Ancient China: December 2021

Saturday, December 4, 2021

The Qing Dynasty

The Later Years of Kangxi's Reign (1684-1722)

In the later years the rulers became accepted as a legitimate Chinese dynasty.
The Manchu-Chinese antagonism ceased to be an important factor in politics.
Kangxi now committed himself to the business of being a Chinese emperor.
He was extremely hard-working
He read and commented. on average of 50 memorials a day.
He also held audiences & performed routine tasks; he also travelled extensively.
In the 1690s he led two campaigns against the Dzungars.
The Russians had, by then, already expanded across Siberia.
In 1656 they had constructed a fort at Albazin on the Amur river.
Kangxi ordered an attack on Albazin.
But he was aware of the possible alliance between the Dzungars and the Russians.
The Dzungars were a Western branch of the Mongol tribes.
He captured Albazin and sought a settlement with Russia
The negotiations between the two states were handled by Jesuit missionaries.
This resulted in the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689.
This was the first treaty signed by China which accepted the principle of diplomatic equality.
The treaty demarcated the frontier between China & Russia.
It kept the Amur River in Chinese hands.
This settlement left Kangxi free to attack the Dzungars.
Galdan, the leader of the Dzungars was threatening to unite the Mongol tribes.
Kangxi led campaigns in 1696 & 1697.
This resulted in the defeat of the Dzungars & the suicide of Galdan.
But the Dzungar remained a threat throughout Kangxi's reign.
In 1717 they rashly invaded Tibet.
This gave Kangxi a pretext to intervene and establish a Chinese presence in Lhasa.
Kangxi continued the practices of the Ming.
There were significant innovations:
1) imperial household system.
The first was the development of the imperial household system.
Before. the conquest, the Manchu had kept household or agricultural slaves.
Many of them were ethnic Chinese.
Their descendants became hereditary slaves or bondservants of the emperor or princes.
From 1615 the bondservants were organized into the banner companies.
The imperial household was derived from the bondservant companies of the banners.
They were commanded directly by the emperor.
This was when the supervising officials were becoming his officials.
Also the rank and file became his personal servants.
the development of the Imperial household had been interrupted by Shunzhi
It was because of his decision to revive the eunuch-controlled Thirteen Offices.
fairs.
In 1661 Kangxi formally established the Imperial Household Department.
He did this to control the eunuchs and to manage the emperor's affairs.
This was situated in the Forbidden City.
By the late 18th century, the Imperial Household employed some 1600 officials.
It was engaged in a wide variety of administrative & commercial activities.
These activities were for the emperor.
2) the inner court
The Imperial Household belonged to what was known as the "inner court."
This was the realm of the emperor, as opposed to the realm of the bureaucracy.
The outer court operated in accordance with the provisions & administrative precedent.
The inner court operated according to the emperor's will.
The outer court communicated with officials through open channels.
The inner court used the "palace memorial" system.
This was a way of communicating directly and secretly with correspondents in the provinces.
Many correspondents were bondservants serving in the provinces, often in the south.
They supplied Kangxi with confidential information on provincial affairs.
They also informed Kangxi of the conduct of officials.

3) the employment of foreigners, mostly Jesuits at court.
The Jesuit mission in Beijing had been established in the closing years of the Ming dynasty.
The Jesuits had helped the Ming by supplying them with cannons.
Their expertise enabled them to retain their position in China after the Manchu conquest.
Shunzhi had been impressed by the German Jesuit Adam Schall.
Schall was a noted astronomer.
During the Obloi regency the Jesuits fell out of favour with the Manchu elite.
This was because of their association with the Shunzhi emperor.
During Kangxi's reign the Jesuits at court enjoyed a position of trust.
This was similar to that of the Chinese bondservants.
In 1664 Adam Schall was accused of inaccuracy in the dating of the calendar.
This amounted to treason & was sentenced to death which was later rescinded.
Schall died in 1666 and his position was taken by Ferdinand Verbiest.
He restored the Jesuit's position.
He defeated his Chinese opponent on a further dispute over the calendar.
He showed his superior skill in math.
Kangxi employed other Jesuits
They were architects, mathematicians, and artists.
They were also diplomats in the negotiations of the Treaty of Nerchinsk.
The Jesuit missionaries had also successfully treated the emperor for malaria.
They did this by prescribing quinine.
In 1693 Kangxi issued an "edict of tolerance."
This allowed the teaching of Christianity.
He also commissioned Jesuits to make a cartographic survey (for a map) of the empire.
But the Jesuits were already under attack from other Christin groups.
This was because they were willing to compromise with the Chinese practice of ancestral worship.
This was a requirement by Kangxi.
The Pope sent Charles Maillard de Tourno to the Qing court to resolve the issue.
He was received in audience by Kangxi.
But Kangxi would not agree to allow a representative of the Pope to reside in Beijing.
Maillard de Tourno did not accept the Jesuit accommodation on the matter of rites.
The papal legate (Charles Maillard) threatened these Jesuits to be excommunicated.
Kangxi then offered them a choice:
a) either all the missionaries accept the compromise and agree to remain in China for life.
b) or leave the country.
After Kangxi's death further negotiations took place.
No agreements could be reached.
In 1742 the papal bull Ex Quo Singulari forbade Christians to perform the Chinese rites.
Some European missionaries remained in Beijing.
But the proselytization of Christianity was forbidden.
The practice of Christianity by Chinese converts was driven underground.
It did continue to make progress in some provinces, like Sichuan.
In 1712 Kangxi announced that tax-collection units, should be frozen permanently.
He said they should not take account of the rise in population.
This decision was represented as an act of benevolence.or as a peace dividend.
It was seen as fulfilling the idea that good government keeps the burden of tax light.
Kangxi's reasons for this action may have been different.

Since the conquest, the dynasty had an increase of problems over the collection of taxes.
in the early years attempts were made to simplify & centralize the tax system.
But it remained extremely complex & vulnerable to under-collection & corruption.
When young, Kangxi had been made aware of the political risks of enforcing tax payments.
After that he found it expedient to act leniently on these matters.
On several occasions he granted generous tax amnesties.
He did fail to deal harshly with cases of official corruption.
He did not take steps to deal with the problem of "hidden land."
This was the recently reclaimed land that did not appear on the registry.

Kangxi's later years were clouded by worries over succession.
In 1676 he had followed the Chinese imperial custom.
He had named the 18 month old Yinreng, his second son as heir to the throne.
At first the relationship between father and son was good.
In 1696, when campaigning against Galden, he appointed Yinreng as regent.
After his return Kangxi heard reports that Yinreng was engaged in immoral behaviour.
The next 15 years, the emperor vacillated between denouncing his son or reinstating him.
Finally in 1712 Yinreng was declared insane & was deposed.
Until he lay on his deathbed Kangxi refused to name who should succeed him.
According to one version, he nominated his 4th son.
He was to reign as the Yongzheng emperor
But the new emperor was to stand accused of usurping the throne.
The throne should have gone to Kangxi's 14th son,
Yongzheng was accused of having poisoned his father.
The charges came from factional infighting.
This had marked court politics during the long succession crisis.

The Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723-35)

The short reign of Yongzheng was notable for the emperor's attempt to introduce reforms.
The first was in response to the circumstances under which he had come to the throne.
In September 1723 he introduced a new succession system.
This departed from both the Chinese tradition & the Manchu custom.
The Chinese appointed the eldest son born of an empress.
The Manchu appointed the ruler's sons according to merit.
It also required the approval of influential members of the imperial family.
The emperor selected his heir and put his name in a sealed box.
His choice was not revealed to anyone, including the candidate himself.
It would only be known after the emperor's death.
Another reform was the bureaucratization of the banner system.
There had been a sharp decline in the value of the banner forces as a military unit.
There were strong cliques within the five Interior Banners headed by the Manchu princes.
Yongzheng deprived the princes control of companies within the banners.
He placed the banners under uniform administrative rules.
He established banner schools to preserve the elements of Manchu & Mongol culture.
He took steps to improve the economic conditions of the bannermen.
The emperor also reformed the dynastic governmental machinery.
The palace memorial system undermined the censorial system.
It did this by enabling the emperor to access confidential information directly.
To complement this arrangement Yongzheng developed the "court letter."
This was a direct & confidential instruction to provincial officials.

This change was part of a much more important reform.
This had its origin under Kangxi 7 which was to be developed further by Yongsheng.
This refers to the Grand Council
This was the inner court council.
It was made up of equal numbers of high-ranking Chinese and Manchus officials.
They would meet daily in the presence of the Emperor
This enabled the Emperor to deal with the high volume of business requiring his attention.
The Grand Council, as a permanent body, was invested with broad powers.
It did not appeared until early in Qianlong's reign in 1729.
Yongzheng created a forerunner body to co-ordinate the campaign against te Dzungars.
The Kangxi Emperor bequeathed to his successor a stable treasury that was nearly empty.
The reason for this was not Kangxi's extravagance nor was it excessive military expenditure
It was the large deficit between the amount of tax levied and the amount of tax received.
This deficit has two main causes:
a) loss at the point of collection
b) the proportion retained at the provincial level of government.

Kangxi had adopted a relaxed attitude on fiscal matters.
Yongzheng immediately instituted a crusade against official corruption.
He initiated a reform connected with the "maltase fee", a surcharge on the land tax.
This was to compensate for losses when silver was melted down.
The silver was melted for taxes.
The excessive imposition of this surcharge was an abuse.
It also indicated that officials were quite underpaid.
Yongzheng acknowledged this problem & legalized the maltage fee.
This was to supplement official salaries and to provide public funds for projects.
Yongzheng's reform did not touch upon the fundamental weakness of the fiscal system.
The system was not able to extract more than 5% of te GNP of an agrarian economy.
Yongzheng involved himself in many other aspects of ruling.
He was determined to enforce ideological conformity among the literati.
he followed his father in promoting Neo-Confucianism in the form of the School of Principle.
This favoured:
a )moral imperatives such as the total subjection of women.
b) the indisputable authority of fathers.
c) the unquestioning loyalty of subjects to rulers.
In 1670 Kangxi had circulated his Sacred Edict.
It expounded these principles in the form of 16 maxims.
In 1724 Yongzheng reissued the edict with his own amplified instructions.
Examination candidates were required to to memorize the maxims.
Scholars were required to expound them twice monthly at Confucian temples.
Yongzheng was concerned with the ethnic minorities in the south.
Previously the imperial policy had relied upon the tribal headman system.
This was the fact that that minorities were ruled by their own tribal leaders.
These leaders were given official ranks and the people themselves were left alone.
In the 18th century, pressure on areas of ethnic minorities increased.
These incidents multiplied.
Yongzheng found the system incompatible with the principle of universal & absolute rule.
He began to bring the minority groups into the provincial administrative system.
This involved the pacification of minority groups (Miao) and their subsequent sinicization.
Yongzheng's reputation as a ruler is mixed.
He stands accused of having usurped the throne.
He is accused of having disposed ruthlessly of his brothers
Yet he has been hailed as "the greatest centralizer and stabilizer" of the Qing Dynasty.
He is seen as one who revitalized the state administration and fostered a time of economic prosperity.
He ruled as an autocrat.
He freed himself from dependence on the bureaucracy & reliance on the Manchu princes.
His objective was not simply power for he showed compassion for his subjects.

The Qianlong Emperor (r.1736-95)

Yongzheng was succeeded by his 4th son, to be known as the Qianlong emperor.
Yongzheng had concealed the name of his heir.
The future emperor and his half-brother closest to him in age were given the same education.
They had the same administrative experience to prepare them equally for the throne.
Both attended the Palace School and studied Manchu texts & Confucian classics.
Both learned calligraphy, painting, & writing poetry & received instruction in archery.
Both made the use of firearms and went hunting.
Qianlong continued the autocratic tendencies of his father's government.
In the early years of his reign, the Grand Canal took its definitive shape.
The imperial princes lost their seats on the council, their places being taken by Manchus.
The Grand Council became so effective tat t no longer needed the emperor's concern.
There was a willingness to appoint Chinese officials, as opposed to Chinese bannermen.
This was for provincial appointments.
The operation of the bureaucracy remained unchanged.
The examination system continued in full force.
Appointments to the civil service were dominated by degree-holders.
Competition for official appointments became severe.
Success in the examinations went increasingly to certain families.
These were the ones that had previously placed a member in the bureaucracy.
They were also those who could afford to use the purchase system to enter the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy was now too large & its procedures too complex.
It could no longer be a simple instrument of the emperor's will.
Qianlong understood this.

The Qing Period
During the 18th century, the Qing empire doubled its territorial size.
Qianlong's contribution to this massive expansion came in Tibet & Xinjiang.
A Chinese presence in Lhasa had been established during his grandfather's reign.
The Chinese influence was undermined by Dzungar intrigues, which in 1750 led to a civil war.
Qianlong's response was to install the Dalai Lama as the temporal ruler of the state.
He also declared Chinese protectorate over the country.
In 1793 Qianlong decreed that the future Dalai Lama should be chosen by lot.
He sent a golden urn to Lhasa for that purpose.
In Xinjiang, the Dzungars continued to offer a challenge.
Between 1755 & 1757 Qing forces virtually forced them out.
The early Manchu rulers had been willing to experiment in matters of foreign relations.
Qianlong generally followed the practices of the tributary system.
China also accepted some responsibility for the well-being of tributary states.
In 1788 a Chinese force was sent to Annam to assist the king to put down a rebellion.
The Qing court valued foreign trade.
It was mindful of the potential dangers of foreign contacts in the south.
This was a region of suspect loyalty.
In 1684 restrictions on foreign trade was erased but remained under close regulations.
Superintendent of maritime customs, the Hoppo, was stationed at Guangzhou
Only certain Chinese merchants were allowed to take a share of the trade.
They were required to guarantee the debts of the foreign traders.
these privileged merchants belonged to the monopolistic group known as the Cohong.
At first, trade was permitted at a number of southern ports.
This proved difficult to regulate.
From 1760 maritime trade was confined to Guangzhou.
By the 18th century the most important participant in this trade was Great Britain.
It was monopolized by the East India Co.
They handled the tea trade, China's most substantial export.
British trade was monopolized by the East India Company.
In Qianlong's reign the economy was doing great.
Its basic economy was based on agriculture with rice, wheat and millet being their most important exports.
In sone regions cotton, rice and tea were important.
In the 18th century the population doubled from 150 million to 300 million.
Little land was available for cultivation
Between 1750 & 1775 the amount of food declined
Non-food items became obsolete.
There was no money to invest for improvement.
Qianlong's reign has emphasized its stability & achievements.
But the first sign of decline made its appearance.

Some of the indicators anticipated the beginning of the end of the imperial system.
these were
a) literary & intellectual life
b) popular religion
c) the rise of rebellion
d) bureaucratic corruption.

Thought, Literature, Religion, Rebellion, & Bureaucracy

The Qianlong emperor promoted himself as a patron of the arts.
He wrote poetry and commissioned scholarly enterprises.
The most important was the compilation of important works.
This was the Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature.
This was a collection of 3500 works deemed to be the best in the Chinese literary tradition.
The selection & editing provided employment for an army of scholars.
But the enterprise had a dark side.
It was also a literary inquisition.
Its aim was to identify and destroy certain literary works.
These were those that contained disrespectful references to the Manchus.
The scholars were involved in collecting rather than original scholarship.
the whole project has been seen as repressive & stultifying.
Among popular religion, the most widespread was the White Lotus Religion.
Its followers worshipped a supreme deity called the Eternal Mother.
The religion suffered from periodic state persecution
As a consequence it had no central organization
It was composed of small communities linked only by visits from traveling teachers.
The White Lotus religion found many of their converts among recent migrants.
Others wireless settled in society; many women found it appealing.
The religion existed to satisfy the spiritual need of the believers.
It provided them with social support.
It did contain a millenarian message.
This predicted a coming apocalypse marked by the arrival of the Maitreya Buddha.
The White Lotus religion inspired the uprising led by Wang Lin.
The rebels were soon defeated
They had exposed the incapacity of the Chinese Army of Green Standards.
They also exposed the weakness of the Manchu banner troops sent against them.
Twenty years later the White Lotus inspired the 1st major popular rebellion.
This would threaten the dynasty.
This arose in the mountain region between the upper waters of the Yangzi & Yellow Rivers.
This was an area that had received many recent migrants.
The rebellion was not suppressed at first
Only when the government permitted local gentry to raise milia forces & employ mercenaries.
Also when they had sanctioned the movement of the population into strategic hamlets.
In this way denying the rebels food and fresh recruits.
Another issue ws that of bureaucratic corruption.
This was commonly cited as a cause of dynastic decline.
Yongzheng had attempted to treat what he regarded as the root cause of corruption.
There were inadequate salaries.
They did this by providing extra stipends for "cultivation of incorruptibility."
In Qianlong's reign these reforms were modified.
Officials were even more handicapped than they had been 50 years previously.
Corruption became a threat to the very survival of the unified Chinese state.
This was illustrated by reference to a Manchu Bannerman named Heshen.
He was Qianlong's favourite throughout the last 25 years of his life.
Heshen was to be accused of having built up an extraordinary network of patronage.
This corrupted a large part of the civil and military establishment.
It also contributed to the growth of unrest and the rise of rebellion.
During the rebellion Heshen got the emperor to believing that he was succeeding.
But he embezzled large sums of money intended for military supplies.
For this, Qianlong's successor, the Jiaqing emperor had Heshen arrested.
He was then allowed to commit suicide.
It was not accepted unanimously that corruption was undermining the Qing government.
It was probably not more prevalent than in any other dynasty.

Friday, December 3, 2021

The Yuan Dynasty

The Mongolian Conquest

The traditional view of the Mongol rule over China was that it was an unmitigated disaster.
Three charges had been levelled against the Mongols.
a) they discriminated against the Chinese both racially & economically.
b) they failed to build on the technological & economic achievements of the Song period. Thus they contributed to the introverted and non-competitive position developed under the Ming.
c) they instituted practices that contributed to the development of despotism.
The Mongol invasion did cause extensive damage.

Positive Features of the Conquest

The period of Mongol Rule had some positive features.
a) the Mongols reunified China
Adopting the dynastic title "Yuan" entitled them to a place in the Chinese dynastic record.
They became legitimate holders of the Mandate of Heaven.

b) Chinese civilization was not fundamentally altered by the episode of Mongol rule.
In several ways scholarship and the arts benefitted from it.
c) Mongol rule was more humane and less ideological restrictive than that of the Song.
The "pax mongolica" the Mongolian peace which spread across Asia exposed China to vast external influences.
d) the hostility of the Chinese for the Mongols was not so intense.
it did not prevent many Mongols remaining in China after the flight of the Mongol court.

Mongolian Society

The Mongols were pastoral nomads.
By the 11th century they were living as a tribal society in present-day Mongolia.
They were in constant conflict with the Tartars their neighbours to the West
Soon the Mongols began to develop an ethnic consciousness
This was a political situation that was exploited and taken advantage of by Temujin.
He was the son of a tribal leader, who was born in about 1167.
His father had been poisoned by the Tartars.
This grievance motivated him to claim the leadership of his tribe.
He raised a disciplined army divided into groups of 1000 men.
He devised new military tactics 7 strategies.
This enabled him to unite the Mongol tribes .
In 1206 he was acclaimed Genghis Khan (Chinggis Khan)
He was the universal sovereign of the steppe peoples
He claimed to be heaven's chosen instrument.
He declared that all who stood in his way did so in defiance of heaven's will.
He then embarked on a remarkable sequence of conquests..

The Conquests of Chinggis Khan

In 1210 he invaded the Xi Xia
He forced them to pay tribute, thereby cutting China's trade routes to the north-west.Y
In 1215 he captured the Jin capital at Yangjing.
He did not destroy the Jurchen dynasty.
He turned west and seized Bokhara & Samarkand.
He began to recruit China and Khitan officials.
He appointed Mikhali, one of his best generals to administer the Chinese territory.
In 1226 he turned to destroy the Xi Xia kingdom but died during the campaign.
He was succeeded as Khagan or khan of khans by his third son Ogodei.
The Mongol Empire was divided between his sons & grandsons.

Ogodei

Ogodei continued the conquests.
He invaded Korea and in 1234 completed the destruction of the Jin Dynasty.
In he West the Mongol forces overcame Russia.
They inflicted devastating defeats on the states of eastern Europe.
Only Ogodei's death in 1241 ended his extravagant expansion.
Ogodei drank himself to death in 1241.
His widow became regent (female sovereign; ruler)

Mongke

In 1251 Mongke became Khagan
After that the Mongol expansion resumed.
Not making a direct attack on the Southern Song, Mongke decided to outflank them.
In 1252 he ordered his brother to attack the south-west.
He destroyed the south-western kingdom of Nanzhao.
Mongke's next objective was the province of Sichuan
But he died in 1259 while pursuing that campaign.
A succession dispute delayed a decisive Mongol attack on China
Mongke had entrusted the administration in north China to his younger brother Khubilai.

Khubilai Khan

Khubilai was willing to accept advice from Confuciasn advisers.
he was also willing to promote the prosperity of the region.
In 1260 he was elected khagan and soon after adopted a reign title.
His chief adviser was a former Buddhist monk named Liu Bingzhong.
His advice encouraged Khubilai to lay out a Chinese state capital at Kaiping.
It was later renamed Shangdu or "upper capital" and became known in the West as Xanadu.
As Emperor of China, Khubilai in 1268 was ready to attack the Southern Song.
The Southern Song continued to assert their claim to the whole of the country.
Khubilai's first objective was to attack the key city of Xianggang. on the Han River.

The End of the Southern Song

Using ships and war engineers, te Mongols battered down the walls.
The city surrendered.
This cleaned the route to the Yangzi valley.
In 1275 Bayan, the main Mongol general met and defeated a large army led by Jia Sidao.
Jia Sidao was the last chief councillor of the Southern Song.
Jia's land policies had already alienated wealthy landowners.
This defeat ensured his dismissal.
Souther Song resistance now collapsed and its court surrendered.
It was only in 1279 that the last Southern Song loyalties were defeated at sea.
The last Southern Song emperor drowned.

China under Mongol Rule

Khubilai had been victorious in China but his other military ventures were less successful.
In 1274 & 1281 he tried to conquer Japan but both times he was driven back.
It was by strong & fierce Japanese resistance. & bad weather.
Campaigns in South-east Asia took them into terrain where he suffered reverses.
This is where military skills were at a disadvantage.
His last years were negative for a number of reasons:
a) military failures.
b) ill-health
c) the death of his favourite wife
d) problems with his succession.

Succession Issues of the Mongols

Mongol customs prescribed that the next in line should go to whichever of the khagan male relatives was acclaimed at a council of notables.
Khubilai tried to follow Chinese customs & nominated Zhenjin.
He was his eldest son by his principled wife.
Zhenjin died in 1285.
Khubilai died in 1294.
He bestowed the succession on his second son - Temur, who reigned until 1307.
Temur continued many aspects of Khubilai's rule.

Succession Struggles

His successor Khanshan was succeeded by his brother, who ruled as Renzong (1311-1320).
Renzong was the most sinicized & cultured of the Mongol rulers.
After Renzong's death the court split into factions.
In 1323 Yesun Temur seized the throne and held it until his death five yers later.
He was hostile to the influence of the Chinese scholar-officials.
After that there were some succession struggles.
Then the throne was held for another five years by Tugh Temur.
He was more committed to the Chinese than to the steppes.
theist Mongol ruler, Toghon Temur came to the throne as a minor.
Hesurvived until the Mongol court fled from China in 1368.

The Rule of Khubilai

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

The Early Qing

The Early Qing

The Manchus descended from the Jurchen tribes who had founded in Jin Dynast in 1122.
The Jianzhou Jurchin adopted the name Manchu in 1635.
By the 16th century theJianzhou Jurchin were living near the Changbai mountains.
This is in the east of present-day Jilin.
There they hunted, practiced agriculture & traded exclusively with the Chinese.Chanbai Jurchin
The area occupied by the Changhai Jurchin was designated a "commanderie"
This implied tat it had been incorporated into the frontier defence system.
The control of the area was superficial.
The Changhai territory became a Manchu state.
This was largely the work of Nurachi (1559-1626)
He unified the Jurchen tribes of his region.
He did it by aggression & marriage alliances.
After he cultivated relations with the Chinese.
In 1589 he was granted a title by the Wanli emperor
The following year he headed a tribute mission to Beijing
In the 1590s he traded profitably in ginseng & horses.
He took advantage of the chaos caused by Hideyoshi's attempted invasion of China.
In 1599 he began to organize the entire Jurchen population into banners.
This was groups of 300 households designated as a company.
And 50 companies formed a "banner."
It was the name referring to the pattern of each flag of each group.
First there were 4 banners
Later the number increased to 8 Manchu banners
There were 8 Mongol banners & 8 Chinese banners

In times of peace the banners served as administrative units.
In times of war, the banners formed the cavalry forces of the Manchus.
In 1603 Nurachi's quick rise to power had alarmed the Chinese.
A boundary was defined between his lands and those of Chinese settlers.
He employed Chinese officials and adopted bureaucratic methods of government.
Nurachi transformed his confederation of Jurchen tribes into a Manchu state.
He also obtained the allegiance of the Jurchen tribes
The Jurchen had yet to place themselves under Chinese protection.
In 1616 he announced the foundation of the Later Jin Dynasty.
He justified his actions in a document entitled the Seven Great Vexations..
Two years later he seized the important trading post and garrison town of Fushun
Nurachi awarded the Chinese commander of the town a high military rank.
He also married him to his granddaughter.
A large Chinese force was dispatched to recover the town but it was routed.
By the end of 1621 Nurachi had gained control of the whole Liaodong.
By then he was appealing to Chinese officials and settlers to come to his side.
The Manchu advance then stalled for eight years.
After the occupation of Liaodong, the Manchus were ruling perhaps one million Chinese.
Some important Chinese families switched over to the Manchu side.
Many Chinese were treated as slaves.
Many were forced to accept Manchu banner men into their households.

In 1623 there was a Chinese attempt to poison the Manchus' food & water supplies.
The punishment was harsh.
Two years later the Chinese revolted.
Nurachi concluded that he could not rely on the population as a whole to support him.
At the same time the Ming strengthened thfences.
They did this by deploying cannons supplied by the Portuguese
This was to defend their garrisons beyond the Great Wall.
The Manchus did not yet possess firearms.
This present a major obstacle to their advance.
When Nurhaci died in 1626 the Chinese negotiated peace terms.

Abahai

The new ruler Abahai managed to placate the Liaodong Chinese.
The Manchus advance resumed.
In 1629 in a spectacular raid, Abahai crossed the Great Wall.
He captured four Chinese cities and reached the walls of Beijing.
This raid disrupted the pacification campaign against the peasants rebellions in Shaanxi.
In 1634-35 Abahai subdued the Chair Mongols.
This allowed him to claim the succession to Chinggis Khan & the Yuan Dynasty.
In 1638 Abahai sent a force which defeated the Korean Yi Dynasty.
He forced it to send tribute tot the Manchus.
Abahai realized that the Chinese could not be subjugated by military force alone.
From 1631 he began to adopt features of the Chinese government.
This included the Six Boards and the Censorate, alongside Manchus institutions.
He introduced the examination system.
He made increasing use of Chinese collaborators in government & Chinese troops.
The troops were now organized in banners.
From the Chinese artillery experts he obtained the technology for casting cannons.
In 1636 he dropped the dynastic name of Jin in favour of Qing, signifying "clear" or "pure."
This was a challenge to the Ming, or "bright" dynasty.

Dorgon: The New Regency

By the middle ofthe 1630s Abahai had become uneasy of excessive sinicization.
He began to insist on the maintenance of Manchu values & tribal values.
In 1643 Abahai died.
It was agreed that the throne should go to his five year old son.
The new emperor's uncles Dorgon & Jirgalang would act as regents.
By now the Ming Dynasty was faced with uncontrollable peasant rebellions.
It was now on the verge of collapse.

The two regents had several options.
a) to continue Abahai's policy agreeing with the aristocratic tribal traditions of the Manchu.
b) to remain in the Manchu homelands and raiding China when it pleased them.
c) to abandon that strategy and occupy China.
Dorgon, ambitious to increase his power, favoured occupying China.
It was at this point that the issue of Chinese collaborations became a crucial factor.
The most powerful Chinese commander on the north-east frontier was Wu Sangui.

Li Zicheng

The rebel leader Li Zicheng captured Beijing & tried to get Wu Sangui to join him.
According to a story Li Zicheng had already seized and violated Wu Sangui's concubine.
This was the famous courtesan Yuanyuan.
for this reason Wu Sangui decided to reject Li's overtures & to negotiate with the Manchus
In fact Wu Sangui failed to respond promptly to Li's invitation.
It led Li Zicheng to suspect that the general was not to be trusted.
He ordered the slaughter of all members of Wu Sangui's facility to be found in Beijing.
It was that reason that the general turned to the Manchus.
Dorgon probably calculated that he could not defeat their combined forces.
With Wu Sangui on his side he could inflict a defeat on te rebel leader's forces.

In June 1644, Dorgon entered Beijing.chus.
He reassured the population that the Manchus had avenged the overthrow of the Ming.
The Manchus forces quickly drove Li Zicheng's troops out of north China.
Before the end of 1645, both rebellions had been defeated.
The Ming court had made Nanjing its capital.
It attempted to negotiate a settlement with the Manchus.
The Manchu response was to launch an attack on the Yangzi provinces.
Here we witnessed the most spirited Chinese resistance & fiercest Manchu reprisals.
At Yangzhou, opposition to the Manchu advance was headed by Shi Kefa.
After their first attack had been repelled, the invaders used cannons to break the city walls.
Then they ordered the city to be sacked as a deterrent to further defiance.
This was a ten-day massacre at Yangzhou as proof of Manchu ruthlessness.
Scholars have regarded Shi Kefa as the model of patriotic Chinese resistance.
At Jiangyin, the initial reaction of the elite to the Manchu advance was to comply with them.
The Manchu demanded that the tax and population registers should be handed over.

Manchu Lifestyle

In June 1645 news reached the city that the Manchu were imposing the regulation.
this required men to wear their hair in the Manchu style, that is, with their shaved with a tail at the back.
This gave rise to a resisitance movement
Elite & popular elements came together in a brief alliance.
The Manchu response was actually perpetuated by Chinese troops.
The Manchu response was to stamp out opposition ruthlessly.
At Jiangyin the elite was divided in its resistance.
The slaughter was actually perpetrated by Chinese troops.
Nanjing fell to the Manchus in June 1645 & the Ming court fled south.
The Manchus than paused to stop a rebellion among their supporters.
They also consolidated their position in the Yangzi valley.

Invasion South

There invasion of the south began in 1649.
In the following year Guangzhou was captures & sacked by Shang Kexi.
Shang Kexi was a Chinese Bannerman who had switched to the Manchu side in 1634.
Resistance in mainland China had now effectively ended.
The last Ming emperor fled to Burma and was captures and executed in 1662.
At this time a challenge to the Manchus had come from Zheng Chenggong.
He was known in the West as Koxinga, he was both a pirate and a patriotic.
He had established a base near Xiamen.
Zheng Chenggong commanded a large naval force.
He used it in 1659 to go up the Yangzi and besieged Nanjing.
A Manchu attack on his forces besieging the city forced him to withdraw.
Despite his defeat, Zheng remained serious threat
The Manchus denied him economic support.
To do this they ordered the coastal population to move several miles inland.
This was Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang.
Zheng Chenggong died in Taiwan in 1662.
Resistance from his family & supporters continued for a further twenty years.

Consolidation of Manchu Rule

Once Dorgon had committed to the conquest of China, the question arose:
As rulers, how should the Manchu behave?
Dorgon had read the the history of the Jin Dynasty.
He was aware of the tension between the two groups.
a) a sanitized emperor supported by a Chinese bureaucracy.
b) a non-Chinese nobility accustomed to the use of military power.
He knew that the Chines bureaucracy itself was split between the two groups.
This was between those who accepted the Manchu presence & those who did not.
Dorgon's response was to perform a balancing act between the two.
This was to reassure the Chinese while retaining the confidence of the Manchus.
He entered Beijing and ordered a mourning service and funeral for the last Ming emperor.
The heavy taxes of the late Ming period was reduced.
Tax concession were given to war-torn areas.
He declared "The empire is a single whole. There are no distinctions between Manchus & Hans."
He then initiated a Manchu-Chinese diarchy.
He did this by inviting all Ming metropolitan officials to remain in their posts.
They had too perform their duties alongside Manchus appointees.
An extensive programme of reforms proposed by Ming officials was adopted.
The examination system was continued.
This was advantageous to northerners who suspected that it favoured men from the south.
Care was taken to assert Manchu dominance.
The requirement that the Chinese should adopt the queue as a symbol of subordination.
The top metropolitan posts were held by Manchus.
Of the Chinese who were appointed were bannermen.
They had submitted to the Manchus before the conquest.
Some tax relief were offered to the Chinese population.
This economic gain was outweighed by the need for land on which to settle banner troops.
Up to one million acres of land was confiscated from Chinese farmers in Zhili.
These farmers were forced to move to the parts of north China.
His measure did not benefit the Manchu bannermen
This was because they lacked knowledge of agricultural techniques.
Soon, many became poor & homeless.
Dorgon had been an ambitious and scheming ruler.
After his death in 1650 te Manchu court was beset by a period of intense factional rivalry.
At first Jirgalang became influential
By now, the emperor was old enough to play a role in government.
From 1653 a dominant faction grouped itself around the Shunzhi emperor.

Emperor Shunzhi

Shunzhi died in 1661, probably of smallpox.
He left a will which is now recognized as a partial forgery.
The remarks in the will show that he aroused the opposition of the Manchu conquest elite.
This was for activities which they regarded as too favourable.
He admitted that he reversed Dorgon's policy of limiting the political influence of the eunuchs.
This was by creating the Thirteen Offices, a personal bureaucracy of eunuch advisers

The purpose may have been to assert his authority against his Manchu opponents.

He confessed to a number of things:
a) he spent too much time with Buddhist monks.
b) He allowed the German jesuit Adam Schall to exercise too much influence at court.
c) He favoured Chinese officials & Ming institutions.
d) He disregarded the Manchu advisers and bondservants.
e) He showed greater devotion to his consort than to his mother.
The will named his seven year old son as his heir, who would reign as the Kangxi emperor.
He prescribed that power was to be exercised by a regency.
This regency was to be composed of four Manchus from the imperial bodyguard.
The four regents, of whom the best known is Obloi, held power until 1669.
In that period they reversed some of the legacies of Shunzhi's reign.
They attempted to reassert Manchu dominance.
a) the Thirteen Offices were abolished.
b) the late emperor's Buddhist advisers were expelled.
c) a persecution of Jesuit missionaries was started.
In the metropolitan gov't, Manchu institutions were given responsibilities.
The Council of Deliberative Officials was one such institution.
The members included the commanders of the Manchus and Mongol banners.
The Manchu and Mongol presidents of the Six Boards were some others given preference.
They were given greater responsibility than the Grand Secretariate.
In the provinces the task of enforcing Manchu dominance was more difficult to complete.
Few Manchus were proficient enough in Chinese.
They were not experienced enough in administration.
For example, to discharge the duties of a provincial appointment.
As a result the regents continued Dorgon's policy of appointing many Chinese bannermen.
Thee appointments were to senior provincial positions.
But first they replaced many of those already in post.
Later in the regency some Manchus were appointed as governors and governor-generals.
these appointments went to Obloi's close associates.
Thus they were resented byother Manchus.
A problem was the relationship between the Manchus conquerers & the Chinese ritual elite.
Especially those who lived in the great commercial & cultural centres.
This was along the southern stretch of the Grand Canal.
Their initial acquiescence to Manchus rule concealed a persistent Ming loyalism.
It also hid a resentment over what they perceived to be unfair treatment on matters.
These referred to official appointments and taxation.

In 1661 a protest took place outside the Confucian temple in Suzho
This was over the ruthless collection of taxes.
It resulted;ted in
a) the trial & execution of 18 members of the gentry on charges of treason.
b) to the subsequent deprivation of many gentry of their degrees.
Two years later at Hangzhou others were violently persecuted.
They were suspected of being involved in the production of a history of the Ming dynasty.
this production contained phrases which might be critical of the Manchus.
The regency suffered from persistent factionalism.
Obloi eventually emerged the winner.
He continued to dominate the government after 1667 when Kangxi reached his majority.
Two years later the emperor ordered the arrest of Obloi.
He had him arraigned and his supporters on charges of usurping his authority & other faults.Obloi was imprisoned and died soon afterwards.
Kangxi thereupon assumed full responsibility for government.
then te Qing faced the most severe threat of the period of consolidation.
This was the tension between centralization & regionalism - control vs. autonomy.
At the end of the Han, the Tang, & the Qing, China had become fragmented.
They fragmented into independent states or warlord regimes.
A similar fragmentation threatened the Qing in the 1660s.
The origin of the threat was the reliance that the Manchus had placed on the Chinese.
These were collaborators & turncoats at the time of the conquest.
Four collaborators, all of whom came from Liaodong were of particular note.
Shang Kexi, Kong You and Geng Zhongming had joined the Manchu side in the 1630s.
The fourth, Wu Sangui, had famously changed his allegiance in 1644.
For their services they had been granted the title of prince.
They had then been commissioned to pacify the south.
King Youdi had been cut off by Ming forces at Guilin in 1652 & had committed suicide.
The others completed the pacification & got for themselves semi-independent fiefdoms.
These were:
Wu Sangui in Yunnan & Guizhou
Shang Kexi in Guangdong
Geng Bingzhong in Fuijan.
Such was the power of these three "feudatories" - as they are called.
In 1673, Shang Kexi requested permission to retire & to pass control to his son.
The Council of Deliberative Officials accepted his retirement.
But they refused to make the appointment, effectively abolishing the feudatory.
This put pressure onto the other feudatories to resign.
Both Geng Jingzhong & Wu Sangui resigned.
The Council did not expect Wu Sangui's resignation to be taken seriously.
They thought it would be a good idea to refuse the resignation.
Instead the Kangxi Emperor decided to accept it.
He also disbanded the three feudatories.
He knew that it would bring about a civil war.
In December 1673 Wu Sangui did the following:
a) he ordered the murder of the governor of Yunnan
b) he decreed the revival of Ming customs.
c) he claimed the Zhou dynasty.
He obtained the support of four provinces very quickly.
The rumour went around Beijing that the Manchus were about to withdraw to the north-east.
Kangxi put down unrest in the capital.
He ordered the suicide of Wu Sanghui's son who had been kept in Beijing as a hostage.
But the rebellion continued to spread.
By the end of 1674 virtually all the south & west of the country was in rebel hands.
Only Shang Kexi in Guangdong remaining loyal.
Kangxi personally directed the military campaign against the rebels.
He increasingly relied on Chinese rather than Manchu commanders.
In many cases, the Manchu commanders proved to be incompetent.
The rebellion was slowly confined.
After Wu Sangui's death, the rebellion was gradually extinguished.
After there defeat of the rebellion, one further task remained to be completed.
This was the subjugation of Taiwan.
Until 1681 Taiwan had been held by the son of Zheng Chenggong
His son had joined the rebellion of the Three Feudatories.
For six years he had established an enclave on the mainland.
In 1683 a large Manchu fleet captured the Penghu (Pescadores) islands.
It then occupied Taiwan incorporated into the empire as a prefecture of Fujian.
The policy of removing the coastal population was finally rescinded.