History week 4 journal entry
Cooper2021
WorldintheMakingAGlobalHistoryVolumeTwoSince1300-281-318.pdf
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20
Expansion and Isolation in Asia 1450–1750
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Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the Russian Empire, 1462–1725
FOCUS What prompted Russian territorial expansion?
China from Ming to Qing Rule, 1500–1800
FOCUS How did the shift to a silver cash economy transform Chinese government and society?
Japan in Transition, 1540–1750 FOCUS How did self-isolation affect Japan?
Korea, a Land in Between, 1392–1750 FOCUS: How did life for common folk in early modern Korea differ from life in China or Japan?
Consolidation in Mainland Southeast Asia, 1500–1750
FOCUS What trends did mainland Southeast Asia share with China, Korea, Japan, and Russia?
COUNTERPOINT: “Spiritual Conquest” in the Philippines
FOCUS: In contrast to the general trend of political consolidation in early modern Asia, why did the Philippines fall to a European colonizing power?
backstory By the fifteenth century, Russia had shaken off Mongol rule and was beginning to expand from its base in Moscow. Russian expansion would eventually lead to conflict with China, which by the fifteenth century was by far the world’s most populous state. Self-sufficient, widely literate, and technically sophisticated, China vied with Europe for supremacy in both practical and theoretical sciences. As we saw in Chapter 14, the Ming dynasty had also become a global power capable of mounting long-distance sea voyages, yet by the 1430s its rulers had chosen to withdraw and focus on consolidating internal affairs. By contrast, Japan was deeply fractured in the fifteenth century, its many districts and several islands subject to feuding warlords. Korea, though less densely populated than either of its neigh- bors east or west, was relatively unified under the Yi dynasty, which came to power in the late fourteenth century. In mainland South- east Asia, several Buddhist kingdoms were by this time undergoing a major reconfigu- ration. Neo-Confucianism was on the rise in Vietnam. The Philippine Islands, meanwhile, remained politically and ethnically diverse, in part due to their complex geography.
World in the Making This life-size portrait from Beijing’s Palace Museum depicts China’s Emperor Qianlong (1711–1799) at a grand old age. The use of perspective—the illusion of three-dimensional space— reflects the influence of European Jesuit artists who resided at court after the early seventeenth century, but the emperor’s pose reflects a Chinese taste for a more statuelike representation of imperial power. His elaborate silk garments and pearl-encrusted headgear and necklace suggest the wealth of the Qing treasury, which despite massive expenditures and waste, boasted a huge surplus in silver for much of the emperor’s reign.
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Wang Yangming (1472–1529) had trouble on his hands. As governor of China’s Jiangxi Province, he had to collect taxes and keep the peace for his Ming overlords. Wang had risen through the ranks of the civil service through a mix of intelligence, connections, and ambition. Now he was faced with a rebellious prince, Zhu Chen-hao, and his followers. Acting as general, Wang successfully attacked the rebels with every weapon at hand, including bronze cannon probably copied from the Portuguese. More important than the suppression of the rebellion was the aftermath. Wang chose not to terrorize the populace as his predecessors might have, but instead moved quickly to rebuild, pardoning many rebels and winning their loyalty to the Ming emperor.
Wang Yangming’s effective governorship won praise, but he was better known as a philosopher. Wang was among the most renowned Neo-Confucianists of early modern China. As described in Chapter 14, the philosophical movement known as Neo-Confucianism revived an ancient tradition. The fifth-century B.C.E. Chinese philosopher Kongzi (Latinized as “Confucius”) envisioned the ideal earthly society as a mirror of divine harmony. Although he prescribed ancestor worship, Confucius developed a system of ethics rather than a formal religion. Education and scientific experimentation were highly valued, but so was submission to social superiors. Some of Confucius’s ideas were elaborated by his fourth-century B.C.E. successor, Mengzi, or Mencius, whose commentaries inspired Wang Yangming.
As the Jiangxi episode suggested, Wang was as much a man of action as he was a scholar. In fact, Wang saw no clear distinction between his military and intellectual lives, arguing that only by doing could one learn. In addition to challenging scholarly reflection in matters of policy, Wang argued that individuals possessed an innate sense of right and wrong, something akin to the Western notion of conscience. Some scholars have argued that at least one result of the diffusion of Wang’s teachings was a heightened sense among Chinese elites of the worthiness of the individual.
Neo-Confucianists sought to restore order to societies they felt had descended into chaos. For Wang, putting Ming society back on track required forceful action. Other Neo-Confucianists favored reflection, but Wang’s activism struck the right chord in early sixteenth-century China, and was widely promoted by educators, first in China and later in Korea and Vietnam. Japan borrowed more selectively from Neo-Confucianism. W hen blended with Buddhist beliefs already rooted in all these regions, Neo-Confucianism emerged as a religion of state. A foundation for many legal as well as moral principles, it helped hold together millions of ethnically diverse and socially divided people. In other parts of Asia, however, religion fueled
Neo-Confucianism The revival of Confucius’s ancient philosophy stressing agrarian life, harmony between ruler and ruled, and respect for elders and ancestors.
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division and conflict. The Philippines were a battleground between recent converts to Islam and Roman Catholicism, and Russia was defining itself as a revived Byzantium, expanding frontiers across Asia in the name of Orthodox Christianity.
Change swept Asia in early modern times, sometimes provoked by foreigners, but mostly resulting from internal developments. The overall trend was toward political consolidation under powerful dynasties. These centralizing governments sought to suppress dissent, encourage religious unity, and expand at the expense of weaker neighbors, often using new military technologies to achieve this end. W hole new classes of bureaucrats and merchants flourished, and with them came wider literacy in vernacular languages, support of the arts, and conspicuous consumption. Despite some punishing episodes of war, rebellion, and natural disaster, the early modern period in East Asia was arguably more peaceful than in most of Europe, the Middle East, or Africa. It was an era of steady population growth, commercial expansion, political consolidation, and cultural florescence.
1. What factors led to imperial
consolidation in Russia and China?
Who were the new rulers, and
what were the sources of their
legitimacy?
2. Why was isolation more
common in these empires than
overseas engagement, and what
were some of the benefits and
drawbacks of isolation?
3. In what ways did early
modern Asians transform their
environments, and why?
OVERVIEW QUESTIONS
The major global development in this chapter: The general trend toward politi- cal and cultural consolidation in early modern Asia.
As you read, consider:
Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the Russian Empire 1462–1725
FOCUS What prompted Russian territorial expansion?
Beginning in 1462, Moscow-based princes combined new weapons technology with bureaucratic innovations to expand their holdings. By the time Tsar Peter the Great died in 1725, the Russian Empire encompassed a huge swath of northern Asia, stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific (see Map 20.1).
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Russian imperialism was conservative, with Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion, serving as a kind of nationalist “glue” throughout early modern times. Religious and cultural unity, plus a tendency toward isolation, inhibited efforts at social and agricultural reform. A lthough Peter the Great would end his reign by copying elements of western European governance and science, Russia remained an essentially tributary, agricultural regime until the nineteenth century. Military reforms were Peter’s most modern legacy. A lthough a modest merchant class had long existed in cities such as Moscow and Novgorod, the majority of Russians remained serfs , bound peasants with little more freedom than slaves.
serf A dependent agricultural laborer attached to a property and treated much like a slave.
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Rise of Russia, 1462–1725 Qing Empire, 1725
Trade route
Furs
Leather
Timber
Russian territory
Trade goods
MAP 20.1 R ise of Russia, 1462–1725 Beginning with the consolidation of Muscov y in the mid-fifteenth century, Russia grew steadily to become one of the world’s largest—albeit least densely populated—land empires.
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Consolidation in Muscovite Russia A fter the fall of Constantinople in 1453, some Russian Christians prophesied that the principality of Muscov y was to be the new Byzantium, and Moscow the “third Rome.” The Russian Orthodox Church was fiercely anti-Catholic and frequently energized by apocalyptic visionaries. These visionaries inspired the grand princes who ruled Moscow following the Black Death, and each seemed more determined than the last to expand both Muscov y and the Orthodox Church’s domain. As the early modern period progressed, the Ottomans and their allies threatened Russia in the south, and the Poles, Lithuanians, and Swedes periodically threatened in the west. The eastern Tatars, though in decline after Timur (see Chapter 14), also menaced.
Russia took shape under Moscow’s grand prince, Ivan III (r. 1462–1505), nicknamed “the Great.” Under Ivan the Great, the Muscovites expanded northward, tying landlocked Muscov y to the commercially vibrant Baltic Sea region. By the later sixteenth century, Russian monarchs allowed English, Dutch, and other non-Catholic European merchants to settle and trade in the capital. These merchants sought to circumvent the Ottomans and other intermediaries to purchase East and South Asian fabrics and spices. A lliances with foreign merchants gave Muscovite rulers access to artillery, muskets, and other Western gunpowder technologies in exchange for furs and Asian textiles. These new weapons in turn fueled Russian imperial expansion, mostly across the steppes to the east and south (see again Map 20.1).
Russia’s next great ruler, and first tsar (literally, “Caesar”), was Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), “the Terrible.” A lthough remembered mostly for bizarre behav- ior in his later years, Ivan IV was an effective monarch. In addition to conquering cities in the distant territories of the Golden Horde in the 1550s and acquiring fur- producing territories in Siberia, Ivan IV also reformed the Muscovite bureaucracy, judiciary, and treasury. The church, always at the heart of Russian politics, was also reorganized and partly subordinated to the state.
Ivan earned his nickname beginning in the 1560s when he established a personal fiefdom called the oprichnina (oh-preech-NEE-nah), which, like the Ottoman timar and devshirme systems, helped to break the power of nobles and replace them with dependent state servants. This abrupt political shuffling crippled commercial cities such as Novgorod, however, and generally threw the empire into disarray. Meanwhile, wars begun in 1558 with Poland and Sweden went badly for Ivan’s out- gunned forces. Things went no better on the southern front, and in 1571 Moscow
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fell to the eastern Tatars. Psychologically unstable during his last decade, Ivan died of a stroke in 1584. Thanks in part to Ivan’s personal disintegration, which included his killing of the heir apparent, Russia descended into chaos after Ivan’s death. Historians call the subsequent three decades Russia’s “Time of Troubles.”
The Time of Troubles (1584 –1613) was punctuated by succession crises, but it was also an era of famine, disease, militar y defeat, and social unrest, ak in to Europe’s “seventeenth-centur y crisis.” Exploiting the dynastic chaos, the k ing of Poland and Lithuania tried to place his son on the Russian throne. The prospect of a Catholic ruler sparked Russia’s first massive peasant rebellion, which ended w ith the humiliating occupation of Moscow by Polish forces. In 1613 an army of nobles, townspeople, and peasants drove out the intruders and put on the throne a nobleman, Michael Romanov (r. 1613–1645), founder of Russia’s last royal line.
The Romanovs’ New Frontiers The Romanovs rebuilt Muscov y and “rebooted” empire. Starting at seven million in 1600, Russia’s population doubled by 1700. Impressive as this growth was, all of Russia’s inhabitants could have fit into a small corner of China. Further, they looked more to leadership from the church, which had regained authority, than from the crown.
Tsar Peter the Great (r. 1689–1725) faced a powerful and insubordinate church. He responded by prosecuting wandering preachers as enemies of the state. But what made Peter “great” was not his harsh dealings with the church but his push to make Russia a competitor on par with western European nation-states. To this end, he stoked expansionist conflicts, imported arms and military experts, built a nav y, and professionalized the armed forces. The Imperial Russian Army soon became world class, but at great cost to taxpayers.
Peter, a man of formidable size and boundless energy, is often remembered for his attempts to Westernize Russia, to purge it of “ backward” characteristics. Boyars, or nobles, were ordered to shave their beards and change their dress, and all courtiers were required to learn French. A new capital, St. Petersburg, was built in the French style, complete with a summer palace inspired by Louis XIV’s Versailles. But the empire’s destiny lay in Asia.
Russian expansion across Asia was not only a military process. The growth of the fur trade reverberated through the ecosystems of Siberia, and settling the steppes of the south and east entailed wrenching social change and transforma- tion of the landscape. As frontier forts and agricultural and ranching colonization advanced, indigenous nomads were massacred, driven out, incorporated into trade
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or tributary networks, or forced to convert to Christianity. The steppe frontier was a haven for fugitives, too, including a number of runaway serfs.
Foreign merchants now entered Moscow from many quarters, including the Middle East and South Asia, yet the government granted only lim- ited access to Russian urban markets and even less to interior supply regions. Russian mer- chants thus retained control of imperial commerce despite limited access to credit and pre- cious metals. They used distant ports such as Archangel, on the W hite Sea, to trade leather and other goods with the English and Dutch. Furs were traded to Europe, and also to the Ottoman and Persian Empires. By the time of Peter the Great, England depended on Russian timber, which it paid for with gold (coming mostly from Brazil by this time, as we will see in the next chapter).
The Russian Empire, in sum, drew from a blend of religious self-confidence, demographic growth, commercial links, and the personal ambitions of its Moscow-based tsars. More gunpowder empire than modern state, Russia nevertheless grew to encompass more terrain than any other Eurasian state in its time, despite its sparse population. Repression of the serf majority, however, would spark a new wave of rebellions before the end of the eighteenth century.
Peter the Great A giant of Russian history, the Romanov tsar Peter the Great spent much of his adult life trying to modernize and expand his vast realm, which spanned the Eurasian continent. He is shown here, tall in the saddle and supremely confident, at the 1709 Battle of Poltava (in present-day Ukraine), where he and his army defeated Sweden’s K ing Charles X II. The artist depicts Peter as blessed by an angel, whereas K ing Charles was forced to seek refuge with the Ottomans.
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China from Ming to Qing Rule 1500–1800
FOCUS How did the shift to a silver cash economy transform Chinese government and society?
By 1500, thanks to several millennia of intensive agriculture and a tradition of vast public works projects, China was home to at least 110 million people, almost twice as many as Europe. Moreover, China under the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) was virtually self-sufficient. R ice and other foodstuffs, along with livestock and manu- factured goods, were transported and redistributed throughout the empire by way of canals, roads, and fortified posts that had been constructed by drafted peasant laborers over the centuries.
Only silver was in short supply as Ming rulers shifted China’s economy from copper or bronze currency and simple barter to silver money exchanges, especially after 1550. Commercialization and a “hard money” economy necessitated links to the outside world. China’s surplus of silk, in demand abroad since antiquity, made exports profitable. Fine porcelain and lacquer wares also brought in foreign exchange, as would tea later on. Western ideas and technologies arrived with Christian missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century, but they barely influenced Chinese culture. China, a technologically advanced and literate society, wanted only silver from the West.
The final century of Ming rule, from about 1540 to 1644, witnessed a commercial revival and improvement in standards of living. It also saw the return of mounted enemies in the north, the Manchu. And, despite the prosperity, there were no guarantees against the famine and disease that had plagued previous centuries. China’s bureaucracy, though efficient by world standards, was inadequate to the task of mass relief. Peasant families could at best hope for community cooperation in hard times.
Late Ming Imperial Demands and Private Trade The most important emperor of late Ming times was Wanli (r. 1573–1620). Wanli was not known for being in touch with his subjects, yet one of his policies had global implications. Wanli ordered many of China’s taxes collected in silver rather than in the form of labor service, rice, or other trade goods. The shift to hard currency eased price standardization across the empire. This was the “Single W hip Law” of 1581, so named since it bundled various taxes into one stinging payment.
Given China’s immense population, demand for silver soared. Portuguese and Chinese merchants first imported Japanese silver, but the Chinese soon focused
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on Manila, the Philippine capital, where they exchanged silk, porcelain, and other goods for Spanish-American silver coming from Mexico (see Map 20.3, page 749). Thanks to Wanli, a Chinese commercial colony emerged in Manila.
The Manila trade was profitable for both Spanish and Chinese merchants. The annual trans-Pacific voyages of the “Manila galleons” that left Acapulco, Mex ico, each year loaded with the silver of Potosí (Bolivia), Zacatecas (Mex ico), and other A merican mining centers, continued through the early nineteenth centur y. Still more Spanish-A merican silver reached China from the West, traveling through Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean basin to ports such as Macao and Guangzhou (Canton). Since China, compared with Europe or India, valued silver at a relatively higher rate than gold, profit could be made in almost any exchange.
How China absorbed so many tons of silver without dramatic price inflation remains a matter of scholarly debate. One outlet was government spending, for by the early seventeenth century Ming rulers were outfitting costly armies. Defense against Manchu and other northern raiders grew increasingly expensive, but in the end proved ineffectual. Were fluctuations in silver income to blame for Ming decline?
Echoing historians of the seventeenth-century crisis in Europe, scholars long claimed that a dip in silver revenues after 1630 rendered the Ming almost defenseless. More recent research, however, suggests no such dip occurred; silver kept pouring in through the 1640s. Other factors must have trumped imperial budget issues. Meanwhile, private merchants who supplied the military profited handsomely from China’s silver-based economy, as did those who exported silk to Manila. Only in the nineteenth century would China’s vast silver holdings begin to flow outward in exchange for opium and other imports.
Trade to the outside world stimulated China’s economy in several ways, especially in the coastal regions around Nanjing and Canton. Men labored on in rice fields since taxes in the form of raw commodities were still required despite growing monetization. Women, however, were increasingly drawn into the production of silk thread and finished textiles for export. Women did most spinning and weaving in their own households as piecework. This yielded essential household income but also added to an already burdensome workload. A lthough Chinese women worked for men, much like Dutch and Irish women in the linen industry, they were now key suppliers to the global commercial economy (see Lives and Livelihoods: Silk Weavers in China). A fter silk, China’s most admired product was its porcelain, known as “chinaware” in the West (see Seeing the Past: Blue-on-W hite: Ming Export Porcelain).
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LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS
Silk Weavers in China Silk production, or sericulture, dates back several thousand years in China, but export volume grew most dramatically in early modern times, begin- ning with the late Ming. It was stimulated in par- ticular by the massive influx of Spanish American silver after 1581. Most Chinese silk producers were concentrated in the southeast, especially along the lower Yangzi R iver (see again Map 20.2). Imperial factories were established under the Ming in Nan- jing and Beijing, but most tasks were spread among peasants who worked at home at specific tasks as- signed by private merchants. The merchants paid peasants for their mulberry leaves, cocoons, spun fiber, and finished fabrics.
Silk fiber is spun from the cocoons of the silk- worm, produced by the worms’ digestion of large quantities of mulberry leaves. The worms are frag- ile creatures susceptible to diseases and in need of constant supervision and feeding. Since they were tended in environments susceptible to drastic tem- perature changes, the worms’ welfare was a con- stant source of worry.
Chinese Silk Weaving This rare detail from a Ming ceramic vase shows a group of Chinese women weaving silk on a complex loom. Both highly technical and vast in scale, Chinese silk production was unmatched in early modern times.
Manchu Expansion and the Rise of the Qing Empire China in the last years of Ming rule faced crisis. Severe droughts crippled the north from 1641 to 1644, but other factors also accelerated imperial decline. Court intrigues created a vacuum of leadership just as Manchu raids grew most threatening, draining resources as early as the 1620s. The Manchu reduced Korea to tributar y status in 1637, and by 1642 they reached Shandong Province.
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Rather like the linen industry in early modern Holland and Ireland, silk production in Ming and Qing China was extremely labor intensive and largely dependent on women. Caring for silkworms was added to a host of domestic and agricultural tasks, and spinning, which had to be finished rapidly before the cocoons rotted, was often done late into the night. Many households stopped interacting with neighbors entirely until silk season had passed, so intense and delicate was the work. Still, silk making was attractive to peasants since it allowed them to enter the market economy at greater advan- tage than with food products, which were heav y and
susceptible to spoilage or consumption by rodents and other vermin. Because the industry itself was not taxed, many peasants planted mulberry bushes and tended cocoons in order to meet the emperor’s silver cash tax demands.
Commercial producers eventually developed large reeling machines operated by men, but in early modern times most reeling was done by women on small hand-turned devices. Some peasants also wove textiles, but often not those who produced the raw fiber. With time, like European linen manufacture, Chinese silk production became a highly capitalized industry.
Questions to Consider
1. From its origins as an ancient Chinese art, how did silk manufacture change in early modern times? 2. How did silk weaving differ from sugar making in the Americas (Chapter 16’s Lives and Livelihoods)
or gold mining in West A frica (Chapter 17’s Lives and Livelihoods)?
For Further Reading:
Vainker, S. J. Chinese Silk: A Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Min-hsiung, Shih. The Silk Industry in Ch’ing China. Translated by E-tu Zen Sun. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
1976.
But it was a local rebel, Li Zicheng, who facilitated the Manchu capture of Beijing in 1644. As the capital fell to Li, both the Ming emperor and his wife commit- ted suicide. To rid the capital of the rebels, a Ming official sought Manchu aid. The Manchus seized the moment and occupied the capital. Calling themselves the Qing, or “Pure,” dynasty, the Manchus assumed the role of ruling minority (see Map 20.2).
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SEEING THE PAST
Blue-on-White: Ming Export Porcelain Before industrialization, China’s artisans produced a
vast range of consumer goods, from ordinary metal
nails to fine silk textiles. After silk, China was most
renowned for its porcelain, a special variety of clay
pottery fired to the point that it was transformed
into glass. The center of this artisanal industry was
(and remains) Jingdezhen (JING- deh-juhn), in east-
ern Jiangxi Province. The combination of properly
mixed kaolin clay and high heat made it possible
for artisans, mostly men, to fashion durable vessels,
plates, and other items of extraordinary thinness.
Over many centuries Chinese painters and calligra-
phers developed a range of styles and techniques
for decorating porcelain, including the application
of cobalt pigments that emerged from the kiln in
stark blue contrast to the white base. The Ming de-
veloped this “blue-on-white” product specifically
for export, first to the Muslim world and later to
regions throughout the globe. Like the example
shown here from about 1600, many blue-on-white
porcelain products were decorated with Western
and other foreign images, including monograms
and pictures of the Virgin Mary.
Porcelain making continued throughout the
Qing period, as well, but with a shift toward individ-
ual artistic virtuosity rather than mass, anonymous
production.
Examining the Evidence
1. How did Chinese artisans adapt their product to match the tastes of foreigner buyers?
2. Compare this Ming plate of around 1600 with the example on p. 844 of “Wedgwood blue” china created in industrializing Britain around two centuries later. W hat aesthetic and physical qualities were the British manufacturers seeking to duplicate, and why?
Ming Blue-on-W hite Export Porcelain Like the example shown here from about 1600, many blue-on-white porcelain products were decorated with Western and other foreign images, including monograms and pictures of the Virgin Mary.
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MAP 20.2 The Qing Dynasty, 1644–1799 The Qing were mounted outsiders who developed a vast Asian empire, first by toppling the Ming dynasty to their south in 1644, and then by annexing interior regions one by one through the eighteenth century. A lthough conquered regions such as Tibet and Mongolia were extensive, most Qing subjects lived in the former Ming core, home to the world’s largest concentration of people.
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The transition to Qing rule after 1644 proved surprisingly smooth, and most Chinese subjects’ lives were barely changed. A lthough the new Qing emperors maintained a distinct ethnic identity and dealt harshly with dissenters, they tended to improve on rather than revolutionize Chinese patterns of governance. As a result, the empire quickly rebounded. Under Qing rule, Western gunpowder technology was so fully embraced that it enabled the conquest of much of Mongolia, Tibet, and the Amur R iver basin (claimed by Russia) by the 1750s. Tributaries from these distant provinces trekked to Beijing to pay homage to the “pure” emperor.
The ascendancy of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) was cemented by Emperor Kangxi’s accession in 1661. By the end of his rule in 1722, China was an expansionist empire. Mongolia, annexed in 1697, was a base for this project, and a buffer against Peter the Great’s Russia. By 1700 much of mainland Southeast Asia, formerly defiant, paid tribute to the Qing emperor in exchange for political autonomy. Kangxi’s successors followed his example, and by 1751 Tibet and Nepal fell to the Qing. Chinese colonists were lured west with tax breaks and homesteads.
By the 1750s, under the long-lived emperor Qianlong (chee-YEN-loong), China seemed to be reaching the limits of its military capability. Victory against southern Siberian peoples demonstrated Qing military might, but trouble was brewing, and not just at the fringes. Rebellions rocked the entire realm. Subjects in the core districts grew restless, and guerrilla warfare and massacres of ethnic Chinese colonists became constant features of frontier life. Qianlong clung to power until 1796, and despite ballooning war costs, the emperor’s reign had boasted some of the biggest treasury sur- pluses in early modern history. The silver of the Americas had funded Qing expansion.
Expanding trade and population growth altered China’s environment in the Ming and Qing eras. Devastating floods were frequent, but their relationship to human rather than divine action was rarely explored except by a few alert public works officials. Deforestation, though not in itself a cause of floods, often exacerbated them. As peas- ants cleared land for planting and cut forests for firewood and building materials, rain- fall catchment diminished. Rains swept away exposed soil, creating massive erosion upstream and river sedimentation downstream. The problem became so widespread that Chinese territorial expansion and colonization in Qing times were in part aimed at resettling peasants displaced by environmental catastrophes in the heartland.
Everyday Life in Ming and Qing China Ming intellectuals were annoyed by China’s shift to commercialism. As in many traditional societies (except Islamic ones), merchants and traders were an almost suspect class, esteemed only slightly above actors and musicians. Chinese society
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as defined by Confucius empha- sized production over exchange, the countryside over the city, and continuity over change or mobility. The ideal was a linked grouping of agriculturally self- sufficient provincial units over- seen by patriarchs. These units were to be connected not by trade, but by a merit-based gov- erning hierarchy headed by a divine monarch.
Within this model, even peasant self-sufficiency was ex- pected. Relying on the market was a signal of distress. Men were supposed to farm and women were supposed to spin and weave, both remaining in their home villages and pro- ducing only for their own consumption. Surpluses, a divine gift to the pious and industrious, were not to be sold but rather offered to the emperor to express fealty and submission. Bureaucrats and scholars, who lived from these surpluses, kept track of them on paper.
Such was the ideal Neo-Confucian society. As we have seen, however, hard times proved frequent in early modern China: droughts, floods, plagues, and even pirates took their toll. Peasants suffered most, especially those driven to frontier lands. Natural disasters, along with increasing state demands for cash taxes, compelled many to migrate and sell their labor to whoever could pay. Evidence suggests that many couples practiced birth control to avoid the financial pressure of additional children.
Meanwhile, landlords and merchants were getting rich through market exchange. The social inequity resulting from this process was in part what bothered Chinese traditionalist intellectuals. W hat struck them as worse, however, was the market economy’s tendency to reward nonproductive and even dishonest behavior. It was the appearance of the uppity rich, not the miserably poor, that most bothered the educated old guard.
Chinese Beggars A lthough most early modern Chinese artists depicted idealized things of beauty, such as rugged landscapes and fanciful creatures in flight, some turned their attention to ordinary people. This c. 1500 Ming image depicts two wandering beggars, one apparently talking to himself and the other brandishing a serpent, presumably his helper at winning alms from curious or terrified passersby.
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The Flourishing of Art and Culture As in Golden Age Spain, the arts and literature thrived in China despite political decline. This seeming paradox was due in part to the patronage of merchants who had made fortunes in the economic upswing, but it was also a function of the surplus of unemployed, literate civil servants. Literacy grew in the late Ming era, and with it came mass distribution of books, many on science. Novels and plays were also hugely popular. The 1610 play The Lute included woodblock prints of scenes for those unable to see a live performance. Some writers narrated travel adventures in the interior for curious urban readers.
In the years around 1600, foreign visitors, notably the Italian Jesuit Matteo R icci in 1601, impressed the Chinese court with their scientific knowledge, though not with their religion. W hen he was not fixing European clocks brought as gifts for the emperor (see page 698), R icci translated Confucius for a Western audience and composed religious tracts in court Chinese. As in Mughal India, Jesuit court visitors influenced painting styles, particularly royal portraiture. The Jesuits remained important at court through the Qing era, but ultimately they won few converts to Christianity.
Japan in Transition 1540–1750
FOCUS How did self-isolation affect Japan?
Located in the North Pacific Ocean, Japan was isolated from the rest of the world for most of the early modern period. A brief opening in the sixteenth century allowed foreign ideas and technologies to enter and permitted a large but ineffectual invasion of Korea. Soon after 1600, however, Japan’s leaders enforced seclusion and, like their neighbors in China, consolidated power internally. Japan would not be reopened for over two centuries.
Most inhabitants of the three major islands, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku, were peasants, nearly all of them subjects of regional lords, called daimyo. Above Japan’s rice-farming peasant majority were warriors called samurais, some of them mercenaries and others permanent employees of powerful daimyo. Above the daimyo a group of generals, including the top-ranking shogun, jockeyed to become Japan’s supreme ruler. By 1600 the royal family had been reduced to ceremonial figureheads. In the peace that came with closure, Japan’s population expanded and the arts flourished.
daimyo A regional lord in feudal and early modern Japan.
samurai The hereditary warrior who dominated Japanese society and culture from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.
shogun The supreme military commander in Japan, who also took political control.
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Rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Unification of Japan As we saw in Chapter 14, Japan’s so-called golden age of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was followed by a breakdown of central authority and a rise in competing military factions. This chaotic period, heyday of the samurai warriors, lasted several centuries. The daimyo sometimes succeeded in bringing a measure of order to their domains, but no one daimyo family could establish predominance over others.
At the end of the sixteenth century, several generals sought to quell civil war and to unify Japan. One such general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1535–1598), not only conquered his rivals but, with the Kyoto emperor’s permission, assumed the role of top shogun. A fter Hideyoshi died, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) seized control. Assuming the title of shogun in 1603, he declared that thereafter rulership was hereditary. The Tokugawa ( TOH-koo-GA H-wah) Shogunate would endure until 1867.
With the shoguns in charge of Japan’s core districts, regional lords were forced to accept allegiance to the emerging unified state or face its growing might. Most submitted, and peace ensued. Peasant rebellions occurred periodically, some- times led by disgruntled samurais, but the state’s adoption of Neo-Confucian ideals similar to those embraced in China and Korea stressed duty and hierarchy over rights and individual freedom. Most Japanese accepted the benefits of peace and worked within their assigned roles.
Hideyoshi’s rule had been notable for two things: tolerating Iberian Christian missionaries and launching two invasions of Korea in 1593 and 1597. Ieyasu soon reversed course, however, banning missionaries and making peace with Korea. Contact with foreigners, particularly Europeans—called nanban, or “southern barbarians,” a reference to their arrival from southern seas—was restricted after 1614 to the island of Deshima, near Nagasaki. Foreign families were not permitted to reside on Japanese soil, and by the 1630s all missionaries and traders had been expelled but one Dutch merchant. A representative of the Dutch East India Com- pany, he was forbidden to discuss religion. Chinese bachelor merchants residing in Nagasaki were treated with similar suspicion.
Was seclusion a response to Christianity? Not entirely, but it played a role. It was not the foreignness of the nanbans’ religion that worried the shoguns, but rather
nanban A Japanese term for “southern barbarians,” or Europeans; also applies to hybrid European-Japanese artistic style.
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Ry uk
yu Is
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Kyushu
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Okinawa
Sakhalin I.
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PACIFIC OCEAN
Edo (Tokyo)
Osaka
Nagasaki
Kyoto
Tokugawa Japan
A m
ur R .
JAPAN KOREA
QING EMPRE
RUSSIAN EMPIRE
A I N U
Tokugawa Japan
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its believers’ insistence that it was the one true religion. Japan was religiously pluralistic. One could follow imported Confucian principles, for example, yet also be a Buddhist. Taoist ideas and rituals were also widespread. Beyond this, most Japanese venerated nature spirits according to Shinto traditions.
Strictly monotheistic, focused on eternal salvation rather than everyday behavior, and fully understood only by foreign specialists, Christianity looked subversive. Priests and followers were executed in waves from 1597 to the late 1630s, when a Christian-led rebellion was suppressed. Then, the shoguns or- dered unrepentant priests and converts publicly beheaded, boiled, or crucified. The only remnants of Catholicism to survive were scattered names of priests and saints, most of them venerated in older Japanese fashion by isolated peasants and fishing folk.
Harsh as it was, the shoguns considered their repression of Christianity a political rather than religious action. Stories of Spain’s lightning-fast conquests in the distant Americas and nearby Philippines had long circulated in Japan, and Dutch and English merchants played up alleged Spanish cruelties. Portugal’s violent actions in India, A frica, and Southeast Asia were also well known, suggesting to Japan’s rulers that Catholic missionaries, particularly Iberians, were a spearhead for conquest. Indiscreet Spanish visitors suggested as much in the 1590s, confirming Japanese fears.
Following Christian suppression in the 1630s, the shoguns controlled the inter- ior by forcing subordinate lords to maintain households in the new capital of Edo (modern Tokyo). Wives and children lived in the city and its growing suburbs as virtual hostages, and the daimyo themselves had to rotate in and out of the capital at least every other year. A new version of court life was one result of this shifting center, and with it grew both a vibrant capital city and a complex road and inn system lacing Japan together. With Edo’s primacy, Osaka became a major market- place. Kyoto thrived as a cultural center.
Only in the north was there any thing like imperial expansion after the failed invasions of Korea. Japanese merchants had long traded with the A inu of Hok kaido. The A inu (EY E-new), whose men sported tattoos and long beards, de- scended from Siberians and probably also Austronesian islanders. The Japanese considered them barbarians, and the A inu considered the Japanese treacherous. By 1650 Japanese trading families had colonized southernmost Hok kaido, but pressures on the A inu sparked rebellion. The Tokugawa state was reluctant to waste money invading and fortif ying Hok kaido, but it did claim the island as Japanese territor y. Only when the Russians threatened in the late eighteenth centur y to annex A inu-inhabited islands farther north did the Japanese back
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their claims with force. A inu culture was violently suppressed, but sur vives to the present day.
Everyday Life and Culture in Tokugawa Japan Japan’s population grew from about ten million in 1600 to nearly thirty million in 1700, when it stabilized. This rapid growth was made possible by relative peace, but expansion and integration of the rice economy contributed as well. R ice’s high yields encouraged creation of even the smallest irrigated fields, and some daimyo were skillful marketers of their tributaries’ main product. Most rice was sold in cities and to elites, while peasants ate a healthier diet of mixed grains, vegetables, and soy products. Urban-rural reciprocity was key, and processed human excre- ment collected in cities and villages was the main fertilizer. As surprising as it may seem, Japan’s system of waste collection and recycling was the most hygienic and efficient in the world. W hole guilds were dedicated to the collection and marketing of what in the West was regarded as dangerous filth. The water supply of Edo, with over half a million people by the eighteenth century, was cleaner and more reliable than that of London. Thus, this system improved overall human health as it created connections between urban and rural Japanese.
New strains of rice introduced from Southeast Asia also allowed farmers to extend cultivation. By contrast, American crops such as maize and peanuts were not embraced in Japan as they were in China. Only sweet potatoes were appreciated, and they saved millions of lives during times of famine. As elsewhere, agricultural expansion and diversification in Japan also had negative ecological consequences. Leaders recognized that deforestation intensified floods, and they responded to this problem efficiently, organizing workers to replant depleted woodlands by the eighteenth century.
Shoguns kept daimyos in check after 1615 by permitting only one castle in each domain, and sharply limiting expansion, but peace encouraged other forms of private construction. Like agriculture, Japan’s construction boom took a toll on forests, as did increased shipbuilding. Vulnerability to earthquakes gave rise to building codes and design innovations. Hence, in agriculture and construction the leaders of Tokugawa Japan demonstrated the power of centralized government, limiting growth, regulating construction, and shaping the connections between their subjects.
A lthough most Tokugawa subjects remained peasants, a leisure class also emerged, mostly concentrated in Kyoto. Merchants imported raw silk from China, which Japanese artisans processed and wove. Other imports included sandalwood, sugar, and spices from Southeast Asia. Consumption of fine fabrics and other
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products by the wealthy expanded the artisan sector, but did not spark industri- alization. There was simply not a large enough wage-earning consumer class in Japan to sustain industrial production. Instead, the trend was toward high-quality “ boutique” goods such as samurai swords and ceremonial kimonos, rather than mass-produced consumer goods.
One precursor to modern Japanese industrialization did appear in the produc- tion of cotton cloth. Most traditional peasant clothing prior to the sixteenth century had been made from hemp fiber, and only through trade with Korea and China had
Kyoto Festival This c. 1750 painting of a festival in Kyoto depicts not only the daimyo, or local lord, and his ox-drawn cart and procession of armed samurai, but also daily goings-on about town. Many people seem to be engaged in conversation indoors, although they are quite visible thanks to open screens, allowing them to view the procession. Near the top of the panel, women and children stroll toward what appears to be a recitation. The use of patterned gold clouds to fill in empty spaces was a convention of early modern Japanese art, and here it adds a fog-like layer to the painting’s depth.
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cotton come to figure in Japan’s economy. Initially, cotton was in demand among sixteenth-century samurai warriors, who used it for clothing, lining for armor, and fuses for guns. Fishing folk also consumed cotton sailcloth. Trade restrictions stimulated internal production of cotton textiles to such a degree that it reached near-industrial levels by the eighteenth century.
Japanese commoners got by on a diet mostly of grain porridges. They consumed little meat and no milk or cheese, and away from coastal areas where seafood and fish could be harvested, most protein came from beans and soy products such as tofu. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, grasses, fungi, insects, and larvae were roasted or pickled for consumption in winter or in lean times. Tobacco, an American crop, grew popular under Tokugawa rule. It was smoked by men and women of all classes in tiny clay pipes, serving a social function much like the sharing of tea. W hen tea was too expensive, as it often was, common folk drank boiled water, which was at least safe. In all, the peasant diet in Tokugawa Japan, though short of protein, was as nourishing as that of western Europe at the same time.
Women of every class faced obstacles to freedom in Japan’s male-dominated and often misogynist society. Most were expected to marry at an early age and spend their lives serving their husbands, children, and in-laws. Still, as in other traditional societies, there were openings for female self-expression and even access to power in Tokugawa Japan. At court, noblewomen exercised considerable influence over succession and the everyday maintenance of proper decorum, and in the peasant sphere women managed household affairs, particularly when men were away on military duty or business. Widows could become quite powerful, especially those managing the affairs of dead merchant husbands.
Emergence of a National Culture With the growth of cities and rise of a leisure class, Japanese literature and painting flourished, along with flower arranging, puppet theater, board games, and music. The writer Ihara Saikaku (EH-hah-rah sigh-kah-KOO) grew popular at the end of the seventeenth century with his tales contrasting elite and working-class life. Saikaku idealized homosexual relations between senior and junior samurais, and also those among actors and their patrons, mostly wealthy townsmen. In “The Great Mirror of Male Love,” Saikaku described most of these relationships as temporary, consensual, and often purchased. More than a hint of misogyny per- vades the writings of Saikaku, but that sentiment is less evident in his “Life of an Amorous Woman” and other stories relating the adventures of courtesans and female prostitutes.
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In Edo, Kyoto, and especially the rice-trading city of Osaka, entertainments were many and varied. Daimyo and samurai landlords came to Osaka to exchange their rice tributes for money, which they then spent locally or in Edo, where they had to pay obeisance to the emperor. Regional elites’ frequent visits to these two cities helped make them economic and cultural crossroads for Japan as a whole. Many samurais moved to these cities permanently as their rural estates diminished in size across generations. Social tension arose as the old warrior class tried to adapt to urban life, but fortunately, there was much to distract them. Some worked for little compensation as teachers or policemen, but the wealthier samurais found time for the theater, musical concerts, and poetry readings. Sumo wrestling matches were popular among many urbanites, as were board games, the tea ceremony, calligraphy, bonsai cultivation, and landscaping. More costly pursuits such as gambling, drinking, and sexual diversions were restricted to the so-called Licensed Quarters of the major cities.
Early modern European visitors, especially Catholic priests, found the general Japanese tolerance of prostitution, female impersonation, and homosexuality shocking, but they made little effort to understand Japanese cultural attitudes about sex and shame. Prostitution often was degrading to women and in some places approached the level of sex slavery. Still, there were groups of female escorts such as the geisha whom outsiders mistook for prostitutes. The geisha were indentured servants who made their living as private entertainers to the wealthiest merchants and landowners visiting or inhabiting cities. Geisha dress, makeup, and comportment were all highly ritualized and distinctive. A lthough the geisha had control over their adult sexual lives, their first coital experience, or “deflowering,” was sold to the highest bidder. Many young male prostitutes also acted as female impersonators in kabuki theater.
Kabuki was a popular form of theater that first appeared in Kyoto in 1603 as a way to advertise a number of female prostitutes. Subsequent shows caused such violence among potential customers that the Tokugawa government allowed only men to perform. As these female impersonators became associated with male prostitution, the state established official theaters that punished actors and patrons who engaged in sexual relations. By the eighteenth century, kabuki performances had become so “sanitized” that they included moralizing Neo-Confucian speeches. Even so, play wrights such as Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724) retained ribald humor amid lessons in correct behavior. At the other end of the spectrum was the somber tradition of Noh theater, associated with Buddhist tales and Shinto shrines.
sumo A Japanese professional wrestler known for his heft.
geisha A professional female entertainer in Tokugawa Japan.
kabuki A popular Japanese theater known for bawdy humor and female impersonation.
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Poetry flourished as never before during the era of seclusion, and poets such as the itinerant and prolific Matsuo Bashō (1644–1684) were widely read. Here is a sample of his work:
On my way through Nagoya, where crazy Chikusai is said to have practiced quackery and poetry, I wrote:
With a bit of madness in me, W hich is poetry, I plod along like Chikusai Among the wails of the wind. Sleeping on a grass pillow I hear now and then The nocturnal bark of a dog In the passing rain.1
Despite isolation, Japan was among the world’s most liter- ate societies in early modern times. By 1700 there were some fifteen hundred pub- lishers active between Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, publishing at least seventy-three hun- dred titles. Books were sold or rented in both city and coun- tryside. Early forms of comic books were circulating by the eighteenth century, the most popular ones resembling to- day’s pulp fiction. Most books were published on woodblock presses despite the fact that movable type was known from both mainland Asian and European sources—another example of the fact that early modern Japan, like China, had little need of the West.
K abuk i Theater Tokugawa Japan’s ribald kabuk i theater tradition became w ildly popular in major cities a fter 160 0. K abuk i actors were initially prostitutes, fi rst young women and then young men, but objections from the samurai led by 1670 to the creation of a class of older men licensed to act in drag. In this c. 1680 screen painting by Hishikawa Moronobu, actors, costume designers, makeup artists, washer women, and stagehands all appear to be absorbed in their ow n litt le worlds. The painting seems to con fi rm early modern Japan’s inward gaze and cultural and material self-su fficienc y.
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Korea, a Land in Between 1392–1750
FOCUS How did life for common folk in early modern Korea differ from life in China or Japan?
The Korean peninsula falls between China and Japan, with the Yellow Sea to the west and the Sea of Japan to the east. In 1392 Korea came to be ruled by the Yi (or Choson) dynasty, which remained in power until 1910. Though unified since the late seventh century, the Korean peninsula developed its distinctive culture primarily during Yi times, partly in response to Chinese and Japanese invasions. Korea had long been influenced by China, and had likewise served as a conduit linking the Asian mainland to Japan. The guiding principles of the early Choson
state were drawn from the work of Confucius, as in contempo- rary China and Japan, and grafted onto a society that mostly practiced Buddhism. Still, Koreans regarded themselves as a distinct and autonomous people, unified by a language and culture.
Capital and Countryside It was under the first Yi ruler that Seoul, then known as Hanyang, became Korea’s capital. Following Chinese principles of geomancy, the city site, backed by mountains and spread along the Han R iver plains, was considered blessed. Successive rulers drafted nearby peasants to expand the city and add to its grandeur. By 1450 Hanyang boasted substantial royal palaces, bureaucratic buildings, markets, and schools.
Choson leaders asserted central power by reducing Buddhist temples and monasteries. Temple lands were confiscated and distributed to loyal officials. A kind of Neo-Confucian consti- tution was drafted advocating more radical state takeover and redistribution of land to peasants, but nobles balked and tenant farming persisted. Early modern Korea’s government mirrored China’s in some ways, but a difference was the prominence of a noble class, the yangban. Yangban elites staffed high coun- cils and regional governorships. A uniquely Korean institution known as the Samsa, a kind of academic oversight committee, had power even over the king, acting as a moral police force. Official historians, also drawn from the educated noble class,
yangban The noble class in early modern Korea.
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Japanese invasions, 1592, 1597 Manchu invasions, 1627, 1637
Ya lu
R .
H an R.
CHINA
JAPAN
KOREA
Choson Korea
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were allowed to write what they observed, keeping their work secret from the king. But most Korean bureaucrats were selected via Chinese-style civil service examinations. The pres- sure was so great that some en- terprising students hid tightly rolled crib-notes in their nos- trils. Military service proved unpopular, partly because it was associated with slavery, and enrollment in school won exemption.
Korea’s needed defense ap- paratus was formed when the nobles’ private forces were consolidated into a national, standing army by the mid- fifteenth century. Professional military men took exams, and peasants were drafted to serve in frontier outposts. The Jurchen and other horse war- riors periodically threatened Korea’s northern provinces, but many chieftains were co- opted by the Choson state in the fifteenth century. Another defense strategy was to settle the northern frontier with land-hungry peasants from the south.
A fter these early initiatives, defense became less of a concern, and the general de- valuing of military service left Korea vulnerable by the time the Japanese invaded in 1593 and 1597. Despite their massive forces and lightning speed, the Japanese under Shogun Hideyoshi were soon driven out with aid from Ming China. The Manchus were not so easily subdued, however. They invaded Korea in 1627 and 1636, rendering it a tributary by 1637. Still, Korea retained considerable autonomy.
Social Order in Early Modern Korea Korean life under the Yi dynasty was marked by sharp class divisions, with a large portion of the poorer country folk living as slaves. This eighteenth-century painting on silk shows a notable individual on promenade, elaborately dressed, shaded, and otherwise attended, as more humble figures kneel in submission in the foreground. The broad- brimmed black hats and flowing garments were typical of high-ranking Koreans.
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Korea exported ginseng, furs, and a few other items to China in exchange for silk and porcelain, but its overseas trade was limited, and few Korean merchants ventured beyond Japan or the nearby Ryukyu Islands, especially Okinawa. Korean merchants in the south complained of Japanese pirates, the same ones who men- aced China from the thirteenth to seventeenth century. The Choson government attempted to suppress the pirates, but Japan’s fractured political system and occa- sional sponsorship of the pirates rendered this fruitless.
Everyday Life in Choson Korea Most Koreans under Yi rule were rice farmers. Wet-field rice cultivation expanded dramatically in the south beginning in the fifteenth century thanks to government initiatives and adaptation of Chinese techniques. Southern populations grew ac- cordingly. Population estimates are debated, but it appears that Korea grew from about five million inhabitants in 1450 to some ten million by 1600. In colder and drier parts of the peninsula, especially in the far north, peasants relied on millet and barley. As in Japan, these healthy grains were widely disdained as hardship rations. Soybeans were later planted, adding a new source of protein. Koreans also exploited seacoasts and rivers for mollusks and fish, and some raised pigs and other livestock. Vegetables such as cabbage were pickled for winter consumption, spiced by the eighteenth century with capsicum peppers introduced from the Americas.
Ordinary folk did not obsess over genealogies as much as the noble yangban class did, but their mating customs could still be rigid. Some marriages were arranged, occa- sionally between young children. Women appear to have lost considerable autonomy with the rise of Neo-Confucianism, and widows were even presented with a knife with which to kill themselves should they be sexually violated or otherwise dishonored. According to some sources, Korean women more often used their suicide knives to kill attackers. Female entertainers, or kisaeng—like their Japanese counterparts, the geisha—were sometimes able to accumulate capital and achieve literary fame.
Teachers in Choson Korea took on the moral advisory role played by priests or imams in early modern Christian or Islamic societies, and in the seventeenth century Neo- Confucian scholars, following the lead of China’s Wang Yangming, attempted to reform Korean society and government. Education was highly valued, and literacy widespread (see Reading the Past: Scenes from the Daily Life of a Korean Queen). It was in the Choson era that Korean students became outspoken critics of the state, launching a number of mass protests in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Despite the ruling class’s attachment to Neo-Confucian philosophy and suppression of Buddhist monaster- ies, popular religious ideas persisted, especially in the countryside. Alongside some Bud- dhist beliefs, mountain deities and sacred stones or trees were venerated, and shamanism was practiced for divination and healing. Many healing shamans were women.
kisaeng A geisha-like female entertainer in early modern Korea.
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READING THE PAST
Scenes from the Daily Life of a Korean Queen The following selection is taken from the diary of
Lady Hong (1735–1815), a queen during Korea’s
long Yi dynasty. Unlike most male authors of the
time, who wrote in Chinese (in part to show off their
education, much as many European men at this
time wrote in Latin rather than their own vernac-
ulars), Lady Hong wrote in the Korean script. She
also devoted great attention to the details of every-
day life, including close observations of individual
emotions. After stating that she began to write her
memoirs at the urging of a nephew, Lady Hong de-
scribes her birth and early upbringing:
I was born during the reign of King Yongjo, at
noon on 6 August 1735, at my mother’s family’s
home in Kop’yong-dong, Pangsongbang. One
night, before I was born, my father had dreamed
of a black dragon coiled around the rafters of my
mother’s room, but the birth of a daughter did not
seem to fit the portent of his dream.
My paternal grandfather, Lord Chong-hon,
came to look at me, and took an immediate fancy
to me, declaring, “Although it is a girl, this is no
ordinary child!” As I grew up, he became so fond
of me that he was reluctant to let me leave his lap.
He would say jokingly, “This girl is quite a little lady
already, so she is sure to grow up quickly!”
The womenfolk of our family were all con-
nected with the most respected clans of the day.
My mother came from the Yi family—an upright
clan. My father’s eldest sister was married to a
famous magistrate; while his second sister was a
daughter-in-law of Prince Ch’ong-nung; and his
youngest sister was a daughter-in-law of the min-
ister of the board of civil office. Despite these con-
nections, they were not haughty or extravagant, as
is so often the case. When the family gathered to-
gether on festival days, my mother always treated
the elder members with respect, and greeted the
younger ones with a kind smile and an affectionate
word. Father’s second brother’s wife was likewise
virtuous, and her esteem for my mother was ex-
ceeded only by that for her mother-in-law. She was
an outstanding woman—noble-minded and well
educated. She was very fond of me; taught me my
Korean alphabet and instructed me in a wide range
of subjects. I loved her like a mother and indeed
my mother used to say I had grown too close to her.
Source: Lady Hong , Memoirs of a Korean Queen, ed. and trans. Choe-Wall Yangh-hi (London: K PI, 1985), 1–4.
Examining the Evidence
1. In what ways do these passages reveal Neo-Confucian values?
2. W hat do these passages tell us about gender roles in a Neo-Confucian court society?
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Choson Korea appears unique among early modern states in that it was both eth- nically homogeneous and heavily reliant on slave labor. Korea’s enslaved population, perhaps as much as 30 percent of the total by 1550, appears to have emerged as a result of several factors: debt peonage (self-sale due to famine or debt) and penal servitude (punishment for crimes, including rebellion). Debt peonage and penal servitude were not unusual in the early modern world, and both could be found in neighboring China. W hat made slavery different in Korea was that the legal status of the enslaved, once proclaimed, was likely to be inherited for many generations. Self-purchase was extremely difficult, and slave owners clung to their chattels tena- ciously. Korea’s rigid social structure, far more hierarchical than neighboring China’s or Japan’s, only reinforced perpetual bondage. Moralists criticized slavery as early as the seventeenth century, but it was not until forced contact with outsiders after 1876 that the institution died out. Korea’s last slaves were freed only in 1894.
Consolidation in Mainland Southeast Asia 1500–1750
FOCUS What trends did mainland southeast asia share with China, Korea, Japan, and Russia?
Mainland Southeast Asia, encompassing the modern nations of Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, followed a path more like that of China than of the Southeast Asian islands discussed in Chapter 18. Overall trends on the mainland included political consolidation, mostly by Buddhist kings; growth of large, tribute-paying populations due to intensive wet rice cultivation; and a shift toward cash crops such as sugar for export. Unlike the diverse islands of In- donesia and the Philippines, which fell increasingly into the hands of European interlopers (see Counterpoint: “Spiritual Conquest” in the Philippines), mainland Southeast Asia in early modern times experienced gunpowder-fueled, dynastic state-building.
Political Consolidation The mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms in place by 1700 formed the basis for the nation-states of today. As happened in Muscovite Russia, access to European guns enabled some emerging dynasties to expand in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies. Another catalyst for change was the rapid growth of global maritime trade (see Map 20.3). Overseas commerce transformed not only traditional maritime hubs such as Melaka and Aceh, as seen in Chapter 18, but also Pegu in Burma,
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0
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M A
LA Y PEN
IN SU
LA
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South China Sea
Bay of Bengal
Yellow Sea
Sea of Japan
Philippine Is.
Borneo
Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
Celebes
TimorJava
Sumatra
Taiwan
JAPAN
KOREA
QING EMPRE
THAILAND
CAMBODIA
GOWATALLOQ
BURMA
LAOS VIETNAM
Beijing
Ayudhya
Luang Prabang
VientianePegu
Lovek
Aceh
Melaka
Batavia
Macao (Port.)
Quanzhou
To t he A
mer icas
From the Americas
Nanjing Hangzhou
Kyoto
Guangzhou (Canton)
Xiamen
Manila
Nagasaki
Seoul
INDIA
Ya ng
zi R.
Xi R.
Ganges R.
M ekong
R.
Sa lw
ee n
R .
Ye llo
w R
.
Southeast Asian Trade, c. 1500–1700 Trade goods
Cinnamon Co�ee Copper Co�on cloth Gold Metal wares Opium Pepper
Porcelain Re�ned sugar Rubies Sandalwood Silk Silver Spices Tobacco
Burma, c. 1580 Laos, c. 1540 Vietnam, c. 1540 Dutch control , c. 1700 Spanish control, c. 1700 Large Chinese merchant community Trade route
100ºE
80ºE
Equator
120ºE
20ºN
40ºN
Tropi c of C
ance r
MAP 20.3 Southeast Asian Trade, c. 1500–1700 Maritime trade between the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific went back thousands of years, but it grew exponentially in volume and value after 1500, when Europeans arrived with gunpowder weapons and Spanish-A merican silver, eager to carve out trading enclaves and establish monopolies on key commodities such as pepper and opium.
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Ayudhya (or Ayutthaya) in Thailand, and Lovek (near modern Phnom Penh) in Cambodia. Here Buddhist kings used trade revenues to enhance their realms by attracting scholars, building libraries and monasteries, and constructing temples and images of the Buddha. Some saw themselves as incarnations of the Buddhist ideal of the universal king. Funded in part by trade, a massive bronze Buddha and supporting temple complex were built in the city of Luang Prabang, in Laos, be- ginning in 1512. A solid gold Buddha was also commissioned. Such costly reli- gious monuments, as seen elsewhere, are a reminder of early modern devotion and wealth.
A notable example of mainland Southeast Asian state-building driven by com- mercial wealth and access to European gunpowder weapons arose in southern Burma beginning in the 1530s. Portuguese mercenaries aided a regional king’s takeover of the commercial city of Pegu, and a new, Pegu-based Buddhist dynasty with imperial ambitions soon emerged. Under K ing Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581) the Burmese expanded into Thailand and Laos. A fter building many pagodas, or ceremonial towers, in his new conquests, admirers referred to Bayinnaung as the “Victor of Ten Directions.” He preferred the title “K ing of K ings.”
Vietnam followed a different path, largely due to Chinese influence. Even before Ming expansion southward in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, Neo-Confucian principles of law and governance had been adopted by Vietnam- ese royalty under the Le dynasty (1428–1788). Yet, like Korea, whose nobility had also embraced the kinds of reformist ideas promoted by Wang Yangming, the Chinese veneer in Vietnam barely masked a vibrant regional culture whose sense of identity was never in question. China brokered power-sharing arrangements between the northern and southern halves of Vietnam in the 1520s, but new, com- petitive dynasties, led by the Trinh and Nguyen clans, were already in the making. Their battles lasted until the late seventeenth century and hindered Vietnamese consolidation.
Mainland Southeast Asia resembled China more than neighboring islands in another sense: high overall population. This was largely the result of wet-rice agriculture and acquired immunity to many lowland tropical maladies. Massive water-control projects reminiscent of those in China and Japan allowed Vietnam’s feuding clans to field tens of thousands of troops by 1700. R ice-rich Burma was even more populous, capable of fielding hundreds of thousands of troops as early as 1650. Unlike China, most of the kingdoms of mainland Southeast Asia col- lected tribute in the form of rice and goods rather than silver throughout the early modern period.
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Commercial Trends Exports from mainland Southeast Asia were not monopolized by Europeans, and in fact many commodities found their principal markets in China and Japan. Sugar cane originated in Southeast Asia, but refined sugar found no market until the late seventeenth century, when growers in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand adopted Chinese milling technology and began to export their product northward. Only Taiwan competed with these regions for the Japanese “sweet” market. Tobacco, introduced from Mexico via Manila, joined betel leaves (traditionally wrapped around areca nuts) as a popular stimulant throughout the region by the seventeenth century. Other drugs had more profound consequences. The Dutch were the first to push the sale of opium from India in the 1680s (initially as a tobacco additive), and it soon created a class of addicts willing to pay any amount of silver cash for it.
Imports to mainland Southeast Asia consisted primarily of cloth from India, an old “monsoon circuit” trade good that fostered resident communities of mer- chants, most of them Muslims, from as far away as Gujarat, in the Arabian Sea. Chinese merchants brought cloth, too, along with metal wares, porcelain, and a wide range of goods acquired through interregional trade. On the whole, the Chinese were more competitive and successful middlemen in mainland Southeast Asia than Europeans in early modern times.
Interregional commerce and urbanization enabled many Southeast Asian women to engage in trade as well, a pattern that fit well with the general regional tendency toward female independence noted in Chapter 18. The wives and concu- bines of long-distance merchants not only carried on important business transac- tions on land, they traveled with their husbands and lovers at sea. Some Southeast Asian women were autonomous intermediaries for European merchants, most fa- mously Soet Pegu, a Burmese woman who lived in the Thai capital of Ayudhya. She was the principal broker for the Dutch in Thailand (then known as Siam) for many years beginning in the 1640s.
The global financial crisis of the seventeenth century, coupled with regional wars, epidemics, and droughts, left mainland Southeast Asia in a weakened state. Burma contracted considerably, as did neighboring Siam. Laos survived as a sep- arate kingdom only due to its isolation from these two neighbors, and it became even more inward-looking. Cambodia was similarly introverted under K hmer rule, and Vietnam suffered a severe decline. Mainland Southeast Asia submitted to paying tribute to China’s Qing emperors in the course of the eighteenth century. In spite of the trend toward contraction, however, the region remained nearly im- pervious to European designs.
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COUNTERPOINT: “Spiritual Conquest” in the Philippines
FOCUS in contrast to the general trend of political consolidation in early modern asia, why did the philippines fall to a European colonizing power?
The Philippine Islands are a large volcanic chain in the tropical waters of the west- ern Pacific (see Map 20.4). Like most Southeast Asian islands, the Philippines were settled by ancient Austronesian mariners. With the exception of a few small Islamic sultanates in the southern islands, the Philippines at the dawn of early modern times had no dynastic rulers or overarching religious or ethical traditions to unify
0
0 1000 Kilometers
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ATLANTIC OCEANGulf of
Mexico
Caribbean Sea
Galápagos Is.
Marquesas Is.
Tahiti
Society Is.
New Zealand
Philippine Is.
Marshall Is.
Mariana Is.
Guam
Solomon Is.
Fiji Samoa
Hawaiian Is.
Kiribati
Tuvalu
CHINA JAPAN
Acapulco Manila
Guangzhou (Canton)
Beijing
Silver
Gold, Lacquerware, Metal wares, Porcelain, Silk, Spices
See Inset Map
Arica
Lima
Mexico City Zacatecas
Potosí
MEXICO
NEW G�NADA
PERU
NEW SPAIN
Route of Manila Galleon
Other transport of silver
Maritime Trade Between the Americas and Asia, 1571–1800
Silver mine
Spanish territory
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
160ºE
140ºE
120ºE 160ºW 140ºW 120ºW
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Tropic of Cancer
100ºW 80ºW 60ºW 40ºW180ºW
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Manila
Sulu Sea
South China Sea
Borneo
Palawan
Luzon
Visayas Archipelago
Su lu
Is.
Mindanao
Philippine Islands
Catholic mission, c. 1700
15ºN
10ºN
5ºN 125ºE
120ºE
MAP 20.4 Maritime Trade Between the A mericas and Asia, 1571–1800 One of the most notable changes in the early modern period was the permanent linking of East Asia and the A mericas through the so-called Manila galleon. A lthough only a few of these lumbering Spanish ships traversed the vast Pacific each year after 1571, they brought millions of ounces of silver to Manila, where the silver was exchanged for Chinese silk, porcelain, and many other commodities. These luxury goods were then shipped east to Mexico. Some were sold in Spanish A merica, but most were reshipped to Spain for consumption or resale.
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its population. Over one hundred languages were spoken throughout the archipel- ago, and material culture differed from one river valley or island to the next.
K in-based political units rarely exceeded two thousand members, and most were mutually hostile. The islands’ total population was probably between one and two million in 1500, and acquired immunity to Old World diseases appears to have been robust, certainly superior to that of Europeans who came later. As in most of Southeast Asia, women in the Philippines were relatively powerful and autonomous in politics, business, and domestic affairs. Both slavery and long- distance trade were established institutions, and some Filipinos used a writing system on bamboo slats, now lost.
Filipino traders sailing large outrigger vessels maintained contact with the East and Southeast Asian mainland, as well as with southern Japan, and Chinese mer- chants had long operated small trading posts in the Philippines, including one at Manila on the northern island of Luzon. Filipino exports included sugar and cotton, along with a bit of gold panned from mountain streams. Imports included metal goods, porcelain, spices, and textiles. Most Filipinos mixed farming with fishing and the raising of small livestock, mostly pigs and chickens.
Arrival of the Spanish Filipino life was forever altered when Spanish conquistadors arrived from Mexico in 1565. By 1571 the Spanish had made Manila their capital city: a base for trade with China and a springboard for regional conquest. Shipyards were established at nearby Cavite to outfit the great galleons sent annually to Acapulco (see again Map 20.4). Conquest was difficult in such a divided region, but these same divisions prevented a unified effort to repulse the Spanish. European invaders managed to gradually dominate many regions of the Philippines by making alliances with local chieftains in exchange for gifts and favors. W here local headmen resisted, obedient substitutes were found and placed in power.
Early Spanish colonists feverishly searched for gold, pearls, and other exportable commodities, but their hopes fizzled before the end of the sixteenth century. There was ultimately little to collect in the way of marketable tribute, and the small enclave around Manila became, rather like a contemporary Portuguese outpost, the exclu- sive preserve of Spanish merchants, soldiers, and missionaries. A few bureaucrats eventually followed, linking Manila to its official capital in faraway Mexico City.
Outside Manila’s Spanish core a substantial Chinese merchant community formed, and many of its residents converted to Catholicism and intermarried with local Filipino elites. In the end it was Catholic priests arriving on the annual ships from Mexico who proved responsible for what has come to be known as the “ spiritual
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conquest” of the Philippines. As a result of lax crown oversight, the absence of pre- cious minerals or other high-value exports, and general Filipino receptiveness to
Roman Catholicism, before the end of early modern times a fairly small number of highly energetic priests managed to transform much of the archi- pelago into a veritable theoc- racy (a state ruled by religious authority), amassing huge amounts of territory and much political power in the process.
Missionaries from several Catholic orders learned to preach in Tagalog, the language of the greater Manila area, as well as a few other regional languages. Lack of standard- ized languages and writing systems complicated mission- ary efforts in some places, as did the racist refusal to train an indigenous clergy, yet the absence of a region-wide state religion or code of ethics simi- lar to Buddhism or Confucian- ism probably eased acceptance of Catholicism’s universalist claims. Indigenous religion persisted, however. In time, Spanish and Mexican mis- sionaries established hundreds of rural churches and fron- tier missions, most of them concentrated in the northern islands but some stretching south through the Visayas ar- chipelago and into northern Mindanao.
A n Elite Filipino Couple This rare image from about 1600 shows a Filipino husband and wife with the local label of Tagalog. A lthough Filipinos spoke many languages and practiced many religions, the Tagalog language was the one chosen by Spanish priests for evangelization. A longside Spanish, it became the islands’ official language. The couple shown here displays dress and grooming similar to those of Malay elites living throughout Southeast Asia. The man holds the hilt of a kris dagger, a symbol of high status, while his wife stands draped in the finest Chinese silk.
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The Limits of “Spiritual Conquest” Southern Mindanao and the Sulu Islands remained staunchly Muslim, however, and hence enemy territory in the Spanish view. Periodic battles pitted self-styled cru- sading Spaniards against the so-called Moors of this region, and some missionaries related harrowing stories of martyrdom and captivity among “pirate infidels” rem- iniscent of accounts from North A frica’s Barbary Coast (discussed in Chapter 19). Indeed, hundreds of letters to Spain’s kings and to the pope describe these mostly fruitless struggles.
Other threats to Christian hegemony came from bands of headhunters inhab- iting the mountainous interior of Luzon and smaller islands, but despite these challenges, the Philippines emerged from early modern times deeply trans- formed, in some ways more like Latin America than any other part of Asia. It would ironically be Filipino youths such as José R izal, trained by the Jesuit and Franciscan successors of these early missionaries, who would lead the struggle to end Spanish colonialism at the last years of the nineteenth century.
Conclusion China, Japan, Korea, and mainland Southeast Asia were home to a large portion of the world’s peoples in early modern times. Russia was, by contrast, vast but thinly populated. In all cases, however, the most notable trend in northern and eastern Asia was toward internal political consolidation. The Philippines, though rela- tively populous, proved to be an exception, falling with relative ease into the hands of Spanish invaders. Outside Orthodox Russia and the Buddhist regions of South- east Asia, Neo-Confucian principles of agrarian order and paternalistic harmony guided imperial consolidation. Despite some shocks in the seventeenth century, steady population growth and relative peace in China, Japan, and Korea seemed only to reinforce Confucius’s ideal notions of educated self-sufficiency and limited need for foreign trade.
Internal changes, however, particularly in China, profoundly affected the rest of the world, and some regional political trends were accelerated by foreign imports such as gunpowder weapons. Wang Yangming, whose story began this chapter, was just one of many new imperial officials to use these deadly tools of power. Western weapons also aided Burmese and later Qing overland expansion in a way reminis- cent of the Islamic “gunpowder empires” discussed in Chapters 18 and 19. Global trade also proved susceptible to East Asia’s centralizing early modern policies. China’s shift to a silver-based currency in the sixteenth century reordered world trade patterns. Suddenly, the Americas, Europe, and many Asian neighbors found themselves revolving in an increasingly tight, China-centered orbit. Virtually
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overnight, the village of Manila became one of the world’s most vibrant trading crossroads. Manila was also an outlying colony, as will be seen in the next chapter, of an increasingly powerful Spanish America. It was only in the nineteenth century that many parts of East and Southeast Asia began to experience the types of out- side domination long experienced by these colonies.
review The major global development in this chapter: The general trend toward political and cultural consolida- tion in early modern Asia.
Important Events
1392–1910 Yi dynasty established in Korea
1543 Portuguese reach Japan
1555–1581 Expansion of Burma under King Bayinnaung
1565 Spanish conquest of Philippines begins
1571 Manila becomes Philippine capital and key Pacific trading post
1581 Chinese Ming emperor Wanli issues Single Whip Law
1584–1613 Time of Troubles in Russia
1597–1630s Persecution of Japanese Christians
1601 Matteo Ricci demonstrates Western technology in Ming court
1602–1867 Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan
1614 Japanese contact with foreigners restricted
1627, 1636 Manchu invasions of Korea
1644 Manchu invasion of Beijing; Ming dynasty replaced by Qing
1661–1722 Qing expansion under Emperor Kangxi
1689–1725 Russian imperial expansion under Tsar Peter the Great
1751 Qing annexation of Tibet
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757
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KEY TERMS daimyo (p. 736) geisha (p. 742) kabuki (p. 742) kisaeng (p. 746)
nanban (p. 737) Neo-Confucianism (p. 722) samurai (p. 736) serf (p. 724)
shogun (p. 736) sumo (p. 742) yangban (p. 744)
CHAPTER OVERVIEW QUESTIONS 1. W hat factors led to imperial consolidation in
Russia and China? W ho were the new rulers, and what were the sources of their legitimacy?
2. W hy was isolation more common in these empires than overseas engagement, and what were some of the benefits and drawbacks of isolation?
3. In what ways did early modern Asians transform their environments, and why?
MAKING CONNECTIONS 1. How did imperial Russia’s rise compare with that
of the Ottomans or Habsburgs (see Chapter 19)? 2. How did China under the Ming and Qing
compare with the other most populous early modern empire, Mughal India (see Chapter 18)?
3. How did Iberian missionaries’ efforts in the Philippines compare with those in western A frica (see Chapter 17)?
For further research into the topics covered in this chapter, see the Bibliography at the end of the book. For additional primary sources from this period, see Sources for World in the Making.
M a k i n g C o n n e c t i o n s
- PART 3: The Early Modern World, 1450–1750
- 20: Expansion and Isolation in Asia 1450–1750
- The Major Global Development in this Chapter: The general trend toward political and cultural consolidation in early modern Asia.
- backstory
- Straddling Eurasia: Rise of the Russian Empire 1462–1725
- Consolidation in Muscovite Russia
- The Romanovs’ New Frontiers
- China from Ming to Qing Rule 1500–1800
- Late Ming Imperial Demands and Private Trade
- Manchu Expansion and the Rise of the Qing Empire
- Everyday Life in Ming and Qing China
- The Flourishing of Art and Culture
- Japan in Transition 1540–1750
- Rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Unification of Japan
- Everyday Life and Culture in Tokugawa Japan
- Emergence of a National Culture
- Korea, a Land in Between 1392–1750
- Capital and Countryside
- Everyday Life in Choson Korea
- Consolidation in Mainland Southeast Asia 1500–1750
- Political Consolidation
- Commercial Trends
- COUNTERPOINT “Spiritual Conquest” in the Philippines
- Arrival of the Spanish
- The Limits of “Spiritual Conquest”
- Conclusion
- Review
- SPECIAL FEATURES
- LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS: Silk Weavers in China
- SEEING THE PAST: Blue-on-White: Ming Export Porcelain
- READING THE PAST: Scenes from the Daily Life of a Korean Queen
