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I. Japanese Reunification
A. Civil War and the Invasion of Korea and Manchuria, 1500–1603
1. In the twelfth century, with imperial unity dissolved, Japan
came under the control of a number of regional warlords called daimyo.
2. Warfare among the daimyo was common, and in 1592 the most
powerful of these warlords, Hideyoshi, chose to lead an invasion of Korea.
3. Although the Korean and Japanese languages are closely related,
the dominant influence on Yi dynasty Korea was China.
4. Despite the creative use of technological and military skill,
the Koreans and their Chinese allies were defeated by the Japanese.
5. After Hideyoshi's death in 1598, the Japanese withdrew their
forces and, in 1606, made peace with Korea.
6. The Japanese withdrawal left Korea in disarray and the Manchu in
a greatly strengthened position.
B. The Tokugawa Shogunate, 1603–1800
1. In the late 1500s Japan’s Ashikaga Shogunate had lost control
and the country had fallen into a period of chaotic wars between local lords; a
new shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, brought all the local lords under the
administration of his Tokugawa Shogunate in 1600.
2. The Tokugawa Shogunate gave loyal regional lords rice lands
close to the shogunal capital in central Japan, while those lords who had not
been supporters of the Tokugawa were given undeveloped lands at the northern
and southern extremes of the islands. The Japanese emperor remained in Kyoto
but had no political power. This political structure had an important influence
on the subsequent development of the Japanese economy.
3. The decentralized system of regional lords meant that Japan
developed well-spaced urban centers in all regions, while the shogun’s
requirement that the regional lords visit Edo frequently stimulated the
development of the transportation infrastructure and the development of
commerce, particularly the development of wholesale rice exchanges.
4. The samurai became bureaucrats and consumers of luxury goods,
spurring the development of an increasingly independent merchant class whose
most successful families cultivated alliances with regional lords and with the
shogun himself. By the end of the 1700s the wealthy industrial families were
politically influential and held the key to modernization and the development of
heavy industry.
C. Japan and the Europeans
1. Jesuits came to Japan in the late 1500s, and while they had
limited success in converting the regional lords, they did make a significant
number of converts among the farmers of southern and eastern Japan. A rural
rebellion in this area in the 1630s was blamed on Christians; the Tokugawa
Shogunate responded with persecutions, a ban on Christianity, and, in 1649, the
closing of the country.
2. The closed country policy was intended to prevent the spread of
foreign influence, but not to exclude knowledge of foreign cultures. A small
number of European traders, mainly Dutch, were allowed to reside on a small
island near Nagasaki, and Japanese who were interested in the European
knowledge that could be gained from European books developed a field known as
“Dutch studies.”
3. Some of the “outer lords” at the northern and southern extremes
of Japan relied on overseas trade with Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, China, and
Southeast Asia for their fortunes. These lords ignored the closed country
policy, and those in the south, in particular, became wealthy from their
control of maritime trade, giving them an advantage over the shogunate and the
“inner” lords.
D. Elite Decline and Social Crisis
1. Patterns of population growth and economic growth also
contributed to the reversal of fortunes between the “inner” and “outer” lords.
Population growth in central Japan put a strain on the agricultural economy,
but in the outer provinces, economic growth outstripped population growth.
2. The Tokugawa system was also undermined by changes in rice
prices and in interest rates, which combined to make both the samurai and the
regional lords dependent on the willingness of the merchants to give them
credit.
3. The Tokugawa shoguns accepted the Confucian idea that
agriculture should be the basis of the state and that merchants should occupy a
low social position because they lacked moral virtue, but the decentralized
political system made it difficult for the shogunate to regulate merchant
activities. In fact, the decentralized system stimulated commerce so that from
1600 to 1800 the economy grew faster than the population and merchants
developed relative freedom, influence, and their own vibrant culture.
4. The ideological and social crisis of Tokugawa Japan’s
transformation from a military to a civil society is illustrated in the
“Forty-seven Ronin” incident of 1702. This incident demonstrates the necessity
of making the difficult decision to force the military to obey the civil law in
the interests of building a centralized, standardized system of law with which
the state could protect the interests of the people.
II. The Late Ming and Early Qing Empires
A. The Later Ming Empire, to 1644
1. The cultural brilliance and economic achievements of the early
Ming continued up to 1600. But at the same time, a number of factors had combined
to exhaust the Ming economy, weaken its government, and cause technological
stagnation.
2. Some of the problems of the late Ming may be attributed to a
drop in annual temperatures between 1645 and 1700, which may have contributed
to the agricultural distress, migration, disease, and uprisings of this period.
Climate change may also have driven the Mongols and the Manchus to protect
their productive lands from Ming control and to take more land along the Ming
borders.
3. The flow of New World silver into China in the 1500s and early
1600s caused inflation in prices and taxes that hit the rural population
particularly hard.
4. In addition to these global causes of Ming decline, there were
also internal factors particular to China. These included disorder and
inefficiency in the urban industrial sector (such as the Jingdezhen ceramics
factories), no growth in agricultural productivity, and low population growth.
B. Ming Collapse and the Rise of the Qing
1. The Ming also suffered from increased threats on their borders:
to the north and west, there was the threat posed by a newly reunified Mongol
confederation, and in Korea the Ming incurred heavy financial losses when it
helped the Koreans to defeat a Japanese invasion. Rebellions of native peoples
rocked the southwest, and Japanese pirates plagued the southeast coast.
2. Rebel forces led by Li Zicheng overthrew the Ming in 1644, and
the Manchu Qing Empire then entered Beijing, restored order, and claimed China
for its own.
3. A Manchu imperial family ruled the Qing Empire, but the Manchus
were only a small proportion of the population, and thus depended on diverse
people for assistance in ruling the empire. Chinese made up the overwhelming
majority of the people and the officials of the Qing Empire.
C. Trading Companies and Missionaries
1. Europeans were eager to trade with China, but enthusiasm for
international trade developed slowly in China, particularly in the imperial
court.
2. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese,
Spanish, and Dutch gained limited access to Chinese trade.
3. By the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company had
become the major European trader in the Indian Ocean.
4. Catholic missionaries accompanied Portuguese and Spanish
traders, and the Jesuits had notable success converting Chinese elites. The
Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) used his mastery of Chinese language and
culture to gain access to the imperial court.
D. Emperor Kangxi (r. 1662–1722)
1. Kangxi (r. 1662–1722) took formal control over his government in
1669 (at the age of sixteen) by executing his chief regent. Kangxi was an
intellectual prodigy and a successful military commander who expanded his
territory and gave it a high degree of stability.
2. During the Kangxi period the Qing were willing to incorporate
ideas and technology from Mongolian, Tibetan, Korean, and Chinese sources. The
Qing also adapted European knowledge and technology—mapmaking, astronomy, and
anatomical and pharmaceutical knowledge—taught by the Jesuits who frequented Kangxi’s
court.
3. The Jesuits were also affected by their contact with China. They
revised their religious teaching in order to allow Chinese converts to practice
Confucian ancestor worship and they transmitted to Europe Chinese technology
including an early form of inoculation against smallpox and the management
techniques of the huge imperial porcelain factories.
E. Chinese Influences on Europe
1. The exchange of ideas and information between the Qing and the
Jesuits flowed in both directions.
2. The wealth and power of the Qing led to a tremendous enthusiasm
in Europe for Chinese things such as silk, tea, porcelain, other decorative
items, and wallpaper. Jesuit descriptions of China also led Europeans such as
Voltaire to see the Qing emperors as benevolent despots or philosopher-kings
from whom the Europeans could learn.
F. Tea and Diplomacy
1. The Qing were eager to expand trade, but wanted to control it in
order to be able to tax it more efficiently and to control piracy and
smuggling. In order to do so, the Qing designated a single market point for
each foreign sector: the market point for those coming from the South China Sea
(including the various European traders) was the city of Canton. This system
worked fairly well until the late 1700s.
2. In the late 1700s the British East India Company and other
English traders believed that China’s vast market held the potential for
unlimited profit and thought that the Qing trade system (the “Canton System”)
stood in the way of opening up new paths for commerce. At the same time, the
British Parliament was at once worried about the flow of British silver into
China and convinced that opening the China market would help to bring more
English merchants into the trade and bring about the end of the outmoded and
nearly bankrupt EIC.
3. In 1793–1794 the British sent a diplomatic mission led by Lord
Macartney to open diplomatic relations with China and revise the trade system.
The Macartney mission was a failure, as were similar diplomatic embassies sent
by the Dutch, the French, and the Russians.
G. Population and Social Stress
1. The peace enforced by the Qing Empire and the temporary revival
of agricultural productivity due to the introduction of American and African
crops contributed to a population explosion that brought China’s total
population to between 350 million and 400 million by the late 1700s.
2. Population growth was accompanied by increased environmental
stress: deforestation, erosion, silting up of river channels and canals, and
flooding. The result was localized misery, migration, increased crime, and
local rebellions.
3. While the territory and the population of the Qing Empire grew,
the number of officials remained about the same. The Qing depended on local
elites to maintain local order, but was unable to enforce tax regulations,
control standards for entry into government service, or prevent the declining
revenue, increased corruption, and increased banditry in the late 1700s.
III. The Russian Empire
A. The Drive Across Northern Asia
1. Following the dissolution of Mongol power in Russia, the city of
Moscow became the foundation for a new state, Muscovy, which absorbed the
territory of the former Kievan state and Novgorod in the west and conquered the
khanates of Kazan, and Astrakhan and the northern Caucasus region in the
east. The Muscovite ruler Ivan IV took
the title of “tsar” in 1547.
2. The natural direction for Russian expansion was the east;
expansion in Siberia was led by groups of Cossacks who defeated the only
political power in the region, the Khanate of Sibir, and took land from the
small hunting and fishing groups of native people. Siberia was valued first for
its furs and timber, after 1700 for gold, coal, and iron, and as a penal colony.
3. In the 1650s the expanding Russian Empire met the expanding Qing
Empire in Mongolia, Central Asia, and along the Amur. Treaties between the two
powers in 1689 and 1727 had the effect of weakening the Mongols and of focusing
Russian expansion eastward toward the Pacific coast and across to North America
B. Russian Society and Politics to 1725
1. As the empire expanded it incorporated a diverse set of peoples,
cultures, and religions. This often produced internal tensions.
2. The Cossacks belonged to close-knit bands and made temporary
alliances with whoever could pay for their military services.
3. Despite the fact that the Cossacks often performed important
services for the Russian Empire, they managed to maintain a high degree of
autonomy.
4. Threats and invasions by Sweden and Poland and internal disputes
among the Russian aristocracy (boyars) in the seventeenth century led to
the overthrow of the old line of Muscovite rulers and the enthronement of
Mikhail Romanov in 1613. The Romanov rulers combined consolidation of their
authority with territorial expansion to the east.
5. As the power of the Romanov rose, the freedom of Russian
peasants fell.
6. In 1649 Russian peasants were legally transformed into serfs.
C. Peter the Great (r. 1689–1725)
1. Peter the Great fought the Ottomans in an attempt to gain a
warm-water port on the Black Sea and to liberate Constantinople (Istanbul) from
Muslim rule, but did not achieve either goal. Peter was more successful in the
Great Northern War, in which he broke Swedish control over the Baltic and
established direct contacts between Russia and Europe.
2. Following his victory in the Great Northern War, Peter built a
new capital, St. Petersburg, which was to contribute the Westernization of the
Russian elites and demonstrate to Europeans the sophistication of Russia. The
new capital was also intended to help break the power of the boyars by reducing
their traditional roles in the government and in the army.
3. Peter wanted to use European technology and culture in order to
strengthen Russia and to strengthen the autocratic power of his government; he
was not interested in political liberalization. As an autocratic ruler, Peter
brought the Russian Orthodox Church under his control, built industrial plants
to serve the military, and increased the burdens of taxes and labor on the
serfs, whom the Russian Empire depended upon for the production of basic
foodstuffs.
D. Consolidation of the Empire
1. Russian expansion in Alaska and the American northwest was
driven by the search for furs, which British and American entrepreneurs had
also been interested in. Control of the natural resources of Siberia put the
Russians in a position to dominate the fur and shipping industries of the North
Pacific.
2. During the reign of Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796), Russia
was the world’s largest land empire, built on an economic basis of large
territory, agriculture, logging, fishing, and furs.
IV. Comparative Perspectives
A. Political Comparisons
1. Between 1500 and 1800, China and Russia grew dramatically, both
in territory controlled and population.
2. In comparison to Russia and China, the seaborne trading empires
of the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English had less territory, tighter
administrations, and much more global sweep.
3. Despite being headed by an emperor, Japan's size, homogeneity,
and failure to add colonies disqualify it from being called a true empire.
4. Japan and Russia made greater progress in improving their
military than did the Chinese.
5. Of Japan, Russia, and China, Russia did the most to build up its
imperial navy.
B. Cultural, Social, and Economic Comparisons
1. As they expanded, both China and Russia pursued policies that
tolerated diversity, while promoting cultural assimilation.
2. While both Russian and Chinese leaders were willing to use
foreign ideas and technologies, they tended to see their own culture as
superior.
3. Both China and Russia had hierarchical and oppressive social
systems.
4. Merchants occupied a precarious position in both China and
Japan.
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