A History of China
by
Wolfram Eberhard

Part 6 out of 9



the Han dynasty; the second founded the first of the so-called "Five
Dynasties" in the tenth century; Chu was the third.

Not until the Mongols had answered Chu's rising with a tightening of the
nationality laws did the revolutionary movement become a national
movement, directed against the foreigners as such. And only when Chu
came under the influence of the first people of the gentry who joined
him, whether voluntarily or perforce, did what had been a revolutionary
movement become a struggle for the substitution of one dynasty for
another without interfering with the existing social system. Both these
points were of the utmost importance to the whole development of the
Ming epoch.

The Mongols were driven out fairly quickly and without great difficulty.
The Chinese drew from the ease of their success a sense of superiority
and a clear feeling of nationalism. This feeling should not be
confounded with the very old feeling of Chinese as a culturally superior
group according to which, at least in theory though rarely in practice,
every person who assimilated Chinese cultural values and traits was a
"Chinese". The roots of nationalism seem to lie in the Southern Sung
period, growing up in the course of contacts with the Juchen and
Mongols; but the discriminatory laws of the Mongols greatly fostered
this feeling. From now on, it was regarded a shame to serve a foreigner
as official, even if he was a ruler of China.

2 _Wars against Mongols and Japanese_

It had been easy to drive the Mongols out of China, but they were never
really beaten in their own country. On the contrary, they seem to have
regained strength after their withdrawal from China: they reorganized
themselves and were soon capable of counter-thrusts, while Chinese
offensives had as a rule very little success, and at all events no
decisive success. In the course of time, however, the Chinese gained a
certain influence over Turkestan, but it was never absolute, always
challenged. After the Mongol empire had fallen to pieces, small states
came into existence in Turkestan, for a long time with varying fortunes;
the most important one during the Ming epoch was that of Hami, until in
1473 it was occupied by the city-state of Turfan. At this time China
actively intervened in the policy of Turkestan in a number of combats
with the Mongols. As the situation changed from time to time, these
city-states united more or less closely with China or fell away from her
altogether. In this period, however, Turkestan was of no military or
economic importance to China.

In the time of the Ming there also began in the east and south the
plague of Japanese piracy. Japanese contacts with the coastal provinces
of China (Kiangsu, Chekiang and Fukien) had a very long history:
pilgrims from Japan often went to these places in order to study
Buddhism in the famous monasteries of Central China; businessmen sold at
high prices Japanese swords and other Japanese products here and bought
Chinese products; they also tried to get Chinese copper coins which had
a higher value in Japan. Chinese merchants co-operated with Japanese
merchants and also with pirates in the guise of merchants. Some Chinese
who were or felt persecuted by the government, became pirates
themselves. This trade-piracy had started already at the end of the Sung
dynasty, when Japanese navigation had become superior to Korean shipping
which had in earlier times dominated the eastern seaboard. These
conditions may even have been one of the reasons why the Mongols tried
to subdue Japan. As early as 1387 the Chinese had to begin the building
of fortifications along the eastern and southern coasts of the country;
The Japanese attacks now often took the character of organized raids: a
small, fast-sailing flotilla would land in a bay, as far as possible
without attracting notice; the soldiers would march against the nearest
town, generally overcoming it, looting, and withdrawing. The defensive
measures adopted from time to time during the Ming epoch were of little
avail, as it was impossible effectively to garrison the whole coast.
Some of the coastal settlements were transferred inland, to prevent the
Chinese from co-operating with the Japanese, and to give the Japanese so
long a march inland as to allow time for defensive measures. The
Japanese pirates prevented the creation of a Chinese navy in this period
by their continual threats to the coastal cities in which the shipyards
lay. Not until much later, at a time of unrest in Japan in 1467, was
there any peace from the Japanese pirates.

The Japanese attacks were especially embarrassing for the Chinese
government for one other reason. Large armies had to be kept all along
China's northern border, from Manchuria to Central Asia. Food supplies
could not be collected in north China which did not have enough
surplusses. Canal transportation from Central China was not reliable, as
the canals did not always have enough water and were often clogged by
hundreds of ships. And even if canals were used, grain still had to be
transported by land from the end of the canals to the frontier. The Ming
government therefore, had organized an overseas flotilla of grain ships
which brought grain from Central China directly to the front in
Liao-tung and Manchuria. And these ships, vitally important, were so
often attacked by the pirates, that this plan later had to be given up
again.

These activities along the coast led the Chinese to the belief that
basically all foreigners who came by ships were "barbarians"; when
towards the end of the Ming epoch the Japanese were replaced by
Europeans who did not behave much differently and were also
pirate-merchants, the nations of Western Europe, too, were regarded as
"barbarians" and were looked upon with great suspicion. On the other
side, continental powers, even if they were enemies, had long been
regarded as "states", sometimes even as equals. Therefore, when at a
much later time the Chinese came into contact with Russians, their
attitude towards them was similar to that which they had taken towards
other Asian continental powers.

3 _Social legislation within the existing order_

At the time when Chu Yuean-chang conquered Peking, in 1368, becoming the
recognized emperor of China (Ming dynasty), it seemed as though he would
remain a revolutionary in spite of everything. His first laws were
directed against the rich. Many of the rich were compelled to migrate to
the capital, Nanking, thus losing their land and the power based on it.
Land was redistributed among poor peasants; new land registers were also
compiled, in order to prevent the rich from evading taxation. The number
of monks living in idleness was cut down and precisely determined; the
possessions of the temples were reduced, land exempted from taxation
being thus made taxable--all this, incidentally, although Chu had
himself been a monk! These laws might have paved the way to social
harmony and removed the worst of the poverty of the Mongol epoch. But
all this was frustrated in the very first years of Chu's reign. The laws
were only half carried into effect or not at all, especially in the
hinterland of the present Shanghai. That region had been conquered by
Chu at the very beginning of the Ming epoch; in it lived the wealthy
landowners who had already been paying the bulk of the taxes under the
Mongols. The emperor depended on this wealthy class for the financing of
his great armies, and so could not be too hard on it.

Chu Yuean-chang and his entourage were also unable to free themselves
from some of the ideas of the Mongol epoch. Neither Chu, nor anybody
else before and long after him discussed the possibility of a form of
government other than that of a monarchy. The first ever to discuss this
question, although very timidly, was Huang Tsung-hsi (1610-1695), at the
end of the Ming dynasty. Chu's conception of an emperor was that of an
absolute monarch, master over life and death of his subjects; it was
formed by the Mongol emperors with their magnificence and the huge
expenditure of their life in Peking; Chu was oblivious of the fact that
Peking had been the capital of a vast empire embracing almost the whole
of Asia, and expenses could well be higher than for a capital only of
China. It did not occur to Chu and his supporters that they could have
done without imperial state and splendour; on the contrary, they felt
compelled to display it. At first Chu personally showed no excessive
signs of this tendency, though they emerged later; but he conferred
great land grants on all his relatives, friends, and supporters; he
would give to a single person land sufficient for 20,000 peasant
families; he ordered the payment of state pensions to members of the
imperial family, just as the Mongols had done, and the total of these
pension payments was often higher than the revenue of the region
involved. For the capital alone over eight million _shih_ of grain had
to be provided in payment of pensions--that is to say, more than 160,000
tons! These pension payments were in themselves a heavy burden on the
state; not only that, but they formed a difficult transport problem! We
have no close figure of the total population at the beginning of the
Ming epoch; about 1500 it is estimated to have been 53,280,000, and this
population had to provide some 266,000,000 _shih_ in taxes. At the
beginning of the Ming epoch the population and revenue must, however,
have been smaller.

The laws against the merchants and the restrictions under which the
craftsmen worked, remained essentially as they had been under the Sung,
but now the remaining foreign merchants of Mongol time also fell under
these laws, and their influence quickly diminished. All craftsmen, a
total of some 300,000 men with families, were still registered and had
to serve the government in the capital for three months once every three
years; others had to serve ten days per month, if they lived close by.
They were a hereditary caste as were the professional soldiers, and not
allowed to change their occupation except by special imperial
permission. When a craftsman or soldier died, another family member had
to replace him; therefore, families of craftsmen were not allowed to
separate into small nuclear families, in which there might not always be
a suitable male. Yet, in an empire as large as that of the Ming, this
system did not work too well: craftsmen lost too much time in travelling
and often succeeded in running away while travelling. Therefore, from
1505 on, they had to pay a tax instead of working for the government,
and from then on the craftsmen became relatively free.

4 _Colonization and agricultural developments_

As already mentioned, the Ming had to keep a large army along the
northern frontiers. But they also had to keep armies in south China,
especially in Yuennan. Here, the Mongol invasions of Burma and Thailand
had brought unrest among the tribes, especially the Shan. The Ming did
not hold Burma but kept it in a loose dependency as "tributary nation".
In order to supply armies so far away from all agricultural surplus
centres, the Ming resorted to the old system of "military colonies"
which seems to have been invented in the second century B.C. and is
still used even today (in Sinkiang). Soldiers were settled in camps
called _ying_, and therefore there are so many place names ending with
_ying_ in the outlying areas of China. They worked as state farmers and
accumulated surplusses which were used in case of war in which these
same farmers turned soldiers again. Many criminals were sent to these
state farms, too. This system, especially in south China, transformed
territories formerly inhabited by native tribes or uninhabited, into
solidly Chinese areas. In addition to these military colonies, a steady
stream of settlers from Central China and the coast continued to move
into Kwangtung and Hunan provinces. They felt protected by the army
against attacks by natives. Yet Ming texts are full of reports on major
and minor clashes with the natives, from Kiangsi and Fukien to Kwangtung
and Kwangsi.

But the production of military colonies was still not enough to feed the
armies, and the government in Chu's time resorted to a new design. It
promised to give merchants who transported grain from Central China to
the borders, government salt certificates. Upon the receipt, the
merchants could acquire a certain amount of salt and sell it with high
profits. Soon, these merchants began to invest some of their capital in
local land which was naturally cheap. They then attracted farmers from
their home countries as tenants. The rent of the tenants, paid in form
of grain, was then sold to the army, and the merchant's gains
increased. Tenants could easily be found: the density of population in
the Yangtze plains had further increased since the Sung time. This
system of merchant colonization did not last long, because soon, in
order to curb the profits of the merchants, money was given instead of
salt certificates, and the merchants lost interest in grain transports.
Thus, grain prices along the frontiers rose and the effectiveness of the
armies was diminished.

Although the history of Chinese agriculture is as yet only partially
known, a number of changes in this field, which began to show up from
Sung time on, seem to have produced an "agricultural revolution" in Ming
time. We have already mentioned the Sung attempts to increase production
near the big cities by deep-lying fields, cultivation on and in lakes.
At the same time, there was an increase in cultivation of mountain
slopes by terracing and by distributing water over the terraces in
balanced systems. New irrigation machines, especially the so-called
Persian wheel, were introduced in the Ming time. Perhaps the most
important innovation, however, was the introduction of rice from
Indo-China's kingdom Champa in 1012 into Fukien from where it soon
spread. This rice had three advantages over ordinary Chinese rice: it
was drought-resistant and could, therefore, be planted in areas with
poor or even no irrigation. It had a great productivity, and it could be
sown very early in the year. At first it had the disadvantage that it
had a vegetation period of a hundred days. But soon, the Chinese
developed a quick-growing Champa rice, and the speediest varieties took
only sixty days from transplantation into the fields to the harvest.
This made it possible to grow two rice harvests instead of only one and
more than doubled the production. Rice varieties which grew again after
being cut and produced a second, but very much smaller harvest,
disappeared from now on. Furthermore, fish were kept in the ricefields
and produced not only food for the farmers but also fertilized the
fields, so that continuous cultivation of ricefields without any
decrease in fertility became possible. Incidentally, fish control the
malaria mosquitoes; although the Chinese did not know this fact, large
areas in South China which had formerly been avoided by Chinese because
of malaria, gradually became inhabitable.

The importance of alternating crops was also discovered and from now on,
the old system of fallow cultivation was given up and continuous
cultivation with, in some areas, even more than one harvest per field
per year, was introduced even in wheat-growing areas. Considering that
under the fallow system from one half to one third of all fields
remained uncultivated each year, the increase in production under the
new system must have been tremendous. We believe that the population
revolution which in China started about 1550, was the result of this
earlier agrarian revolution. From the eighteenth century on we get
reports on depletion of fields due to wrong application of the new
system.

Another plant deeply affected Chinese agriculture: cotton. It is often
forgotten that, from very early times, the Chinese in the south had used
kapok and similar fibres, and that the cocoons of different kinds of
worms had been used for silk. Real cotton probably came from Bengal over
South-East Asia first to the coastal provinces of China and spread
quickly into Fukien and Kwangtung in Sung time.

On the other side, cotton reached China through Central Asia, and
already in the thirteenth century we find it in Shensi in north-western
China. Farmers in the north could in many places grow cotton in summer
and wheat in winter, and cotton was a high-priced product. They ginned
the cotton with iron rods; a mechanical cotton gin was introduced not
until later. The raw cotton was sold to merchants who transported it
into the industrial centre of the time, the Yangtze valley, and who
re-exported cotton cloth to the north. Raw cotton, loosened by the
string of the bow (a method which was known since Sung), could now in
the north also be used for quilts and padded winter garments.

5 _Commercial and industrial developments_

Intensivation and modernization of agriculture led to strong population
increases especially in the Yangtze valley from Sung time on. Thus, in
this area commerce and industry also developed most quickly.
Urbanization was greatest here. Nanking, the new Ming capital, grew
tremendously because of the presence of the court and administration,
and even when later the capital was moved, Nanking continued to remain
the cultural capital of China. The urban population needed textiles and
food. From Ming time on, fashions changed quickly as soon as government
regulations which determined colour and material of the dress of each
social class were relaxed or as soon as they could be circumvented by
bribery or ingenious devices. Now, only factories could produce the
amounts which the consumers wanted. We hear of many men who started out
with one loom and later ended up with over forty looms, employing many
weavers. Shanghai began to emerge as a centre of cotton cloth
production. A system of middle-men developed who bought raw cotton and
raw silk from the producers and sold it to factories.

Consumption in the Yangtze cities raised the value of the land around
the cities. The small farmers who were squeezed out, migrated to the
south. Absentee landlords in cities relied partly on migratory, seasonal
labour supplied by small farmers from Chekiang who came to the Yangtze
area after they had finished their own harvest. More and more,
vegetables and mulberries or cotton were planted in the vicinity of the
cities. As rice prices went up quickly a large organization of rice
merchants grew up. They ran large ships up to Hankow where they bought
rice which was brought down from Hunan in river boats by smaller
merchants. The small merchants again made contracts with the local
gentry who bought as much rice from the producers as they could and sold
it to these grain merchants. Thus, local grain prices went up and we
hear of cases where the local population attacked the grain boats in
order to prevent the depletion of local markets.

Next to these grain merchants, the above-mentioned salt merchants have
to be mentioned again. Their centre soon became the city of Hsin-an, a
city on the border of Chekiang and Anhui, or in more general terms, the
cities in the district of Hui-chou. When the grain transportation to the
frontiers came to an end in early Ming time, the Hsin-an merchants
specialized first in silver trade. Later in Ming time, they spread their
activities all over China and often monopolized the salt, silver, rice,
cotton, silk or tea businesses. In the sixteenth century they had
well-established contacts with smugglers on the Fukien coast and brought
foreign goods into the interior. Their home was also close to the main
centres of porcelain production in Kiangsi which was exported to
overseas and to the urban centres. The demand for porcelain had
increased so much that state factories could not fulfil it. The state
factories seem often to have suffered from a lack of labour: indented
artisans were imported from other provinces and later sent back on state
expenses or were taken away from other state industries. Thus, private
porcelain factories began to develop, and in connection with quickly
changing fashions a great diversification of porcelain occurred.

One other industry should also be mentioned. With the development of
printing, which will be discussed below, the paper industry was greatly
stimulated. The state also needed special types of paper for the paper
currency. Printing and book selling became a profitable business, and
with the application of block print to textiles (probably first used in
Sung time) another new field of commercial activity was opened.

As already mentioned, silver in form of bars had been increasingly used
as currency in Sung time. The yearly government production of silver was
_c_. 10,000 kg. Mongol currency was actually based upon silver. The
Ming, however, reverted to copper as basic unit, in addition to the use
of paper money. This encouraged the use of silver for speculative
purposes.

The development of business changed the face of cities. From Sung time
on, the division of cities into wards with gates which were closed
during the night, began to break down. Ming cities had no more wards.
Business was no more restricted to official markets but grew up in all
parts of the cities. The individual trades were no more necessarily all
in one street. Shops did not have to close at sunset. The guilds
developed and in some cases were able to exercise locally some influence
upon the officials.

6 _Growth of the small gentry_

With the spread of book printing, all kinds of books became easily
accessible, including reprints of examination papers. Even businessmen
and farmers increasingly learned to read and to write, and many people
now could prepare themselves for the examinations. Attendance, however,
at the examinations cost a good deal. The candidate had to travel to the
local or provincial capital, and for the higher examinations to the
capital of the country; he had to live there for several months and, as
a rule, had to bribe the examiners or at least to gain the favour of
influential people. There were many cases of candidates becoming
destitute. Most of them were heavily in debt when at last they gained a
position. They naturally set to work at once to pay their debts out of
their salary, and to accumulate fresh capital to meet future
emergencies. The salaries of officials were, however, so small that it
was impossible to make ends meet; and at the same time every official
was liable with his own capital for the receipt in full of the taxes for
the collection of which he was responsible. Consequently every official
began at once to collect more taxes than were really due, so as to be
able to cover any deficits, and also to cover his own cost of
living--including not only the repayment of his debts but the
acquisition of capital or land so as to rise in the social scale. The
old gentry had been rich landowners, and had no need to exploit the
peasants on such a scale.

The Chinese empire was greater than it had been before the Mongol epoch,
and the population was also greater, so that more officials were needed.
Thus in the Ming epoch there began a certain democratization, larger
sections of the population having the opportunity of gaining government
positions; but this democratization brought no benefit to the general
population but resulted in further exploitation of the peasants.

The new "small gentry" did not consist of great families like the
original gentry. When, therefore, people of that class wanted to play a
political part in the central government, or to gain a position there,
they had either to get into close touch with one of the families of the
gentry, or to try to approach the emperor directly. In the immediate
entourage of the emperor, however, were the eunuchs. A good many members
of the new class had themselves castrated after they had passed their
state examination. Originally eunuchs were forbidden to acquire
education. But soon the Ming emperors used the eunuchs as a tool to
counteract the power of gentry cliques and thus to strengthen their
personal power. When, later, eunuchs controlled appointments to
government posts, long established practices of bureaucratic
administration were eliminated and the court, i.e. the emperor and his
tools, the eunuchs, could create a rule by way of arbitrary decisions, a
despotic rule. For such purposes, eunuchs had to have education, and
these new educated eunuchs, when they had once secured a position, were
able to gain great influence in the immediate entourage of the emperor;
later such educated eunuchs were preferred, especially as many offices
were created which were only filled by eunuchs and for which educated
eunuchs were needed. Whole departments of eunuchs came into existence at
court, and these were soon made use of for confidential business of the
emperor's outside the palace.

These eunuchs worked, of course, in the interest of their families. On
the other hand, they were very ready to accept large bribes from the
gentry for placing the desires of people of the gentry before the
emperor and gaining his consent. Thus the eunuchs generally accumulated
great wealth, which they shared with their small gentry relatives. The
rise of the small gentry class was therefore connected with the
increased influence of the eunuchs at court.

7 _Literature, art, crafts_

The growth of the small gentry which had its stronghold in the
provincial towns and cities, as well as the rise of the merchant class
and the liberation of the artisans, are reflected in the new literature
of Ming time. While the Mongols had developed the theatre, the novel may
be regarded as the typical Ming creation. Its precursors were the
stories of story-tellers centuries ago. They had developed many styles,
one of which, for instance, consisted of prose with intercalated poetic
parts (_pien-wen_). Buddhists monks had used these forms of popular
literature and spread their teachings in similar forms; due to them,
many Indian stories and tales found their way into the Chinese
folklore. Soon, these stories of story-tellers or monks were written
down, and out of them developed the Chinese classical novel. It
preserved many traits of the stories: it was cut into chapters
corresponding with the interruptions which the story-teller made in
order to collect money; it was interspersed with poems. But most of all,
it was written in everyday language, not in the language of the gentry.
To this day every Chinese knows and reads with enthusiasm
_Shui-hu-chuan_ ("The Story of the River Bank"), probably written about
1550 by Wang Tao-k'un, in which the ruling class was first described in
its decay. Against it are held up as ideals representatives of the
middle class in the guise of the gentleman brigand. Every Chinese also
knows the great satirical novel _Hsi-yu-chi_ ("The Westward Journey"),
by Feng Meng-lung (1574-1645), in which ironical treatment is meted out
to all religions and sects against a mythological background, with a
freedom that would not have been possible earlier. The characters are
not presented as individuals but as representatives of human types: the
intellectual, the hedonist, the pious man, and the simpleton, are drawn
with incomparable skill, with their merits and defects. A third famous
novel is _San-kuo yen-i_ ("The Tale of the Three Kingdoms"), by Lo
Kuan-chung. Just as the European middle class read with avidity the
romances of chivalry, so the comfortable class in China was enthusiastic
over romanticized pictures of the struggle of the gentry in the third
century. "The Tale of the Three Kingdoms" became the model for countless
historical novels of its own and subsequent periods. Later, mainly in
the sixteenth century, the sensational and erotic novel developed, most
of all in Nanking. It has deeply influenced Japanese writers, but was
mercilessly suppressed by the Chinese gentry which resented the
frivolity of this wealthy and luxurious urban class of middle or small
gentry families who associated with rich merchants, actors, artists and
musicians. Censorship of printed books had started almost with the
beginning of book printing as a private enterprise: to the famous
historian, anti-Buddhist and conservative Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-1072), the
enemy of Wang An-shih, belongs the sad glory of having developed the
first censorship rules. Since Ming time, it became a permanent feature
of Chinese governments.

The best known of the erotic novels is the _Chin-p'ing-mei_ which, for
reasons of our own censors can be published only in expurgated
translations. It was written probably towards the end of the sixteenth
century. This novel, as all others, has been written and re-written by
many authors, so that many different versions exist. It might be pointed
out that many novels were printed in Hui-chou, the commercial centre of
the time.

The short story which formerly served the entertainment of the educated
only and which was, therefore, written in classical Chinese, now also
became a literary form appreciated by the middle classes. The collection
_Chin-ku ch'i-kuan_ ("Strange Stories of New Times and Old"), compiled
by Feng Meng-lung, is the best-known of these collections in vernacular
Chinese.

Little original work was done in the Ming epoch in the fields generally
regarded as "literature" by educated Chinese, those of poetry and the
essay. There are some admirable essays, but these are only isolated
examples out of thousands. So also with poetry: the poets of the gentry,
united in "clubs", chose the poets of the Sung epoch as their models to
emulate.

The Chinese drama made further progress in the Ming epoch. Many of the
finest Chinese dramas were written under the Ming; they are still
produced again and again to this day. The most famous dramatists of the
Ming epoch are Wang Shih-chen (1526-1590) and T'ang Hsien-tsu
(1556-1617). T'ang wrote the well-known drama _Mu-tan-ting_ ("The Peony
Pavilion"), one of the finest love-stories of Chinese literature, full
of romance and remote from all reality. This is true also of the other
dramas by T'ang, especially his "Four Dreams", a series of four plays.
In them a man lives in dream through many years of his future life, with
the result that he realizes the worthlessness of life and decides to
become a monk.

Together with the development of the drama (or, rather, the opera) in
the Ming epoch went an important endeavour in the modernization of
music, the attempt to create a "well-tempered scale" made in 1584 by Chu
Tsai-yue. This solved in China a problem which was not tackled till later
in Europe. The first Chinese theorists of music who occupied themselves
with this problem were Ching Fang (77-37 B.C.) and Ho Ch'eng-t'ien (A.D.
370-447).

In the Mongol epoch, most of the Chinese painters had lived in central
China; this remained so in the Ming epoch. Of the many painters of the
Ming epoch, all held in high esteem in China, mention must be made
especially of Ch'in Ying (_c_. 1525), T'ang Yin (1470-1523), and Tung
Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636). Ch'in Ying painted in the Academic Style,
indicating every detail, however small, and showing preference for a
turquoise-green ground. T'ang Yin was the painter of elegant women; Tung
became famous especially as a calligraphist and a theoretician of the
art of painting; a textbook of the art was written by him.

Just as puppet plays and shadow theatre are the "opera of the common
man" and took a new development in Ming time, the wood-cut and
block-printing developed largely as a cheap substitute of real
paintings. The new urbanites wanted to have paintings of the masters and
found in the wood-cut which soon became a multi-colour print a cheap
mass medium. Block printing in colours, developed in the Yangtze valley,
was adopted by Japan and found its highest refinement there. But the
Ming are also famous for their monumental architecture which largely
followed Mongol patterns. Among the most famous examples is the famous
Great Wall which had been in dilapidation and was rebuilt; the great
city walls of Peking; and large parts of the palaces of Peking, begun in
the Mongol epoch. It was at this time that the official style which we
may observe to this day in North China was developed, the style employed
everywhere, until in the age of concrete it lost its justification.

In the Ming epoch the porcelain with blue decoration on a white ground
became general; the first examples, from the famous kilns in
Ching-te-chen, in the province of Kiangsi, were relatively coarse, but
in the fifteenth century the production was much finer. In the sixteenth
century the quality deteriorated, owing to the disuse of the cobalt from
the Middle East (perhaps from Persia) in favour of Sumatra cobalt, which
did not yield the same brilliant colour. In the Ming epoch there also
appeared the first brilliant red colour, a product of iron, and a start
was then made with three-colour porcelain (with lead glaze) or
five-colour (enamel). The many porcelains exported to western Asia and
Europe first influenced European ceramics (Delft), and then were
imitated in Europe (Boettger); the early European porcelains long showed
Chinese influence (the so-called onion pattern, blue on a white ground).
In addition to the porcelain of the Ming epoch, of which the finest
specimens are in the palace at Istanbul, especially famous are the
lacquers (carved lacquer, lacquer painting, gold lacquer) of the Ming
epoch and the cloisonne work of the same period. These are closely
associated with the contemporary work in Japan.

8 _Politics at court_

After the founding of the dynasty by Chu Yuean-chang, important questions
had to be dealt with apart from the social legislation. What was to be
done, for instance, with Chu's helpers? Chu, like many revolutionaries
before and after him, recognized that these people had been serviceable
in the years of struggle but could no longer remain useful. He got rid
of them by the simple device of setting one against another so that they
murdered one another. In the first decades of his rule the dangerous
cliques of gentry had formed again, and were engaged in mutual
struggles. The most formidable clique was led by Hu Wei-yung. Hu was a
man of the gentry of Chu's old homeland, and one of his oldest
supporters. Hu and his relations controlled the country after 1370,
until in 1380 Chu succeeded in beheading Hu and exterminating his
clique. New cliques formed before long and were exterminated in turn.

Chu had founded Nanking in the years of revolution, and he made it his
capital. In so doing he met the wishes of the rich grain producers of
the Yangtze delta. But the north was the most threatened part of his
empire, so that troops had to be permanently stationed there in
considerable strength. Thus Peking, where Chu placed one of his sons as
"king", was a post of exceptional importance.

In Chu Yuean-chang's last years (he was named T'ai Tsu as emperor)
difficulties arose in regard to the dynasty. The heir to the throne died
in 1391; and when the emperor himself died in 1398, the son of the late
heir-apparent was installed as emperor (Hui Ti, 1399-1402). This choice
had the support of some of the influential Confucian gentry families of
the south. But a protest against his enthronement came from the other
son of Chu Yuean-chang, who as king in Peking had hoped to become
emperor. With his strong army this prince, Ch'eng Tsu, marched south and
captured Nanking, where the palaces were burnt down. There was a great
massacre of supporters of the young emperor, and the victor made himself
emperor (better known under his reign name, Yung-lo). As he had
established himself in Peking, he transferred the capital to Peking,
where it remained throughout the Ming epoch. Nanking became a sort of
subsidiary capital.

This transfer of the capital to the north, as the result of the victory
of the military party and Buddhists allied to them, produced a new
element of instability: the north was of military importance, but the
Yangtze region remained the economic centre of the country. The
interests of the gentry of the Yangtze region were injured by the
transfer. The first Ming emperor had taken care to make his court
resemble the court of the Mongol rulers, but on the whole had exercised
relative economy. Yung-lo (1403-1424), however, lived in the actual
palaces of the Mongol rulers, and all the luxury of the Mongol epoch was
revived. This made the reign of Yung-lo the most magnificent period of
the Ming epoch, but beneath the surface decay had begun. Typical of the
unmitigated absolutism which developed now, was the word of one of the
emperor's political and military advisors, significantly a Buddhist
monk: "I know the way of heaven. Why discuss the hearts of the people?"

9 _Navy. Southward expansion_

After the collapse of Mongol rule in Indo-China, partly through the
simple withdrawal of the Mongols, and partly through attacks from
various Chinese generals, there were independence movements in
south-west China and Indo-China. In 1393 wars broke out in Annam.
Yung-lo considered that the time had come to annex these regions to
China and so to open a new field for Chinese trade, which was suffering
continual disturbance from the Japanese. He sent armies to Yuennan and
Indo-China; at the same time he had a fleet built by one of his eunuchs,
Cheng Ho. The fleet was successfully protected from attack by the
Japanese. Cheng Ho, who had promoted the plan and also carried it out,
began in 1405 his famous mission to Indo-China, which had been envisaged
as giving at least moral support to the land operations, but was also
intended to renew trade connections with Indo-China, where they had been
interrupted by the collapse of Mongol rule. Cheng Ho sailed past
Indo-China and ultimately reached the coast of Arabia. His account of
his voyage is an important source of information about conditions in
southern Asia early in the fifteenth century. Cheng Ho and his fleet
made some further cruises, but they were discontinued. There may have
been several reasons, (1) As state enterprises, the expeditions were
very costly. Foreign goods could be obtained more cheaply and with less
trouble if foreign merchants came themselves to China or Chinese
merchants travelled at their own risk. (2) The moral success of the
naval enterprises was assured. China was recognized as a power
throughout southern Asia, and Annam had been reconquered. (3) After the
collapse of the Mongol emperor Timur, who died in 1406, there no longer
existed any great power in Central Asia, so that trade missions from the
kingdom of the Shahruk in North Persia were able to make their way to
China, including the famous mission of 1409-1411. (4) Finally, the fleet
would have had to be permanently guarded against the Japanese, as it had
been stationed not in South China but in the Yangtze region. As early as
1411 the canals had been repaired, and from 1415 onward all the traffic
of the country went by the canals, so evading the Japanese peril. This
ended the short chapter of Chinese naval history.

These travels of Cheng Ho seem to have had one more cultural result: a
large number of fairy-tales from the Middle East were brought to China,
or at all events reached China at that time. The Chinese, being a
realistically-minded people, have produced few fairy-tales of their own.
The bulk of their finest fairy-tales were brought by Buddhist monks, in
the course of the first millennium A.D., from India by way of Central
Asia. The Buddhists made use of them to render their sermons more
interesting and impressive. As time went on, these stories spread all
over China, modified in harmony with the spirit of the people and
adapted to the Chinese environment. Only the fables failed to strike
root in China: the matter-of-fact Chinese was not interested in animals
that talked and behaved to each other like human beings. In addition,
however, to these early fairy-tales, there was another group of stories
that did not spread throughout China, but were found only in the
south-eastern coastal provinces. These came from the Middle East,
especially from Persia. The fairy-tales of Indian origin spread not only
to Central Asia but at the same time to Persia, where they found a very
congenial soil. The Persians made radical changes in the stories and
gave them the form in which they came to Europe by various
routes--through North Africa to Spain and France; through
Constantinople, Venice, or Genoa to France; through Russian Turkestan to
Russia, Finland, and Sweden; through Turkey and the Balkans to Hungary
and Germany. Thus the stories found a European home. And this same
Persian form was carried by sea in Cheng Ho's time to South China. Thus
we have the strange experience of finding some of our own finest
fairy-tales in almost the same form in South China.

10 _Struggles between cliques_

Yung-lo's successor died early. Under the latter's son, the emperor
Hsuean Tsung (1426-1435; reign name Hsuean-te), fixed numbers of
candidates were assigned for the state examinations. It had been found
that almost the whole of the gentry in the Yangtze region sat at the
examinations; and that at these examinations their representatives made
sure, through their mutual relations, that only their members should
pass, so that the candidates from the north were virtually excluded. The
important military clique in the north protested against this, and a
compromise was arrived at: at every examination one-third of the
candidates must come from the north and two-thirds from the south. This
system lasted for a long time, and led to many disputes.

At his death Hsuean Tsung left the empire to his eight-year-old son Ying
Tsung (1436-49 and 1459-64), who was entirely in the hands of the Yang
clique, which was associated with his grandmother. Soon, however,
another clique, led by the eunuch Wang Chen, gained the upper hand at
court. The Mongols were very active at this time, and made several raids
on the province of Shansi; Wang Chen proposed a great campaign against
them, and in this campaign he took with him the young emperor, who had
reached his twenty-first birthday in 1449. The emperor had grown up in
the palace and knew nothing of the world outside; he was therefore glad
to go with Wang Chen; but that eunuch had also lived in the palace and
also knew nothing of the world, and in particular of war. Consequently
he failed in the organization of reinforcements for his army, some
100,000 strong; after a few brief engagements the Oirat-Mongol prince
Esen had the imperial army surrounded and the emperor a prisoner. The
eunuch Wang Chen came to his end, and his clique, of course, no longer
counted. The Mongols had no intention of killing the emperor; they
proposed to hold him to ransom, at a high price. The various cliques at
court cared little, however, about their ruler. After the fall of the
Wang clique there were two others, of which one, that of General Yue,
became particularly powerful, as he had been able to repel a Mongol
attack on Peking. Yue proclaimed a new emperor--not the captive emperor's
son, a baby, but his brother, who became the emperor Ching Tsung. The
Yang clique insisted on the rights of the imperial baby. From all this
the Mongols saw that the Chinese were not inclined to spend a lot of
money on their imperial captive. Accordingly they made an enormous
reduction in the ransom demanded, and more or less forced the Chinese to
take back their former emperor. The Mongols hoped that this would at
least produce political disturbances by which they might profit, once
the old emperor was back in Peking. And this did soon happen. At first
the ransomed emperor was pushed out of sight into a palace, and Ching
Tsung continued to reign. But in 1456 Ching Tsung fell ill, and a
successor to him had to be chosen. The Yue clique wanted to have the son
of Ching Tsung; the Yang clique wanted the son of the deposed emperor
Ying Tsung. No agreement was reached, so that in the end a third clique,
led by the soldier Shih Heng, who had helped to defend Peking against
the Mongols, found its opportunity, and by a _coup d'etat_ reinstated
the deposed emperor Ying Tsung.

This was not done out of love for the emperor, but because Shih Heng
hoped that under the rule of the completely incompetent Ying Tsung he
could best carry out a plan of his own, to set up his own dynasty. It is
not so easy, however, to carry a conspiracy to success when there are
several rival parties, each of which is ready to betray any of the
others. Shih Heng's plan became known before long, and he himself was
beheaded (1460).

The next forty years were filled with struggles between cliques, which
steadily grew in ferocity, particularly since a special office, a sort
of secret police headquarters, was set up in the palace, with functions
which it extended beyond the palace, with the result that many people
were arrested and disappeared. This office was set up by the eunuchs and
the clique at their back, and was the first dictatorial organ created in
the course of a development towards despotism that made steady progress
in these years.

In 1505 Wu Tsung came to the throne, an inexperienced youth of fifteen
who was entirely controlled by the eunuchs who had brought him up. The
leader of the eunuchs was Liu Chin, who had the support of a group of
people of the gentry and the middle class. Liu Chin succeeded within a
year in getting rid of the eunuchs at court who belonged to other
cliques and were working against him. After that he proceeded to
establish his power. He secured in entirely official form the emperor's
permission for him to issue all commands himself; the emperor devoted
himself only to his pleasures, and care was taken that they should keep
him sufficiently occupied to have no chance to notice what was going on
in the country. The first important decree issued by Liu Chin resulted
in the removal from office or the punishment or murder of over three
hundred prominent persons, the leaders of the cliques opposed to him. He
filled their posts with his own supporters, until all the higher posts
in every department were in the hands of members of his group. He
collected large sums of money which he quite openly extracted from the
provinces as a special tax for his own benefit. When later his house was
searched there were found 240,000 bars and 57,800 pieces of gold (a bar
was equivalent of ten pieces), 791,800 ounces and 5,000,000 bars of
silver (a bar was five ounces), three bushels of precious stones, two
gold cuirasses, 3,000 gold rings, and much else--of a total value
exceeding the annual budget of the state! The treasure was to have been
used to finance a revolt planned by Liu Chin and his supporters.

Among the people whom Liu Chin had punished were several members of the
former clique of the Yang, and also the philosopher Wang Yang-ming, who
later became so famous, a member of the Wang family which was allied to
the Yang. In 1510 the Yang won over one of the eunuchs in the palace and
so became acquainted with Liu Chin's plans. When a revolt broke out in
western China, this eunuch (whose political allegiance was, of course,
unknown to Liu Chin) secured appointment as army commander. With the
army intended for the crushing of the revolt, Liu Chin's palace was
attacked when he was asleep, and he and all his supporters were
arrested. Thus the other group came into power in the palace, including
the philosopher Wang Yang-ming (1473-1529). Liu Chin's rule had done
great harm to the country, as enormous taxation had been expended for
the private benefit of his clique. On top of this had been the young
emperor's extravagance: his latest pleasures had been the building of
palaces and the carrying out of military games; he constantly assumed
new military titles and was burning to go to war.

11 _Risings_

The emperor might have had a good opportunity for fighting, for his
misrule had resulted in a great popular rising which began in the west,
in Szechwan, and then spread to the east. As always, the rising was
joined by some ruined scholars, and the movement, which had at first
been directed against the gentry as such, was turned into a movement
against the government of the moment. No longer were all the wealthy and
all officials murdered, but only those who did not join the movement. In
1512 the rebels were finally overcome, not so much by any military
capacity of the government armies as through the loss of the rebels'
fleet of boats in a typhoon.

In 1517 a new favourite of the emperor's induced him to make a great
tour in the north, to which the favourite belonged. The tour and the
hunting greatly pleased the emperor, so that he continued his
journeying. This was the year in which the Portuguese Fernao Pires de
Andrade landed in Canton--the first modern European to enter China.

In 1518 Wang Yang-ming, the philosopher general, crushed a rising in
Kiangsi. The rising had been the outcome of years of unrest, which had
two causes: native risings of the sort we described above, and loss for
the gentry due to the transfer of the capital. The province of Kiangsi
was a part of the Yangtze region, and the great landowners there had
lived on the profit from their supplies to Nanking. When the capital was
moved to Peking, their takings fell. They placed themselves under a
prince who lived in Nanking. This prince regarded Wang Yang-ming's move
into Kiangsi as a threat to him, and so rose openly against the
government and supported the Kiangsi gentry. Wang Yang-ming defeated
him, and so came into the highest favour with the incompetent emperor.
When peace had been restored in Nanking, the emperor dressed himself up
as an army commander, marched south, and made a triumphal entry into
Nanking.

One other aspect of Wang Yang-ming's expeditions has not yet been
studied: he crushed also the so-called salt-merchant rebels in the
southernmost part of Kiangsi and adjoining Kwangtung. These
merchants-turned-rebels had dominated a small area, off and on since
the eleventh century. At this moment, they seem to have had connections
with the rich inland merchants of Hsin-an and perhaps also with
foreigners. Information is still too scanty to give more details, but a
local movement as persistent as this one deserves attention.

Wang Yang-ming became acquainted as early as 1519 with the first
European rifles, imported by the Portuguese who had landed in 1517. (The
Chinese then called them Fu-lan-chi, meaning Franks. Wang was the first
Chinese who spoke of the "Franks".) The Chinese had already had mortars
which hurled stones, as early as the second century A.D. In the seventh
or eighth century their mortars had sent stones of a couple of
hundredweights some four hundred yards. There is mention in the eleventh
century of cannon which apparently shot with a charge of a sort of
gunpowder. The Mongols were already using true cannon in their sieges.
In 1519, the first Portuguese were presented to the Chinese emperor in
Nanking, where they were entertained for about a year in a hostel, a
certain Lin Hsuen learned about their rifles and copied them for Wang
Yang-ming. In general, however, the Chinese had no respect for the
Europeans, whom they described as "bandits" who had expelled the lawful
king of Malacca and had now come to China as its representatives. Later
they were regarded as a sort of Japanese, because they, too, practiced
piracy.

12 _Machiavellism_

All main schools of Chinese philosophy were still based on Confucius.
Wang Yang-ming's philosophy also followed Confucius, but he liberated
himself from the Neo-Confucian tendency as represented by Chu Hsi, which
started in the Sung epoch and continued to rule in China in his time and
after him; he introduced into Confucian philosophy the conception of
"intuition". He regarded intuition as the decisive philosophic
experience; only through intuition could man come to true knowledge.
This idea shows an element of meditative Buddhism along lines which the
philosopher Lu Hsiang-shan (1139-1192) had first developed, while
classical Neo-Confucianism was more an integration of monastic Buddhism
into Confucianism. Lu had felt himself close to Wang An-shih
(1021-1086), and this whole school, representing the small gentry of the
Yangtze area, was called the Southern or the Lin-ch'uan school,
Lin-ch'uan in Kiangsi being Wang An-shih's home. During the Mongol
period, a Taoist group, the _Cheng-i-chiao_ (Correct Unity Sect) had
developed in Lin-ch'uan and had accepted some of the Lin-ch'uan
school's ideas. Originally, this group was a continuation of Chang
Ling's church Taoism. Through the _Cheng-i_ adherents, the Southern
school had gained political influence on the despotic Mongol rulers. The
despotic Yung-lo emperor had favoured the monk Tao-yen (_c_. 1338-1418)
who had also Taoist training and proposed a philosophy which also
stressed intuition. He was, incidentally, in charge of the compilation
of the largest encyclopaedia ever written, the _Yung-lo ta-tien_
commissioned by the Yung-lo emperor.

Wang Yang-ming followed the Lin-ch'uan tradition. The introduction of
the conception of intuition, a highly subjective conception, into the
system of a practical state philosophy like Confucianism could not but
lead in the practice of the statesman to Machiavellism. The statesman
who followed the teaching of Wang Yang-ming had the opportunity of
justifying whatever he did by his intuition.

Wang Yang-ming failed to gain acceptance for his philosophy. His
disciples also failed to establish his doctrine in China, because it
served the interests of an individual despot against those of the gentry
as a class, and the middle class, which might have formed a
counterweight against them, was not yet politically ripe for the seizure
of the opportunity here offered to it. In Japan, however, Wang's
doctrine gained many followers, because it admirably served the
dictatorial state system which had developed in that country.
Incidentally, Chiang Kai-shek in those years in which he showed Fascist
tendencies, also got interested in Wang Yang-ming.

13 _Foreign relations in the sixteenth century_

The feeble emperor Wu Tsung died in 1521, after an ineffective reign,
without leaving an heir. The clique then in power at court looked among
the possible pretenders for the one who seemed least likely to do
anything, and their choice fell on the fifteen-year-old Shih Tsung, who
was made emperor. The forty-five years of his reign were filled in home
affairs with intrigues between the cliques at court, with growing
distress in the country, and with revolts on a larger and larger scale.
Abroad there were wars with Annam, increasing raids by the Japanese,
and, above all, long-continued fighting against the famous Mongol ruler
Yen-ta, from 1549 onward. At one time Yen-ta reached Peking and laid
siege to it. The emperor, who had no knowledge of affairs, and to whom
Yen-ta had been represented as a petty bandit, was utterly dismayed and
ready to do whatever Yen-ta asked; in the end he was dissuaded from
this, and an agreement was arrived at with Yen-ta for state-controlled
markets to be set up along the frontier, where the Mongols could
dispose of their goods against Chinese goods on very favourable terms.
After further difficulties lasting many years, a compromise was arrived
at: the Mongols were earning good profits from the markets, and in 1571
Yen-ta accepted a Chinese title. On the Chinese side, this Mongol trade,
which continued in rather different form in the Manchu epoch, led to the
formation of a local merchant class in the frontier province of Shansi,
with great experience in credit business; later the first Chinese
bankers came almost entirely from this quarter.

After a brief interregnum there came once more to the throne a
ten-year-old boy, the emperor Shen Tsung (reign name Wan-li; 1573-1619).
He, too, was entirely under the influence of various cliques, at first
that of his tutor, the scholar Chang Chue-chan. About the time of the
death, in 1582, of Yen-ta we hear for the first time of a new people. In
1581 there had been unrest in southern Manchuria. The Mongolian tribal
federation of the Tuemet attacked China, and there resulted collisions
not only with the Chinese but between the different tribes living there.
In southern and central Manchuria were remnants of the Tungus Juchen.
The Mongols had subjugated the Juchen, but the latter had virtually
become independent after the collapse of Mongol rule over China. They
had formed several tribal alliances, but in 1581-83 these fought each
other, so that one of the alliances to all intents was destroyed. The
Chinese intervened as mediators in these struggles, and drew a
demarcation line between the territories of the various Tungus tribes.
All this is only worth mention because it was from these tribes that
there developed the tribal league of the Manchus, who were then to rule
China for some three hundred years.

In 1592 the Japanese invaded Korea. This was their first real effort to
set foot on the continent, a purely imperialistic move. Korea, as a
Chinese vassal, appealed for Chinese aid. At first the Chinese army had
no success, but in 1598 the Japanese were forced to abandon Korea. They
revenged themselves by intensifying their raids on the coast of central
China; they often massacred whole towns, and burned down the looted
houses. The fighting in Korea had its influence on the Tungus tribes: as
they were not directly involved, it contributed to their further
strengthening.

The East India Company was founded in 1600. At this time, while the
English were trying to establish themselves in India, the Chinese tried
to gain increased influence in the south by wars in Annam, Burma, and
Thailand (1594-1604). These wars were for China colonial wars, similar
to the colonial fighting by the British in India. But there began to be
defined already at that time in the south of Asia the outlines of the
states as they exist at the present time.

In 1601 the first European, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, succeeded in
gaining access to the Chinese court, through the agency of a eunuch. He
made some presents, and the Chinese regarded his visit as a mission from
Europe bringing tribute. Ricci was therefore permitted to remain in
Peking. He was an astronomer and was able to demonstrate to his Chinese
colleagues the latest achievements of European astronomy. In 1613, after
Ricci's death, the Jesuits and some Chinese whom they had converted were
commissioned to reform the Chinese calendar. In the time of the Mongols,
Arabs had been at work in Peking as astronomers, and their influence had
continued under the Ming until the Europeans came. By his astronomical
labours Ricci won a place of honour in Chinese literature; he is the
European most often mentioned.

The missionary work was less effective. The missionaries penetrated by
the old trade routes from Canton and Macao into the province of Kiangsi
and then into Nanking. Kiangsi and Nanking were their chief centres.
They soon realized that missionary activity that began in the lower
strata would have no success; it was necessary to work from above,
beginning with the emperor, and then, they hoped, the whole country
could be converted to Christianity. When later the emperors of the Ming
dynasty were expelled and fugitives in South China, one of the
pretenders to the throne was actually converted--but it was politically
too late. The missionaries had, moreover, mistaken ideas as to the
nature of Chinese religion; we know today that a universal adoption of
Christianity in China would have been impossible even if an emperor had
personally adopted that foreign faith: there were emperors who had been
interested in Buddhism or in Taoism, but that had been their private
affair and had never prevented them, as heads of the state, from
promoting the religious system which politically was the most
expedient--that is to say, usually Confucianism. What we have said here
in regard to the Christian mission at the Ming court is applicable also
to the missionaries at the court of the first Manchu emperors, in the
seventeenth century. Early in the eighteenth century missionary activity
was prohibited--not for religious but for political reasons, and only
under the pressure of the Capitulations in the nineteenth century were
the missionaries enabled to resume their labours.

14 _External and internal perils_

Towards the end of the reign of Wan-li, about 1620, the danger that
threatened the empire became more and more evident. The Manchus
complained, no doubt with justice, of excesses on the part of Chinese
officials; the friction constantly increased, and the Manchus began to
attack the Chinese cities in Manchuria. In 1616, after his first
considerable successes, their leader Nurhachu assumed the imperial
title; the name of the dynasty was Tai Ch'ing (interpreted as "The great
clarity", but probably a transliteration of a Manchurian word meaning
"hero"). In 1618, the year in which the Thirty Years War started in
Europe, the Manchus conquered the greater part of Manchuria, and in 1621
their capital was Liaoyang, then the largest town in Manchuria.

But the Manchu menace was far from being the only one. On the south-east
coast a pirate made himself independent; later, with his family, he
dominated Formosa and fought many battles with the Europeans there
(European sources call him Coxinga). In western China there came a great
popular rising, in which some of the natives joined, and which spread
through a large part of the southern provinces. This rising was
particularly sanguinary, and when it was ultimately crushed by the
Manchus the province of Szechwan, formerly so populous, was almost
depopulated, so that it had later to be resettled. And in the province
of Shantung in the east there came another great rising, also very
sanguinary, that of the secret society of the "White Lotus". We have
already pointed out that these risings of secret societies were always a
sign of intolerable conditions among the peasantry. This was now the
case once more. All the elements of danger which we mentioned at the
outset of this chapter began during this period, between 1610 and 1640,
to develop to the full.

Then there were the conditions in the capital itself. The struggles
between cliques came to a climax. On the death of Shen Tsung (or Wan-li;
1573-1619), he was succeeded by his son, who died scarcely a month
later, and then by his sixteen-year-old grandson. The grandson had been
from his earliest youth under the influence of a eunuch, Wei
Chung-hsien, who had castrated himself. With the emperor's wet-nurse and
other people, mostly of the middle class, this man formed a powerful
group. The moment the new emperor ascended the throne, Wei was
all-powerful. He began by murdering every eunuch who did not belong to
his clique, and then murdered the rest of his opponents. Meanwhile the
gentry had concluded among themselves a defensive alliance that was a
sort of party; this party was called the Tung-lin Academy. It was
confined to literati among the gentry, and included in particular the
literati who had failed to make their way at court, and who lived on
their estates in Central China and were trying to gain power themselves.
This group was opposed to Wei Chung-hsien, who ruthlessly had every
discoverable member murdered. The remainder went into hiding and
organized themselves secretly under another name. As the new emperor had
no son, the attempt was made to foist a son upon him; at his death in
1627, eight women of the harem were suddenly found to be pregnant! He
was succeeded by his brother, who was one of the opponents of Wei
Chung-hsien and, with the aid of the opposing clique, was able to bring
him to his end. The new emperor tried to restore order at court and in
the capital by means of political and economic decrees, but in spite of
his good intentions and his unquestionable capacity he was unable to
cope with the universal confusion. There was insurrection in every part
of the country. The gentry, organized in their "Academies", and secretly
at work in the provinces, no longer supported the government; the
central power no longer had adequate revenues, so that it was unable to
pay the armies that should have marched against all the rebels and also
against external enemies. It was clear that the dynasty was approaching
its end, and the only uncertainty was as to its successor. The various
insurgents negotiated or fought with each other; generals loyal to the
government won occasional successes against the rebels; other generals
went over to the rebels or to the Manchus. The two most successful
leaders of bands were Li Tz[)u]-ch'eng and Chang Hsien-chung. Li came
from the province of Shensi; he had come to the fore during a disastrous
famine in his country. The years around 1640 brought several widespread
droughts in North China, a natural phenomenon that was repeated in the
nineteenth century, when unrest again ensued. Chang Hsien-chung returned
for a time to the support of the government, but later established
himself in western China. It was typical, however, of all these
insurgents that none of them had any great objective in view. They
wanted to get enough to eat for themselves and their followers; they
wanted to enrich themselves by conquest; but they were incapable of
building up an ordered and new administration. Li ultimately made
himself "king" in the province of Shensi and called his dynasty "Shun",
but this made no difference: there was no distribution of land among the
peasants serving in Li's army; no plan was set into operation for the
collection of taxes; not one of the pressing problems was faced.

Meanwhile the Manchus were gaining support. Almost all the Mongol
princes voluntarily joined them and took part in the raids into North
China. In 1637 the united Manchus and Mongols conquered Korea. Their
power steadily grew. What the insurgents in China failed to achieve, the
Manchus achieved with the aid of their Chinese advisers: they created a
new military organization, the "Banner Organization". The men fit for
service were distributed among eight "banners", and these banners became
the basis of the Manchu state administration. By this device the
Manchus emerged from the stage of tribal union, just as before them
Turks and other northern peoples had several times abandoned the
traditional authority of a hierarchy of tribal leaders, a system of
ruling families, in favour of the authority, based on efficiency, of
military leaders. At the same time the Manchus set up a central
government with special ministries on the Chinese model. In 1638 the
Manchus appeared before Peking, but they retired once more. Manchu
armies even reached the province of Shantung. They were hampered by the
death at the critical moment of the Manchu ruler Abahai (1626-1643). His
son Fu Lin was not entirely normal and was barely six years old; there
was a regency of princes, the most prominent among them being Prince
Dorgon.

Meanwhile Li Tz[)u]-ch'eng broke through to Peking. The city had a
strong garrison, but owing to the disorganization of the government the
different commanders were working against each other; and the soldiers
had no fighting spirit because they had no pay for a long time. Thus the
city fell, on April 24th, 1644, and the last Ming emperor killed
himself. A prince was proclaimed emperor; he fled through western and
southern China, continually trying to make a stand, but it was too late;
without the support of the gentry he had no resource, and ultimately, in
1659, he was compelled to flee into Burma.

Thus Li Tz[)u]-ch'eng was now emperor. It should have been his task
rapidly to build up a government, and to take up arms against the other
rebels and against the Manchus. Instead of this he behaved in such a way
that he was unable to gain any support from the existing officials in
the capital; and as there was no one among his former supporters who had
any positive, constructive ideas, just nothing was done.

This, however, improved the chances of all the other aspirants to the
imperial throne. The first to realize this clearly, and also to possess
enough political sagacity to avoid alienating the gentry, was General Wu
San-kui, who was commanding on the Manchu front. He saw that in the
existing conditions in the capital he could easily secure the imperial
throne for himself if only he had enough soldiers. Accordingly he
negotiated with the Manchu Prince Dorgon, formed an alliance with the
Manchus, and with them entered Peking on June 6th, 1644. Li
Tz[)u]-ch'eng quickly looted the city, burned down whatever he could,
and fled into the west, continually pursued by Wu San-kui. In the end he
was abandoned by all his supporters and killed by peasants. The Manchus,
however, had no intention of leaving Wu San-kui in power: they
established themselves in Peking, and Wu became their general.


(C) The Manchu Dynasty (1644-1911)

1 _Installation of Manchus_

The Manchus had gained the mastery over China owing rather to China's
internal situation than to their military superiority. How was it that
the dynasty could endure for so long, although the Manchus were not
numerous, although the first Manchu ruler (Fu Lin, known under the rule
name Shun-chih; 1644-1662) was a psychopathic youth, although there were
princes of the Ming dynasty ruling in South China, and although there
were strong groups of rebels all over the country? The Manchus were
aliens; at that time the national feeling of the Chinese had already
been awakened; aliens were despised. In addition to this, the Manchus
demanded that as a sign of their subjection the Chinese should wear
pigtails and assume Manchurian clothing (law of 1645). Such laws could
not but offend national pride. Moreover, marriages between Manchus and
Chinese were prohibited, and a dual government was set up, with Manchus
always alongside Chinese in every office, the Manchus being of course in
the superior position. The Manchu soldiers were distributed in military
garrisons among the great cities, and were paid state pensions, which
had to be provided by taxation. They were the master race, and had no
need to work. Manchus did not have to attend the difficult state
examinations which the Chinese had to pass in order to gain an
appointment. How was it that in spite of all this the Manchus were able
to establish themselves?

The conquering Manchu generals first went south from eastern China, and
in 1645 captured Nanking, where a Ming prince had ruled. The region
round Nanking was the economic centre of China. Soon the Manchus were in
the adjoining southern provinces, and thus they conquered the whole of
the territory of the landowning gentry, who after the events of the
beginning of the seventeenth century had no longer trusted the Ming
rulers. The Ming prince in Nanking was just as incapable, and surrounded
by just as evil a clique, as the Ming emperors of the past. The gentry
were not inclined to defend him. A considerable section of the gentry
were reduced to utter despair; they had no desire to support the Ming
any longer; in their own interest they could not support the rebel
leaders; and they regarded the Manchus as just a particular sort of
"rebels". Interpreting the refusal of some Sung ministers to serve the
foreign Mongols as an act of loyalty, it was now regarded as shameful to
desert a dynasty when it came to an end and to serve the new ruler, even
if the new regime promised to be better. Many thousands of officials,
scholars, and great landowners committed suicide. Many books, often
really moving and tragic, are filled with the story of their lives. Some
of them tried to form insurgent bands with their peasants and went into
the mountains, but they were unable to maintain themselves there. The
great bulk of the elite soon brought themselves to collaborate with the
conquerors when they were offered tolerable conditions. In the end the
Manchus did not interfere in the ownership of land in central China.

At the time when in Europe Louis XIV was reigning, the Thirty Years War
was coming to an end, and Cromwell was carrying out his reforms in
England, the Manchus conquered the whole of China. Chang Hsien-chung and
Li Tz[)u]-ch'eng were the first to fall; the pirate Coxinga lasted a
little longer and was even able to plunder Nanking in 1659, but in 1661
he had to retire to Formosa. Wu San-kui, who meanwhile had conquered
western China, saw that the situation was becoming difficult for him.
His task was to drive out the last Ming pretenders for the Manchus. As
he had already been opposed to the Ming in 1644, and as the Ming no
longer had any following among the gentry, he could not suddenly work
with them against the Manchus. He therefore handed over to the Manchus
the last Ming prince, whom the Burmese had delivered up to him in 1661.
Wu San-kui's only possible allies against the Manchus were the gentry.
But in the west, where he was in power, the gentry counted for nothing;
they had in any case been weaker in the west, and they had been
decimated by the insurrection of Chang Hsien-chung. Thus Wu San-kui was
compelled to try to push eastwards, in order to unite with the gentry of
the Yangtze region against the Manchus. The Manchus guessed Wu San-kui's
plan, and in 1673, after every effort at accommodation had failed, open
war came. Wu San-kui made himself emperor, and the Manchus marched
against him. Meanwhile, the Chinese gentry of the Yangtze region had
come to terms with the Manchus, and they gave Wu San-kui no help. He
vegetated in the south-west, a region too poor to maintain an army that
could conquer all China, and too small to enable him to last
indefinitely as an independent power. He was able to hold his own until
his death, although, with the loss of the support of the gentry, he had
no prospect of final success. Not until 1681 was his successor, his
grandson Wu Shih-fan, defeated. The end of the rule of Wu San-kui and
his successor marked the end of the national governments of China; the
whole country was now under alien domination, for the simple reason that
all the opponents of the Manchus had failed. Only the Manchus were
accredited with the ability to bring order out of the universal
confusion, so that there was clearly no alternative but to put up with
the many insults and humiliations they inflicted--with the result that
the national feeling that had just been aroused died away, except where
it was kept alive in a few secret societies. There will be more to say
about this, once the works which were suppressed by the Manchus are
published.

In the first phase of the Manchu conquest the gentry had refused to
support either the Ming princes or Wu San-kui, or any of the rebels, or
the Manchus themselves. A second phase began about twenty years after
the capture of Peking, when the Manchus won over the gentry by desisting
from any interference with the ownership of land, and by the use of
Manchu troops to clear away the "rebels" who were hostile to the gentry.
A reputable government was then set up in Peking, free from eunuchs and
from all the old cliques; in their place the government looked for
Chinese scholars for its administrative posts. Literati and scholars
streamed into Peking, especially members of the "Academies" that still
existed in secret, men who had been the chief sufferers from the
conditions at the end of the Ming epoch. The young emperor Sheng Tsu
(1663-1722; K'ang-hsi is the name by which his rule was known, not his
name) was keenly interested in Chinese culture and gave privileged
treatment to the scholars of the gentry who came forward. A rapid
recovery quite clearly took place. The disturbances of the years that
had passed had got rid of the worst enemies of the people, the
formidable rival cliques and the individuals lusting for power; the
gentry had become more cautious in their behaviour to the peasants; and
bribery had been largely stamped out. Finally, the empire had been
greatly expanded. All these things helped to stabilize the regime of the
Manchus.

2 _Decline in the eighteenth century_

The improvement continued until the middle of the eighteenth century.
About the time of the French Revolution there began a continuous
decline, slow at first and then gathering speed. The European works on
China offer various reasons for this: the many foreign wars (to which we
shall refer later) of the emperor, known by the name of his ruling
period, Ch'ien-lung, his craze for building, and the irruption of the
Europeans into Chinese trade. In the eighteenth century the court
surrounded itself with great splendour, and countless palaces and other
luxurious buildings were erected, but it must be borne in mind that so
great an empire as the China of that day possessed very considerable
financial strength, and could support this luxury. The wars were
certainly not inexpensive, as they took place along the Russian
frontier and entailed expenditure on the transport of reinforcements and
supplies; the wars against Turkestan and Tibet were carried on with
relatively small forces. This expenditure should not have been beyond
the resources of an ordered budget. Interestingly enough, the period
between 1640 and 1840 belongs to those periods for which almost no
significant work in the field of internal social and economic
developments has been made; Western scholars have been too much
interested in the impact of Western economy and culture or in the
military events. Chinese scholars thus far have shown a prejudice
against the Manchu dynasty and were mainly interested in the study of
anti-Manchu movements and the downfall of the dynasty. On the other
hand, the documentary material for this period is extremely extensive,
and many years of work are necessary to reach any general conclusions
even in one single field. The following remarks should, therefore, be
taken as very tentative and preliminary, and they are, naturally,
fragmentary.

[Illustration: 14 Aborigines of South China, of the 'Black Miao' tribe,
at a festival. China-ink drawing of the eighteenth century. _Collection
of the Museum fuer Voelkerkunde, Berlin. No. 1D 8756, 68_.]

[Illustration: 15 Pavilion on the 'Coal Hill' at Peking, in which the
last Ming emperor committed suicide. _Photo Eberhard_.]

[Illustration: Chart POPULATION GROWTH OF CHINA]

The decline of the Manchu dynasty began at a time when the European
trade was still insignificant, and not as late as after 1842, when China
had to submit to the foreign Capitulations. These cannot have been the
true cause of the decline. Above all, the decline was not so noticeable
in the state of the Exchequer as in a general impoverishment of China.
The number of really wealthy persons among the gentry diminished, but
the middle class, that is to say the people who had education but little
or no money and property, grew steadily in number.

One of the deeper reasons for the decline of the Manchu dynasty seems to
lie in the enormous increase in the population. Here are a few Chinese
statistics:

_Year_ _Population_

1578(before the Manchus) 10,621,463 families or 60,692,856 individuals
1662 19,203,233 " 100,000,000 " [*]
1710 23,311,236 " 116,000,000 " [*]
1729 25,480,498 " 127,000,000 " [*]
1741 " 143,411,559 "
1754 184,504,493 "
1778 242,965,618 "
1796 275,662,414 "
1814 374,601,132 "
1850 414,493,899 "
(1953) (601,938,035 ")

[*] Approximately

It may be objected that these figures are incorrect and exaggerated.
Undoubtedly they contain errors. But the first figure (for 1578) of some
sixty millions is in close agreement with all other figures of early
times; the figure for 1850 seems high, but cannot be far wrong, for even
after the great T'ai P'ing Rebellion of 1851, which, together with its
after-effects, costs the lives of countless millions, all statisticians
of today estimate the population of China at more than four hundred
millions. If we enter these data together with the census of 1953 into a
chart (see p. 273), a fairly smooth curve emerges; the special features
are that already under the Ming the population was increasing and,
secondly, that the high rate of increase in the population began with
the long period of internal peace since about 1700. From that time
onwards, all China's wars were fought at so great a distance from China
proper that the population was not directly affected. Moreover, in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Manchus saw to the maintenance
of the river dykes, so that the worst inundations were prevented. Thus
there were not so many of the floods which had often cost the lives of
many million people in China; and there were no internal wars, with
their heavy cost in lives.

But while the population increased, the tillage failed to increase in
the needed proportion. I have, unfortunately, no statistics for all
periods; but the general tendency is shown by the following table:

_Date Cultivated area_ mou _per person_
_in_ mou

1578 701,397,600 11.6
1662 531,135,800
1719 663,113,200
1729 878,176,000 6.1
(1953) (1,627,930,000) (2.7)

Six _mou_ are about one acre. In 1578, there were 66 _mou_ land per
family of the total population. This was close to the figures regarded
as ideal by Chinese early economists for the producing family (100
_mou_) considering the fact that about 80 per cent of all families at
that time were producers. By 1729 it was only 35 _mou_ per family, i.e.
the land had to produce almost twice as much as before. We have shown
that the agricultural developments in the Ming time greatly increased
the productivity of the land. This then, obviously resulted in an
increase of population. But by the middle of the eighteenth century,
assuming that production doubled since the sixteenth century, population
pressure was again as heavy as it had been then. And after _c_. 1750,
population pressure continued to build up to the present time.

Internal colonization continued during the Manchu time; there was a
continuous, but slow flow of people into Kwangsi, Kweichow, Yuennan. In
spite of laws which prohibited emigration, Chinese also moved into
South-East Asia. Chinese settlement in Manchuria was allowed only in the
last years of the Manchus. But such internal colonization or emigration
could alleviated the pressure only in some areas, while it continued to
build up in others.

In Europe as well as in Japan, we find a strong population increase; in
Europe at almost the same time as in China. But before population
pressure became too serious in Europe or Japan, industry developed and
absorbed the excess population. Thus, farms did not decrease too much in
size. Too small farms are always and in many ways uneconomical. With the
development of industries, the percentage of farm population decreased.
In China, however, the farm population was still as high as 73.3 per
cent of the total population in 1932 and the percentage rose to 81 per
cent in 1950.

From the middle of the seventeenth century on, commercial activities,
especially along the coast, continued to increase and we find gentry
families who equip sons who were unwilling or not capable to study and
to enter the ranks of the officials, but who were too unruly to sit in
villages and collect the rent from the tenants of the family, with money
to enter business. The newly settled areas of Kwangtung and Kwangsi were
ideal places for them: here they could sell Chinese products to the
native tribes or to the new settlers at high prices. Some of these men
introduced new techniques from the old provinces of China into the
"colonial" areas and set up dye factories, textile factories, etc., in
the new towns of the south. But the greatest stimulus for these
commercial activities was foreign, European trade. American silver which
had flooded Europe in the sixteenth century, began to flow into China
from the beginning of the seventeenth century on. The influx was stopped
not until between 1661 and 1684 when the government again prohibited
coastal shipping and removed coastal settlements into the interior in
order to stop piracy along the coasts of Fukien and independence
movements on Formosa. But even during these twenty-three years, the
price of silver was so low that home production was given up because it
did not pay off. In the eighteenth century, silver again continued to
enter China, while silk and tea were exported. This demand led to a
strong rise in the prices of silk and tea, and benefited the merchants.
When, from the late eighteenth century on, opium began to be imported,
the silver left China again. The merchants profited this time from the
opium trade, but farmers had to suffer: the price of silver went up, and
taxes had to be paid in silver, while farm products were sold for
copper. By 1835, the ounce of silver had a value of 2,000 copper coins
instead of one thousand before 1800. High gains in commerce prevented
investment in industries, because they would give lower and later
profits than commerce. From the nineteenth century on, more and more
industrial goods were offered by importers which also prevented
industrialization. Finally, the gentry basically remained
anti-industrial and anti-business. They tried to operate necessary
enterprises such as mining, melting, porcelain production as far as
possible as government establishments; but as the operators were
officials, they were not too business-minded and these enterprises did
not develop well. The businessmen certainly had enough capital, but they
invested it in land instead of investing it in industries which could at
any moment be taken away by the government, controlled by the officials
or forced to sell at set prices, and which were always subject to
exploitation by dishonest officials. A businessman felt secure only when
he had invested in land, when he had received an official title upon the
payment of large sums of money, or when he succeeded to push at least
one of his sons into the government bureaucracy. No doubt, in spite of
all this, Chinese business and industry kept on developing in the Manchu
time, but they did not develop at such a speed as to transform the
country from an agrarian into a modern industrial nation.

3 _Expansion in Central Asia; the first State treaty_

The rise of the Manchu dynasty actually began under the K'ang-hsi rule
(1663-1722). The emperor had three tasks. The first was the removal of
the last supporters of the Ming dynasty and of the generals, such as Wu
San-kui, who had tried to make themselves independent. This necessitated
a long series of campaigns, most of them in the south-west or south of
China; these scarcely affected the population of China proper. In 1683
Formosa was occupied and the last of the insurgent army commanders was
defeated. It was shown above that the situation of all these leaders
became hopeless as soon as the Manchus had occupied the rich Yangtze
region and the intelligentsia and the gentry of that region had gone
over to them.

A quite different type of insurgent commander was the Mongol prince
Galdan. He, too, planned to make himself independent of Manchu
overlordship. At first the Mongols had readily supported the Manchus,
when the latter were making raids into China and there was plenty of
booty. Now, however, the Manchus, under the influence of the Chinese
gentry whom they brought, and could not but bring, to their court, were
rapidly becoming Chinese in respect to culture. Even in the time of
K'ang-hsi the Manchus began to forget Manchurian; they brought tutors to
court to teach the young Manchus Chinese. Later even the emperors did
not understand Manchurian! As a result of this process, the Mongols
became alienated from the Manchurians, and the situation began once more
to be the same as at the time of the Ming rulers. Thus Galdan tried to
found an independent Mongol realm, free from Chinese influence.

The Manchus could not permit this, as such a realm would have threatened
the flank of their homeland, Manchuria, and would have attracted those
Manchus who objected to sinification. Between 1690 and 1696 there were
battles, in which the emperor actually took part in person. Galdan was
defeated. In 1715, however, there were new disturbances, this time in
western Mongolia. Tsewang Rabdan, whom the Chinese had made khan of the
Oeloet, rose against the Chinese. The wars that followed, extending far
into Turkestan and also involving its Turkish population together with
the Dzungars, ended with the Chinese conquest of the whole of Mongolia
and of parts of eastern Turkestan. As Tsewang Rabdan had tried to extend
his power as far as Tibet, a campaign was undertaken also into Tibet,
Lhasa was occupied, a new Dalai Lama was installed there as supreme
ruler, and Tibet was made into a protectorate. Since then Tibet has
remained to this day under some form of Chinese colonial rule.

This penetration of the Chinese into Turkestan took place just at the
time when the Russians were enormously expanding their empire in Asia,
and this formed the third problem for the Manchus. In 1650 the Russians
had established a fort by the river Amur. The Manchus regarded the Amur
(which they called the "River of the Black Dragon") as part of their own
territory, and in 1685 they destroyed the Russian settlement. After this
there were negotiations, which culminated in 1689 in the Treaty of
Nerchinsk. This treaty was the first concluded by the Chinese state with
a European power. Jesuit missionaries played a part in the negotiations
as interpreters. Owing to the difficulties of translation the text of
the treaty, in Chinese, Russian, and Manchurian, contained some
obscurities, particularly in regard to the frontier line. Accordingly,
in 1727 the Russians asked for a revision of the old treaty. The Chinese
emperor, whose rule name was Yung-cheng, arranged for the negotiations
to be carried on at the frontier, in the town of Kyakhta, in Mongolia,
where after long discussions a new treaty was concluded. Under this
treaty the Russians received permission to set up a legation and a
commercial agency in Peking, and also to maintain a church. This was the
beginning of the foreign Capitulations. From the Chinese point of view
there was nothing special in a facility of this sort. For some fifteen
centuries all the "barbarians" who had to bring tribute had been given
houses in the capital, where their envoys could wait until the emperor
would receive them--usually on New Year's Day. The custom had sprung up
at the reception of the Huns. Moreover, permission had always been given
for envoys to be accompanied by a few merchants, who during the envoy's
stay did a certain amount of business. Furthermore the time had been
when the Uighurs were permitted to set up a temple of their own. At the
time of the permission given to the Russians to set up a "legation", a
similar office was set up (in 1729) for "Uighur" peoples (meaning
Mohammedans), again under the control of an office, called the Office
for Regulation of Barbarians. The Mohammedan office was placed under two
Mohammedan leaders who lived in Peking. The Europeans, however, had
quite different ideas about a "legation", and about the significance of
permission to trade. They regarded this as the opening of diplomatic
relations between states on terms of equality, and the carrying on of
trade as a special privilege, a sort of Capitulation. This reciprocal
misunderstanding produced in the nineteenth century a number of serious
political conflicts. The Europeans charged the Chinese with breach of
treaties, failure to meet their obligations, and other such things,
while the Chinese considered that they had acted with perfect
correctness.

4 _Culture_

In this K'ang-hsi period culture began to flourish again. The emperor
had attracted the gentry, and so the intelligentsia, to his court
because his uneducated Manchus could not alone have administered the
enormous empire; and he showed great interest in Chinese culture,
himself delved deeply into it, and had many works compiled, especially
works of an encyclopaedic character. The encyclopaedias enabled
information to be rapidly gained on all sorts of subjects, and thus were
just what an interested ruler needed, especially when, as a foreigner,
he was not in a position to gain really thorough instruction in things
Chinese. The Chinese encyclopaedias of the seventeenth and especially of
the eighteenth century were thus the outcome of the initiative of the
Manchurian emperor, and were compiled for his information; they were not
due, like the French encyclopaedias of the eighteenth century, to a
movement for the spread of knowledge among the people. For this latter
purpose the gigantic encyclopaedias of the Manchus, each of which fills
several bookcases, were much too expensive and were printed in much too
limited editions. The compilations began with the great geographical
encyclopaedia of Ku Yen-wu (1613-1682), and attained their climax in the
gigantic eighteenth-century encyclopaedia _T'u-shu chi-ch'eng_,
scientifically impeccable in the accuracy of its references to sources.
Here were already the beginnings of the "Archaeological School", built
up in the course of the eighteenth century. This school was usually
called "Han school" because the adherents went back to the commentaries
of the classical texts written in Han time and discarded the orthodox
explanations of Chu Hsi's school of Sung time. Later, its most prominent
leader was Tai Chen (1723-1777). Tai was greatly interested in
technology and science; he can be regarded as the first philosopher who
exhibited an empirical, scientific way of thinking. Late nineteenth and
early twentieth century Chinese scholarship is greatly obliged to him.

The most famous literary works of the Manchu epoch belong once more to
the field which Chinese do not regard as that of true literature--the
novel, the short story, and the drama. Poetry did exist, but it kept to
the old paths and had few fresh ideas. All the various forms of the Sung
period were made use of. The essayists, too, offered nothing new, though
their number was legion. One of the best known is Yuean Mei (1716-1797),
who was also the author of the collection of short stories _Tse-pu-yue_
("The Master did not tell"), which is regarded very highly by the
Chinese. The volume of short stories entitled _Liao-chai chich-i_, by
P'u Sung-lin (1640-1715?), is world-famous and has been translated into
every civilized language. Both collections are distinguished by their
simple but elegant style. The short story was popular among the greater
gentry; it abandoned the popular style it had in the Ming epoch, and
adopted the polished language of scholars.

The Manchu epoch has left to us what is by general consent the finest
novel in Chinese literature, _Hung-lou-meng_ ("The Dream of the Red
Chamber"), by Ts'ao Hsueeh-ch'in, who died in 1763. It describes the
downfall of a rich and powerful family from the highest rank of the
gentry, and the decadent son's love of a young and emotional lady of the
highest circles. The story is clothed in a mystical garb that does
something to soften its tragic ending. The interesting novel _Ju-lin
wai-shih_ ("Private Reports from the Life of Scholars"), by Wu
Ching-tz[)u] (1701-1754), is a mordant criticism of Confucianism with
its rigid formalism, of the social system, and of the examination
system. Social criticism is the theme of many novels. The most modern in
spirit of the works of this period is perhaps the treatment of feminism
in the novel _Ching-hua-yuean_, by Li Yu-chen (d. 1830), which demanded
equal rights for men and women.

The drama developed quickly in the Manchu epoch, particularly in
quantity, especially since the emperors greatly appreciated the theatre.
A catalogue of plays compiled in 1781 contains 1,013 titles! Some of
these dramas were of unprecedented length. One of them was played in 26
parts containing 240 acts; a performance took two years to complete!
Probably the finest dramas of the Manchu epoch are those of Li Yue (born
1611), who also became the first of the Chinese dramatic critics. What
he had to say about the art of the theatre, and about aesthetics in
general, is still worth reading.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the influence of Europe
became more and more marked. Translation began with Yen Fu (1853-1921),
who translated the first philosophical and scientific books and books on
social questions and made his compatriots acquainted with Western
thought. At the same time Lin Shu (1852-1924) translated the first
Western short stories and novels. With these two began the new style,
which was soon elaborated by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, a collaborator of Sun
Yat-sen's, and by others, and which ultimately produced the "literary
revolution" of 1917. Translation has continued to this day; almost every
book of outstanding importance in world literature is translated within
a few months of its appearance, and on the average these translations
are of a fairly high level.

Particularly fine work was produced in the field of porcelain in the
Manchu epoch. In 1680 the famous kilns in the province of Kiangsi were
reopened, and porcelain that is among the most artistically perfect in
the world was fired in them. Among the new colours were especially green
shades (one group is known as _famille verte_) and also black and yellow
compositions. Monochrome porcelain also developed further, including
very fine dark blue, brilliant red (called "ox-blood"), and white. In
the eighteenth century, however, there began an unmistakable decline,
which has continued to this day, although there are still a few
craftsmen and a few kilns that produce outstanding work (usually
attempts to imitate old models), often in small factories.

In painting, European influence soon shows itself. The best-known
example of this is Lang Shih-ning, an Italian missionary whose original
name was Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766); he began to work in China in
1715. He learned the Chinese method of painting, but introduced a number
of technical tricks of European painters, which were adopted in general
practice in China, especially by the official court painters: the
painting of the scholars who lived in seclusion remained uninfluenced.
Dutch flower-painting also had some influence in China as early as the
eighteenth century.

The missionaries played an important part at court. The first Manchu
emperors were as generous in this matter as the Mongols had been, and
allowed the foreigners to work in peace. They showed special interest in
the European science introduced by the missionaries; they had less
sympathy for their religious message. The missionaries, for their part,
sent to Europe enthusiastic accounts of the wonderful conditions in
China, and so helped to popularize the idea that was being formed in
Europe of an "enlightened", a constitutional, monarchy. The leaders of
the Enlightenment read these reports with enthusiasm, with the result
that they had an influence on the French Revolution. Confucius was found
particularly attractive, and was regarded as a forerunner of the
Enlightenment. The "Monadism" of the philosopher Leibniz was influenced
by these reports.

The missionaries gained a reputation at court as "scientists", and in
this they were of service both to China and to Europe. The behaviour of
the European merchants who followed the missions, spreading gradually in
growing numbers along the coasts of China, was not by any means so
irreproachable. The Chinese were certainly justified when they declared
that European ships often made landings on the coast and simply looted,
just as the Japanese had done before them. Reports of this came to the
court, and as captured foreigners described themselves as "Christians"
and also seemed to have some connection with the missionaries living at
court, and as disputes had broken out among the missionaries themselves
in connection with papal ecclesiastical policy, in the Yung-cheng period
(1723-1736; the name of the emperor was Shih Tsung) Christianity was
placed under a general ban, being regarded as a secret political
organization.

5 _Relations with the outer world_

During the Yung-cheng period there was long-continued guerrilla fighting
with natives in south-west China. The pressure of population in China
sought an outlet in emigration. More and more Chinese moved into the
south-west, and took the land from the natives, and the fighting was the
consequence of this.

At the beginning of the Ch'ien-lung period (1736-1796), fighting started
again in Turkestan. Mongols, now called Kalmuks, defeated by the
Chinese, had migrated to the Ili region, where after heavy fighting they
gained supremacy over some of the Kazaks and other Turkish peoples
living there and in western Turkestan. Some Kazak tribes went over to
the Russians, and in 1735 the Russian colonialists founded the town of
Orenburg in the western Kazak region. The Kalmuks fought the Chinese
without cessation until, in 1739, they entered into an agreement under
which they ceded half their territory to Manchu China, retaining only
the Ili region. The Kalmuks subsequently reunited with other sections of
the Kazaks against the Chinese. In 1754 peace was again concluded with
China, but it was followed by raids on both sides, so that the Manchus
determined to enter on a great campaign against the Ili region. This
ended with a decisive victory for the Chinese (1755). In the years that
followed, however, the Chinese began to be afraid that the various Kazak
tribes might unite in order to occupy the territory of the Kalmuks,
which was almost unpopulated owing to the mass slaughter of Kalmuks by
the Chinese. Unrest began among the Mohammedans throughout the
neighbouring western Turkestan, and the same Chinese generals who had
fought the Kalmuks marched into Turkestan and captured the Mohammedan
city states of Uch, Kashgar, and Yarkand.

The reinforcements for these campaigns, and for the garrisons which in
the following decades were stationed in the Ili region and in the west
of eastern Turkestan, marched along the road from Peking that leads
northward through Mongolia to the far distant Uliassutai and Kobdo. The
cost of transport for one _shih_ (about 66 lb.) amounted to 120 pieces
of silver. In 1781 certain economies were introduced, but between 1781
and 1791 over 30,000 tons, making some 8 tons a day, was transported to
that region. The cost of transport for supplies alone amounted in the
course of time to the not inconsiderable sum of 120,000,000 pieces of
silver. In addition to this there was the cost of the transported goods
and of the pay of soldiers and of the administration. These figures
apply to the period of occupation, of relative peace: during the actual
wars of conquest the expenditure was naturally far higher. Thus these
campaigns, though I do not think they brought actual economic ruin to
China, were nevertheless a costly enterprise, and one which produced
little positive advantage.

In addition to this, these wars brought China into conflict with the
European colonial powers. In the years during which the Chinese armies
were fighting in the Ili region, the Russians were putting out their
feelers in that direction, and the Chinese annals show plainly how the
Russians intervened in the fighting with the Kalmuks and Kazaks. The Hi
region remained thereafter a bone of contention between China and
Russia, until it finally went to Russia, bit by bit, between 1847 and
1881. The Kalmuks and Kazaks played a special part in Russo-Chinese
relations. The Chinese had sent a mission to the Kalmuks farthest west,
by the lower Volga, and had entered into relations with them, as early
as 1714. As Russian pressure on the Volga region continually grew, these
Kalmuks (mainly the Turgut tribe), who had lived there since 1630,
decided to return into Chinese territory (1771). During this enormously
difficult migration, almost entirely through hostile territory, a large
number of the Turgut perished; 85,000, however, reached the Hi region,
where they were settled by the Chinese on the lands of the eastern
Kalmuks, who had been largely exterminated.

In the south, too, the Chinese came into direct touch with the European
powers. In 1757 the English occupied Calcutta, and in 1766 the province
of Bengal. In 1767 a Manchu general, Ming Jui, who had been victorious
in the fighting for eastern Turkestan, marched against Burma, which was
made a dependency once more in 1769. And in 1790-1791 the Chinese
conquered Nepal, south of Tibet, because Nepalese had made two attacks
on Tibet. Thus English and Chinese political interests came here into
contact.

For the Ch'ien-lung period's many wars of conquest there seem to have
been two main reasons. The first was the need for security. The Mongols
had to be overthrown because otherwise the homeland of the Manchus was
menaced; in order to make sure of the suppression of the eastern
Mongols, the western Mongols (Kalmuks) had to be overthrown; to make
them harmless, Turkestan and the Ili region had to be conquered; Tibet
was needed for the security of Turkestan and Mongolia--and so on. Vast
territories, however, were conquered in this process which were of no
economic value, and most of which actually cost a great deal of money
and brought nothing in. They were conquered simply for security. That
advantage had been gained: an aggressor would have to cross great areas
of unproductive territory, with difficult conditions for reinforcements,
before he could actually reach China. In the second place, the Chinese
may actually have noticed the efforts that were being made by the
European powers, especially Russia and England, to divide Asia among
themselves, and accordingly they made sure of their own good share.

6 _Decline; revolts_

The period of Ch'ien-lung is not only that of the greatest expansion of
the Chinese empire, but also that of the greatest prosperity under the
Manchu regime. But there began at the same time to be signs of internal
decline. If we are to fix a particular year for this, perhaps it should
be the year 1774, in which came the first great popular rising, in the
province of Shantung. In 1775 there came another popular rising, in
Honan--that of the "Society of the White Lotus". This society, which had
long existed as a secret organization and had played a part in the Ming
epoch, had been reorganized by a man named Liu Sung. Liu Sung was
captured and was condemned to penal servitude. His followers, however,
regrouped themselves, particularly in the province of Anhui. These
risings had been produced, as always, by excessive oppression of the
people by the government or the governing class. As, however, the anger
of the population was naturally directed also against the idle Manchus
of the cities, who lived on their state pensions, did no work, and
behaved as a ruling class, the government saw in these movements a
nationalist spirit, and took drastic steps against them. The popular
leaders now altered their program, and acclaimed a supposed descendant
from the Ming dynasty as the future emperor. Government troops caught
the leader of the "White Lotus" agitation, but he succeeded in escaping.
In the regions through which the society had spread, there then began a
sort of Inquisition, of exceptional ferocity. Six provinces were
affected, and in and around the single city of Wuch'ang in four months
more than 20,000 people were beheaded. The cost of the rising to the
government ran into millions. In answer to this oppression, the popular
leaders tightened their organization and marched north-west from the
western provinces of which they had gained control. The rising was
suppressed only by a very big military operation, and not until 1802.
There had been very heavy fighting between 1793 and 1802--just when in
Europe, in the French Revolution, another oppressed population won its
freedom.

The Ch'ien-lung emperor abdicated on New Year's Day, 1795, after ruling
for sixty years. He died in 1799. His successor was Jen Tsung
(1796-1821; reign name: Chia-ch'ing). In the course of his reign the
rising of the "White Lotus" was suppressed, but in 1813 there began a
new rising, this time in North China--again that of a secret
organization, the "Society of Heaven's Law". One of its leaders bribed
some eunuchs, and penetrated with a group of followers into the palace;
he threw himself upon the emperor, who was only saved through the
intervention of his son. At the same time the rising spread in the
provinces. Once more the government succeeded in suppressing it and
capturing the leaders. But the memory of these risings was kept alive
among the Chinese people. For the government failed to realize that the
actual cause of the risings was the general impoverishment, and saw in
them a nationalist movement, thus actually arousing a national
consciousness, stronger than in the Ming epoch, among the middle and
lower classes of the people, together with hatred of the Manchus. They
were held responsible for every evil suffered, regardless of the fact
that similar evils had existed earlier.

7 _European Imperialism in the Far East_

With the Tao-kuang period (1821-1850) began a new period in Chinese
history, which came to an end only in 1911.

In foreign affairs these ninety years were marked by the steadily
growing influence of the Western powers, aimed at turning China into a
colony. Culturally this period was that of the gradual infiltration of
Western civilization into the Far East; it was recognized in China that
it was necessary to learn from the West. In home affairs we see the
collapse of the dynasty and the destruction of the unity of the empire;
of four great civil wars, one almost brought the dynasty to its end.
North and South China, the coastal area and the interior, developed in
different ways.

Great Britain had made several attempts to improve her trade relations
with China, but the mission of 1793 had no success, and that of 1816
also failed. English merchants, like all foreign merchants, were only
permitted to settle in a small area adjoining Canton and at Macao, and
were only permitted to trade with a particular group of monopolists,
known as the "Hong". The Hong had to pay taxes to the state, but they
had a wonderful opportunity of enriching themselves. The Europeans were
entirely at their mercy, for they were not allowed to travel inland, and
they were not allowed to try to negotiate with other merchants, to
secure lower prices by competition.

The Europeans concentrated especially on the purchase of silk and tea;
but what could they import into China? The higher the price of the goods
and the smaller the cargo space involved, the better were the chances of
profit for the merchants. It proved, however, that European woollens or
luxury goods could not be sold; the Chinese would probably have been
glad to buy food, but transport was too expensive to permit profitable
business. Thus a new article was soon discovered--opium, carried from
India to China: the price was high and the cargo space involved was very
small. The Chinese were familiar with opium, and bought it readily.
Accordingly, from 1800 onwards opium became more and more the chief
article of trade, especially for the English, who were able to bring it
conveniently from India. Opium is harmful to the people; the opium trade
resulted in certain groups of merchants being inordinately enriched; a
great deal of Chinese money went abroad. The government became
apprehensive and sent Lin Tse-hsue as its commissioner to Canton. In 1839
he prohibited the opium trade and burned the chests of opium found in
British possession. The British view was that to tolerate the Chinese
action might mean the destruction of British trade in the Far East and
that, on the other hand, it might be possible by active intervention to
compel the Chinese to open other ports to European trade and to shake
off the monopoly of the Canton merchants. In 1840 British ships-of-war
appeared off the south-eastern coast of China and bombarded it. In 1841
the Chinese opened negotiations and dismissed Lin Tse-hsue. As the
Chinese concessions were regarded as inadequate, hostilities continued;
the British entered the Yangtze estuary and threatened Nanking. In this
first armed conflict with the West, China found herself defenceless
owing to her lack of a navy, and it was also found that the European
weapons were far superior to those of the Chinese. In 1842 China was
compelled to capitulate: under the Treaty of Nanking Hong Kong was ceded
to Great Britain, a war indemnity was paid, certain ports were thrown
open to European trade, and the monopoly was brought to an end. A great
deal of opium came, however, into China through smuggling--regrettably,
for the state lost the customs revenue!

This treaty introduced the period of the Capitulations. It contained
the dangerous clause which added most to China's misfortunes--the Most
Favoured Nation clause, providing that if China granted any privilege to
any other state, that privilege should also automatically be granted to
Great Britain. In connection with this treaty it was agreed that the
Chinese customs should be supervised by European consuls; and a trade
treaty was granted. Similar treaties followed in 1844 with France and
the United States. The missionaries returned; until 1860, however, they
were only permitted to work in the treaty ports. Shanghai was thrown
open in 1843, and developed with extraordinary rapidity from a town to a
city of a million and a centre of world-wide importance.

The terms of the Nanking Treaty were not observed by either side; both
evaded them. In order to facilitate the smuggling, the British had
permitted certain Chinese junks to fly the British flag. This also
enabled these vessels to be protected by British ships-of-war from
pirates, which at that time were very numerous off the southern coast
owing to the economic depression. The Chinese, for their part, placed
every possible obstacle in the way of the British. In 1856 the Chinese
held up a ship sailing under the British flag, pulled down its flag, and
arrested the crew on suspicion of smuggling. In connection with this and
other events, Britain decided to go to war. Thus began the "Lorcha War"
of 1857, in which France joined for the sake of the booty to be
expected. Britain had just ended the Crimean War, and was engaged in
heavy fighting against the Moguls in India. Consequently only a small
force of a few thousand men could be landed in China; Canton, however,
was bombarded, and also the forts of Tientsin. There still seemed no
prospect of gaining the desired objectives by negotiation, and in 1860 a
new expedition was fitted out, this time some 20,000 strong. The troops
landed at Tientsin and marched on Peking; the emperor fled to Jehol and
did not return; he died in 1861. The new Treaty of Tientsin (1860)
provided for (a) the opening of further ports to European traders; (b)
the session of Kowloon, the strip of land lying opposite Hong Kong; (c)
the establishment of a British legation in Peking; (d) freedom of
navigation along the Yangtze; (e) permission for British subjects to
purchase land in China; (f) the British to be subject to their own
consular courts and not to the Chinese courts; (g) missionary activity
to be permitted throughout the country. In addition to this, the
commercial treaty was revised, the opium trade was permitted once more,
and a war indemnity was to be paid by China. In the eyes of Europe,
Britain had now succeeded in turning China not actually into a colony,
but at all events into a semi-colony; China must be expected soon to
share the fate of India. China, however, with her very different
conceptions of intercourse between states, did not realize the full
import of these terms; some of them were regarded as concessions on
unimportant points, which there was no harm in granting to the trading
"barbarians", as had been done in the past; some were regarded as simple
injustices, which at a given moment could be swept away by
administrative action.

But the result of this European penetration was that China's balance of
trade was adverse, and became more and more so, as under the commercial
treaties she could neither stop the importation of European goods nor
set a duty on them; and on the other hand she could not compel
foreigners to buy Chinese goods. The efflux of silver brought general
impoverishment to China, widespread financial stringency to the state,
and continuous financial crises and inflation. China had never had much
liquid capital, and she was soon compelled to take up foreign loans in
order to pay her debts. At that time internal loans were out of the
question (the first internal loan was floated in 1894): the population
did not even know what a state loan meant; consequently the loans had to
be issued abroad. This, however, entailed the giving of securities,
generally in the form of economic privileges. Under the Most Favoured
Nation clause, however, these privileges had then to be granted to other
states which had made no loans to China. Clearly a vicious spiral, which
in the end could only bring disaster.

The only exception to the general impoverishment, in which not only the
peasants but the old upper classes were involved, was a certain section
of the trading community and the middle class, which had grown rich
through its dealings with the Europeans. These people now accumulated
capital, became Europeanized with their staffs, acquired land from the
impoverished gentry, and sent their sons abroad to foreign universities.
They founded the first industrial undertakings, and learned European
capitalist methods. This class was, of course, to be found mainly in the
treaty ports in the south and in their environs. The south, as far north
as Shanghai, became more modern and more advanced; the north made no
advance. In the south, European ways of thought were learnt, and Chinese
and European theories were compared. Criticism began. The first
revolutionary societies were formed in this atmosphere in the south.

8 _Risings in Turkestan and within China: the T'ai P'ing Rebellion_

But the emperor Hsuean Tsung (reign name Tao-kuang), a man in poor health
though not without ability, had much graver anxieties than those caused
by the Europeans. He did not yet fully realize the seriousness of the
European peril.

[Illustration: 16 The imperial summer palace of the Manchu rulers, at
Jehol. _Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson_.]

[Illustration: 17 Tower on the city wall of Peking. _Photo H.
Hammer-Morrisson_.]

In Turkestan, where Turkish Mohammedans lived under
Chinese rule, conditions were far from being as the Chinese desired. The
Chinese, a fundamentally rationalistic people, regarded religion as a
purely political matter, and accordingly required every citizen to take
part in the official form of worship. Subject to that, he might
privately belong to any other religion. To a Mohammedan, this was
impossible and intolerable. The Mohammedans were only ready to practice
their own religion, and absolutely refused to take part in any other.
The Chinese also tried to apply to Turkestan in other matters the same
legislation that applied to all China, but this proved irreconcilable
with the demands made by Islam on its followers. All this produced
continual unrest.

Turkestan had a feudal system of government with a number of feudal
lords (_beg_), who tried to maintain their influence and who had the
support of the Mohammedan population. The Chinese had come to Turkestan
as soldiers and officials, to administer the country. They regarded
themselves as the lords of the land and occupied themselves with the
extraction of taxes. Most of the officials were also associated with the
Chinese merchants who travelled throughout Turkestan and as far as
Siberia. The conflicts implicit in this situation produced great
Mohammedan risings in the nineteenth century. The first came in
1825-1827; in 1845 a second rising flamed up, and thirty years later
these revolts led to the temporary loss of the whole of Turkestan.

In 1848, native unrest began in the province of Hunan, as a result of
the constantly growing pressure of the Chinese settlers on the native
population; in the same year there was unrest farther south, in the
province of Kwangsi, this time in connection with the influence of the
Europeans. The leader was a quite simple man of Hakka blood, Hung
Hsiu-ch'uean (born 1814), who gathered impoverished Hakka peasants round
him as every peasant leader had done in the past. Very often the nucleus
of these peasant movements had been a secret society with a particular
religious tinge; this time the peasant revolutionaries came forward as
at the same time the preachers of a new religion of their own. Hung had
heard of Christianity from missionaries (1837), and he mixed up
Christian ideas with those of ancient China and proclaimed to his
followers a doctrine that promised the Kingdom of God on earth. He
called himself "Christ's younger brother", and his kingdom was to be
called _T'ai P'ing_ ("Supreme Peace"). He made his first comrades,
charcoal makers, local doctors, peddlers and farmers, into kings, and
made himself emperor. At bottom the movement, like all similar ones
before it, was not religious but social; and it produced a great
response from the peasants. The program of the T'ai P'ing, in some
points influenced by Christian ideas but more so by traditional Chinese
thought, was in many points revolutionary: (a) all property was communal
property; (b) land was classified into categories according to its
fertility and equally distributed among men and women. Every producer
kept of the produce as much as he and his family needed and delivered
the rest into the communal granary; (c) administration and tax systems
were revised; (d) women were given equal rights: they fought together
with men in the army and had access to official position. They had to
marry, but monogamy was requested; (e) the use of opium, tobacco and
alcohol was prohibited, prostitution was illegal; (f) foreigners were
regarded as equals, capitulations as the Manchus had accepted were not
recognized. A large part of the officials, and particularly of the
soldiers sent against the revolutionaries, were Manchus, and
consequently the movement very soon became a nationalist movement, much
as the popular movement at the end of the Mongol epoch had done. Hung
made rapid progress; in 1852 he captured Hankow, and in 1853 Nanking,
the important centre in the east. With clear political insight he made
Nanking his capital. In this he returned to the old traditions of the
beginning of the Ming epoch, no doubt expecting in this way to attract
support from the eastern Chinese gentry, who had no liking for a capital
far away in the north. He made a parade of adhesion to the ancient
Chinese tradition: his followers cut off their pigtails and allowed
their hair to grow as in the past.

He did not succeed, however, in carrying his reforms from the stage of
sporadic action to a systematic reorganization of the country, and he
also failed to enlist the elements needed for this as for all other
administrative work, so that the good start soon degenerated into a
terrorist regime.

Hung's followers pressed on from Nanking, and in 1853-1855 they advanced
nearly to Tientsin; but they failed to capture Peking itself.

The new T'ai P'ing state faced the Europeans with big problems. Should


 


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