The History Book

127

appeared off Canton (now

Guangzhou) in the south, and by

1557, Portugal had established a

permanent base at Macao. Spanish

and Portuguese merchants (the

former operating from Nagasaki

in Japan and Manila in the

Philippines)—and from 1601, the

Dutch—secured an important

share in trade with China.

Even though Ming policy

discouraged foreign maritime trade,

individual Chinese merchants had

participated actively in the revived

economy. Before long there were

flourishing Chinese colonies in

Manila and on Java in Indonesia,

near the Dutch-controlled trading

city of Batavia, and Chinese

merchants controlled a large share

of local trade in Southeast Asia.

The technical sophistication of the

Chinese porcelain industry under

the Ming led for the first time to the

mass production of ceramics for

export to European markets.

The effects, though, of this

growth in trade were not wholly

positive: while a huge influx of

silver from the Americas and

Japan, used by the Europeans to

pay for Chinese goods such as

silk, lacquerware, and porcelain,

stimulated economic growth, it

also caused inflation.

Technological change

Ming China had inherited a legacy

of scientific and technological

innovation from the Song dynasty,

which had left the country at the

forefront of many scientific fields,

including navigation and the

military applications of gunpowder—

a substance discovered during the

Tang era whose use had spread

to Europe from China in the 13th

century. Under the Ming, though,

the pace of progress slowed and

by the later part of the dynasty, ideas

had begun to flow in from Europe.

The Chinese military began to use

artillery of European manufacture,

and knowledge of European

mathematics and astronomy was

introduced to the country through

Jesuit missionaries, including

Matteo Ricci, who lived in Beijing

from 1601 to 1610. He translated

the ancient Greek mathematician

Eucl id’s Geometry into Chinese, as

well as a treatise on the astrolabe

(an astronomical instrument used

for taking the altitude of the sun or

stars). In 1626, the German Jesuit

Johann Adam Schall von Bell wrote

the first treatise in Chinese on the

telescope, bringing Heliocentrism

(an astronomical model in which

the sun lies at the center of the

universe) to a Chinese audience.

The Ming collapse

The late Ming began to suffer many

of the same issues that had led to

the fall of the Yuan. Crop failures

reduced the productivity of China’s

vast agriculture, and famines and

floods led to widespread unrest in

rural areas. The army’s pay began

to fall into arrears, leading to

discipline problems and desertions,

while localized peasant uprisings

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

coalesced into more general revolts.

Meanwhile, on the northeastern

frontier, the Manchus had built

a state along Chinese lines at

Mukden in Manchuria—calling

their regime the Qing dynasty in

1636—and were now poised to take

advantage of the Ming’s imminent

collapse. They were aided in this

by a revolt led by Li Zicheng, a rebel

leader whose forces entered Beijing

in 1644 unopposed, prompting the

emperor to commit suicide. In

desperation, the Ming military

called on the Manchus for help. The

tribesmen swept into the capital

and drove out the rebels, but then

seized the throne, and proclaimed

the Qing dynasty in China.

An enduring legacy

Although the Ming had fallen

victim to an agrarian crisis that

coincided with renewed nomadic

activity on its frontiers, this was

a combination that had also brought

down dynasties before it. The

bureaucracy that had given China

centuries of constancy and reduced

the possibility, or even the need, for

internal dissent, was slow to adapt

itself to times of fast-moving crisis.

Yet even so, the Ming era had

brought great wealth and success

to China. The population expanded

from around 60 million at the start

of its rule, to around three times

that number by 1600. Much of this

growth was centered in medium-

sized market towns, rather than

in large cities, and an increase in

agricultural production led to the

rise of an affluent merchant class in

the provinces. Many of the elements

of orderly government that Hongwu

had inaugurated were carried over

into the succeeding Qing dynasty,

providing China with a degree of

unity, stability, and prosperity that

the European states of that period

could only envy and admire. ■

Today the great civil and

military officers, the numerous

officials, and the masses

join in urging us to ascend

the throne.

Proclamation

Document of the

Hongwu Emperor, 1368

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