History Book Club
Wednesday,
February 22, 2017
China—Pick Your
Dynasty!
Wednesday,
February 22, 2017: Pick your favorite Chinese dynasty. Whether
it’s Xia dynasty, Shang, Chou (Zhou), Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, or any of the
others, you’ll learn Chinese history. [Suggested
by Walt Frederick].
Keay,
John, China, a History, London, UK: Harper Press, 2009.
Thank you, Walt Frederick, for your
very interesting approach to China. John Keay leads in to
China, by starting with the China that exists today. New economic resurgence
has swept over China, emphasizing some features, and air-brushing out others,
for an audience both domestic and foreign.
Gone are the cadres of farmers, marching
militantly to work, the relentless propaganda, the little red books and the
huge portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong.
It’s a new China, with lightning-fast rail service, new cities popping
up, and bright young people filling up the lecture halls at MIT,
Harvard,
CalTech, Oxford and Tsinghua. And of course, in many, many ways, there’s the
old China.
As we
delve into the history of China, we quickly learn how much we don’t know that we should. How do you pronounce “Qin” dynasty or “Shaanxi”
province?
Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644)
I
chose to go back in time, to 1368, which marked the beginning of a brilliant era for China, the
Ming Dynasty.
Zhu
Yuanzhang, a penniless orphan joined a rebel band, then quickly gained a
leadership role. More and more joined and then the band, now an army, invaded
and captured Nanjing in 1356. That would remain his base and stronghold for the
next 40 years.
Zhu
was ugly and ignorant, but he was a good listener and a quick learner. He began
a four-day battle with a neighboring warlord in 1363, and when he won, ever
more armies and navies flocked to his side. By 1366 he had control over the
whole Yangzi basin and had emerged as the obvious heir to the Yuan empire. In
1368 he made a formal declaration of his own dynasty, which would be called
Ming, meaning brilliant or effulgent. In that year his forces entered Dadu, the
capital of the previous emperor, Yuan Shundi, who had fled north to inner
Mongolia. For the first time in centuries, China had a Chinese emperor. He
renamed Dadu Beiping, a Pinyin rendering of “North Pacified”.
By
1371 only Yunnan (adjacent to Myanmar) remained in Mongol hands. In 1382 it was overrun, and when it was a
bright 11-year-old Muslim boy was captured, castrated and renamed Zheng He. He
became a favorite of the new emperor. Soon this Yunnanese Muslim eunuch would
command China’s greatest maritime enterprise.
Zhu Yuanzhang,
the Ming Emperor, grew more and more paranoid and his rule became worse than
the Yuan Mongols before him. Not a day would pass when there was not a mass
execution, and frequently Zhu would witness a severe beating, perhaps to death,
of some staff member. In 1393 a long-serving general offered a word of
complaint and he was immediately executed.
Zhu
died in 1398 and was buried on a mountain near his capital of Nanjing. The
empire sighed in relief.
The
new Emperor Yongle in 1403 announced that he was sending a fleet to the western
ocean. Admiral Zheng He, the Muslim eunuch, would command China’s first armada.
The first voyage sailed in 1405. In all, the Chinese made seven voyages, each
lasting about two years, and all commanded by Zheng He. These voyages included
100 to 300 ships and some 27,000 men. Fifty or so ships, called “Treasure
ships” were huge—three to five times the size of those sailed by Columbus or
Vasco da Gama, and displacing 20,000 to 30,000 tons.
This
armada sailed down the China coast, visiting Champa (now Viet Nam), the
Philippines, Malacca, Sumatra, into the Indian Ocean to Calicut in India, Sri
Lanka, the Maldives, Djofar (now part of Oman) and other ports in modern Kenya.
People in this vast area saw Chinese power and mercantile excellence, but
except for some conflicts in Viet Nam, there was no combat or attempt to
conquer territory.
At
this time the Ming Court carried out a huge tribute enterprise, with land
trains or caravans crossing from Herat, Samarkand, Burma, Korea and Tibet, one
after another, bringing precious metals, jewels, spices, ostriches, elephants,
rhinoceros, giraffes. They returned with silks, silver and paper money.
All
of this trade generated great respect and appreciation for the Chinese.
In
1436 the Ming Zhengtong emperor ascended the throne. He was eight years old,
and loved to play with soldiers. When he became 21 his tutor, Wang Zhen, a
eunuch, became his head of security.
In
July 1449 Esen, the Mongol leader, launched a large-scale invasion of China.
They crushed a poorly-supplied Chinese army just inside the Great Wall.
Wang
Zhen determined it was time for the young emperor to go to war. Emperor Zhengtong appointed his half-brother
as regent and with a hastily formed army of 500,000, with the eunuch as a field
marshal, marched west to Datong, near the border with Mongolia in Shanxi
province.
The
Chinese entered Datong with little opposition, but reports began to come in of
fierce warfighting by the Mongols, with many Chinese deaths. After two days
they abandoned the city and gave up the idea of invading Mongol territory. The
army began a march back to Beijing, but became mired in heavy rain. The
generals wanted to halt and send the Emperor back to Beijing for his safety,
but Wang Zhen overruled them. The Minister of War, who was afraid of horses,
kept falling off his horse.
As
the Chinese army camped at the post station of Tumu, Esen’s cavalry of about
20,000 descended upon the Chinese and killed many thousands, while many others
escaped in disarray. All the generals were killed; Wang Zhen was killed by his
own officers. Esen’s troops captured the Emperor and attempted to use him as
ransom to invade Beijing, but the general in charge at Beijing rejected the
offer, saying that the country was more important than an emperor’s life. Esen kept Emperor Zhengtong for four years,
then released him.
That
whole mess is called the Tumu incident.
Reading
about the Ming Dynasty it appears that eunuchs played a large part in
government. At times they were forbidden to hold jobs, but often they ruled
segments of the Imperial court with an iron hand.
As
the Ming Dynasty entered the 16th century, there was a time when
Chinese ports were closed to foreign trade, but there was much black market
trade. Finally, China began to welcome trade from the Portuguese, the Dutch,
English and Japanese. The Portuguese
built a base in what would become Hong Kong in 1514, and in 1557 obtained Macau
nearby. The British gained Hong Kong as
a Crown Colony as a result of the Opium Wars during the Qing Dynasty in 1842.
The
Grand Canal of China, connecting Beijing with Hangzhou near Shanghai, 1100
miles long, was first built in the Fifth century B.C., but it was restored in
the Ming Dynasty and was very heavily used to send rice and other grains and
foodstuff north, and building materials south.
The
Ming Dynasty began a slow decline in the second half of the 16th
century, until China was ripe for change to the Qing Dynasty in 1644. Like the
Yuan Dynasty before it, at the beginning there were strong leaders and the
country began to prosper, and toward the end, there were rebellions, many
earthquakes and climate change which produced years of cold summers and poor
crops. The people believed that the Ming court had lost the “Mandate of
Heaven.”
HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2017
Wednesday,
March 29, 2017: What made America powerful? Was it our
geography, size, natural resources, protection of two oceans, our choice of
immigrants, our leaders? This is not intended to be a "feel good" topic. You are invited to lift up the carpet and examine "powerful". E.g.: The Spanish-American War.... [Suggested by Janos Posfai]
Wednesday,
April 26, 2017: History of Class in America
We’ve often bragged that Americans started out
resisting the class structure, but our Founding Fathers included men like
Thomas Jefferson, owners of much land and slaves. At the same time, indentured
servants arrived in young America, to fill the bottom rungs of society. [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday,
May 31, 2017: Famines in the World [Suggested
by Linda Burkell and Walt Frederick]
Wednesday,
June 28, 2017: History of English/British Colonialism
It started in the latter part of the 15th Century with plantations
in Ireland. Read how the United Kingdom grew to become the greatest Empire in
the history of the world. If you wish,
home in on British slave trade, and how the U.K. colonized the New World, bringing
slaves to grow sugar and cotton. Then Napoleonic Wars and Britain’s seizure of
French Colonies. America and Canada.
Colonization of Asia in Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand,
India, Burma. Africa, and more for you to discover. [Suggested by Richard Heuser]
Wednesday,
July 26, 2017:
Treasure Hunts in History. This
is your opportunity to find a treasure and discover the hunt for it, whether it
is the quest for gold in California, diamonds in Africa, the hunt for the
pharaohs buried in the pyramids, the hunt to discover a cure for polio or
yellow fever, the terracotta army buried with Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor
of China, the search for the source of the Nile, the discovery of Neanderthal
man… This topic is for you to imagine! [Suggested by Walt Frederick]
Wednesday,
August 31, 2017: Gloucester and the Sea.
Gloucester
has throughout four centuries cast its lot with the North Atlantic, remaining a
maritime port for better or worse. The maritime culture of Cape Ann is the mix
of a noble maritime heritage; ubiquitous sea influences that reach as far as
the quarries behind Rockport and into the haunted tracks of Dogtown Common;
seductive but capricious natural splendors; and untidy independence that repels
some but converts other visitors into lifetime devotees. We plan to invite
Chester Brigham, author of Gloucester’s Bargain with the Sea, to join
us. Read this or any other book about
the maritime history of Gloucester.
[Suggested by Richard Verrengia]
