chapter 26

Francis Xavier

A Jesuit who traveled to Japan in 1549 and opened a mission to seek converts to Christianity.

What China's Government thought About technological innovation

During the Tang and Song dynasties, the imperial government had encouraged technological innovation as a foundation of military and economic strength. In contrast, the Ming and Qing regimes favored political and social stability over technological innovation, which they feared would lead to unsettling change.

Yongle Encyclopedia

Emperor Yongle sponsored the compilation, which was a vast collection of Chinese philosophical, literary, and historical texts that filled almost twenty-three thousand scrolls.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (reigned 1600-1616)

Established a military government known as the Tokugawa bakufu ("tent government," since it theoretically was only a temporary replacement for the emperor's rule). Ieyasu and his descendants ruled the bakufu as shoguns from 1600 until the end of the Tokugawa dynasty in 1867.

Who was Matteo Ricci

Founder of the mission to China, who had the ambitious goal of converting China to Christianity, beginning with the Ming emperor Wanli. Ricci was a brilliant and learned man as well as a polished diplomat, and he became a popular figure at the Ming court. Upon arrival at Macau in 1582, Ricci immersed himself in the study of the Chinese language and the Confucian classics. He had a talent for languages, and his phenomenal memory enabled him to master the thousands of characters used in literary Chinese writing. By the time he first traveled to Beijing and visited the imperial court in 1601, Ricci was able to write learned Chinese and converse fluently with Confucian scholars.

Japanese historians often refer to the sixteenth century as the era of

sengoku—"the country at war."

Tokugawa shoguns

sought to lay a foundation for long-term political and social stability, and they provided generous support for neo-Confucian studies in an effort to promote traditional values.

Yongle moved the capital from Nanjing to.... and why

Beijing so as to keep closer watch on the Mongols and other nomadic peoples in the north.

Neo-Confucianism in Japan

Tokugawa shoguns promoted the neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi.

Kabuki

Featured several acts consisting of lively and sometimes bawdy(humorously indecent talk) skits where stylized acting combined with lyric singing, dancing, and spectacular staging. A crucial component of kabuki was the actor's ability to improvise and embellish the dialogue, for the text of plays served only as guides for the dramatic performance.

Social Change

administration of local affairs had fallen mostly to daimyo and samurai warriors. Once Japan was stable, however, the interest of Tokugawa authorities was to reduce the numbers of armed professional warriors, so they pushed daimyo and samurai to become bureaucrats and government functionaries.

Zheng He

an admiral, whose fleets included as many as 317 vessels and 28,000 men. Zheng He called at ports from Java to Malindi, suppressed pirates in southeast Asian waters, intervened in local conflicts in Sumatra and Ceylon, intimidated local authorities with shows of force in southern Arabia and Mogadishu, and made China's presence felt throughout the Indian Ocean basin.

In an effort to prevent European influences from destabilizing the land, the Tokugawa shogun.....

closely controlled relations between Japan and the outside world. The worried that the Europeans would making alliances with daimyo and supplying them with weapons.

The Great Wall

dating back to the Qin dynasty. The Ming-dynasty took on the project of the wall after most was in ruins.10 to 15 meters high, and it featured watchtowers, signal towers, and accommodations for troops deployed on the border.

China's Technology

economic expansion took place largely in the absence of technological innovation. During the Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese engineers had produced a veritable flood of inventions, and China was the world's leader in technology. But little innovation in agricultural and industrial technologies occurred during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Shogun

Japanese military leader who ruled in place of the emperor.

What was the difference between scholar-bureaucrats and gentry

Because of their official positions, the scholar-bureaucrats ranked slightly above gentry.

Civil Service Examinations

A battery of grueling tests given at the district, provincial, and metropolitan levels that determined entry into the Chinese civil service during the Ming and Qing dynasties. They had memorized several thousand characters that were necessary to deal with the Confucian curriculum, including the Analects of Confucius and other standard works.

Foot Binding

A custom that probably originated in the Song dynasty, became exceptionally popular during the late Ming and Qing dynasties. Tightly constrained and even deformed by strips of linen, bound feet could not grow naturally and so would not support the weight of an adult woman. Bound feet were small and dainty, and they sometimes inspired erotic arousal among men. The practice of foot binding became most widespread among the wealthy classes, since it demonstrated an ability to support women who could not perform physical labor, but commoners sometimes bound the feet of especially pretty girls in hopes of arranging favorable marriages that would enhance the family's social standing.

The Son of Heaven

A human being designated by heavenly powers to maintain order on the earth. He led a privileged life within the walls of the Forbidden City. Hundreds of concubines resided in his harem, and thousands of eunuchs looked after his desires.

Dutch Learning

After 1639, Dutch merchants trading at Nagasaki became Japan's principal source of information about Europe and the world beyond east Asia. A small number of Japanese scholars learned Dutch in order to communicate with the foreigners.

Who unified Manchu tribes into a centralized state

An ambitious chieftain named Nurhaci(reigned 1616-1626). started their long journey to power

The Manchus portrayed themselves after they recover the capital of Beijing

Avengers who saved the capital from dangerous rebels, but they neglected to restore Ming rule. Instead, they moved their own capital to Beijing and simply displaced the Ming dynasty.

Lower Classes

Beyond the Confucian social hierarchy were members of the military forces and the so-called mean people. Confucian moralists regarded armed forces as a wretched but necessary evil and attempted to avoid military dominance of society by placing civilian bureaucrats in the highest command positions, even at the expense of military effectiveness. The mean people included slaves, indentured servants, entertainers, prostitutes, and other marginal groups such as the "beggars of Jiangsu" and the "boat people of Guangdong."

Eunuchs

Castrated males, originally in charge of the harem, who grew to play major roles in government; eunuchs were common in China and other societies.

Who was Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di)

Chinese Ming emperor (r. 1403-1424) who pushed for foreign exploration and promoted cultural achievements such as the Yongle Encyclopedia. His successors discontinued the expensive maritime expeditions but maintained the tightly centralized state that Hongwu had established.

Gender Relations

Chinese parents preferred boys over girls. Whereas a boy might have the opportunity to take the official examinations, become a government official, and thereby bring honor and financial reward to the entire clan, parents regarded a girl as a social and financial liability.

The education and examination system molded the personal values of those who managed day-to-day affairs in imperial China by?

Concentrating on Confucian classics and neo-Confucian commentaries, the examinations guaranteed that Confucianism would be at the heart of Chinese education and that Confucians would govern the state.

Working Classes

Confucian tradition ranked three broad classes of commoners below the gentry: peasants, artisans or workers, and merchants. By far the biggest class consisted of peasants, a designation that covered everyone from day laborers to tenant farmers to petty landlords. Confucian principles regarded peasants as the most honorable of the three classes, since they performed honest labor and provided the food that supported the entire population.

What was Filial piety

Implied not only duties of children toward their fathers but also loyalty of subjects toward the emperor. Like the imperial government, the Chinese family was hierarchical, patriarchal, and authoritarian. The father was head of the household, and he passed leadership of the family to his eldest son.

Christian Missions

In the early decades of their mission, Jesuits experienced remarkable success in Japan. Daimyo adopted Christianity and ordered their subjects to do likewise.

Merchants

Individuals of enormous wealth and influence, ranked at the bottom level of the Confucian social hierarchy. Because moralists looked upon them as unscrupulous social parasites, merchants enjoyed little legal protection, and government policy was always critically important to their pursuits. Yet Chinese merchants often garnered official support for their enterprises, either through bribery of government bureaucrats or through profit-sharing arrangements with gentry families.

Control of Foreign Relations

Japanese issued a series of edicts that restricted all foreign relations. Prohibited foreign merchants from trading in Japanese ports, and even forbade the import of foreign books. The policy allowed carefully controlled trade with Asian lands, and it also permitted small numbers of Chinese and Dutch merchants to trade under tight restrictions at the southern port city of Nagasaki. The policy never led to the complete isolation of Japan from the outside world. Throughout the Tokugawa period, Japan carried on a flourishing trade with China, Korea, Taiwan, and the Ryukyu Islands, and Dutch merchants regularly brought news of European and larger world affairs.

With a strong imperial leadership muter tensions between the Manchu rules and the Chinese subjects. WHat two rules helped consolidate their hold on China

Kangxi and Qianlong

Qianlong

Kangxi's grandson continued this expansion of Chinese influence. Qianlong sought to consolidate Kangxi's conquests in central Asia by maintaining military garrisons in eastern Turkestan (the territory now known as Xinjiang province in western China) and encouraging merchants to settle there in hopes that they would stabilize the region. Qianlong also made Vietnam, Burma, and Nepal vassal states of the Qing dynasty.

Who wrote the Collection of Books

Kangxi, Collection of Books was smaller than the Yongle Encyclopedia, but it was more influential because the emperor had it printed and distributed, whereas Yongle's compilation was available only in three manuscript copies.

What helped the establishment of the Qing dynasty

Manchu military prowess and partly to Chinese support for the Manchus. During the 1630s and 1640s, many Chinese generals deserted the Ming dynasty because of its corruption and inefficiency. Confucian scholar-bureaucrats also worked against the Ming, since they despised the eunuchs who dominated the imperial court. The Manchu ruling elites were schooled in Chinese language and Confucian thought, and they often enjoyed more respect from the scholar-bureaucrats than did the emperor and high administrators of the Ming dynasty itself.

Why would the Qing emperors have wanted to incorporate such extensive territories in Mongolia and Tibet into their empire?

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.

The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven

Matteo Ricci argued that the doctrines of Confucius and Jesus were very similar, if not identical. Over the years, according to Ricci, neo-Confucian scholars had altered Confucius's own teachings, so adoption of Christianity by Chinese would represent a return to a more pure and original Confucianism.

Zhu Xi

Neo-Confucian Chinese philosopher combined the moral, ethical, and political values of Confucius with the logical rigor and speculative power of Buddhist philosophy. He emphasized the values of self-discipline, filial piety, and obedience to established rulers, all of which appealed to Ming and Qing emperors seeking to maintain stability in their vast realm. Cultural policies of the Ming and Qing dynasties made the neo-Confucian tradition the reigning imperial ideology from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century.

The Return of Christianity to China

Nestorian Christians had established churches and monasteries in China. Roman Catholic communities were prominent in Chinese commercial centers during the Yuan dynasty. After the outbreak of epidemic plague and the collapse of the Yuan dynasty Christianity disappeared from China. When Roman Catholic missionaries returned they had to start from scratch in their efforts to win converts and establish a Christian community.

Ming Decline

Pirates and smugglers operated almost at will along the east coast of China. (Although Ming officials referred to the pirates as Japanese, in fact most of them were Chinese.) Both the Ming navy and coastal defenses were ineffective, and conflicts with pirates often led to the disruption of coastal communities and sometimes even interior regions. The emperors sometimes ignored government affairs.

Control of the Daimyo

Policy of "alternate attendance," which required daimyo to maintain their families at Edo and spend every other year at the Tokugawa court.

Daimyo

Powerful territorial lords in early modern Japan.

Bunraku

Puppet theater. In bunraku, chanters accompanied by music told a story acted out by puppets.

What marked the height of the Qing dynasty.

Qianlong's reign the imperial treasury bulged so much that on four occasions Qianlong cancelled tax collections. Toward the end of his reign, Qianlong paid less attention to imperial affairs and delegated many responsibilities to his favorite eunuchs. His successors continued that practice, devoting themselves to hunting and the harem (house reserved for the residence of women), and by the nineteenth century the Qing dynasty faced serious difficulties. Throughout the reign of Qianlong, however, China remained a wealthy and well-organized land.

Who wrote the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries

Qianlong, was too large to publish—it ran to 93,556 pamphlet-size volumes—but the emperor deposited manuscript copies in seven libraries throughout China.

Emperor Wanli

Refused to meet with government officials. Instead, he conducted business through eunuch intermediaries. Powerful eunuchs won the favor of the later Ming emperors by procuring concubines for them and providing for their amusement. The eunuchs then used their power and position to enrich themselves and lead lives of luxury. As their influence increased, corruption and inefficiency spread throughout the government and weakened the Ming state.

End of the Jesuit Mission

Roman Catholic mission in China came to an end because of squabbles between the Jesuits and members of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, who also sought converts in China. Jealous of the Jesuits' presence at the imperial court, the Franciscans and Dominicans complained to the pope about their rivals' tolerance of ancestor veneration and willingness to conduct Chinese-language services. The pope sided with the critics and in the early eighteenth century issued several proclamations ordering missionaries in China to suppress ancestor veneration and conduct services according to European standards. In response to that demand, the emperor Kangxi ordered an end to the preaching of Christianity in China. Although he did not strictly enforce the ban, the mission weakened, and by the mid-eighteenth century it had effectively come to an end.

Day-to-day governance of the empire fell in the hands of?

Scholar-bureaucrats appointed by the emperor. With few exceptions these officials came from the class of well-educated and highly literate men known as the scholar-gentry. These men had earned academic degrees by passing rigorous civil service examinations, and they dominated China's political and social life.

Anti-Christian Campaign

Shoguns promulgated several decrees ordering a halt to Christian missions and commanding Japanese Christians to renounce their faith.

How did the Ming emperors also set out to eradicate Mongol and other foreign influences

Sponsored study of Chinese cultural traditions, especially Confucianism, and provided financial support for imperial academies and regional colleges. Restored the system of civil service examinations that Mongol rulers had neglected.

Who succeeded the Ming

The Qing dynasty who were Manchus of nomadic origin, but they too worked zealously to promote Chinese ways

Jesuits

The most prominent of the missionaries. They sought to capture Chinese interest with European science and technology, but their ultimate goal was always to win converts.

The Manchus were careful to preserve their own ethnic and cultural identity. How did they achieve this

They not only outlawed intermarriage between Manchus and Chinese but also forbade Chinese from traveling to Manchuria and from learning the Manchurian language. Qing authorities also forced Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and grow a Manchu-style queue as a sign of submission to the dynasty.

How were the Ming and Qing emperors alike

They were deeply conservative: their principal concern was to maintain stability in a large agrarian society, so they adopted policies that favored Chinese political and cultural traditions. The state that they fashioned governed China for more than half a millennium.

Floating Worlds

Ukiyo, Japanese word for the "floating worlds," a Buddhist term for the insignificance of the world that came to represent the urban centers in Tokugawa Japan. Entertainment and pleasure quarters where teahouses, theaters, brothels, and public baths offered escape from social responsibilities and the rigid rules of conduct that governed public behavior in Tokugawa society.

Kangxi

Was a Confucian scholar he studied the Confucian classics and sought to apply their teachings through his policies. Thus, for example, he organized flood-control and irrigation projects in observance of the Confucian precept that rulers should look after the welfare of their subjects and promote agriculture. He also generously patronized Confucian schools and academies.

Ming Collapse

When a series of famines struck China, the government was unable to organize effective relief efforts. Peasants organized revolts throughout China, and they gathered momentum as one city after another withdrew its loyalty from the Ming dynasty. Manchu forces invaded from the north in search of opportunities for expansion in China. In 1644, rebel forces captured the Ming capital at Beijing. Manchu invaders allied with an army loyal to the Ming, crushed the rebels, and recovered Beijing.

Who was the founder of the Ming Dynasty

Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu) drove the Mongols out of China and built a tightly centralized state.

When the Yuan dynasty came to an end, who succeeded it

the Ming, they sought to erase all signs of Mongol influence and restore traditional ways to China. Looking to the Tang and Song dynasties for inspiration, they built a powerful imperial state, revived the civil service staffed by Confucian scholars, and promoted Confucian thought.