to reliance on supervisory roles in administration, build up of military reserves (including Chinese troops), widespread utilization of other (trusted) foreigners, maintenance of homeland beyond the Great Wall.
4. Passage of time, however, sees increase in acceptance of borrowed Chinese customs, titles and institutional forms, intermarriage; sedentary lifestyle and need to maintain centralized administrative control brings decline in military strength basic to control maintenance; end result: absorption or expulsion.
B. Under the Mongols:
1. Chinggis Khan, having unified the hunters, fishermen and mounted warriors of the steppes into a single Mongol force and having organized them militarily (into a cavalry employing "flying horse" tactic of turning back on pursuers and "weak middle" battlefield maneuver plus excellent communications, spies and terror), attacks and subdues "sedentary" barbarian dynasties established by Khitan (the Liao), Tangut (the Hsi Hsia) and Jurched (the Chin) on Sung borders.
2. His sons and grandson, Khubilai Khan, complete the process, overrunning not only the Southern Sung but much of Central and West Asia as well.
3. Khubilai Khan as the emperor Shih Tsu then founds the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) with its capital at Cambaluc (first use of site of modern Beijing / Peking), thus establishing the first barbarian rule of the entirety of the Chinese empire ever attempted.
a. A system of dual administration established to make possible Mongol control: Mongols or non-Chinese (Moslems or Westerners) placed in key positions according to a criteria of trust (Mongols, Westerners, Northern Chinese, Southern Chinese) but use of Chinese political institutions and scholar-bureaucratic aid continued; Mongolian used by royal family but Chinese, elsewhere.
b. Expansionism continues, bringing Mongol attacks on Southeast Asia and Japan (two attempts in 1274 and 1281 against Japan; however, both fail).
c. Religious toleration practiced (Lamanism, Islam, Nestorian Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism) restricting Confucian influence; paper money widely used; international contacts increase (Marco Polo).
d. Cultural advances in drama (Chinese opera) and the novel (All Men Are Brothers, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, [later, Golden Lotus and Dream of the Red Chamber / The Story of the Stone]).
3. Attempts to maintain feudal, patriarchal, polygamous clan and tribal organization with differing customs (clothing, sexual equality, milk products, seldom bathed) and culture (language, alphabet and law codes) in a strange and hostile environment, however, failed: Mongols eventually absorbed into Chinese cultural style following established pattern.
V. Conclusion: Attitudes Fostered by Barbarian Contact and Barbarian Rule.
A. Contact confirmed feelings of political and cultural superiority: seen in tribute system; no outsider seen as equal; "Chinese" increasingly equated with "civilized";
B. Barbarian rule led to confidence in ability to absorb or expel plus a reactionary stress in Ming on military strength, orthodoxy and lessening tolerance of criticism.
C Result: chauvinistic ethnocentric culturalism firmly established. [Question of later reaction to arrival of Western barbarians.]
MING CHINA: THE LAST "CHINESE" DYNASTY
I. INTRODUCTION: Traditional China from the Yuan through the Ch'ing is marked by a remarkable degree of stability, unlike the dynamism characteristic of Europe during the same centuries. This is due (during the Ming) not only to the Confucian orientation towards the past but is also in part to the fear of renewed barbarian control and the fact that the only acceptable model for the Ming lies in the Sung. The result is an increasingly ethnocentric, antiquarian, introspective stress on the preservation of culturalism and political cohesion at all costs.
II. The Fall of the Yuan
A. Internal fratricidal rivalry within the court brings military decline and rise of eunuch control.
B. Huang Ho floods bring economic havoc and indicate loss of Mandate of Heaven.
C. Local uprisings with secret society support justify position through claims of descent from Sung emperors, prophesies of Maitreya's advent, desire to avenge misrule and to oust the "barbarians".
II. The Rise of the Ming
A. Chu Yuan-chang:
1. an illiterate peasant sold by his parents to a monastery during a famine; as a Buddhist novice exposed to education; a runaway who becomes a bandit in southeastern China (perhaps a member of the White Lotus Society) and gains control of South China by 1356.
2. as T'ai-tsu ("Grand Progenitor"), founds Ming in 1368 with capital in south at Nanking; adopted year period name Hung Wu ("Vast Military Power") which remained unchanged through-out reign, establishing precedent maintained subsequently and giving rise to custom of historical notation as the Hung Wu Emperor.
B. Yung Lo as second emperor ousted nephew (Hung Wu's grandson) and moved capital to Peking (and the Forbidden City, first constructed at this time), his stronghold, (close to barbarian areas, isolated and exposed) where it has remained since (in official records).
III. The Organization of the (Despotic) State Under the Ming:
A. The Emperor, as the Son of Heaven, ruled under authority granted by Mandate of Heaven, aided by Inner Court: the Grand Secretaries (no Prime Minister or Imperial Secretariat, however) and eunuchs who controlled access to the throne and carried out imperial instructions.
B. The Outer Court: the military, administrative and censorate bureaucracies (some 20,000 scholar-bureaucrats in total) extended through provinces (15), prefectures (159) and subprefectures (234) to the level of the hsien (1171); each level divided into military, administrative and judicial functions (a provincial administrator, judicial commissioner and military commander) assigned under the Law of Avoidance and checked by censors (110); extended by li-chia system (10 families plus a gentry family = li; 110 li = 1 chia with pao-chia continued for mutual responsibility as well) to local population.
C. Economic support dependent on state monopolies (salt and tea) and system of taxation (grain, silver ingots, silk; labor; state service) based on periodic cadestral and population surveys.
D. Philosophical support from Neo-Confucianism (education and the examination system).
E. Tensions: between emperor and bureaucrats; between upper and lower administrators; between local systems and the national state; within the censorate; between military and civilian authority with growth of Manchu threat.
V. International Contacts
A. Handled successfully through the Tribute System until the arrival of the Jesuits and a variety of European trading interests in the dynasty's concluding years (even then Western advances are successfully rejected).
B. Maritime Expeditions (7) sent out during Yung Lo's reign under Cheng Ho (Muslim eunuch) between 1405 and 1433 to Persian Gulf and the East Coast of Africa (seen as costly and unproductive; met with indifference).
IV. Conclusion: The above illustrates the degree of stability present within the traditional Chinese political (and social) order by the beginning of the Ming Dynasty and leads to several observations:
A. This stability contributed to a slowing of the pace of growth and change in China after the fourteenth century:
1. Centuries of cultural continuity had permitted close attention to all facets of the ongoing system in China; every aspect has been subjected to continual refinement, incongruities had been eliminated, internal control systems had been developed and continuities assured; by the Ming, the overall goal -- that of preventing total disintegration in times of stress -- had been achieved; all the various factors involved -- social, political, economic, philosophical, cultural -- had come together; the system had become a single finely-tuned, well-oiled entity capable of a remarkable degree of self-preservation: as the Mongols had demonstrated, even "barbarians" seemed incapable of destroying it -- quite naturally a sense of complacency set in; to many Imperial China came to seem not only the source of all true civilization but perfection itself.
2. Gradually the impulse to grow and change was replaced by a concern with the preservation of the status quo and the emergence of "Unchanging China", a concern and a conception unchallenged until the arrival of the modernizing West in the nineteenth century; by then China would have become too rigid, too conservative, too convinced of her own innate superiority to respond effectively.
B. As the last Chinese dynasty, the Ming is subsequently seen (by the Chinese themselves) as a period of restoration, embellishment and development of the "true" Chinese Confucian cultural tradition (one which it chose not to alter despite the fact that its models in turn were Sung, not Yuan), thus introducing a considerable time lag which further exacerbated the situation
CH'ING CHINA: AN INTRODUCTION
I. The Decline of the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644)
A. The Ming Dynasty restored, embellished and developed the Chinese Confucian cultural tradition after retrieving the empire from the Mongols (but did not seek to alter their inheritance from the Sung).
B. The decline characteristic of the dynastic cycle set in following the rule of Wan Li (1573-1620).
1. Weak and uninformed rulers; corruption and vast expenditures (tombs), a war with Japan fought in Korea (1592); fiscal crisis brings higher taxes; growing eunuch power plus growing power of empresses' families bring factionalism to the Inner Court; famine and flood result, interpreted as loss of Mandate of Heaven and encouraging rebellion (Chang Hsien-chung in South; Li Tzu-ch'eng in North).
2. Li Tzu-ch'eng from Shensi (NW) into Shansi (1631), Honan (1640) and Peking (1644) bringing death by hanging to last Ming emperor and the founding of the Shun Dynasty; still faced rival claimants, however, and proved unable to consolidate position (secret society rebellion and remnants of Ming in South, particularly); sought support from Wu San-kuei (Ming general).
3. Wu San-kuei, an ambitious man himself and smarting from the abduction of a favorite concubine by Li, threw his support instead to the Manchu (a horse-riding nomad group from Manchuria with a steppe cultural background), forming a military alliance and agreeing to recognize a Manchu emperor; Manchu control of all China established by 1683 with capture of last Ming stronghold on Taiwan.
II. The Whys Behind Manchu Successes as Chinese Traditional Rulers in the Ch'ing Dynasty (1644-1912)
A. Manchuria part of the Han empire, lying enroute to Korea; from same racial stock (Jurched) providing Chin (1122-1234) leadership during the Sung meant basic sinification.
B. Earlier unification: Nurahachi (1559-1626) founded the Manchu state, uniting four main tribes into Banners (yellow, white, blue and red with red or white borders + eight Mongol + eight Chinese groups = 169,000, less than half Manchu), using Mongolian script variation, Chinese officials and Confucian doctrines -- grated control of Liaotung and used during Ming to aid in control of other inner barbarians.
C. Military superiority: made imposition of rule easy with assurance of control; shown in later expansion into Taiwan, Tibet and Central Asia placing administrative control of the Chinese state at its greatest extent in history.
D. Willingly adopted (and adapted) administrative procedures and doctrinaire support used in the Ming and chose to interfere little at the local level:
1. Appointed a Manchu Emperor in the Confucian manner; chose initially to be called Ch'in after earlier dynasty (for Chinese approval) but, when informed Ch'in "gold" overcome by Ming "fire," assumed Ch'ing (using water radical).
2. Filtered administration through an Inner Court (Grand Secretaries, eunuchs and a Grand Council after 1729); staffed bureaucracy with half Manchu and half Chinese; had all documents translated from Chinese into Manchu.
3. Limited supervisorary role to top level posts and military functions, even establishing Green Standard forces of Chinese to maintain local order; organized society below the hsien using both pao-chia (10 families = p'ai; 10 p'ai = chia; 10 chia = pao) and li-chia (10 families + 1 gentry family times 10) systems.
E. Maintained administrative and cultural separation:
1. Manchu restricted to military or high official positions;
2. Homeland maintained in Manchuria, administered by Banner, ruled by indigenous nobility;
3. Sumptuary laws forbade intermarriage, adoption of Chinese customs or dress and provided that Chinese wear queue.
F. Cultural as well as political leadership provided by strong Manchu Emperors.
1. K'ang-hsi (1661-1722): third son of first emperor, warrior, administrator and politician; expanded empire, opened contact with Russia, maintained Jesuit influence, concerned with canals and grain storage, traveled extensively; intelligent, understanding, lenient, diligent, conscientious, active, frugal; "be filial and respect the social relationships; be frugal and diligent; esteem scholarship and eschew unorthodoxy; be law abiding and pay taxes."
2. Ch'ien-lung (1736-1795): K'ang-hsi's grandson; expanded the state to greatest extent ever, himself widely traveled; regarded as a true Confucian emperor for resigning so as not to outrule his grandfather.
III. The Manchu were inheritors of Chinese cultural tradition; they were culturally conservative in proving their right to rule China as outsiders; they continued relatively unchanged the stability in the political and social order brought into being by the Ming; under strong early rulers the Ch'ing thus represents the zenith of traditional Chinese culture but the nadir was close behind as the military became useless drones, as corruption increased under weak rulers, as the population grew and discontent increased, as intellectual stagnation crept in by the middle of the nineteenth century and as the challenge of the West loomed ever larger on the horizon.