Transcript Northern Eurasia 1500-1800

Northern Eurasia
1500-1800
C.20
Japan
Introduction
 The three centuries b/w 1500-1800 saw the rise of the
Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan, the Qing Empire in China, and
the Russian Empire
 This chapter will discuss the following:
 Japanese reunification
 The Later Ming and Early Qing Empires
 The Russian Empire
Japanese Reunification
 Why was Japan able to unify in shorter amount of time than
China and Russia?
 Well, Japan is smaller in size than both China and Russia and
Japan differed in its response to new contacts with western
Europeans.
Civil War and the Invasion of Korea,
1500-1603
 In the 12th century Japan’s imperial unity had fell under the
control of numerous warlords known as, daimyo.
 Each daimyo had its own town, a small bureaucracy and
army.
 The armies that were devoted to the daimyo were known as
samurai.
Civil War
 Warfare among the different daimyo was common
 There was a prolonged civil war in the 1500s that brought
the separate Japanese islands under the control of powerful
warlords
 The most significant and powerful of the warlords was,
Hideyoshi.
Hideyoshi
 In 1592 Hideyoshi launched an invasion of the Asian mainland
with 160,000 men.
 His intentions were to conquer the Korean peninsula and
make himself emperor of China as well.
Korea and Japan
 Korean and Japanese languages are closely realated but the
dominant influence on Korean culture had been China.
 Korea had accepted their subordinate realtionship with their
giant of a neighbor and had paid tribute to China.
 Korea was a model Confucian state with its own system of
writing and made use of moveable type and printing.
Hideyoshi’s invasion
 Koreans used all the military techonolgy of the times against
the Japanese.
 They used covered warships called “turtle boats”,
 They were still no match for the mentally unstable Hideyoshi
 Hideyoshi invaded Manchuria and Korea but after
Hideyoshi’s death in 1598 the other Japanese leaders
withdrew their forces and made peace with Korea in 1606
Consequences of Hideyoshi’s
invasion
 Korean nobility (yangban) were able to lay claim to so much
tax-paying land that royal revenues fell by two-thirds.
 The battles in Manchuria weakened Chinese garrisons which
then permitted Manchu opposition to consolidate.
 This then allowed Manchu to be in possession of Beijing,
China’s capital, by 1644.
Tokugawa Shogunate
 What is a Shogun?
 A Shogun is a hereditary commander in chief in feudal
Japan.
 A Shogunate is dictatorship: a form of government in which
the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a
constitution or laws or opposition etc.)
Tokugawa Shogunate
 Tokugawa Ieayasu established this new Shogunate in 1603.
 They created a new capital city, Edo. Edo is now modern-day
Tokyo.
 He helped to create a trade route b/w Edo and the imperial
city of Kyoto which help to develop the Japanese economy.
 Even though their was more political unity, the daimyo still
had a lot of power.
Peaceful times in the Tokugawa
Shogunate
 Economic integration was the name of the game rather than
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political centralization.
The Shogunate required the daimyo to visit Edo frequently
there were good roads and maritime transport that would
link the city to the castle towns on three or four main islands
of Japan.
The Shogun paid the daimyo in rice and the lords paid their
followers in rice.
To pay personal expenses you had to convert the rice into
cash.
Rice exchanges were then established at Edo and Osaka.
Peace continued….
 The peace of the Tokugawa era forced the warrior class to
become more domesticated in a way.
 The samurai became better educated, more attuned to elite
tastes, and generally more interested in consumption.
 For example, the samurai became excellenct customers of
silk, sake (rice wine), fans, porcelain, books, etc…
Japan and the Europeans
 Japan began directly interacted with Europeans in the mid-
sixteenth century and this brought them new opportunities
and problems.
 The first major impact was that of military technology.
 By 1543 the daimyo were fighting with Western-style
firearms.
Trade w/ Europeans
 Japan began to trade with Portugal, Spain, and the
Netherlands, and England
 The gov’t closely regulated their activities
 Few goods went to Europe
 The Japanese sold the Dutch copper and silver which the
Dutch exchanged in China for silks and they then resold in
Japan.
Catholic Missionaries
 Portuguese and Spanish merchant ships brought Catholic
missionaries.
 The Japanese response was mixed.
 Large numbers of ordinary Japanese found the new faith
deeply meaningful but members of the elite were inclined to
oppose it as disruptive and foreign.
 Nevertheless, by 1580 more than 100,000 Japanese had
become Christians and one daimyo gave the Jesuit
missionaries the port city of Nagasaki.
Japan and Europe cont….
 By the early seventeenth century there were nearly 300,000
Japanese Christians but this did not change the fractious
politics of the day.
 The new Shogunate in Edo became the center of new
hostility towards Christians and Europeans in 1614.
 They issued a decree charging that Christians were trying to
overthrow the government and seize land. They then ordered
the movement eliminated.
 B/w 1633-39 a series of decrees ordered the end of
European trade.
 The new Shogunate wanted to make sure no new Christians
emerged so they ordered people to show certificates from
Buddhist temples attesting to their religious orthodoxy and
thus their loyalty to the regime.
 They did still allow trade with the Dutch for their needs.
Elite Decline and Social Crisis
 During the 1700s population growth put a strain on the well-
developed lands of central Japan.
 The central gov’t wasn’t able to stabalize rice prices and halt
the economic decline of the samurai.
 The samurai had to convert the rice to cash in the market.
 Rice brokers made themselves rich by controlling the
interest rates on rice.
 The shoguns tried to protect the samurai from decline by
curbing the power of the merchant class.
 Their legitimacy rested on their ability to reward and protect
the interests of the lords and samurai who has supported
them.
The Later Ming and Early Qing
Empires
The Ming Empire
1500-1644
 Like Japan, China after 1500 experienced civil and foreign
wars, and important change in government, and new trading
cultural trading relations with Europe and its neighbors.
 It was just on a much larger scale than that of the Japanese.
 The Ming Empire last from 1368-1644 and came after the
Mongol Yuan dynasty.
Ming continued….
 The Ming empire began to flourish during the 1500s due to
their assembly line production of porcelain.
 There was also an eager market for silk, lacquered furniture.
 This golden age was followed by many decades of political
weakness, warfare, and rural woes until the Qing emerged.
Why is China called China???
 Europeans were highly impressed by China’s imperial power,
exquisite manufactures, and large population.
 They bought the blue-on-white porcelain commonly used by
China’s upper classes and referred to these fine dishes as
“china”
Achievements of the Ming
 Urban elites had created a culture that included novels,
operas, poetry, porcelain, and painting.
 Small business owners would make money by catering to the
elite with businesses dealing with printing, tailoring, running
restaurants, or selling paper, ink, etc.
Problems plaguing the Ming
 1. Rapid growth in the trading economy led to rapid growth
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in the urban areas.
2. Price inflation due to the flood of silver from Europe
3. Ming gov’t showed little interest in developing the
economy.
4. The gov’t tried to use paper currency even though it
wasn’t generally accepted b/c silver had won the approval of
the markets
5. Ming factories were disorderly and inefficient.
Ming collapse and rise of the Qing
 One would think that the economic problems just mentioned
would bring the Ming down but it didn’t.
 What brought about the collapse of the Ming was the result
of growing rebellion within and the rising power of the
Manchu outside China’s borders.
Ming collapse
 The following were the reasons as to why the Ming
collapsed:
 Insecure borders
 Mongols united
 Manchuria
 Pirates, arghhhhhhhhh
 Inability of the military to protect the coast
 Japanese invasions
 The Ming emperor was dead by his own hand and the
imperial family had fled.
 The new empire would be called the Qing empire and
headed by a Manchu family.
Trading Companies and
Missionaries
 Europeans were eager to trade with China
 Enthusiasm for international trade developed slowly in
China, particularly in the imperial court
 Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese,
Spanish, and Dutch gained limited access to Chinese trade
 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
Emperor Kangxi (r. 1662–1722)
 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.
Chinese Influences on Europe
 The exchange of ideas and information between the Qing and the
Jesuits flowed in both directions
 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.
Beginning of the end
 Population explosion which caused an intensified demand for
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rice, wheat, and land.
More people=less land per person for farming
Increased demand for building materials and firewood
reduced the woodlands. This put China at risk for flooding
due to deforestation.
The Grand Canal was nearly unusable b/c it wasn’t being
maintained.
Interior China was miserable due to this
To summarize the empire had grown large and the gov’t
couldn’t deal with it.
The Russian Empire
 Russian had modest beginnings in 1500, Russian expanded
rapidly during the next three centuries.
 Russia became one of Europe’s major powers by 1750.
The Drive across Northern Asia
 The Russians were a branch of the Slavic people of eastern
Europe.
 Most were Orthodox Christians like the Greeks.
 The Mongols had ruled the Russians from 1240s-1480
 Moscow became the most important Russian city and the
center of political power
Russian Society and Politics to
1725
 As the empire expanded it incorporated a diverse set of
peoples, cultures, and religions. This often produced internal
tensions
 The Cossacks were a good example of the results of cultures
and people diverging.