AP WORLD WEEK 3 NOT GOING TO FAIL
Eurasia Impact on China
China had learned about the cultivation and processing of both cotton and sugar from India. China gained access to new fast-ripening drought resistant strains of rice that made highly productive rice-based agriculture possible in the drier and more rugged regions of southern China. This led to the frontier south of the Yangtze River to grow rapidly in population, overtaking the traditional centers of Chinese civilization in the north. Awareness of Persian windmills spurred the development of a distinct but related device in China. Printing arose with China's growing involvement with Buddhism and it was in Buddhist monasteries during the Tang Dynasty that the long established practice of printing with seals was converted into woodblock printing. Gunpowder originated when a Indian Buddhist monk identified soils that contained saltpeter and showed that they produced a purple flame. Trade with Indian Ocean: Thousand of ships annually visited the ports of Southern China, and settled communities of foreign merchants-Arabs, Persians, Indians, Southeast Asians turned some of these cities into cosmopolitan centers. Indian Ocean commerce also contributed much to the transformation of southern China from farming to one more heavily based on producing for export. In the process, merchants achieved a degree of social acceptance not known before, including their frequent appointments to high ranking bureaucratic positions.
China and Eurasia (Chinese impact on Eurasia)
China's Impact on Eurasia: China's economic revolution led to diffusion of many technological innovations to people and places far from East Asia. Chinese techniques for producing salt by solar evaporation spread to the Islamic world and later Christian Europe. Papermaking, known in China since the Han dynasty, spread to Korea and Vietnam, to Japan and India, to the Islamic world, to Muslim Spain, to France and Germany, and then England. Movable type printing reached Korea and Japan (needed for reproducing sacred Buddhist texts). The movable type reached Europe and then reinvented by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. Often a particular Chinese technique or product stimulated innovations in more distant lands in accordance with local needs. Once gunpowder became available in Europe, it triggered the development of cannons. Soon cannons appeared in the Islamic world and in China itself. Chinese textile, metallurgical, and naval technologies likewise stimulated imitation and innovation all over Eurasia. The magnetic compass was eagerly embraced by mariners that transverse across the Indian Ocean. Commercial Life and Market-based Behavior: China's products-silk, porcelain, lacquerware/tableware-found eager buyers from Japan to East Africa. The immense size and wealth of China's domestic economy also provided a ready market for hundreds of commodities afar. For example, the lives of many thousands of people in the spice-producing islands of what is now Indonesia were transformed as they came to depend on Chinese consumers' demand for their products.
Interactions with Nomadic Neighbors
China's most enduring and intense interaction with foreigners lay in the north, involving the many nomadic pastoral or semi-agricultural peoples of the steppes. The northern nomads had long focused their economics around the raising of livestock and the mastery of horse riding. They needed grain and other agricultural products from China and their leaders enjoyed Chinese manufactured and luxury goods for attracting and rewarding followers. The nomads were training, raiding, and extorting in order to obtain the resources so vital to their way of life (unable to sustain Chinese-style farming in the steppes). Chinese point of view: For 2000 years or more, pressure from the steppes and the intrusion of the nomadic peoples were constant factors in China's historical development. Nomads point of view: The threat often came from the Chinese, who periodically directed their own military forces deep into the steppes, built the Great Wall to keep the nomads out, and often proved unwilling to allow pastoral peoples easy access to trading opportunities within China. Chinese needed the nomads for a source of horses, so essential to the Chinese military as well as other products from the forests and steppes. Additionally, pastoral nomads controlled much of the Silk Road trading network, which brought goods from the West to China.
Golden Age of China
Chinese regained its unity under the Sui dynasty and emperors solidified that unity through the vast extension of the country's canal system, stretching some 1,200 miles in length, and linking the north and south of China economically. The Tang and the Song dynasties built on the Sui foundations of renewed unity. Golden Age: The Tang and the Song dynasties have been long regarded as a "golden age" of arts and literature, setting standards of excellence in poetry, landscape, painting, and ceramics. Mainly in the Song Dynasty, an explosion of scholarship gave rise to Neo-Confucianism-combination of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism State structure (successful and endured for a thousand years): Six major ministries-personnel, finance, rites, army, justice, and public works-were accompanied by the Censorate, an agency that exercised surveillance over the rest of the government, checking on the character of the public officials. To choose government officials, the examination system was revived and made more elaborate by the ability to print books. Although this merit based system challenged aristocratic families' hold on public office, a substantial percentage of official positions went to the sons of the privileged; this was because the examination grew far more rapidly than the number of official positions (limited positions and priority given to upper class). Despite the state's equal redistribution of land to peasants, the great families of landowners continued to live on their land. Economic Revolution: Rapid growth in population- jumped from 50 million to 60 million during the Tang Dynasty to 120 million by 1200. Remarkable achievements of agricultural production led to the doubling of the population such as fast ripening and drought-resistant strain of rice from Vietnam. Many people found their way to cities, making China the most urbanized country in the world. Dozens of Chinese cities numbered over 100,000 and the Song Dynasty capital was home to more than a million people. Food: Supplying the cities with food was made possible by an immense network of internal waterways-canals, rivers, lakes-stretching around 3,000 miles. They provided a cheap transportation system that bound the country together economically. Industrial Production: Iron industry increased its output dramatically-it was providing the government with 32,000 suits of armor and 16 million iron arrowheads annually, in addition to supplying metal for coins, tools, construction, and bells in Buddhist monasteries. Inventions in printing, both woodblock and movable type generated the world's first printed books. It's navigational and shipbuilding technologies led the world. The Chinese invention of gunpowder created a revolution in military affairs. All of this occurred in a commercialized society-producing for the market rather than for local consumption (cheap transportation led to peasants growing specialized crops for sale). The growing use of paper money as well as financial instruments such as letters of credit and promissory notes further contributed to the commercialization of the economy.
Chinese Tribute System
Chinese viewed themselves as infinitely superior to the barbarian peoples beyond its borders: China represented civilization with its long history, great cities, sophisticated intellectual and artistic achievements, bureaucratic state, literate elite, and prosperous economy. This was a sharp contrast to the primitive life of nomads who lived on their horses and engaged in war continually. The Chinese required little from the outside world, while Barbarians sought access to China's wealth and wisdom. Because the Barbarians couldn't become civilized Chinese, the Chinese established a tribute system in exchange for the benefits they offered. The tribute system was a set of practices that required non-Chinese authorities to acknowledge Chinese superiority and their own subordinate place in Chinese-centered world order/dominance. Foreigners seeking access to China had to send a delegation (group of delegates) to the Chinese court where they would perform the kowtow, a series of ritual bowings and present their tribute (highly valued produce from other countries) to the Chinese emperor. The emperor would then grant permission for foreigners to trade in China's rich markets and would provide them with gifts often worth more than what they had offered. Rulers of other countries would gain prestige from having an association with the Chinese government which assisted them in local struggles for power.
Disguised Faults in Tribute System
Chinese was confronting large and powerful nomadic empires able to deal with China on at least equal terms. For example, Xiongnu (Manchuria to Central Asia) raided into northern China and persuaded the Chinese emperor to negotiate an arrangement that recognized the nomadic state as a political equal and agreed to supply him annually with large quantities of grain, wine, and silk. This was protection money from China to prevent military incursions by the nomads. During the Tang Dynasty, many Turkic empires demanded large amounts of gifts from the Chinese. One of these people, the Uighers, rescued the Tang Dynasty from a serious internal revolt and in exchange brought half a million rolls of silk into the Ughar lands. Steppe nomads were generally not interested in conquering and ruling China because it was easier and more profitable to demand goods from the functioning state. However, when China broke down, various nomadic groups conquered and governed parts of China. This took place during the fall of the Han Dynasty and the fall of the Tang Dynasty when the Khitan and then the Jin peoples established states that encompassed parts of northern China as well as major areas of the steppes to the north. Both of them required the Chinese to deliver annually huge quantities of silk, silver, and tea.
Differences between Japanese and Chinese culture
Differences with Chinese culture: the Japanese never succeeded in creating an effective centralized and bureaucratic state like China. The political authority of the court and emperor gradually diminished in favor of competing aristocratic families. A Chinese-style university trained officials but it enrolled students who were largely the sons of court aristocrats. As political power became decentralized, local authorities developed their own samurai (warrior class of Japanese society who followed the bushido or way of the warrior which featured great skill in martial arts, bravery, loyalty, endurance, honor, and a preference for death over surrender). Japan's celebration of the samurai and military virtues contrasted sharply with China's emphasis on intellectual achievements and political officeholding which had higher prestige. Although Buddhism in many forms took hold in the country, it never completely replaced the Shintoism, which focused attention on numerous kami, sacred spirits associated with human ancestors and various natural phenomena. This religion also provided legitimacy to the imperial family, based on claims of descent from the Sun goddess. However, numerous kami were assimilated into Japanese Buddhism as local expressions of Buddhist deities or principles. Literary and Artistic Culture: A highly stylized Japanese poetic form, known as tanka, has been the favored form of expression. Particularly during the Heim dynasty, a highly refined culture found expression at the imperial court even if it was losing political authority. Court aristocrats and their ladies lived in splendor, composed poems, arranged flowers, and conducted love affairs. Japan's women largely escaped the oppressive features of the Chinese because the most powerful Chinese influence on Japan occurred during the Tang Dynasty. Japanese women did begin to lose status in the rise of a warrior culture with the personal relationships of samurai warriors to their lords replacing marriage alliances as a political strategy and therefore reducing the influence of women in political life.
Japan and China
Japanese islands were physically separated from China by 100 miles of ocean and were never successfully invaded or conquered. Japan's very extensive borrowing from Chinese civilization was voluntary rather than occurring because of military threat or being conquered by China. The high point of this borrowing occurred when Japanese states started to form from the dozens of small-clan based aristocratic chiefdoms. The state admired the centralized bureaucratic state of the Tang Dynasty and attempted to imitate it. Efforts of Shotoku Taishi (a prominent aristocrat from a major clan) to do this: He launched a series of large scale missions to China, which took hundreds of monks, scholars, artists, and students to the mainland and when they returned they put into practice what they had learned. The Seventeen Article Constitution which he issued claimed that the Japanese ruler was a Chinese-style emperor and it encouraged Confucianism and Buddhism. Japanese authorities also adopted Chinese-style court rituals and a system of court rankings for officials as well as the Chinese calendar. They also established Chinese-based tax systems, law codes, government bureaucracies, and provincial administration. The two capital cities first Nara then Kyoto modeled after the Chinese capital. Chinese culture: Various schools of Chinese Buddhism took root, first among the educated classes and later all throughout Japanese society. Art, architecture, education, medicine, views of the afterlife, attitudes toward suffering and the impermanence of life-reflected the influence of Buddhist culture in Japan. The Chinese writing system-and with it an interest in historical writing, calligraphy, and poetry proved attractive among the elite. By the tenth century, deliberate efforts to absorb additional elements of Chinese culture diminished, and formal tribute missions to China stopped, although private traders and Buddhist monks continued to make the difficult journey to the mainland (one of the causes of differences with Chinese culture).
Korea and China
Temporary Chinese conquest of northern Korea during the Han dynasty and some colonization by Chinese settlers provided an initial channel for Chinese cultural influence, particularly Buddhism. Once Korean states emerged (4th-7th century) they strenuously resisted Chinese political control, except when they found it advantageous to join with China against a local enemy. One of these states-the Silla Kingdom-allied with the Tang Dynasty China to start some political unity in the Korean Peninsula. However, Chinese efforts for its government to control the Korean government and blend Korean culture with Chinese culture provoked sharp military resistance and led to the withdrawal of Chinese forces and establishment of a tribute system with Korea. Chinese contributions to Korean culture: The tribute system showed that Korean rulers were following the laws and gave them knowledge of Chinese court life and administrative techniques, which they replicated back home. The new Korean capital city of Kumsong was modeled exactly like the Chinese capital of Chang'an. Tribute missions also enabled both official and private trade, mostly in luxury goods, Buddhist texts, and artwork which all increased the lives of Korean aristocracy (becoming similar to Chinese in culture). Thousands of Korean students were students were sent to China to learn Confucianism and also natural sciences and the arts and Buddhist monks visited centers of learning and took pilgrimages in China and brought back popular forms of Chinese Buddhism. Schools for the study of Confucianism, using texts in the Chinese language, were established in Korea. Negative Impact on Korean women: With the support of the Korean court, Chinese models of family life and female behavior, especially among the elite, gradually replaced the more flexible Korean patterns. For example, some Korean customs such as funeral rites in which a husband is buried in the sacred land of the wife's family, remarriage of widows or divorced women, and female inheritance of property was gradually destroyed under the pressure of Confucianism. However, Chinese cultural influence, except for Buddhism, had little impact beyond the aristocracy and certainly did not penetrate the lives of serf-like peasants or slaves which made up ⅓ of the population. A Chinese-style examination system to recruit government officials, though encouraged by some Korean rulers, never assumed the prominence that it gained in Tang and Song Dynasty China. Korea's aristocratic class was able to maintain an even stronger monopoly on bureaucratic office than the Chinese. Korea also moved toward cultural independence through the development of a phonetic alphabet known as Hangul for writing in the Korean language.
Vietnam and China
Vietnam: The elite culture of Vietnam borrowed heavily from China-adopting Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, administrative techniques, the examination system, and artistic and literary styles. Vietnam achieved political independence, while participating fully in the tribute system. The Red River Valley portion of Vietnam was fully incorporated into the Chinese state for more than a thousand years. Regarded by the Chinese as "southern Barbarians", the Vietnamese were ruled by Chinese officials and were expected to fully imitate the Chinese, culturally and politically. Therefore, Chinese style irrigated agriculture was introduced, and Vietnamese elites were brought into the local bureaucracy after being educated in Confucius-based schools. Additionally, Chinese replaced the language used for official business and large numbers of Chinese, fleeing internal conflict, flooded into the relative security of the south. The heavy pressure of the Chinese presence also generated periodic rebellions. An uprising was launched by the Truang sisters after their father was overthrown from the Chinese government. When the rebellion was crushed several years later, the Truang sister committed suicide rather than surrender, but in literature, monuments, and public memory, they long remained powerful symbols of Vietnamese resistance to Chinese aggression. The weakening of the Tang Dynasty finally enabled a particularly large rebellion to establish Vietnam as a separate state, though they maintained the tribute system with China. Chinese influences: The Vietnamese found the Chinese approach to government useful and styled their rulers as emperors, claiming the Mandate of Heaven, and making use of Chinese court rituals, while expanding their state steadily southward. A Chinese-based examination system functioned to undermine an established aristocracy and provide social mobility. Uniquely Vietnamese: Distinctive language, and a greater role for women in social and economic life. Female natural deities and even a "female Buddha" continued to be a part of Vietnamese popular religion. The Vietnamese developed a variation of Chinese writing called chu nom which provided the basis for an independent national literature.
Influences on Chinese and Nomads
When nomadic peoples actually ruled parts of China, some of them adopted Chinese ways, employing Chinese advisors, governing according to Chinese practice, and the elite immersing themselves in Chinese culture and learning. The Jurchen or Jin people lived in northern China and greatly adopted the Chinese ways. The native peoples of southern China were gradually absorbed into Chinese culture. However, the pastoral societies north of the Great Wall generally retained their own cultural patterns. Few Chinese cultural patterns were incorporated and they lived in an area where Chinese-style agriculture was not possible. Various modes of interaction caused two quite distinct and separate ways of life. Influence of nomads on Chinese: Some influence in parts of northern China which was periodically conquered and ruled by the nomadic peoples. High-ranking members of the imperial family personally led their troops in battle in the style of Turkic warriors. In the Tang Dynasty, foreigners were greatly accepted and occupied China because of delegations bearing tribute, merchants, or religious pilgrims. Additionally the culture of western Barbarians (Central Asia, India, Persia, Arabs) had great appeal among northern Chinese elites. However, the more traditional southern Chinese, feeling themselves heir to the legacy of the Han dynasty, were sharply critical of their northern counterparts.
Women in the Song Dynasty
Women in the Song Dynasty: Under the influence of the steppe nomads, whose women had less restricted lives, elite Chinese women of the Tang Dynasty era, at least in the north, had participated in social life with greater freedom than in the classical times. By the Song Dynasty, however, reviving Confucianism and rapid economic growth seemed to tighten patriarchal restrictions on women and to restore some of the earlier Han dynasty images of female submission. Confucian writers highlighted the subordination of women and the need to keep males and females separate in every domain of life. Foot binding was the most compelling expression of patriarchy and involved the tight wrapping of young girls' feet, usually breaking the bones of the foot and causing intense pain. During the Tang Dynasty, foot binding spread widely among elite families and later became more widespread in Chinese society. The rapidly commercializing economy undermined the position of women in the textile industry. Urban workshops and state factories, run by men, increasingly took over the skilled tasks of weaving textiles, especially silk, which had previously been the work of rural women. However other opportunities arose in an increasingly prosperous Song China such as in the cities, women operated restaurants, sold fish and vegetables, and worked as maids, cooks, and dressmakers (makes women's clothes). Women also worked for the elite families. Other positive trends in women life included the expansion of their property rights, in both controlling their own and inheriting property from their family. Low ranking but ambitious officials strongly urged the education of women.
