East Asia
By Eric Garcia
Political: Despite China
stopping the maritime voyages of Zheng He, China built another kind of empire
on its northern and western frontiers that made China gain a lot more territory
and make it bigger in size, and a number of non-Chinese people were
incorporated into the empire. The dynasty responsible for this expansion was
the Qing dynasty also called the Manchu dynasty which lasted from 1644-1912. The
Qing dynasty consisted of foreign and nomadic origins; its founding came from
Manchuria, the area north of the Great Wall of China. They conquered China
following the Mongols and they wanted to maintain their ethnic distinctiveness from
the Chinese which is why they outlawed intermarriage between themselves and the
Chinese. They used Chinese bureaucratic techniques to govern which were the
techniques that China had used for a long time. Qing rulers did as much as they
could to reinforce traditional Confucian gender roles by honoring men who were
loyal sons, officials, and philanthropists, and women who showed that they were
loyal to their husbands by refusing rape or remaining chaste. Trade, tribute,
and warfare made the nomadic peoples interact with the Chinese. Chinese
authority in the area was resisted by the nomads. In the early modern era, Qing
dynasty China attempted an eight year military campaign to bring the huge nomad
regions under Chinese rule, they were a success. The Court of Colonial Affairs
was the new office that ruled the conquered areas of China. China wanted to
unify the surrounding areas. China became an imperial state that expanded the
territory of China.
Economic: The colonial
efforts of China to colonize western China created the need for local notables
since the Chinese wanted to govern the regions they conquered as inexpensively
as possible. The local officials sometimes abused their power, and demanded
extra taxes, or work services from their people that they governed. Central
Asia which had been a major crossroads of the Silk Roads now became a backwater
that was backward because of Chinese rule. Land based commerce across Asia
began to decline, and oceanic trade via the Indian Ocean took place. Indebted
Mongolia nobles lost their dear land to Chinese merchants, while nobles who
were no long able to herd their animals fled into urban areas and left their
rural lives, in the urban world, they had to beg. The systems that the Chinese
used involved trading with the middle East and India. They would trade via the
sea roads of the Indian Ocean. They would trade with trading ports along the
eastern African coast. The Philippines were colonized by Spain and made a major
trading center as Chinese went there to trade for silver. The Chinese needed
silver because the government passed a law that allowed taxes to only be paid
in silver, so Manila in the Philippines became an important trading center and
Chinese merchants went there to trade for silver which they needed to pay the
taxes.
Religion: In the Qing
Empire, there was a minor Catholic presence that Jesuits from Europe
established. The Philippines was Spanish Catholic because of the Spanish
colonials that colonized the Philippines, and Spanish Franciscans would convert
the locals. The Philippines was the only East Asian region to fully adopt
Christianity as Japan rejected European religious ideas and China was strict
about them. The Chinese encounter with Christianity was different than the
encounter of Christianity with Native Americans. Chinese still followed
Buddhism and Confucianism. European missionaries needed permission from Chinese
authorities to preach in China. Jesuits learned the Chinese language in hopes
of being able to easily convert Chinese elites to Christianity. Jesuits had to
point out parallels between Confucianism and Christianity rather than
portraying Confucianism as foreign. Confucianism remained the religion of high
class Chinese elites. There was no mass conversion of Christianity in China.
Some Chinese scholars converted to Christianity because they were attracted by
the personal lives of missionaries and they had an interest in Western science
and they found happiness in the moral certainty that Christianity offered. The Chinese
elites had Confucianism, and Buddhism and Daoism supplied the spiritual needs
for most Chinese. The Pope challenged the authority of the emperor and this
outraged Emperor Kangxi, so this was a major turning point in Christianity in
China as missionaries were expelled. Matteo Ricci was a famous Jesuit who had
success in China as he learned Confucian texts, dressed like Chinese, and
assimilated into their culture.
Society: China still had
inequality between the rich and the poor. Women were still unequal to men, and
women were seen as low and they were used as concubines. The elites were the
ones who ruled and were in the bureaucracy, and they were usually the ones that
passed the civil service examinations. China continued to operate broadly
within a Confucian framework which held women as lower than men and merchants
lower than other professions. However the Confucian framework was enriched by
the insights of Buddhism and Daoism to make a new system of thought called
Neo-Confucianism. Chinese thinkers argued that intuitive moral knowledge
existed in people and that even the bad people knew that they did bad things.
Chinese Buddhists made Buddhism more accessible to ordinary people. People
turned to Buddhism because anyone could achieve salvation by faith alone.
Confucian thinking was still strong which is a reason that women were still
seen as low class. Foot binding occurred which was a strong symbol of gender
inequality. Rural families were usually close as they worked together to
survive. Women who weren’t of high class usually had more freedoms and they did
so because it was mainly peasants that followed Buddhism which had gender
equality. Peasant women were able to work because they had to in order for
their family to survive. Women would take care of crops or the children. Boys
worked from a young age, but boys that were in a high class family went to school
and became bureaucrats.
Innovation: Chinese elite
culture took toward a movement known as kaozheng, or research based on
evidence. They intended to seek truth from facts kaozheng was critical of the
unfounded speculation of conventional Confucian philosophy, and instead it emphasized
the importance of verification, precision, accuracy, and rigorous analysis in
all fields of inquiry. This emphasis created works dealing with agriculture,
medicine, pharmacology, botany, craft techniques and more. During the Qing
dynasty, kaozheng was associated with a recovery and critical analysis of
ancient historical documents which sometimes led to sharp criticism of
neo-Confucian teachings. Kaozheng can be described as a genuinely scientific
approach to knowledge, similar to the scientific reasoning of the Scientific
Revolution in Europe. Kaozheng was applied more to the study of the past than
to the natural world of astronomy, physics, or anatomy as in the West. Some
Chinese scholars were fascinated by Western science ideas of Europe, so when
missionaries came, they converted to Christianity so that they could gain
access and learn more about western scientific ideas, and also western systems
of mapping because the Chinese were fascinated by European maps and their
mapmaking skills. Confucian philosophers made advances in map making, and China
had made advances in irrigation systems what with their canals. Chinese created
how to manuals for different tasks such as how to paint manuals.
Arts and Architecture: City
dwellers and rural peoples made plays, paintings, short stories, and especially
novels. They provided diversion and entertainment for the people. People liked
paint in how to painting styles. A huge painting industry formed and it
responded to the growing demand of exciting novels. One of the most famous
Chinese novels was Cao Queqin’s novel called “The Dream of the Red Chamber” it
was a huge book that had 120 chapters and 400 characters that were mainly women.
Chinese architecture was grand in itself. They had solid structures and
beautiful rooms for royal palaces. The roofs on Chinese buildings are what are
unique about them. The roofs are distinguishable from roofs in other parts of
the world. China had many novels and they were read by everyone. Chinese art
showed famous historical events, or social issues, or portraits of important peoples
such as emperors. Chinese architecture had canals and street systems that
divided streets in blocks. There were Chinese rituals that honored the emperor
or venerated ancestors.
Near Geography: The region
of East Asia has the Pacific ocean to the east, but no ocean to the west. India
and southeast Asia lie to the south whereas Europe lies to the way west. The
Pacific Ocean was used for Chinese merchants to get into the Indian Ocean basin
so that they could trade with Indian ocean regions. Central Asia where the
Mongols were from was dry and barren, and after the decline of the Mongols, these
regions declined, and the Silk Roads stopped. Chinese people settled near
rivers or canals, so that they could get water for their basic needs. Major
Chinese cities were situated either near the Pacific Ocean on the coast, or
inland on a river or canal. Japan was isolated from the rest of the world in a
way, it lay to the far northeast, and it did not border the Asian continent.
The Yellow river was an important river to China so was the Yangtzhe. The
Philippines lay to the southeast of China, but it is still part of East Asia.
People would settle near rivers and grow crops there so that the crops could be
watered. Not many Chinese chose to live in the way interior of China since that
region was dry and barren, and the rivers did not stretch all the way inland
that far.
sources: The Strayer Book