90 China in World History
have been if the Chinese had used their naval superiority in the fi fteenth
century as the Europeans did two and three centuries later—to conquer
people and territory and seize control of international trade.
Unfortunately, none of the succeeding Ming emperors were very
effective political or military leaders. In one famous case, the Wanli
Emperor spent much of his nearly fi fty-year reign, from 1572 to 1620,
in a mental and political tug-of-war with his Confucian offi cials. After
his offi cials would not allow him to elevate the consort he loved most to
the position of empress because he already had an empress, he refused
for two decades to hold court, read offi cial documents, or make deci-
sions about government policy. His offi cials and eunuchs were forced
to carry on a charade of normality while the emperor devoted him-
self to the pleasures of private life in the palace. Meanwhile, increasing
factionalism in the bureaucracy was accompanied by sometimes lethal
power struggles between Confucian bureaucrats and palace eunuchs,
who grew in numbers and infl uence in the middle and late Ming. By the
end of the dynasty, the government supported perhaps 100,000 eunuchs
and another 100,000 members of the extended imperial family.
In a pattern not unlike the Song period, the political problems of the
Ming did not prevent a second commercial revolution from transform-
ing Chinese society. During the Ming period, more land came under
cultivation in southwest China, and by the late sixteenth century, new
crops from the Americas—tobacco, corn, peanuts, tomatoes, sweet red
peppers, potatoes, and sweet potatoes—were all introduced into China.
These crops could often be grown on hilly or sandy soil not previously
farmed. They helped produce another dramatic burst of population
growth in the late Ming and entire Qing period. Interregional trade
grew steadily, and as merchants accumulated signifi cant wealth, they
began to challenge, in practice if not yet in theory, the traditional Con-
fucian prejudice against merchants.
The southern lower Yangzi valley region around Nanjing, Suzhou,
and Hangzhou became by far the most prosperous area in China. Cot-
ton production grew dramatically during the Ming. Farmers increas-
ingly specialized in cash crops such as fruits, vegetables, rice, wheat,
sugar, cotton, tea, and tobacco, and silver became the main medium of
exchange in the economy. Vast quantities of silver fl owed into China
from Japan and, from 1570 onward, from the Spanish production of
silver in Peru and Mexico. The Spanish took silver to Manila, where
they bought Chinese products, especially silk and porcelain. The export
trade grew rapidly as the world began to discover the attractions of Chi-
nese silks, tea, and porcelain. The imperial kilns at the southern town