World history pages: 456-465: Late Imperial China

Late Imperial China

China's last two dynasties were the Ming (1368-1644) and the Qing or Manchus (1644-1911). During this time, China developed a lot socially and politically. The population grew to 410 million, its cities got bigger and its business and trade increased.

The Chinese government used the Confucian style of bureaucracy. The people in the government were mainly from the gentry class. The gentry were a class of people who lived mostly in the towns. They owned land. They were supposed to represent the local people. They were almost like bureaucrats (officials) who worked under the local magistrates. During the time of the Manchus, China expanded its land to the east and annexed Taiwan. China also increased its trade with the West, especially Great Britain. However, this trade was carefully controlled by Chinese officials.

Late Imperial China: Ming (1368-1644) AND Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties

The Ming and the Qing dynasties were the last dynasties of China. The Ming was Chinese but the Qing was foreign (the Manchus). The two dynasties, however, were very similar in the way they ruled.

Land and People

In the mid-19th century, China's population reached 410 million people. This helped commerce to grow. Also, the educated upper classes became more important. There was also an increase in the food supply at this time.

We do not know why the population increased so much at this time. Did the death rate go down? If so,why? Or did the population grow because the Chinese developed new technology and ways of farming and this made it possible to feed more people?

The Ming-Qing Era was the longest period of good government in China's history. However, by the early 19th century the Chinese standard of living had started to go down. It was not easy for a country to have such a large, growing population.

China's Third Commercial Revolution

The early Ming emperors did not want China to have any contact with other countries – especially the West. They also encouraged developments in farming. They did not encourage industrialisation. They made sure the government had a monopoly on lots of types of business. This stopped people from being able to try new things. It was also not very good for the south-eastern coastal areas of China. This was because the government limited the amount of shipping and trade there. In the mid-16th century, trade started to grow again. This was because the population was increasing, farming methods were improving and the government was relaxing its controls on trade. This was the third time there had been a period of commercial growth in China (also called a 'commercial revolution'). It happened between 1500 and 1800. The first and second commercial revolutions had happened during the Han and Song dynasties. By the early nineteenth century, China was the most commercialized non-industrial country in the world.

One thing that helped to increase trade and business was imported silver. Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, silver came into China from Japan. From the 1570s, Spanish ships brought Mexican and Peruvian silver into China, too. In the 18th century, private banks opened in China. They were called Shaanxi banks. They helped business people transfer money and they gave merchants credit when they wanted to trade. This meant they could borrow money and pay it back to the bank when they had sold all their goods. These banks opened offices in Singapore, Japan and Russia. The imported silver and the possibility to borrow money from these banks helped China to develop commercially. It was the same situation in Europe.

Between 1500 and 1800, the size of towns increased. This was, however, in market towns. These towns were a link between local markets and the bigger towns and cities. Different regions or areas of China started to trade with each other but China still did not have a big national economy. Most of China's economic activity happened in seven or eight regional economies. However, there was a lot of trade between them all. A lot of this trade was made possible by transporting or moving the goods by boat.

Women and the Commercial Revolution

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, people still followed the ideas of Confucius. Women were expected to do what she was told by her parents, then her husband and finally her son (when he took over from his father as head of the family).Women in the upper classes and some others had their feet bound. A young girl would have her feet broken and then she would have to wear metal training shoes. Later, her feet would be tied very tightly. Her feet became deformed and she was only able to walk very slowly. The Chinese thought this was very good. It was called 'footbinding.' It meant that many women were not as physically free as men because they could not walk easily. Manchus, however, did not agree with footbinding. One Manchu (Qing) emperor passed a law which said that footbinding was not allowed. However, the Chinese ignored this law and continued to do it.

The population grew and the size of the average farm got smaller. More women started to work at home, making things to sell for the commercial markets. Women started to earn more money and they wanted to have more say or power in making family decisions.

Political System

There were big changes in the size of the population and in the economy in China at this time but there was very little change in the political system. Government during the Ming and Qing dynasties was very much the same as it had been before. The Ming and Qing system did have some strengths, though. These strengths were that

Role of Confucianism

The ideas of Confucius spread more and more in late imperial China. There were more schools, academies prepared people for the civil service exams and more and more people could read and write.

The Confucian idea of society was patriarchal. The family was the basic unit of society. The father was head of the family. The emperor was the 'son of Heaven' – the 'ruler-father.' He was at the very top of society. In between him and the ordinary family were the district or local magistrates the 'father-mother officials.' The idea was that the state was one big family. This meant that the state had lots of responsibilities and duties to the ordinary people.

In Europe at this time, religion was becoming less involved with the state and the Scientific Revolution was making people think again about their religious and political ideas. China, however, was much more united in these ideas. People shared more of the same ideas and beliefs.

Emperor

Ming – Qing emperors were more powerful than ever and made all important decisions. They were despots – they had total power. They had secret police. They had prisons where people could be tortured for doing something wrong – even something quite small. Even important officials could be punished in a cruel, often fatal way. However, even officials who were hurt or unfairly treated stayed loyal (true) to the emperor. This showed how strong their Confucian training was.

During the Qing dynasty, the emperor's power stayed as strong as ever but officials were better treated than they were in the days of the Ming dynasty. This was because the Qing were Manchus, foreign rulers, and they were careful not to make the Chinese officials hate them.

The Forbidden Palace was a symbol of the emperor's power. It had huge walls and courtyards which led to an audience hall. This is where the emperor would sit on a dais or small stage, above the officials. They would all kneel before him.

Behind the audience hall were the emperor's private rooms and his harem. By the 17th century, there were 9,000 ladies and about 70,000 eunuchs. The emperor would often give members of his family huge estates in Northern China.

Bureaucracy

Another part of the Ming-Qing system was the government itself. At the top were the military (the army), the law department and the administrative department. Beneath them were the six ministries and all the provincial, and district offices. The emperors spent more money on their governments than in earlier dynasties. In fact, as late as the 1580s, there was even money left over from government spending. This only changed in the last fifty years of the Ming. Then they had to spend a lot of money on the army and so the government went bankrupt. In the second half of the17th century, the Manchus brought back a strong government and managed to get a good tax system back again, close to the same level as the Ming's.

One of the reasons the Ming-Qing government was so good was that its officials were very good at their jobs. They also believed very strongly in the system and thought it was good. These officials had lots of power and prestige. When the Portuguese arrived in China in the early16th century, they called these officials 'mandarins.'

Everyone wanted to get a job as a government official. It was very difficult to pass the entrance exam to become an official. When the population grew and schools increased, there was even more competition to get these jobs. (See "The Seven Transformations of an Examination Candidate' below).

First, the candidate had an interview at the district office. After that, he took the county examination. If he passed, he became a member of the gentry and he didn't have to do state labour service. This was a system in which every adult male had to spend some time working for the state. The examination took years of study. About half a million men passed each year. The second stage was to pass the provincial examination. These were only held every three years. Only one in a hundred candidates passed these. The final examination was the metropolitan examination, also held every three years. Fewer than 90 candidates passed this every time it was held.

The Seven Transformations of an Examination Candidate [page 461]

The Chinese civil service examination was very difficult. A person needed a lot of physical and mental strength to take it. Chinese people used to say, 'To pass the exam, a man needs the spiritual strength of a dragon-horse, the physique of a donkey, the insensitivity of a wood louse, and the endurance of a camel.' The following passage is by a 17th century writer who never succeeded in passing the exam:

  • When he first enters the exam compound, and walks along panting under his heavy load of luggage, he looks just like a beggar.
  • Next he is body searched and scolded by clerks, shouted at by soldiers and he is just like a prisoner.
  • When he finally goes into the exam room with the other candidates, he stretches his neck to look out of the window, and he looks just like the larva of a bee.
  • When the examination is finished at last and he leaves, his mind is in a haze and his legs feel weak. He is just like a sick bird that has been let out of its cage.
  • While he is wondering when the results will be announced and waiting to see if he has passed or failed, he is very nervous. He is startled by any small noise, even the rustling of the trees or the grass. He cannot even sit or stand still. He is just like a monkey on a leash.
  • When at last the results announced and he finds out he has failed, he falls down on the ground like a dead person. He lies there, not moving, just like a poisoned fly.
  • Then when he gets control of himself again, he stands up. Almost every sight and sound makes him angry. He throws things around and complains that the examiners are idiots.
  • When he finally calms down, he sees that everything in the room is broken. At this time he is just like a pigeon, smashing its own eggs. These are the seven transformations of a candidate.

Gentry

A final part of the Ming-Qing system was the gentry class. Their place in society was below the elite bureaucracy and above the ordinary people in the village below. The lowest level of bureaucratic government was the district magistrate. The population increased by six times its size during the Ming-Qing dynasties but the number of district magistrates only increased from 1,170 to1,470. A district magistrate always came from outside the area he worked in. This was so that he was not too personally involved with the local people. His office compound had lots of secretaries and advisors. However, if he wanted to govern the area well, he had to get the support of the local gentry.

'Gentry' here does not mean a lot of rich landowners like in England. The Chinese 'gentry' lived mostly in the market towns or the biggest towns in the district. compound and educationally, the gentry were on the same level as the magistrates – much higher than clerks or village leaders.

They usually owned land which meant that they didn't have to do the actual farm labour. They could afford to send their children to private schools. Very often they were not in the area where they owned their land and they were not very good to the people who worked on their farms. However, they were also local leaders. They often represented| the local people and spoke to the bureaucracy for them. They also kept the local schools and Confucian temples in good condition and repaired roads, bridges, canals and dykes. The gentry class was the place where most of the officials came from. It was the class that made sure that people followed the ideas and beliefs of Confucius.

Pattern of Manchu Rule

The Ming dynasty ended in 1644. The Qing came to power. They were not Chinese, they were Manchus from Manchuria. It was not such a big change for the Chinese for two reasons. First, the changeover of power happened quickly. Secondly, the Manchus had already ruled over the Chinese living in Manchuria so they were used to the way that Chinese people lived.

In the late 16th century, a strong Manchurian leader brought the Manchurian tribes together and started a new dynasty with a Confucian government. When the Ming dynasty collapsed, the Manchurians seemed to be the people who could keep Confucian ideals going in China. The Chinese gentry preferred the Manchus to the Chinese rebel leaders. They seemed like criminals. After the Manchus took power, most officials worked for the new dynasty. The year the Qing dynasty began was 1644.

The Manchus were only a very small part of the population. They made sure they were an elite group. For example, their soldiers were paid well and were given lands to farm. They were not allowed to marry Chinese women, their children had to study Manchu and they were not allowed to the feet of their daughters (see 'footbinding' above). In 1688, northern and central Manchuria were closed to Chinese who wanted to go and live there. Another thing that the Manchu did to keep themselves separate from the Chinese was this: they had one Manchu man and one Chinese man for each important government job. This was so that the Manchu could oversee his Chinese colleague.

At the provincial level, Chinese governors were overseen by Manchu governor-generals. Most officials and all district magistrates beneath the governors were Chinese.

One strength of the Manchu dynasty was that it had two very good emperors who ruled for a long time. They were Kangxi (1661-1722) and Qianlong (1736-1795).

Kangxi was a man with a lot of energy. He used to get up very early to read important papers and then meet his officials. He was in charge of all the palace examinations. He had studied Confucian ideals and all the well-educated people supported him. Kangxi was also very interested in European science. He studied this with Jesuit astronomers who he had at his court.

He opened four ports to foreign trade. He improved the dykes on the Huai and Yellow Rivers and he dredged the Grand Canal. During his time as emperor, he visited all six of China's southern provinces six times. He was a very good emperor.

Qianlong began his reign in 1736. During his time as emperor, the Qing dynasty was its most successful and powerful.

Like Kangxi, he was energetic, clever, careful and hard-working. He visited South China, too. He also supported a lot of scholars.

In his last years as emperor, however, there was corruption in his court. In 1796, there was a rebellion. It was called the White Lotus Rebellion. The rebellion was stopped by the man who became the next emperor. However, this cost the empire a lot of money and it was never as rich as it had been before. Nevertheless, China started the 19th century with a strong government and a peaceful society. There no signs of the trouble that happened later.

Ming-Qing Foreign Relations

Ming

China expanded during the time of the first Ming Emperor. When he died China controlled the northern steppe and the southern provinces. Northern Vietnam became part of China during the reign of the third Ming emperor.

The Ming emperors kept control of China's borders by using a tribute system. The tribute system worked as follows: Ambassadors from the frontier vassals came close to the emperor with a kowtow and brought him gifts. The emperor then sent the vassals a seal allowing them to continue as kings, use the Chinese calendar, and have other privileges.

The furthest expeditions during the reign of the third Ming emperor were by sea to Southeast Asia, India and Africa. The purpose of these expeditions was not trade. The purpose was to let other places know about the importance of China, and to bring them into the tribute system described above.

These sea expeditions stopped suddenly. They had become too expensive at a time when China was fighting in Mongolia and building the capital city Beijing. Historians are surprised that China had the technology for exploration but chose to stop using it. China did not have the characteristics that motivated Portugal to explore the world; greed, curiosity, etc.

The most important threat to China were the Mongols. They were finally defeated by the Chinese army in the 1560s and signed a peace treaty in 1571.

The second threat to China came from Japan. Japanese pirates raided the Chinese coast in the 15th and 16th centuries. The cost of the fighting against the Japanese weakened the Ming dynasty.

Qing

The final and successful threat to the Ming dynasty were the Manchus, who came to power in 1644. In 1683 the Manchu emperor Kangxi suppressed revolts on the island of Taiwan, which became part of China for the first time.

As usual the main threats to China came from its northern and north-western borders, which were settled by Russian traders. In the 1680s China drove the Russians out of Northern Manchuria. The treaty of 1689 excluded Russia from the region.

The situation to the west of China was more complex, and involved relations with Russia, Western Mongols and Tibet. During this time China gained control of a huge amount of new land. Although China later became smaller, it still claims these lands to be hers. This is the reason for the tension that exists even today along the borders of China with Russia and the former Soviet republics. It is also the reason why China claims Tibet.

Contacts with the West

Some Europeans had reached China during the Tang and Yuan dynasties. But many more came as Europe began its exploration of the oceans in the 16th century. The most successful visitors were Jesuits. The Jesuits used their knowledge of astronomy, weapons, etc. to win entry to the Chinese court.

The Manchus allowed the Jesuits to stay when they came to power in 1644. The Jesuits opposed Buddhism and tried to spread Christianity. However, they did not try to suppress Confucianism, which they said was compatible with Christianity.

In 1715 the Pope, informed by Christian rivals of the Jesuits, stopped Chinese Christians from practising elements of Confucianism. In answer to this the Chinese emperor banned Christianity in China.

Not all Europeans came to China to spread religion. The Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, British and Americans all came in the next two centuries to trade.

By the early 18th century there were many restrictions on Western traders. However, both they and the Chinese with whom they traded made profits.

The British East India company opened trade routes between China, India and Britain. This lead to some Chinese becoming very rich. Britain tried to negotiate better trade conditions for itself, but China did not allow any changes in the restrictions.

Ming-Qing Culture

During the Ming and Qing dynasties China started to isolate itself from the rest of the world. This had advantages (such as the maintenance of social traditions) but also resulted in a weakness that became clear in the 19th century.

Chinese cultural influence on Europe from this period is best seen in the European pottery industry, which copied many Chinese products.

Chinese novels developed from plot-books. These were written in colloquial Chinese.

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