Next to these grain merchants, the above-mentioned salt merchants have

to be mentioned again. Their centre soon became the city of Hsin-an, a

city on the border of Chekiang and Anhui, or in more general terms, the

cities in the district of Hui-chou. When the grain transportation to the

frontiers came to an end in early Ming time, the Hsin-an merchants

specialized first in silver trade. Later in Ming time, they spread their

activities all over China and often monopolized the salt, silver, rice,

cotton, silk or tea businesses. In the sixteenth century they had

well-established contacts with smugglers on the Fukien coast and brought

foreign goods into the interior. Their home was also close to the main

centres of porcelain production in Kiangsi which was exported to

overseas and to the urban centres. The demand for porcelain had

increased so much that state factories could not fulfil it. The state

factories seem often to have suffered from a lack of labour: indented

artisans were imported from other provinces and later sent back on state

expenses or were taken away from other state industries. Thus, private

porcelain factories began to develop, and in connection with quickly

changing fashions a great diversification of porcelain occurred.

One other industry should also be mentioned. With the development of

printing, which will be discussed below, the paper industry was greatly

stimulated. The state also needed special types of paper for the paper

currency. Printing and book selling became a profitable business, and

with the application of block print to textiles (probably first used in

Sung time) another new field of commercial activity was opened.

As already mentioned, silver in form of bars had been increasingly used

as currency in Sung time. The yearly government production of silver was

_c_. 10,000 kg. Mongol currency was actually based upon silver. The

Ming, however, reverted to copper as basic unit, in addition to the use

of paper money. This encouraged the use of silver for speculative

purposes.

The development of business changed the face of cities. From Sung time

on, the division of cities into wards with gates which were closed

during the night, began to break down. Ming cities had no more wards.

Business was no more restricted to official markets but grew up in all

parts of the cities. The individual trades were no more necessarily all

in one street. Shops did not have to close at sunset. The guilds

developed and in some cases were able to exercise locally some influence

upon the officials.

6 _Growth of the small gentry_

With the spread of book printing, all kinds of books became easily

accessible, including reprints of examination papers. Even businessmen

and farmers increasingly learned to read and to write, and many people

now could prepare themselves for the examinations. Attendance, however,

at the examinations cost a good deal. The candidate had to travel to the

local or provincial capital, and for the higher examinations to the

capital of the country; he had to live there for several months and, as

a rule, had to bribe the examiners or at least to gain the favour of

influential people. There were many cases of candidates becoming

destitute. Most of them were heavily in debt when at last they gained a

position. They naturally set to work at once to pay their debts out of

their salary, and to accumulate fresh capital to meet future

emergencies. The salaries of officials were, however, so small that it

was impossible to make ends meet; and at the same time every official

was liable with his own capital for the receipt in full of the taxes for

the collection of which he was responsible. Consequently every official

began at once to collect more taxes than were really due, so as to be

able to cover any deficits, and also to cover his own cost of

living--including not only the repayment of his debts but the

acquisition of capital or land so as to rise in the social scale. The

old gentry had been rich landowners, and had no need to exploit the

peasants on such a scale.

The Chinese empire was greater than it had been before the Mongol epoch,

and the population was also greater, so that more officials were needed.

Thus in the Ming epoch there began a certain democratization, larger

sections of the population having the opportunity of gaining government

positions; but this democratization brought no benefit to the general

population but resulted in further exploitation of the peasants.

The new "small gentry" did not consist of great families like the

original gentry. When, therefore, people of that class wanted to play a

political part in the central government, or to gain a position there,

they had either to get into close touch with one of the families of the

gentry, or to try to approach the emperor directly. In the immediate

entourage of the emperor, however, were the eunuchs. A good many members

of the new class had themselves castrated after they had passed their

state examination. Originally eunuchs were forbidden to acquire

education. But soon the Ming emperors used the eunuchs as a tool to

counteract the power of gentry cliques and thus to strengthen their

personal power. When, later, eunuchs controlled appointments to

government posts, long established practices of bureaucratic

administration were eliminated and the court, i.e. the emperor and his

tools, the eunuchs, could create a rule by way of arbitrary decisions, a

despotic rule. For such purposes, eunuchs had to have education, and

these new educated eunuchs, when they had once secured a position, were

able to gain great influence in the immediate entourage of the emperor;

later such educated eunuchs were preferred, especially as many offices

were created which were only filled by eunuchs and for which educated

eunuchs were needed. Whole departments of eunuchs came into existence at

court, and these were soon made use of for confidential business of the

emperor's outside the palace.

These eunuchs worked, of course, in the interest of their families. On

the other hand, they were very ready to accept large bribes from the

gentry for placing the desires of people of the gentry before the

emperor and gaining his consent. Thus the eunuchs generally accumulated

great wealth, which they shared with their small gentry relatives. The

rise of the small gentry class was therefore connected with the

increased influence of the eunuchs at court.

7 _Literature, art, crafts_

The growth of the small gentry which had its stronghold in the

provincial towns and cities, as well as the rise of the merchant class

and the liberation of the artisans, are reflected in the new literature

of Ming time. While the Mongols had developed the theatre, the novel may

be regarded as the typical Ming creation. Its precursors were the

stories of story-tellers centuries ago. They had developed many styles,

one of which, for instance, consisted of prose with intercalated poetic

parts (_pien-wen_). Buddhists monks had used these forms of popular

literature and spread their teachings in similar forms; due to them,

many Indian stories and tales found their way into the Chinese

folklore. Soon, these stories of story-tellers or monks were written

down, and out of them developed the Chinese classical novel. It

preserved many traits of the stories: it was cut into chapters

corresponding with the interruptions which the story-teller made in

order to collect money; it was interspersed with poems. But most of all,

it was written in everyday language, not in the language of the gentry.

To this day every Chinese knows and reads with enthusiasm

_Shui-hu-chuan_ ("The Story of the River Bank"), probably written about

1550 by Wang Tao-k'un, in which the ruling class was first described in

its decay. Against it are held up as ideals representatives of the

middle class in the guise of the gentleman brigand. Every Chinese also

knows the great satirical novel _Hsi-yu-chi_ ("The Westward Journey"),

by Feng Meng-lung (1574-1645), in which ironical treatment is meted out

to all religions and sects against a mythological background, with a

freedom that would not have been possible earlier. The characters are

not presented as individuals but as representatives of human types: the

intellectual, the hedonist, the pious man, and the simpleton, are drawn

with incomparable skill, with their merits and defects. A third famous

novel is _San-kuo yen-i_ ("The Tale of the Three Kingdoms"), by Lo

Kuan-chung. Just as the European middle class read with avidity the

romances of chivalry, so the comfortable class in China was enthusiastic

over romanticized pictures of the struggle of the gentry in the third

century. "The Tale of the Three Kingdoms" became the model for countless

historical novels of its own and subsequent periods. Later, mainly in

the sixteenth century, the sensational and erotic novel developed, most

of all in Nanking. It has deeply influenced Japanese writers, but was

mercilessly suppressed by the Chinese gentry which resented the

frivolity of this wealthy and luxurious urban class of middle or small

gentry families who associated with rich merchants, actors, artists and

musicians. Censorship of printed books had started almost with the

beginning of book printing as a private enterprise: to the famous

historian, anti-Buddhist and conservative Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-1072), the

enemy of Wang An-shih, belongs the sad glory of having developed the

first censorship rules. Since Ming time, it became a permanent feature

of Chinese governments.

The best known of the erotic novels is the _Chin-p'ing-mei_ which, for

reasons of our own censors can be published only in expurgated

translations. It was written probably towards the end of the sixteenth

century. This novel, as all others, has been written and re-written by

many authors, so that many different versions exist. It might be pointed

out that many novels were printed in Hui-chou, the commercial centre of

the time.

The short story which formerly served the entertainment of the educated

only and which was, therefore, written in classical Chinese, now also

became a literary form appreciated by the middle classes. The collection

_Chin-ku ch'i-kuan_ ("Strange Stories of New Times and Old"), compiled

by Feng Meng-lung, is the best-known of these collections in vernacular

Chinese.

Little original work was done in the Ming epoch in the fields generally

regarded as "literature" by educated Chinese, those of poetry and the

essay. There are some admirable essays, but these are only isolated

examples out of thousands. So also with poetry: the poets of the gentry,

united in "clubs", chose the poets of the Sung epoch as their models to

emulate.

The Chinese drama made further progress in the Ming epoch. Many of the

finest Chinese dramas were written under the Ming; they are still

produced again and again to this day. The most famous dramatists of the

Ming epoch are Wang Shih-chen (1526-1590) and T'ang Hsien-tsu

(1556-1617). T'ang wrote the well-known drama _Mu-tan-ting_ ("The Peony

Pavilion"), one of the finest love-stories of Chinese literature, full

of romance and remote from all reality. This is true also of the other

dramas by T'ang, especially his "Four Dreams", a series of four plays.

In them a man lives in dream through many years of his future life, with

the result that he realizes the worthlessness of life and decides to

become a monk.

Together with the development of the drama (or, rather, the opera) in

the Ming epoch went an important endeavour in the modernization of

music, the attempt to create a "well-tempered scale" made in 1584 by Chu

Tsai-yü. This solved in China a problem which was not tackled till later

in Europe. The first Chinese theorists of music who occupied themselves

with this problem were Ching Fang (77-37 B.C.) and Ho Ch'êng-t'ien (A.D.

370-447).

In the Mongol epoch, most of the Chinese painters had lived in central

China; this remained so in the Ming epoch. Of the many painters of the

Ming epoch, all held in high esteem in China, mention must be made

especially of Ch'in Ying (_c_. 1525), T'ang Yin (1470-1523), and Tung

Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636). Ch'in Ying painted in the Academic Style,

indicating every detail, however small, and showing preference for a

turquoise-green ground. T'ang Yin was the painter of elegant women; Tung

became famous especially as a calligraphist and a theoretician of the

art of painting; a textbook of the art was written by him.

Just as puppet plays and shadow theatre are the "opera of the common

man" and took a new development in Ming time, the wood-cut and

block-printing developed largely as a cheap substitute of real

paintings. The new urbanites wanted to have paintings of the masters and

found in the wood-cut which soon became a multi-colour print a cheap

mass medium. Block printing in colours, developed in the Yangtze valley,

was adopted by Japan and found its highest refinement there. But the

Ming are also famous for their monumental architecture which largely

followed Mongol patterns. Among the most famous examples is the famous

Great Wall which had been in dilapidation and was rebuilt; the great

city walls of Peking; and large parts of the palaces of Peking, begun in

the Mongol epoch. It was at this time that the official style which we

may observe to this day in North China was developed, the style employed

everywhere, until in the age of concrete it lost its justification.

In the Ming epoch the porcelain with blue decoration on a white ground

became general; the first examples, from the famous kilns in

Ching-te-chen, in the province of Kiangsi, were relatively coarse, but

in the fifteenth century the production was much finer. In the sixteenth

century the quality deteriorated, owing to the disuse of the cobalt from

the Middle East (perhaps from Persia) in favour of Sumatra cobalt, which

did not yield the same brilliant colour. In the Ming epoch there also

appeared the first brilliant red colour, a product of iron, and a start

was then made with three-colour porcelain (with lead glaze) or

five-colour (enamel). The many porcelains exported to western Asia and

Europe first influenced European ceramics (Delft), and then were

imitated in Europe (Böttger); the early European porcelains long showed

Chinese influence (the so-called onion pattern, blue on a white ground).

In addition to the porcelain of the Ming epoch, of which the finest

specimens are in the palace at Istanbul, especially famous are the

lacquers (carved lacquer, lacquer painting, gold lacquer) of the Ming

epoch and the cloisonné work of the same period. These are closely

associated with the contemporary work in Japan.

8 _Politics at court_

After the founding of the dynasty by Chu Yüan-chang, important questions

had to be dealt with apart from the social legislation. What was to be

done, for instance, with Chu's helpers? Chu, like many revolutionaries

before and after him, recognized that these people had been serviceable

in the years of struggle but could no longer remain useful. He got rid

of them by the simple device of setting one against another so that they

murdered one another. In the first decades of his rule the dangerous

cliques of gentry had formed again, and were engaged in mutual

struggles. The most formidable clique was led by Hu Wei-yung. Hu was a

man of the gentry of Chu's old homeland, and one of his oldest

supporters. Hu and his relations controlled the country after 1370,

until in 1380 Chu succeeded in beheading Hu and exterminating his

clique. New cliques formed before long and were exterminated in turn.

Chu had founded Nanking in the years of revolution, and he made it his

capital. In so doing he met the wishes of the rich grain producers of

the Yangtze delta. But the north was the most threatened part of his

empire, so that troops had to be permanently stationed there in

considerable strength. Thus Peking, where Chu placed one of his sons as

"king", was a post of exceptional importance.

In Chu Yüan-chang's last years (he was named T'ai Tsu as emperor)

difficulties arose in regard to the dynasty. The heir to the throne died

in 1391; and when the emperor himself died in 1398, the son of the late

heir-apparent was installed as emperor (Hui Ti, 1399-1402). This choice

had the support of some of the influential Confucian gentry families of

the south. But a protest against his enthronement came from the other

son of Chu Yüan-chang, who as king in Peking had hoped to become

emperor. With his strong army this prince, Ch'eng Tsu, marched south and

captured Nanking, where the palaces were burnt down. There was a great

massacre of supporters of the young emperor, and the victor made himself

emperor (better known under his reign name, Yung-lo). As he had

established himself in Peking, he transferred the capital to Peking,

where it remained throughout the Ming epoch. Nanking became a sort of

subsidiary capital.

This transfer of the capital to the north, as the result of the victory

of the military party and Buddhists allied to them, produced a new

element of instability: the north was of military importance, but the

Yangtze region remained the economic centre of the country. The

interests of the gentry of the Yangtze region were injured by the

transfer. The first Ming emperor had taken care to make his court

resemble the court of the Mongol rulers, but on the whole had exercised

relative economy. Yung-lo (1403-1424), however, lived in the actual

palaces of the Mongol rulers, and all the luxury of the Mongol epoch was

revived. This made the reign of Yung-lo the most magnificent period of

the Ming epoch, but beneath the surface decay had begun. Typical of the

unmitigated absolutism which developed now, was the word of one of the

emperor's political and military advisors, significantly a Buddhist

monk: "I know the way of heaven. Why discuss the hearts of the people?"

9 _Navy. Southward expansion_

After the collapse of Mongol rule in Indo-China, partly through the

simple withdrawal of the Mongols, and partly through attacks from

various Chinese generals, there were independence movements in

south-west China and Indo-China. In 1393 wars broke out in Annam.

Yung-lo considered that the time had come to annex these regions to

China and so to open a new field for Chinese trade, which was suffering

continual disturbance from the Japanese. He sent armies to Yünnan and

Indo-China; at the same time he had a fleet built by one of his eunuchs,

Cheng Ho. The fleet was successfully protected from attack by the

Japanese. Cheng Ho, who had promoted the plan and also carried it out,

began in 1405 his famous mission to Indo-China, which had been envisaged

as giving at least moral support to the land operations, but was also

intended to renew trade connections with Indo-China, where they had been

interrupted by the collapse of Mongol rule. Cheng Ho sailed past

Indo-China and ultimately reached the coast of Arabia. His account of

his voyage is an important source of information about conditions in

southern Asia early in the fifteenth century. Cheng Ho and his fleet

made some further cruises, but they were discontinued. There may have

been several reasons, (1) As state enterprises, the expeditions were

very costly. Foreign goods could be obtained more cheaply and with less

trouble if foreign merchants came themselves to China or Chinese

merchants travelled at their own risk. (2) The moral success of the

naval enterprises was assured. China was recognized as a power

throughout southern Asia, and Annam had been reconquered. (3) After the

collapse of the Mongol emperor Timur, who died in 1406, there no longer

existed any great power in Central Asia, so that trade missions from the

kingdom of the Shahruk in North Persia were able to make their way to

China, including the famous mission of 1409-1411. (4) Finally, the fleet

would have had to be permanently guarded against the Japanese, as it had

been stationed not in South China but in the Yangtze region. As early as

1411 the canals had been repaired, and from 1415 onward all the traffic

of the country went by the canals, so evading the Japanese peril. This

ended the short chapter of Chinese naval history.

These travels of Cheng Ho seem to have had one more cultural result: a

large number of fairy-tales from the Middle East were brought to China,

or at all events reached China at that time. The Chinese, being a

realistically-minded people, have produced few fairy-tales of their own.

The bulk of their finest fairy-tales were brought by Buddhist monks, in

the course of the first millennium A.D., from India by way of Central

Asia. The Buddhists made use of them to render their sermons more

interesting and impressive. As time went on, these stories spread all

over China, modified in harmony with the spirit of the people and

adapted to the Chinese environment. Only the fables failed to strike

root in China: the matter-of-fact Chinese was not interested in animals

that talked and behaved to each other like human beings. In addition,

however, to these early fairy-tales, there was another group of stories

that did not spread throughout China, but were found only in the

south-eastern coastal provinces. These came from the Middle East,

especially from Persia. The fairy-tales of Indian origin spread not only

to Central Asia but at the same time to Persia, where they found a very

congenial soil. The Persians made radical changes in the stories and

gave them the form in which they came to Europe by various

routes--through North Africa to Spain and France; through

Constantinople, Venice, or Genoa to France; through Russian Turkestan to

Russia, Finland, and Sweden; through Turkey and the Balkans to Hungary

and Germany. Thus the stories found a European home. And this same

Persian form was carried by sea in Cheng Ho's time to South China. Thus

we have the strange experience of finding some of our own finest

fairy-tales in almost the same form in South China.

10 _Struggles between cliques_

Yung-lo's successor died early. Under the latter's son, the emperor

Hsüan Tsung (1426-1435; reign name Hsüan-tê), fixed numbers of

candidates were assigned for the state examinations. It had been found

that almost the whole of the gentry in the Yangtze region sat at the

examinations; and that at these examinations their representatives made

sure, through their mutual relations, that only their members should

pass, so that the candidates from the north were virtually excluded. The

important military clique in the north protested against this, and a

compromise was arrived at: at every examination one-third of the

candidates must come from the north and two-thirds from the south. This

system lasted for a long time, and led to many disputes.

At his death Hsüan Tsung left the empire to his eight-year-old son Ying

Tsung (1436-49 and 1459-64), who was entirely in the hands of the Yang

clique, which was associated with his grandmother. Soon, however,

another clique, led by the eunuch Wang Chen, gained the upper hand at

court. The Mongols were very active at this time, and made several raids

on the province of Shansi; Wang Chen proposed a great campaign against

them, and in this campaign he took with him the young emperor, who had

reached his twenty-first birthday in 1449. The emperor had grown up in

the palace and knew nothing of the world outside; he was therefore glad

to go with Wang Chen; but that eunuch had also lived in the palace and

also knew nothing of the world, and in particular of war. Consequently

he failed in the organization of reinforcements for his army, some

100,000 strong; after a few brief engagements the Oirat-Mongol prince

Esen had the imperial army surrounded and the emperor a prisoner. The

eunuch Wang Chen came to his end, and his clique, of course, no longer

counted. The Mongols had no intention of killing the emperor; they

proposed to hold him to ransom, at a high price. The various cliques at

court cared little, however, about their ruler. After the fall of the

Wang clique there were two others, of which one, that of General Yü,

became particularly powerful, as he had been able to repel a Mongol

attack on Peking. Yü proclaimed a new emperor--not the captive emperor's

son, a baby, but his brother, who became the emperor Ching Tsung. The

Yang clique insisted on the rights of the imperial baby. From all this

the Mongols saw that the Chinese were not inclined to spend a lot of

money on their imperial captive. Accordingly they made an enormous

reduction in the ransom demanded, and more or less forced the Chinese to

take back their former emperor. The Mongols hoped that this would at

least produce political disturbances by which they might profit, once

the old emperor was back in Peking. And this did soon happen. At first

the ransomed emperor was pushed out of sight into a palace, and Ching

Tsung continued to reign. But in 1456 Ching Tsung fell ill, and a

successor to him had to be chosen. The Yü clique wanted to have the son

of Ching Tsung; the Yang clique wanted the son of the deposed emperor

Ying Tsung. No agreement was reached, so that in the end a third clique,

led by the soldier Shih Hêng, who had helped to defend Peking against

the Mongols, found its opportunity, and by a _coup d'état_ reinstated

the deposed emperor Ying Tsung.

This was not done out of love for the emperor, but because Shih Hêng

hoped that under the rule of the completely incompetent Ying Tsung he

could best carry out a plan of his own, to set up his own dynasty. It is

not so easy, however, to carry a conspiracy to success when there are

several rival parties, each of which is ready to betray any of the

others. Shih Hêng's plan became known before long, and he himself was

beheaded (1460).

The next forty years were filled with struggles between cliques, which

steadily grew in ferocity, particularly since a special office, a sort

of secret police headquarters, was set up in the palace, with functions

which it extended beyond the palace, with the result that many people

were arrested and disappeared. This office was set up by the eunuchs and

the clique at their back, and was the first dictatorial organ created in

the course of a development towards despotism that made steady progress

in these years.

In 1505 Wu Tsung came to the throne, an inexperienced youth of fifteen

who was entirely controlled by the eunuchs who had brought him up. The

leader of the eunuchs was Liu Chin, who had the support of a group of

people of the gentry and the middle class. Liu Chin succeeded within a

year in getting rid of the eunuchs at court who belonged to other

cliques and were working against him. After that he proceeded to

establish his power. He secured in entirely official form the emperor's

permission for him to issue all commands himself; the emperor devoted

himself only to his pleasures, and care was taken that they should keep

him sufficiently occupied to have no chance to notice what was going on

in the country. The first important decree issued by Liu Chin resulted

in the removal from office or the punishment or murder of over three

hundred prominent persons, the leaders of the cliques opposed to him. He

filled their posts with his own supporters, until all the higher posts

in every department were in the hands of members of his group. He

collected large sums of money which he quite openly extracted from the

provinces as a special tax for his own benefit. When later his house was

searched there were found 240,000 bars and 57,800 pieces of gold (a bar

was equivalent of ten pieces), 791,800 ounces and 5,000,000 bars of

silver (a bar was five ounces), three bushels of precious stones, two

gold cuirasses, 3,000 gold rings, and much else--of a total value

exceeding the annual budget of the state! The treasure was to have been

used to finance a revolt planned by Liu Chin and his supporters.

Among the people whom Liu Chin had punished were several members of the

former clique of the Yang, and also the philosopher Wang Yang-ming, who

later became so famous, a member of the Wang family which was allied to

the Yang. In 1510 the Yang won over one of the eunuchs in the palace and

so became acquainted with Liu Chin's plans. When a revolt broke out in

western China, this eunuch (whose political allegiance was, of course,

unknown to Liu Chin) secured appointment as army commander. With the

army intended for the crushing of the revolt, Liu Chin's palace was

attacked when he was asleep, and he and all his supporters were

arrested. Thus the other group came into power in the palace, including

the philosopher Wang Yang-ming (1473-1529). Liu Chin's rule had done

great harm to the country, as enormous taxation had been expended for

the private benefit of his clique. On top of this had been the young

emperor's extravagance: his latest pleasures had been the building of

palaces and the carrying out of military games; he constantly assumed

new military titles and was burning to go to war.

11 _Risings_

The emperor might have had a good opportunity for fighting, for his

misrule had resulted in a great popular rising which began in the west,

in Szechwan, and then spread to the east. As always, the rising was

joined by some ruined scholars, and the movement, which had at first

been directed against the gentry as such, was turned into a movement

against the government of the moment. No longer were all the wealthy and

all officials murdered, but only those who did not join the movement. In

1512 the rebels were finally overcome, not so much by any military

capacity of the government armies as through the loss of the rebels'

fleet of boats in a typhoon.

In 1517 a new favourite of the emperor's induced him to make a great

tour in the north, to which the favourite belonged. The tour and the

hunting greatly pleased the emperor, so that he continued his

journeying. This was the year in which the Portuguese Fernão Pires de

Andrade landed in Canton--the first modern European to enter China.

In 1518 Wang Yang-ming, the philosopher general, crushed a rising in

Kiangsi. The rising had been the outcome of years of unrest, which had

two causes: native risings of the sort we described above, and loss for

the gentry due to the transfer of the capital. The province of Kiangsi

was a part of the Yangtze region, and the great landowners there had

lived on the profit from their supplies to Nanking. When the capital was

moved to Peking, their takings fell. They placed themselves under a

prince who lived in Nanking. This prince regarded Wang Yang-ming's move

into Kiangsi as a threat to him, and so rose openly against the

government and supported the Kiangsi gentry. Wang Yang-ming defeated

him, and so came into the highest favour with the incompetent emperor.

When peace had been restored in Nanking, the emperor dressed himself up

as an army commander, marched south, and made a triumphal entry into

Nanking.

One other aspect of Wang Yang-ming's expeditions has not yet been

studied: he crushed also the so-called salt-merchant rebels in the

southernmost part of Kiangsi and adjoining Kwangtung. These

merchants-turned-rebels had dominated a small area, off and on since

the eleventh century. At this moment, they seem to have had connections

with the rich inland merchants of Hsin-an and perhaps also with

foreigners. Information is still too scanty to give more details, but a

local movement as persistent as this one deserves attention.

Wang Yang-ming became acquainted as early as 1519 with the first

European rifles, imported by the Portuguese who had landed in 1517. (The

Chinese then called them Fu-lan-chi, meaning Franks. Wang was the first

Chinese who spoke of the "Franks".) The Chinese had already had mortars

which hurled stones, as early as the second century A.D. In the seventh

or eighth century their mortars had sent stones of a couple of

hundredweights some four hundred yards. There is mention in the eleventh

century of cannon which apparently shot with a charge of a sort of

gunpowder. The Mongols were already using true cannon in their sieges.

In 1519, the first Portuguese were presented to the Chinese emperor in

Nanking, where they were entertained for about a year in a hostel, a

certain Lin Hsün learned about their rifles and copied them for Wang

Yang-ming. In general, however, the Chinese had no respect for the

Europeans, whom they described as "bandits" who had expelled the lawful

king of Malacca and had now come to China as its representatives. Later

they were regarded as a sort of Japanese, because they, too, practiced

piracy.

12 _Machiavellism_

All main schools of Chinese philosophy were still based on Confucius.

Wang Yang-ming's philosophy also followed Confucius, but he liberated

himself from the Neo-Confucian tendency as represented by Chu Hsi, which

started in the Sung epoch and continued to rule in China in his time and

after him; he introduced into Confucian philosophy the conception of

"intuition". He regarded intuition as the decisive philosophic

experience; only through intuition could man come to true knowledge.

This idea shows an element of meditative Buddhism along lines which the

philosopher Lu Hsiang-shan (1139-1192) had first developed, while

classical Neo-Confucianism was more an integration of monastic Buddhism

into Confucianism. Lu had felt himself close to Wang An-shih

(1021-1086), and this whole school, representing the small gentry of the

Yangtze area, was called the Southern or the Lin-ch'uan school,

Lin-ch'uan in Kiangsi being Wang An-shih's home. During the Mongol

period, a Taoist group, the _Cheng-i-chiao_ (Correct Unity Sect) had

developed in Lin-ch'uan and had accepted some of the Lin-ch'uan

school's ideas. Originally, this group was a continuation of Chang

Ling's church Taoism. Through the _Cheng-i_ adherents, the Southern

school had gained political influence on the despotic Mongol rulers. The

despotic Yung-lo emperor had favoured the monk Tao-yen (_c_. 1338-1418)

who had also Taoist training and proposed a philosophy which also

stressed intuition. He was, incidentally, in charge of the compilation

of the largest encyclopaedia ever written, the _Yung-lo ta-tien_

commissioned by the Yung-lo emperor.

Wang Yang-ming followed the Lin-ch'uan tradition. The introduction of

the conception of intuition, a highly subjective conception, into the

system of a practical state philosophy like Confucianism could not but

lead in the practice of the statesman to Machiavellism. The statesman

who followed the teaching of Wang Yang-ming had the opportunity of

justifying whatever he did by his intuition.

Wang Yang-ming failed to gain acceptance for his philosophy. His

disciples also failed to establish his doctrine in China, because it

served the interests of an individual despot against those of the gentry

as a class, and the middle class, which might have formed a

counterweight against them, was not yet politically ripe for the seizure

of the opportunity here offered to it. In Japan, however, Wang's

doctrine gained many followers, because it admirably served the

dictatorial state system which had developed in that country.

Incidentally, Chiang Kai-shek in those years in which he showed Fascist

tendencies, also got interested in Wang Yang-ming.

13 _Foreign relations in the sixteenth century_

The feeble emperor Wu Tsung died in 1521, after an ineffective reign,

without leaving an heir. The clique then in power at court looked among

the possible pretenders for the one who seemed least likely to do

anything, and their choice fell on the fifteen-year-old Shih Tsung, who

was made emperor. The forty-five years of his reign were filled in home

affairs with intrigues between the cliques at court, with growing

distress in the country, and with revolts on a larger and larger scale.

Abroad there were wars with Annam, increasing raids by the Japanese,

and, above all, long-continued fighting against the famous Mongol ruler

Yen-ta, from 1549 onward. At one time Yen-ta reached Peking and laid

siege to it. The emperor, who had no knowledge of affairs, and to whom

Yen-ta had been represented as a petty bandit, was utterly dismayed and

ready to do whatever Yen-ta asked; in the end he was dissuaded from

this, and an agreement was arrived at with Yen-ta for state-controlled

markets to be set up along the frontier, where the Mongols could

dispose of their goods against Chinese goods on very favourable terms.

After further difficulties lasting many years, a compromise was arrived

at: the Mongols were earning good profits from the markets, and in 1571

Yen-ta accepted a Chinese title. On the Chinese side, this Mongol trade,

which continued in rather different form in the Manchu epoch, led to the

formation of a local merchant class in the frontier province of Shansi,

with great experience in credit business; later the first Chinese

bankers came almost entirely from this quarter.

After a brief interregnum there came once more to the throne a

ten-year-old boy, the emperor Shen Tsung (reign name Wan-li; 1573-1619).

He, too, was entirely under the influence of various cliques, at first

that of his tutor, the scholar Chang Chü-chan. About the time of the

death, in 1582, of Yen-ta we hear for the first time of a new people. In

1581 there had been unrest in southern Manchuria. The Mongolian tribal

federation of the Tümet attacked China, and there resulted collisions

not only with the Chinese but between the different tribes living there.

In southern and central Manchuria were remnants of the Tungus Juchên.

The Mongols had subjugated the Juchên, but the latter had virtually

become independent after the collapse of Mongol rule over China. They

had formed several tribal alliances, but in 1581-83 these fought each

other, so that one of the alliances to all intents was destroyed. The

Chinese intervened as mediators in these struggles, and drew a

demarcation line between the territories of the various Tungus tribes.

All this is only worth mention because it was from these tribes that

there developed the tribal league of the Manchus, who were then to rule

China for some three hundred years.

In 1592 the Japanese invaded Korea. This was their first real effort to

set foot on the continent, a purely imperialistic move. Korea, as a

Chinese vassal, appealed for Chinese aid. At first the Chinese army had

no success, but in 1598 the Japanese were forced to abandon Korea. They

revenged themselves by intensifying their raids on the coast of central

China; they often massacred whole towns, and burned down the looted

houses. The fighting in Korea had its influence on the Tungus tribes: as

they were not directly involved, it contributed to their further

strengthening.

The East India Company was founded in 1600. At this time, while the

English were trying to establish themselves in India, the Chinese tried

to gain increased influence in the south by wars in Annam, Burma, and

Thailand (1594-1604). These wars were for China colonial wars, similar

to the colonial fighting by the British in India. But there began to be

defined already at that time in the south of Asia the outlines of the

states as they exist at the present time.

In 1601 the first European, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, succeeded in

gaining access to the Chinese court, through the agency of a eunuch. He

made some presents, and the Chinese regarded his visit as a mission from

Europe bringing tribute. Ricci was therefore permitted to remain in

Peking. He was an astronomer and was able to demonstrate to his Chinese

colleagues the latest achievements of European astronomy. In 1613, after

Ricci's death, the Jesuits and some Chinese whom they had converted were

commissioned to reform the Chinese calendar. In the time of the Mongols,

Arabs had been at work in Peking as astronomers, and their influence had

continued under the Ming until the Europeans came. By his astronomical

labours Ricci won a place of honour in Chinese literature; he is the

European most often mentioned.

The missionary work was less effective. The missionaries penetrated by

the old trade routes from Canton and Macao into the province of Kiangsi

and then into Nanking. Kiangsi and Nanking were their chief centres.

They soon realized that missionary activity that began in the lower

strata would have no success; it was necessary to work from above,

beginning with the emperor, and then, they hoped, the whole country

could be converted to Christianity. When later the emperors of the Ming

dynasty were expelled and fugitives in South China, one of the

pretenders to the throne was actually converted--but it was politically

too late. The missionaries had, moreover, mistaken ideas as to the

nature of Chinese religion; we know today that a universal adoption of

Christianity in China would have been impossible even if an emperor had

personally adopted that foreign faith: there were emperors who had been

interested in Buddhism or in Taoism, but that had been their private

affair and had never prevented them, as heads of the state, from

promoting the religious system which politically was the most

expedient--that is to say, usually Confucianism. What we have said here

in regard to the Christian mission at the Ming court is applicable also

to the missionaries at the court of the first Manchu emperors, in the

seventeenth century. Early in the eighteenth century missionary activity

was prohibited--not for religious but for political reasons, and only

under the pressure of the Capitulations in the nineteenth century were

the missionaries enabled to resume their labours.

14 _External and internal perils_

Towards the end of the reign of Wan-li, about 1620, the danger that

threatened the empire became more and more evident. The Manchus

complained, no doubt with justice, of excesses on the part of Chinese

officials; the friction constantly increased, and the Manchus began to

attack the Chinese cities in Manchuria. In 1616, after his first

considerable successes, their leader Nurhachu assumed the imperial

title; the name of the dynasty was Tai Ch'ing (interpreted as "The great

clarity", but probably a transliteration of a Manchurian word meaning

"hero"). In 1618, the year in which the Thirty Years War started in

Europe, the Manchus conquered the greater part of Manchuria, and in 1621

their capital was Liaoyang, then the largest town in Manchuria.

But the Manchu menace was far from being the only one. On the south-east

coast a pirate made himself independent; later, with his family, he

dominated Formosa and fought many battles with the Europeans there

(European sources call him Coxinga). In western China there came a great

popular rising, in which some of the natives joined, and which spread

through a large part of the southern provinces. This rising was

particularly sanguinary, and when it was ultimately crushed by the

Manchus the province of Szechwan, formerly so populous, was almost

depopulated, so that it had later to be resettled. And in the province

of Shantung in the east there came another great rising, also very

sanguinary, that of the secret society of the "White Lotus". We have

already pointed out that these risings of secret societies were always a

sign of intolerable conditions among the peasantry. This was now the

case once more. All the elements of danger which we mentioned at the

outset of this chapter began during this period, between 1610 and 1640,

to develop to the full.

Then there were the conditions in the capital itself. The struggles

between cliques came to a climax. On the death of Shen Tsung (or Wan-li;

1573-1619), he was succeeded by his son, who died scarcely a month

later, and then by his sixteen-year-old grandson. The grandson had been

from his earliest youth under the influence of a eunuch, Wei

Chung-hsien, who had castrated himself. With the emperor's wet-nurse and

other people, mostly of the middle class, this man formed a powerful

group. The moment the new emperor ascended the throne, Wei was

all-powerful. He began by murdering every eunuch who did not belong to

his clique, and then murdered the rest of his opponents. Meanwhile the

gentry had concluded among themselves a defensive alliance that was a

sort of party; this party was called the Tung-lin Academy. It was

confined to literati among the gentry, and included in particular the

literati who had failed to make their way at court, and who lived on

their estates in Central China and were trying to gain power themselves.

This group was opposed to Wei Chung-hsien, who ruthlessly had every

discoverable member murdered. The remainder went into hiding and

organized themselves secretly under another name. As the new emperor had

no son, the attempt was made to foist a son upon him; at his death in

1627, eight women of the harem were suddenly found to be pregnant! He

was succeeded by his brother, who was one of the opponents of Wei

Chung-hsien and, with the aid of the opposing clique, was able to bring

him to his end. The new emperor tried to restore order at court and in

the capital by means of political and economic decrees, but in spite of

his good intentions and his unquestionable capacity he was unable to

cope with the universal confusion. There was insurrection in every part

of the country. The gentry, organized in their "Academies", and secretly

at work in the provinces, no longer supported the government; the

central power no longer had adequate revenues, so that it was unable to

pay the armies that should have marched against all the rebels and also

against external enemies. It was clear that the dynasty was approaching

its end, and the only uncertainty was as to its successor. The various

insurgents negotiated or fought with each other; generals loyal to the

government won occasional successes against the rebels; other generals

went over to the rebels or to the Manchus. The two most successful

leaders of bands were Li Tz[)u]-ch'êng and Chang Hsien-chung. Li came

from the province of Shensi; he had come to the fore during a disastrous

famine in his country. The years around 1640 brought several widespread

droughts in North China, a natural phenomenon that was repeated in the

nineteenth century, when unrest again ensued. Chang Hsien-chung returned

for a time to the support of the government, but later established

himself in western China. It was typical, however, of all these

insurgents that none of them had any great objective in view. They

wanted to get enough to eat for themselves and their followers; they

wanted to enrich themselves by conquest; but they were incapable of

building up an ordered and new administration. Li ultimately made

himself "king" in the province of Shensi and called his dynasty "Shun",

but this made no difference: there was no distribution of land among the

peasants serving in Li's army; no plan was set into operation for the

collection of taxes; not one of the pressing problems was faced.

Meanwhile the Manchus were gaining support. Almost all the Mongol

princes voluntarily joined them and took part in the raids into North

China. In 1637 the united Manchus and Mongols conquered Korea. Their

power steadily grew. What the insurgents in China failed to achieve, the

Manchus achieved with the aid of their Chinese advisers: they created a

new military organization, the "Banner Organization". The men fit for

service were distributed among eight "banners", and these banners became

the basis of the Manchu state administration. By this device the

Manchus emerged from the stage of tribal union, just as before them

Turks and other northern peoples had several times abandoned the

traditional authority of a hierarchy of tribal leaders, a system of

ruling families, in favour of the authority, based on efficiency, of

military leaders. At the same time the Manchus set up a central

government with special ministries on the Chinese model. In 1638 the

Manchus appeared before Peking, but they retired once more. Manchu

armies even reached the province of Shantung. They were hampered by the

death at the critical moment of the Manchu ruler Abahai (1626-1643). His

son Fu Lin was not entirely normal and was barely six years old; there

was a regency of princes, the most prominent among them being Prince

Dorgon.

Meanwhile Li Tz[)u]-ch'êng broke through to Peking. The city had a

strong garrison, but owing to the disorganization of the government the

different commanders were working against each other; and the soldiers

had no fighting spirit because they had no pay for a long time. Thus the

city fell, on April 24th, 1644, and the last Ming emperor killed

himself. A prince was proclaimed emperor; he fled through western and

southern China, continually trying to make a stand, but it was too late;

without the support of the gentry he had no resource, and ultimately, in

1659, he was compelled to flee into Burma.

Thus Li Tz[)u]-ch'êng was now emperor. It should have been his task

rapidly to build up a government, and to take up arms against the other

rebels and against the Manchus. Instead of this he behaved in such a way

that he was unable to gain any support from the existing officials in

the capital; and as there was no one among his former supporters who had

any positive, constructive ideas, just nothing was done.

This, however, improved the chances of all the other aspirants to the

imperial throne. The first to realize this clearly, and also to possess

enough political sagacity to avoid alienating the gentry, was General Wu

San-kui, who was commanding on the Manchu front. He saw that in the

existing conditions in the capital he could easily secure the imperial

throne for himself if only he had enough soldiers. Accordingly he

negotiated with the Manchu Prince Dorgon, formed an alliance with the

Manchus, and with them entered Peking on June 6th, 1644. Li

Tz[)u]-ch'eng quickly looted the city, burned down whatever he could,

and fled into the west, continually pursued by Wu San-kui. In the end he

was abandoned by all his supporters and killed by peasants. The Manchus,

however, had no intention of leaving Wu San-kui in power: they

established themselves in Peking, and Wu became their general.

(C) The Manchu Dynasty (1644-1911)

1 _Installation of Manchus_

The Manchus had gained the mastery over China owing rather to China's

internal situation than to their military superiority. How was it that

the dynasty could endure for so long, although the Manchus were not

numerous, although the first Manchu ruler (Fu Lin, known under the rule

name Shun-chih; 1644-1662) was a psychopathic youth, although there were

princes of the Ming dynasty ruling in South China, and although there

were strong groups of rebels all over the country? The Manchus were

aliens; at that time the national feeling of the Chinese had already

been awakened; aliens were despised. In addition to this, the Manchus

demanded that as a sign of their subjection the Chinese should wear

pigtails and assume Manchurian clothing (law of 1645). Such laws could

not but offend national pride. Moreover, marriages between Manchus and

Chinese were prohibited, and a dual government was set up, with Manchus

always alongside Chinese in every office, the Manchus being of course in

the superior position. The Manchu soldiers were distributed in military

garrisons among the great cities, and were paid state pensions, which

had to be provided by taxation. They were the master race, and had no

need to work. Manchus did not have to attend the difficult state

examinations which the Chinese had to pass in order to gain an

appointment. How was it that in spite of all this the Manchus were able

to establish themselves?

The conquering Manchu generals first went south from eastern China, and

in 1645 captured Nanking, where a Ming prince had ruled. The region

round Nanking was the economic centre of China. Soon the Manchus were in

the adjoining southern provinces, and thus they conquered the whole of

the territory of the landowning gentry, who after the events of the

beginning of the seventeenth century had no longer trusted the Ming

rulers. The Ming prince in Nanking was just as incapable, and surrounded

by just as evil a clique, as the Ming emperors of the past. The gentry

were not inclined to defend him. A considerable section of the gentry

were reduced to utter despair; they had no desire to support the Ming

any longer; in their own interest they could not support the rebel

leaders; and they regarded the Manchus as just a particular sort of

"rebels". Interpreting the refusal of some Sung ministers to serve the

foreign Mongols as an act of loyalty, it was now regarded as shameful to

desert a dynasty when it came to an end and to serve the new ruler, even

if the new regime promised to be better. Many thousands of officials,

scholars, and great landowners committed suicide. Many books, often

really moving and tragic, are filled with the story of their lives. Some

of them tried to form insurgent bands with their peasants and went into

the mountains, but they were unable to maintain themselves there. The

great bulk of the élite soon brought themselves to collaborate with the

conquerors when they were offered tolerable conditions. In the end the

Manchus did not interfere in the ownership of land in central China.

At the time when in Europe Louis XIV was reigning, the Thirty Years War

was coming to an end, and Cromwell was carrying out his reforms in

England, the Manchus conquered the whole of China. Chang Hsien-chung and

Li Tz[)u]-ch'êng were the first to fall; the pirate Coxinga lasted a

little longer and was even able to plunder Nanking in 1659, but in 1661

he had to retire to Formosa. Wu San-kui, who meanwhile had conquered

western China, saw that the situation was becoming difficult for him.

His task was to drive out the last Ming pretenders for the Manchus. As

he had already been opposed to the Ming in 1644, and as the Ming no

longer had any following among the gentry, he could not suddenly work

with them against the Manchus. He therefore handed over to the Manchus

the last Ming prince, whom the Burmese had delivered up to him in 1661.

Wu San-kui's only possible allies against the Manchus were the gentry.

But in the west, where he was in power, the gentry counted for nothing;

they had in any case been weaker in the west, and they had been

decimated by the insurrection of Chang Hsien-chung. Thus Wu San-kui was

compelled to try to push eastwards, in order to unite with the gentry of

the Yangtze region against the Manchus. The Manchus guessed Wu San-kui's

plan, and in 1673, after every effort at accommodation had failed, open

war came. Wu San-kui made himself emperor, and the Manchus marched

against him. Meanwhile, the Chinese gentry of the Yangtze region had

come to terms with the Manchus, and they gave Wu San-kui no help. He

vegetated in the south-west, a region too poor to maintain an army that

could conquer all China, and too small to enable him to last

indefinitely as an independent power. He was able to hold his own until

his death, although, with the loss of the support of the gentry, he had

no prospect of final success. Not until 1681 was his successor, his

grandson Wu Shih-fan, defeated. The end of the rule of Wu San-kui and

his successor marked the end of the national governments of China; the

whole country was now under alien domination, for the simple reason that

all the opponents of the Manchus had failed. Only the Manchus were

accredited with the ability to bring order out of the universal

confusion, so that there was clearly no alternative but to put up with

the many insults and humiliations they inflicted--with the result that

the national feeling that had just been aroused died away, except where

it was kept alive in a few secret societies. There will be more to say

about this, once the works which were suppressed by the Manchus are

published.

In the first phase of the Manchu conquest the gentry had refused to

support either the Ming princes or Wu San-kui, or any of the rebels, or

the Manchus themselves. A second phase began about twenty years after

the capture of Peking, when the Manchus won over the gentry by desisting

from any interference with the ownership of land, and by the use of

Manchu troops to clear away the "rebels" who were hostile to the gentry.

A reputable government was then set up in Peking, free from eunuchs and

from all the old cliques; in their place the government looked for

Chinese scholars for its administrative posts. Literati and scholars

streamed into Peking, especially members of the "Academies" that still

existed in secret, men who had been the chief sufferers from the

conditions at the end of the Ming epoch. The young emperor Sheng Tsu

(1663-1722; K'ang-hsi is the name by which his rule was known, not his

name) was keenly interested in Chinese culture and gave privileged

treatment to the scholars of the gentry who came forward. A rapid

recovery quite clearly took place. The disturbances of the years that

had passed had got rid of the worst enemies of the people, the

formidable rival cliques and the individuals lusting for power; the

gentry had become more cautious in their behaviour to the peasants; and

bribery had been largely stamped out. Finally, the empire had been

greatly expanded. All these things helped to stabilize the regime of the

Manchus.

2 _Decline in the eighteenth century_

The improvement continued until the middle of the eighteenth century.

About the time of the French Revolution there began a continuous

decline, slow at first and then gathering speed. The European works on

China offer various reasons for this: the many foreign wars (to which we

shall refer later) of the emperor, known by the name of his ruling

period, Ch'ien-lung, his craze for building, and the irruption of the

Europeans into Chinese trade. In the eighteenth century the court

surrounded itself with great splendour, and countless palaces and other

luxurious buildings were erected, but it must be borne in mind that so

great an empire as the China of that day possessed very considerable

financial strength, and could support this luxury. The wars were

certainly not inexpensive, as they took place along the Russian

frontier and entailed expenditure on the transport of reinforcements and

supplies; the wars against Turkestan and Tibet were carried on with

relatively small forces. This expenditure should not have been beyond

the resources of an ordered budget. Interestingly enough, the period

between 1640 and 1840 belongs to those periods for which almost no

significant work in the field of internal social and economic

developments has been made; Western scholars have been too much

interested in the impact of Western economy and culture or in the

military events. Chinese scholars thus far have shown a prejudice

against the Manchu dynasty and were mainly interested in the study of

anti-Manchu movements and the downfall of the dynasty. On the other

hand, the documentary material for this period is extremely extensive,

and many years of work are necessary to reach any general conclusions

even in one single field. The following remarks should, therefore, be

taken as very tentative and preliminary, and they are, naturally,

fragmentary.

[Illustration: 14 Aborigines of South China, of the 'Black Miao' tribe,

at a festival. China-ink drawing of the eighteenth century. _Collection

of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. No. 1D 8756, 68_.]

[Illustration: 15 Pavilion on the 'Coal Hill' at Peking, in which the

last Ming emperor committed suicide. _Photo Eberhard_.]

[Illustration: Chart POPULATION GROWTH OF CHINA]

The decline of the Manchu dynasty began at a time when the European

trade was still insignificant, and not as late as after 1842, when China

had to submit to the foreign Capitulations. These cannot have been the

true cause of the decline. Above all, the decline was not so noticeable

in the state of the Exchequer as in a general impoverishment of China.

The number of really wealthy persons among the gentry diminished, but

the middle class, that is to say the people who had education but little

or no money and property, grew steadily in number.

One of the deeper reasons for the decline of the Manchu dynasty seems to

lie in the enormous increase in the population. Here are a few Chinese

statistics:

_Year_ _Population_

1578(before the Manchus) 10,621,463 families or 60,692,856 individuals

1662 19,203,233 " 100,000,000 " [*]

1710 23,311,236 " 116,000,000 " [*]

1729 25,480,498 " 127,000,000 " [*]

1741 " 143,411,559 "

1754 184,504,493 "

1778 242,965,618 "

1796 275,662,414 "

1814 374,601,132 "

1850 414,493,899 "

(1953) (601,938,035 ")

[*] Approximately

It may be objected that these figures are incorrect and exaggerated.

Undoubtedly they contain errors. But the first figure (for 1578) of some

sixty millions is in close agreement with all other figures of early

times; the figure for 1850 seems high, but cannot be far wrong, for even

after the great T'ai P'ing Rebellion of 1851, which, together with its

after-effects, costs the lives of countless millions, all statisticians

of today estimate the population of China at more than four hundred

millions. If we enter these data together with the census of 1953 into a

chart (see p. 273), a fairly smooth curve emerges; the special features

are that already under the Ming the population was increasing and,

secondly, that the high rate of increase in the population began with

the long period of internal peace since about 1700. From that time

onwards, all China's wars were fought at so great a distance from China

proper that the population was not directly affected. Moreover, in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Manchus saw to the maintenance

of the river dykes, so that the worst inundations were prevented. Thus

there were not so many of the floods which had often cost the lives of

many million people in China; and there were no internal wars, with

their heavy cost in lives.

But while the population increased, the tillage failed to increase in

the needed proportion. I have, unfortunately, no statistics for all

periods; but the general tendency is shown by the following table:

_Date Cultivated area_ mou _per person_

_in_ mou

1578 701,397,600 11.6

1662 531,135,800

1719 663,113,200

1729 878,176,000 6.1

(1953) (1,627,930,000) (2.7)

Six _mou_ are about one acre. In 1578, there were 66 _mou_ land per

family of the total population. This was close to the figures regarded

as ideal by Chinese early economists for the producing family (100

_mou_) considering the fact that about 80 per cent of all families at

that time were producers. By 1729 it was only 35 _mou_ per family, i.e.

the land had to produce almost twice as much as before. We have shown

that the agricultural developments in the Ming time greatly increased

the productivity of the land. This then, obviously resulted in an

increase of population. But by the middle of the eighteenth century,

assuming that production doubled since the sixteenth century, population

pressure was again as heavy as it had been then. And after _c_. 1750,

population pressure continued to build up to the present time.

Internal colonization continued during the Manchu time; there was a

continuous, but slow flow of people into Kwangsi, Kweichow, Yünnan. In

spite of laws which prohibited emigration, Chinese also moved into

South-East Asia. Chinese settlement in Manchuria was allowed only in the

last years of the Manchus. But such internal colonization or emigration

could alleviated the pressure only in some areas, while it continued to

build up in others.

In Europe as well as in Japan, we find a strong population increase; in

Europe at almost the same time as in China. But before population

pressure became too serious in Europe or Japan, industry developed and

absorbed the excess population. Thus, farms did not decrease too much in

size. Too small farms are always and in many ways uneconomical. With the

development of industries, the percentage of farm population decreased.

In China, however, the farm population was still as high as 73.3 per

cent of the total population in 1932 and the percentage rose to 81 per

cent in 1950.

From the middle of the seventeenth century on, commercial activities,

especially along the coast, continued to increase and we find gentry

families who equip sons who were unwilling or not capable to study and

to enter the ranks of the officials, but who were too unruly to sit in

villages and collect the rent from the tenants of the family, with money

to enter business. The newly settled areas of Kwangtung and Kwangsi were

ideal places for them: here they could sell Chinese products to the

native tribes or to the new settlers at high prices. Some of these men

introduced new techniques from the old provinces of China into the

"colonial" areas and set up dye factories, textile factories, etc., in

the new towns of the south. But the greatest stimulus for these

commercial activities was foreign, European trade. American silver which

had flooded Europe in the sixteenth century, began to flow into China

from the beginning of the seventeenth century on. The influx was stopped

not until between 1661 and 1684 when the government again prohibited

coastal shipping and removed coastal settlements into the interior in

order to stop piracy along the coasts of Fukien and independence

movements on Formosa. But even during these twenty-three years, the

price of silver was so low that home production was given up because it

did not pay off. In the eighteenth century, silver again continued to

enter China, while silk and tea were exported. This demand led to a

strong rise in the prices of silk and tea, and benefited the merchants.

When, from the late eighteenth century on, opium began to be imported,

the silver left China again. The merchants profited this time from the

opium trade, but farmers had to suffer: the price of silver went up, and

taxes had to be paid in silver, while farm products were sold for

copper. By 1835, the ounce of silver had a value of 2,000 copper coins

instead of one thousand before 1800. High gains in commerce prevented

investment in industries, because they would give lower and later

profits than commerce. From the nineteenth century on, more and more

industrial goods were offered by importers which also prevented

industrialization. Finally, the gentry basically remained

anti-industrial and anti-business. They tried to operate necessary

enterprises such as mining, melting, porcelain production as far as

possible as government establishments; but as the operators were

officials, they were not too business-minded and these enterprises did

not develop well. The businessmen certainly had enough capital, but they

invested it in land instead of investing it in industries which could at

any moment be taken away by the government, controlled by the officials

or forced to sell at set prices, and which were always subject to

exploitation by dishonest officials. A businessman felt secure only when

he had invested in land, when he had received an official title upon the

payment of large sums of money, or when he succeeded to push at least

one of his sons into the government bureaucracy. No doubt, in spite of

all this, Chinese business and industry kept on developing in the Manchu

time, but they did not develop at such a speed as to transform the

country from an agrarian into a modern industrial nation.

3 _Expansion in Central Asia; the first State treaty_

The rise of the Manchu dynasty actually began under the K'ang-hsi rule

(1663-1722). The emperor had three tasks. The first was the removal of

the last supporters of the Ming dynasty and of the generals, such as Wu

San-kui, who had tried to make themselves independent. This necessitated

a long series of campaigns, most of them in the south-west or south of

China; these scarcely affected the population of China proper. In 1683

Formosa was occupied and the last of the insurgent army commanders was

defeated. It was shown above that the situation of all these leaders

became hopeless as soon as the Manchus had occupied the rich Yangtze

region and the intelligentsia and the gentry of that region had gone

over to them.

A quite different type of insurgent commander was the Mongol prince

Galdan. He, too, planned to make himself independent of Manchu

overlordship. At first the Mongols had readily supported the Manchus,

when the latter were making raids into China and there was plenty of

booty. Now, however, the Manchus, under the influence of the Chinese

gentry whom they brought, and could not but bring, to their court, were

rapidly becoming Chinese in respect to culture. Even in the time of

K'ang-hsi the Manchus began to forget Manchurian; they brought tutors to

court to teach the young Manchus Chinese. Later even the emperors did

not understand Manchurian! As a result of this process, the Mongols

became alienated from the Manchurians, and the situation began once more

to be the same as at the time of the Ming rulers. Thus Galdan tried to

found an independent Mongol realm, free from Chinese influence.

The Manchus could not permit this, as such a realm would have threatened

the flank of their homeland, Manchuria, and would have attracted those

Manchus who objected to sinification. Between 1690 and 1696 there were

battles, in which the emperor actually took part in person. Galdan was

defeated. In 1715, however, there were new disturbances, this time in

western Mongolia. Tsewang Rabdan, whom the Chinese had made khan of the

Ölöt, rose against the Chinese. The wars that followed, extending far

into Turkestan and also involving its Turkish population together with

the Dzungars, ended with the Chinese conquest of the whole of Mongolia

and of parts of eastern Turkestan. As Tsewang Rabdan had tried to extend

his power as far as Tibet, a campaign was undertaken also into Tibet,

Lhasa was occupied, a new Dalai Lama was installed there as supreme

ruler, and Tibet was made into a protectorate. Since then Tibet has

remained to this day under some form of Chinese colonial rule.

This penetration of the Chinese into Turkestan took place just at the

time when the Russians were enormously expanding their empire in Asia,

and this formed the third problem for the Manchus. In 1650 the Russians

had established a fort by the river Amur. The Manchus regarded the Amur

(which they called the "River of the Black Dragon") as part of their own

territory, and in 1685 they destroyed the Russian settlement. After this

there were negotiations, which culminated in 1689 in the Treaty of

Nerchinsk. This treaty was the first concluded by the Chinese state with

a European power. Jesuit missionaries played a part in the negotiations

as interpreters. Owing to the difficulties of translation the text of

the treaty, in Chinese, Russian, and Manchurian, contained some

obscurities, particularly in regard to the frontier line. Accordingly,

in 1727 the Russians asked for a revision of the old treaty. The Chinese

emperor, whose rule name was Yung-cheng, arranged for the negotiations

to be carried on at the frontier, in the town of Kyakhta, in Mongolia,

where after long discussions a new treaty was concluded. Under this

treaty the Russians received permission to set up a legation and a

commercial agency in Peking, and also to maintain a church. This was the

beginning of the foreign Capitulations. From the Chinese point of view

there was nothing special in a facility of this sort. For some fifteen

centuries all the "barbarians" who had to bring tribute had been given

houses in the capital, where their envoys could wait until the emperor

would receive them--usually on New Year's Day. The custom had sprung up

at the reception of the Huns. Moreover, permission had always been given

for envoys to be accompanied by a few merchants, who during the envoy's

stay did a certain amount of business. Furthermore the time had been

when the Uighurs were permitted to set up a temple of their own. At the

time of the permission given to the Russians to set up a "legation", a

similar office was set up (in 1729) for "Uighur" peoples (meaning

Mohammedans), again under the control of an office, called the Office

for Regulation of Barbarians. The Mohammedan office was placed under two

Mohammedan leaders who lived in Peking. The Europeans, however, had

quite different ideas about a "legation", and about the significance of

permission to trade. They regarded this as the opening of diplomatic

relations between states on terms of equality, and the carrying on of

trade as a special privilege, a sort of Capitulation. This reciprocal

misunderstanding produced in the nineteenth century a number of serious

political conflicts. The Europeans charged the Chinese with breach of

treaties, failure to meet their obligations, and other such things,

while the Chinese considered that they had acted with perfect

correctness.

4 _Culture_

In this K'ang-hsi period culture began to flourish again. The emperor

had attracted the gentry, and so the intelligentsia, to his court

because his uneducated Manchus could not alone have administered the

enormous empire; and he showed great interest in Chinese culture,

himself delved deeply into it, and had many works compiled, especially

works of an encyclopaedic character. The encyclopaedias enabled

information to be rapidly gained on all sorts of subjects, and thus were

just what an interested ruler needed, especially when, as a foreigner,

he was not in a position to gain really thorough instruction in things

Chinese. The Chinese encyclopaedias of the seventeenth and especially of

the eighteenth century were thus the outcome of the initiative of the

Manchurian emperor, and were compiled for his information; they were not

due, like the French encyclopaedias of the eighteenth century, to a

movement for the spread of knowledge among the people. For this latter

purpose the gigantic encyclopaedias of the Manchus, each of which fills

several bookcases, were much too expensive and were printed in much too

limited editions. The compilations began with the great geographical

encyclopaedia of Ku Yen-wu (1613-1682), and attained their climax in the

gigantic eighteenth-century encyclopaedia _T'u-shu chi-ch'eng_,

scientifically impeccable in the accuracy of its references to sources.

Here were already the beginnings of the "Archaeological School", built

up in the course of the eighteenth century. This school was usually

called "Han school" because the adherents went back to the commentaries

of the classical texts written in Han time and discarded the orthodox

explanations of Chu Hsi's school of Sung time. Later, its most prominent

leader was Tai Chen (1723-1777). Tai was greatly interested in

technology and science; he can be regarded as the first philosopher who

exhibited an empirical, scientific way of thinking. Late nineteenth and

early twentieth century Chinese scholarship is greatly obliged to him.

The most famous literary works of the Manchu epoch belong once more to

the field which Chinese do not regard as that of true literature--the

novel, the short story, and the drama. Poetry did exist, but it kept to

the old paths and had few fresh ideas. All the various forms of the Sung

period were made use of. The essayists, too, offered nothing new, though

their number was legion. One of the best known is Yüan Mei (1716-1797),

who was also the author of the collection of short stories _Tse-pu-yü_

("The Master did not tell"), which is regarded very highly by the

Chinese. The volume of short stories entitled _Liao-chai chich-i_, by

P'u Sung-lin (1640-1715?), is world-famous and has been translated into

every civilized language. Both collections are distinguished by their

simple but elegant style. The short story was popular among the greater

gentry; it abandoned the popular style it had in the Ming epoch, and

adopted the polished language of scholars.

The Manchu epoch has left to us what is by general consent the finest

novel in Chinese literature, _Hung-lou-meng_ ("The Dream of the Red

Chamber"), by Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in, who died in 1763. It describes the

downfall of a rich and powerful family from the highest rank of the

gentry, and the decadent son's love of a young and emotional lady of the

highest circles. The story is clothed in a mystical garb that does

something to soften its tragic ending. The interesting novel _Ju-lin

wai-shih_ ("Private Reports from the Life of Scholars"), by Wu

Ching-tz[)u] (1701-1754), is a mordant criticism of Confucianism with

its rigid formalism, of the social system, and of the examination

system. Social criticism is the theme of many novels. The most modern in

spirit of the works of this period is perhaps the treatment of feminism

in the novel _Ching-hua-yüan_, by Li Yu-chên (d. 1830), which demanded

equal rights for men and women.

The drama developed quickly in the Manchu epoch, particularly in

quantity, especially since the emperors greatly appreciated the theatre.

A catalogue of plays compiled in 1781 contains 1,013 titles! Some of

these dramas were of unprecedented length. One of them was played in 26

parts containing 240 acts; a performance took two years to complete!

Probably the finest dramas of the Manchu epoch are those of Li Yü (born

1611), who also became the first of the Chinese dramatic critics. What

he had to say about the art of the theatre, and about aesthetics in

general, is still worth reading.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the influence of Europe

became more and more marked. Translation began with Yen Fu (1853-1921),

who translated the first philosophical and scientific books and books on

social questions and made his compatriots acquainted with Western

thought. At the same time Lin Shu (1852-1924) translated the first

Western short stories and novels. With these two began the new style,

which was soon elaborated by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, a collaborator of Sun

Yat-sen's, and by others, and which ultimately produced the "literary

revolution" of 1917. Translation has continued to this day; almost every

book of outstanding importance in world literature is translated within

a few months of its appearance, and on the average these translations

are of a fairly high level.

Particularly fine work was produced in the field of porcelain in the

Manchu epoch. In 1680 the famous kilns in the province of Kiangsi were

reopened, and porcelain that is among the most artistically perfect in

the world was fired in them. Among the new colours were especially green

shades (one group is known as _famille verte_) and also black and yellow

compositions. Monochrome porcelain also developed further, including

very fine dark blue, brilliant red (called "ox-blood"), and white. In

the eighteenth century, however, there began an unmistakable decline,

which has continued to this day, although there are still a few

craftsmen and a few kilns that produce outstanding work (usually

attempts to imitate old models), often in small factories.

In painting, European influence soon shows itself. The best-known

example of this is Lang Shih-ning, an Italian missionary whose original

name was Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766); he began to work in China in

1715. He learned the Chinese method of painting, but introduced a number

of technical tricks of European painters, which were adopted in general

practice in China, especially by the official court painters: the

painting of the scholars who lived in seclusion remained uninfluenced.

Dutch flower-painting also had some influence in China as early as the

eighteenth century.

The missionaries played an important part at court. The first Manchu

emperors were as generous in this matter as the Mongols had been, and

allowed the foreigners to work in peace. They showed special interest in

the European science introduced by the missionaries; they had less

sympathy for their religious message. The missionaries, for their part,

sent to Europe enthusiastic accounts of the wonderful conditions in

China, and so helped to popularize the idea that was being formed in

Europe of an "enlightened", a constitutional, monarchy. The leaders of

the Enlightenment read these reports with enthusiasm, with the result

that they had an influence on the French Revolution. Confucius was found

particularly attractive, and was regarded as a forerunner of the

Enlightenment. The "Monadism" of the philosopher Leibniz was influenced

by these reports.

The missionaries gained a reputation at court as "scientists", and in

this they were of service both to China and to Europe. The behaviour of

the European merchants who followed the missions, spreading gradually in

growing numbers along the coasts of China, was not by any means so

irreproachable. The Chinese were certainly justified when they declared

that European ships often made landings on the coast and simply looted,

just as the Japanese had done before them. Reports of this came to the

court, and as captured foreigners described themselves as "Christians"

and also seemed to have some connection with the missionaries living at

court, and as disputes had broken out among the missionaries themselves

in connection with papal ecclesiastical policy, in the Yung-cheng period

(1723-1736; the name of the emperor was Shih Tsung) Christianity was

placed under a general ban, being regarded as a secret political

organization.

5 _Relations with the outer world_

During the Yung-cheng period there was long-continued guerrilla fighting

with natives in south-west China. The pressure of population in China

sought an outlet in emigration. More and more Chinese moved into the

south-west, and took the land from the natives, and the fighting was the

consequence of this.

At the beginning of the Ch'ien-lung period (1736-1796), fighting started

again in Turkestan. Mongols, now called Kalmuks, defeated by the

Chinese, had migrated to the Ili region, where after heavy fighting they

gained supremacy over some of the Kazaks and other Turkish peoples

living there and in western Turkestan. Some Kazak tribes went over to

the Russians, and in 1735 the Russian colonialists founded the town of

Orenburg in the western Kazak region. The Kalmuks fought the Chinese

without cessation until, in 1739, they entered into an agreement under

which they ceded half their territory to Manchu China, retaining only

the Ili region. The Kalmuks subsequently reunited with other sections of

the Kazaks against the Chinese. In 1754 peace was again concluded with

China, but it was followed by raids on both sides, so that the Manchus

determined to enter on a great campaign against the Ili region. This

ended with a decisive victory for the Chinese (1755). In the years that

followed, however, the Chinese began to be afraid that the various Kazak

tribes might unite in order to occupy the territory of the Kalmuks,

which was almost unpopulated owing to the mass slaughter of Kalmuks by

the Chinese. Unrest began among the Mohammedans throughout the

neighbouring western Turkestan, and the same Chinese generals who had

fought the Kalmuks marched into Turkestan and captured the Mohammedan

city states of Uch, Kashgar, and Yarkand.

The reinforcements for these campaigns, and for the garrisons which in

the following decades were stationed in the Ili region and in the west

of eastern Turkestan, marched along the road from Peking that leads

northward through Mongolia to the far distant Uliassutai and Kobdo. The

cost of transport for one _shih_ (about 66 lb.) amounted to 120 pieces

of silver. In 1781 certain economies were introduced, but between 1781

and 1791 over 30,000 tons, making some 8 tons a day, was transported to

that region. The cost of transport for supplies alone amounted in the

course of time to the not inconsiderable sum of 120,000,000 pieces of

silver. In addition to this there was the cost of the transported goods

and of the pay of soldiers and of the administration. These figures

apply to the period of occupation, of relative peace: during the actual

wars of conquest the expenditure was naturally far higher. Thus these

campaigns, though I do not think they brought actual economic ruin to

China, were nevertheless a costly enterprise, and one which produced

little positive advantage.

In addition to this, these wars brought China into conflict with the

European colonial powers. In the years during which the Chinese armies

were fighting in the Ili region, the Russians were putting out their

feelers in that direction, and the Chinese annals show plainly how the

Russians intervened in the fighting with the Kalmuks and Kazaks. The Hi

region remained thereafter a bone of contention between China and

Russia, until it finally went to Russia, bit by bit, between 1847 and

1881. The Kalmuks and Kazaks played a special part in Russo-Chinese

relations. The Chinese had sent a mission to the Kalmuks farthest west,

by the lower Volga, and had entered into relations with them, as early

as 1714. As Russian pressure on the Volga region continually grew, these

Kalmuks (mainly the Turgut tribe), who had lived there since 1630,

decided to return into Chinese territory (1771). During this enormously

difficult migration, almost entirely through hostile territory, a large

number of the Turgut perished; 85,000, however, reached the Hi region,

where they were settled by the Chinese on the lands of the eastern

Kalmuks, who had been largely exterminated.

In the south, too, the Chinese came into direct touch with the European

powers. In 1757 the English occupied Calcutta, and in 1766 the province

of Bengal. In 1767 a Manchu general, Ming Jui, who had been victorious

in the fighting for eastern Turkestan, marched against Burma, which was

made a dependency once more in 1769. And in 1790-1791 the Chinese

conquered Nepal, south of Tibet, because Nepalese had made two attacks

on Tibet. Thus English and Chinese political interests came here into

contact.

For the Ch'ien-lung period's many wars of conquest there seem to have

been two main reasons. The first was the need for security. The Mongols

had to be overthrown because otherwise the homeland of the Manchus was

menaced; in order to make sure of the suppression of the eastern

Mongols, the western Mongols (Kalmuks) had to be overthrown; to make

them harmless, Turkestan and the Ili region had to be conquered; Tibet

was needed for the security of Turkestan and Mongolia--and so on. Vast

territories, however, were conquered in this process which were of no

economic value, and most of which actually cost a great deal of money

and brought nothing in. They were conquered simply for security. That

advantage had been gained: an aggressor would have to cross great areas

of unproductive territory, with difficult conditions for reinforcements,

before he could actually reach China. In the second place, the Chinese

may actually have noticed the efforts that were being made by the

European powers, especially Russia and England, to divide Asia among

themselves, and accordingly they made sure of their own good share.

6 _Decline; revolts_

The period of Ch'ien-lung is not only that of the greatest expansion of

the Chinese empire, but also that of the greatest prosperity under the

Manchu regime. But there began at the same time to be signs of internal

decline. If we are to fix a particular year for this, perhaps it should

be the year 1774, in which came the first great popular rising, in the

province of Shantung. In 1775 there came another popular rising, in

Honan--that of the "Society of the White Lotus". This society, which had

long existed as a secret organization and had played a part in the Ming

epoch, had been reorganized by a man named Liu Sung. Liu Sung was

captured and was condemned to penal servitude. His followers, however,

regrouped themselves, particularly in the province of Anhui. These

risings had been produced, as always, by excessive oppression of the

people by the government or the governing class. As, however, the anger

of the population was naturally directed also against the idle Manchus

of the cities, who lived on their state pensions, did no work, and

behaved as a ruling class, the government saw in these movements a

nationalist spirit, and took drastic steps against them. The popular

leaders now altered their program, and acclaimed a supposed descendant

from the Ming dynasty as the future emperor. Government troops caught

the leader of the "White Lotus" agitation, but he succeeded in escaping.

In the regions through which the society had spread, there then began a

sort of Inquisition, of exceptional ferocity. Six provinces were

affected, and in and around the single city of Wuch'ang in four months

more than 20,000 people were beheaded. The cost of the rising to the

government ran into millions. In answer to this oppression, the popular

leaders tightened their organization and marched north-west from the

western provinces of which they had gained control. The rising was

suppressed only by a very big military operation, and not until 1802.

There had been very heavy fighting between 1793 and 1802--just when in

Europe, in the French Revolution, another oppressed population won its

freedom.

The Ch'ien-lung emperor abdicated on New Year's Day, 1795, after ruling

for sixty years. He died in 1799. His successor was Jen Tsung

(1796-1821; reign name: Chia-ch'ing). In the course of his reign the

rising of the "White Lotus" was suppressed, but in 1813 there began a

new rising, this time in North China--again that of a secret

organization, the "Society of Heaven's Law". One of its leaders bribed

some eunuchs, and penetrated with a group of followers into the palace;

he threw himself upon the emperor, who was only saved through the

intervention of his son. At the same time the rising spread in the

provinces. Once more the government succeeded in suppressing it and

capturing the leaders. But the memory of these risings was kept alive

among the Chinese people. For the government failed to realize that the

actual cause of the risings was the general impoverishment, and saw in

them a nationalist movement, thus actually arousing a national

consciousness, stronger than in the Ming epoch, among the middle and

lower classes of the people, together with hatred of the Manchus. They

were held responsible for every evil suffered, regardless of the fact

that similar evils had existed earlier.

7 _European Imperialism in the Far East_

With the Tao-kuang period (1821-1850) began a new period in Chinese

history, which came to an end only in 1911.

In foreign affairs these ninety years were marked by the steadily

growing influence of the Western powers, aimed at turning China into a

colony. Culturally this period was that of the gradual infiltration of

Western civilization into the Far East; it was recognized in China that

it was necessary to learn from the West. In home affairs we see the

collapse of the dynasty and the destruction of the unity of the empire;

of four great civil wars, one almost brought the dynasty to its end.

North and South China, the coastal area and the interior, developed in

different ways.

Great Britain had made several attempts to improve her trade relations

with China, but the mission of 1793 had no success, and that of 1816

also failed. English merchants, like all foreign merchants, were only

permitted to settle in a small area adjoining Canton and at Macao, and

were only permitted to trade with a particular group of monopolists,

known as the "Hong". The Hong had to pay taxes to the state, but they

had a wonderful opportunity of enriching themselves. The Europeans were

entirely at their mercy, for they were not allowed to travel inland, and

they were not allowed to try to negotiate with other merchants, to

secure lower prices by competition.

The Europeans concentrated especially on the purchase of silk and tea;

but what could they import into China? The higher the price of the goods

and the smaller the cargo space involved, the better were the chances of

profit for the merchants. It proved, however, that European woollens or

luxury goods could not be sold; the Chinese would probably have been

glad to buy food, but transport was too expensive to permit profitable

business. Thus a new article was soon discovered--opium, carried from

India to China: the price was high and the cargo space involved was very

small. The Chinese were familiar with opium, and bought it readily.

Accordingly, from 1800 onwards opium became more and more the chief

article of trade, especially for the English, who were able to bring it

conveniently from India. Opium is harmful to the people; the opium trade

resulted in certain groups of merchants being inordinately enriched; a

great deal of Chinese money went abroad. The government became

apprehensive and sent Lin Tsê-hsü as its commissioner to Canton. In 1839

he prohibited the opium trade and burned the chests of opium found in

British possession. The British view was that to tolerate the Chinese

action might mean the destruction of British trade in the Far East and

that, on the other hand, it might be possible by active intervention to

compel the Chinese to open other ports to European trade and to shake

off the monopoly of the Canton merchants. In 1840 British ships-of-war

appeared off the south-eastern coast of China and bombarded it. In 1841

the Chinese opened negotiations and dismissed Lin Tsê-hsü. As the

Chinese concessions were regarded as inadequate, hostilities continued;

the British entered the Yangtze estuary and threatened Nanking. In this

first armed conflict with the West, China found herself defenceless

owing to her lack of a navy, and it was also found that the European

weapons were far superior to those of the Chinese. In 1842 China was

compelled to capitulate: under the Treaty of Nanking Hong Kong was ceded

to Great Britain, a war indemnity was paid, certain ports were thrown

open to European trade, and the monopoly was brought to an end. A great

deal of opium came, however, into China through smuggling--regrettably,

for the state lost the customs revenue!

This treaty introduced the period of the Capitulations. It contained

the dangerous clause which added most to China's misfortunes--the Most

Favoured Nation clause, providing that if China granted any privilege to

any other state, that privilege should also automatically be granted to

Great Britain. In connection with this treaty it was agreed that the

Chinese customs should be supervised by European consuls; and a trade

treaty was granted. Similar treaties followed in 1844 with France and

the United States. The missionaries returned; until 1860, however, they

were only permitted to work in the treaty ports. Shanghai was thrown

open in 1843, and developed with extraordinary rapidity from a town to a

city of a million and a centre of world-wide importance.

The terms of the Nanking Treaty were not observed by either side; both

evaded them. In order to facilitate the smuggling, the British had

permitted certain Chinese junks to fly the British flag. This also

enabled these vessels to be protected by British ships-of-war from

pirates, which at that time were very numerous off the southern coast

owing to the economic depression. The Chinese, for their part, placed

every possible obstacle in the way of the British. In 1856 the Chinese

held up a ship sailing under the British flag, pulled down its flag, and

arrested the crew on suspicion of smuggling. In connection with this and

other events, Britain decided to go to war. Thus began the "Lorcha War"

of 1857, in which France joined for the sake of the booty to be

expected. Britain had just ended the Crimean War, and was engaged in

heavy fighting against the Moguls in India. Consequently only a small

force of a few thousand men could be landed in China; Canton, however,

was bombarded, and also the forts of Tientsin. There still seemed no

prospect of gaining the desired objectives by negotiation, and in 1860 a

new expedition was fitted out, this time some 20,000 strong. The troops

landed at Tientsin and marched on Peking; the emperor fled to Jehol and

did not return; he died in 1861. The new Treaty of Tientsin (1860)

provided for (a) the opening of further ports to European traders; (b)

the session of Kowloon, the strip of land lying opposite Hong Kong; (c)

the establishment of a British legation in Peking; (d) freedom of

navigation along the Yangtze; (e) permission for British subjects to

purchase land in China; (f) the British to be subject to their own

consular courts and not to the Chinese courts; (g) missionary activity

to be permitted throughout the country. In addition to this, the

commercial treaty was revised, the opium trade was permitted once more,

and a war indemnity was to be paid by China. In the eyes of Europe,

Britain had now succeeded in turning China not actually into a colony,

but at all events into a semi-colony; China must be expected soon to

share the fate of India. China, however, with her very different

conceptions of intercourse between states, did not realize the full

import of these terms; some of them were regarded as concessions on

unimportant points, which there was no harm in granting to the trading

"barbarians", as had been done in the past; some were regarded as simple

injustices, which at a given moment could be swept away by

administrative action.

But the result of this European penetration was that China's balance of

trade was adverse, and became more and more so, as under the commercial

treaties she could neither stop the importation of European goods nor

set a duty on them; and on the other hand she could not compel

foreigners to buy Chinese goods. The efflux of silver brought general

impoverishment to China, widespread financial stringency to the state,

and continuous financial crises and inflation. China had never had much

liquid capital, and she was soon compelled to take up foreign loans in

order to pay her debts. At that time internal loans were out of the

question (the first internal loan was floated in 1894): the population

did not even know what a state loan meant; consequently the loans had to

be issued abroad. This, however, entailed the giving of securities,

generally in the form of economic privileges. Under the Most Favoured

Nation clause, however, these privileges had then to be granted to other

states which had made no loans to China. Clearly a vicious spiral, which

in the end could only bring disaster.

The only exception to the general impoverishment, in which not only the

peasants but the old upper classes were involved, was a certain section

of the trading community and the middle class, which had grown rich

through its dealings with the Europeans. These people now accumulated

capital, became Europeanized with their staffs, acquired land from the

impoverished gentry, and sent their sons abroad to foreign universities.

They founded the first industrial undertakings, and learned European

capitalist methods. This class was, of course, to be found mainly in the

treaty ports in the south and in their environs. The south, as far north

as Shanghai, became more modern and more advanced; the north made no

advance. In the south, European ways of thought were learnt, and Chinese

and European theories were compared. Criticism began. The first

revolutionary societies were formed in this atmosphere in the south.

8 _Risings in Turkestan and within China: the T'ai P'ing Rebellion_

But the emperor Hsüan Tsung (reign name Tao-kuang), a man in poor health

though not without ability, had much graver anxieties than those caused

by the Europeans. He did not yet fully realize the seriousness of the

European peril.

[Illustration: 16 The imperial summer palace of the Manchu rulers, at

Jehol. _Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson_.]

[Illustration: 17 Tower on the city wall of Peking. _Photo H.

Hammer-Morrisson_.]

In Turkestan, where Turkish Mohammedans lived under

Chinese rule, conditions were far from being as the Chinese desired. The

Chinese, a fundamentally rationalistic people, regarded religion as a

purely political matter, and accordingly required every citizen to take

part in the official form of worship. Subject to that, he might

privately belong to any other religion. To a Mohammedan, this was

impossible and intolerable. The Mohammedans were only ready to practice

their own religion, and absolutely refused to take part in any other.

The Chinese also tried to apply to Turkestan in other matters the same

legislation that applied to all China, but this proved irreconcilable

with the demands made by Islam on its followers. All this produced

continual unrest.

Turkestan had a feudal system of government with a number of feudal

lords (_beg_), who tried to maintain their influence and who had the

support of the Mohammedan population. The Chinese had come to Turkestan

as soldiers and officials, to administer the country. They regarded

themselves as the lords of the land and occupied themselves with the

extraction of taxes. Most of the officials were also associated with the

Chinese merchants who travelled throughout Turkestan and as far as

Siberia. The conflicts implicit in this situation produced great

Mohammedan risings in the nineteenth century. The first came in

1825-1827; in 1845 a second rising flamed up, and thirty years later

these revolts led to the temporary loss of the whole of Turkestan.

In 1848, native unrest began in the province of Hunan, as a result of

the constantly growing pressure of the Chinese settlers on the native

population; in the same year there was unrest farther south, in the

province of Kwangsi, this time in connection with the influence of the

Europeans. The leader was a quite simple man of Hakka blood, Hung

Hsiu-ch'üan (born 1814), who gathered impoverished Hakka peasants round

him as every peasant leader had done in the past. Very often the nucleus

of these peasant movements had been a secret society with a particular

religious tinge; this time the peasant revolutionaries came forward as

at the same time the preachers of a new religion of their own. Hung had

heard of Christianity from missionaries (1837), and he mixed up

Christian ideas with those of ancient China and proclaimed to his

followers a doctrine that promised the Kingdom of God on earth. He

called himself "Christ's younger brother", and his kingdom was to be

called _T'ai P'ing_ ("Supreme Peace"). He made his first comrades,

charcoal makers, local doctors, peddlers and farmers, into kings, and

made himself emperor. At bottom the movement, like all similar ones

before it, was not religious but social; and it produced a great

response from the peasants. The program of the T'ai P'ing, in some

points influenced by Christian ideas but more so by traditional Chinese

thought, was in many points revolutionary: (a) all property was communal

property; (b) land was classified into categories according to its

fertility and equally distributed among men and women. Every producer

kept of the produce as much as he and his family needed and delivered

the rest into the communal granary; (c) administration and tax systems

were revised; (d) women were given equal rights: they fought together

with men in the army and had access to official position. They had to

marry, but monogamy was requested; (e) the use of opium, tobacco and

alcohol was prohibited, prostitution was illegal; (f) foreigners were

regarded as equals, capitulations as the Manchus had accepted were not

recognized. A large part of the officials, and particularly of the

soldiers sent against the revolutionaries, were Manchus, and

consequently the movement very soon became a nationalist movement, much

as the popular movement at the end of the Mongol epoch had done. Hung

made rapid progress; in 1852 he captured Hankow, and in 1853 Nanking,

the important centre in the east. With clear political insight he made

Nanking his capital. In this he returned to the old traditions of the

beginning of the Ming epoch, no doubt expecting in this way to attract

support from the eastern Chinese gentry, who had no liking for a capital

far away in the north. He made a parade of adhesion to the ancient

Chinese tradition: his followers cut off their pigtails and allowed

their hair to grow as in the past.

He did not succeed, however, in carrying his reforms from the stage of

sporadic action to a systematic reorganization of the country, and he

also failed to enlist the elements needed for this as for all other

administrative work, so that the good start soon degenerated into a

terrorist regime.

Hung's followers pressed on from Nanking, and in 1853-1855 they advanced

nearly to Tientsin; but they failed to capture Peking itself.

The new T'ai P'ing state faced the Europeans with big problems. Should

they work with it or against it? The T'ai P'ing always insisted that

they were Christians; the missionaries hoped now to have the opportunity

of converting all China to Christianity. The T'ai P'ing treated the

missionaries well but did not let them operate. After long hesitation

and much vacillation, however, the Europeans placed themselves on the

side of the Manchus. Not out of any belief that the T'ai P'ing movement

was without justification, but because they had concluded treaties with

the Manchu government and given loans to it, of which nothing would

have remained if the Manchus had fallen; because they preferred the weak

Manchu government to a strong T'ai P'ing government; and because they

disliked the socialistic element in many of the measured adopted by the

T'ai P'ing.

At first it seemed as if the Manchus would be able to cope unaided with

the T'ai P'ing, but the same thing happened as at the end of the Mongol

rule: the imperial armies, consisting of the "banners" of the Manchus,

the Mongols, and some Chinese, had lost their military skill in the long

years of peace; they had lost their old fighting spirit and were glad to

be able to live in peace on their state pensions. Now three men came to

the fore--a Mongol named Seng-ko-lin-ch'in, a man of great personal

bravery, who defended the interests of the Manchu rulers; and two

Chinese, Tsêng Kuo-fan (1811-1892) and Li Hung-chang (1823-1901), who

were in the service of the Manchus but used their position simply to

further the interests of the gentry. The Mongol saved Peking from

capture by the T'ai P'ing. The two Chinese were living in central China,

and there they recruited, Li at his own expense and Tsêng out of the

resources at his disposal as a provincial governor, a sort of militia,

consisting of peasants out to protect their homes from destruction by

the peasants of the T'ai P'ing. Thus the peasants of central China, all

suffering from impoverishment, were divided into two groups, one

following the T'ai P'ing, the other following Tsêng Kuo-fan. Tsêng's

army, too, might be described as a "national" army, because Tsêng was

not fighting for the interests of the Manchus. Thus the peasants, all

anti-Manchu, could choose between two sides, between the T'ai P'ing and

Tsêng Kuo-fan. Although Tsêng represented the gentry and was thus

against the simple common people, peasants fought in masses on his side,

for he paid better, and especially more regularly. Tsêng, being a good

strategist, won successes and gained adherents. Thus by 1856 the T'ai

P'ing were pressed back on Nanking and some of the towns round it; in

1864 Nanking was captured.

While in the central provinces the T'ai P'ing rebellion was raging,

China was suffering grave setbacks owing to the Lorcha War of 1856; and

there were also great and serious risings in other parts of the country.

In 1855 the Yellow River had changed its course, entering the sea once

more at Tientsin, to the great loss of the regions of Honan and Anhui.

In these two central provinces the peasant rising of the so-called "Nien

Fei" had begun, but it only became formidable after 1855, owing to the

increasing misery of the peasants. This purely peasant revolt was not

suppressed by the Manchu government until 1868, after many collisions.

Then, however, there began the so-called "Mohammedan risings". Here

there are, in all, five movements to distinguish: (1) the Mohammedan

rising in Kansu (1864-5); (2) the Salar movement in Shensi; (3) the

Mohammedan revolt in Yünnan (1855-1873); (4) the rising in Kansu (1895);

(5) the rebellion of Yakub Beg in Turkestan (from 1866 onward).

While we are fairly well informed about the other popular risings of

this period, the Mohammedan revolts have not yet been well studied. We

know from unofficial accounts that these risings were suppressed with

great brutality. To this day there are many Mohammedans in, for

instance, Yünnan, but the revolt there is said to have cost a million

lives. The figures all rest on very rough estimates: in Kansu the

population is said to have fallen from fifteen millions to one million;

the Turkestan revolt is said to have cost ten million lives. There are

no reliable statistics; but it is understandable that at that time the

population of China must have fallen considerably, especially if we bear

in mind the equally ferocious suppression of the risings of the T'ai

P'ing and the Nien Fei within China, and smaller risings of which we

have made no mention.

The Mohammedan risings were not elements of a general Mohammedan revolt,

but separate events only incidentally connected with each other. The

risings had different causes. An important factor was the general

distress in China. This was partly due to the fact that the officials

were exploiting the peasant population more ruthlessly than ever. In

addition to this, owing to the national feeling which had been aroused

in so unfortunate a way, the Chinese felt a revulsion against

non-Chinese, such as the Salars, who were of Turkish race. Here there

were always possibilities of friction, which might have been removed

with a little consideration but which swelled to importance through the

tactless behaviour of Chinese officials. Finally there came divisions

among the Mohammedans of China which led to fighting between themselves.

All these risings were marked by two characteristics. They had no

general political aim such as the founding of a great and universal

Islamic state. Separate states were founded, but they were too small to

endure; they would have needed the protection of great states. But they

were not moved by any pan-Islamic idea. Secondly, they all took place on

Chinese soil, and all the Mohammedans involved, except in the rising of

the Salars, were Chinese. These Chinese who became Mohammedans are

called Dungans. The Dungans are, of course, no longer pure Chinese,

because Chinese who have gone over to Islam readily form mixed

marriages with Islamic non-Chinese, that is to say with Turks and

Mongols.

The revolt, however, of Yakub Beg in Turkestan had a quite different

character. Yakub Beg (his Chinese name was An Chi-yeh) had risen to the

Chinese governorship when he made himself ruler of Kashgar. In 1866 he

began to try to make himself independent of Chinese control. He

conquered Ili, and then in a rapid campaign made himself master of all

Turkestan.

His state had a much better prospect of endurance than the other

Mohammedan states. He had full control of it from 1874. Turkestan was

connected with China only by the few routes that led between the desert

and the Tibetan mountains. The state was supported against China by

Russia, which was continually pressing eastward, and in the south by

Great Britain, which was pressing towards Tibet. Farther west was the

great Ottoman empire; the attempt to gain direct contact with it was not

hopeless in itself, and this was recognized at Istanbul. Missions went

to and fro, and Turkish officers came to Yakub Beg and organized his

army; Yakub Beg recognized the Turkish sultan as Khalif. He also

concluded treaties with Russia and Great Britain. But in spite of all

this he was unable to maintain his hold of Turkestan. In 1877 the famous

Chinese general Tso Tsung-t'ang (1812-1885), who had fought against the

T'ai P'ing and also against the Mohammedans in Kansu, marched into

Turkestan and ended Yakub Beg's rule.

Yakub was defeated, however, not so much by Chinese superiority as by a

combination of circumstances. In order to build up his kingdom he was

compelled to impose heavy taxation, and this made him unpopular with his

own followers: they had to pay taxes under the Chinese, but the Chinese

collection had been much less rigorous than that of Yakub Beg. It was

technically impossible for the Ottoman empire to give him any aid, even

had its internal situation permitted it. Britain and Russia would

probably have been glad to see a weakening of the Chinese hold over

Turkestan, but they did not want a strong new state there, once they had

found that neither of them could control the country while it was in

Yakub Beg's hands. In 1881 Russia occupied the Ili region, Yakub's first

conquest. In the end the two great powers considered it better for

Turkestan to return officially into the hands of the weakened China,

hoping that in practice they would be able to bring Turkestan more and

more under their control. Consequently, when in 1880, three years after

the removal of Yakub Beg, China sent a mission to Russia with the

request for the return of the Ili region to her, Russia gave way, and

the Treaty of Ili was concluded, ending for the time the Russian

penetration of Turkestan. In 1882 the Manchu government raised

Turkestan to a "new frontier" (Sinkiang) with a special administration.

This process of colonial penetration of Turkestan continued. Until the

end of the first world war there was no fundamental change in the

situation in the country, owing to the rivalry between Great Britain and

Russia. But after 1920 a period began in which Turkestan became almost

independent, under a number of rulers of parts of the country. Then,

from 1928 onward, a more and more thorough penetration by Russia began,

so that by 1940 Turkestan could almost be called a Soviet Republic. The

second world war diverted Russian attention to the West, and at the same

time compelled the Chinese to retreat into the interior from the

Japanese, so that by 1943 the country was more firmly held by the

Chinese government than it had been for seventy years. After the

creation of the People's Democracy mass immigration into Sinkiang began,

in connection with the development of oil fields and of many new

industries in the border area between Sinkiang and China proper. Roads

and air communications opened Sinkiang. Yet, the differences between

immigrant Chinese and local, Muslim Turks, continue to play a role.

9 _Collision with Japan; further Capitulations_

The reign of Wen Tsung (reign name Hsien-feng 1851-1861) was marked

throughout by the T'ai P'ing and other rebellions and by wars with the

Europeans, and that of Mu Tsung (reign name T'ung-chih: 1862-1874) by

the great Mohammedan disturbances. There began also a conflict with

Japan which lasted until 1945. Mu Tsung came to the throne as a child of

five, and never played a part of his own. It had been the general rule

for princes to serve as regents for minors on the imperial throne, but

this time the princes concerned won such notoriety through their

intrigues that the Peking court circles decided to entrust the regency

to two concubines of the late emperor. One of these, called Tz[)u] Hsi

(born 1835), of the Manchu tribe of the Yehe-Nara, quickly gained the

upper hand. The empress Tz[)u] Hsi was one of the strongest

personalities of the later nineteenth century who played an active part

in Chinese political life. She played a more active part than any

emperor had played for many decades.

Meanwhile great changes had taken place in Japan. The restoration of the

Meiji had ended the age of feudalism, at least on the surface. Japan

rapidly became Westernized, and at the same time entered on an

imperialist policy. Her aims from 1868 onward were clear, and remained

unaltered until the end of the second World War: she was to be

surrounded by a wide girdle of territories under Japanese domination, in

order to prevent the approach of any enemy to the Japanese homeland.

This girdle was divided into several zones--(1) the inner zone with the

Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, Korea, the Ryukyu archipelago, and Formosa;

(2) the outer zone with the Marianne, Philippine, and Caroline Islands,

eastern China, Manchuria, and eastern Siberia; (3) the third zone, not

clearly defined, including especially the Netherlands Indies,

Indo-China, and the whole of China, a zone of undefined extent. The

outward form of this subjugated region was to be that of the Greater

Japanese Empire, described as the Imperium of the Yellow Race (the main

ideas were contained in the Tanaka Memorandum 1927 and in the Tada

Interview of 1936). Round Japan, moreover, a girdle was to be created of

producers of raw materials and purchasers of manufactures, to provide

Japanese industry with a market. Japan had sent a delegation of amity to

China as early as 1869, and a first Sino-Japanese treaty was signed in

1871; from then on, Japan began to carry out her imperialistic plans. In

1874 she attacked the Ryukyu islands and Formosa on the pretext that

some Japanese had been murdered there. Under the treaty of 1874 Japan

withdrew once more, only demanding a substantial indemnity; but in 1876,

in violation of the treaty and without a declaration of war, she annexed

the Ryukyu Islands. In 1876 began the Japanese penetration into Korea;

by 1885 she had reached the stage of a declaration that Korea was a

joint sphere of interest of China and Japan; until then China's

protectorate over Korea had been unchallenged. At the same time (1876)

Great Britain had secured further Capitulations in the Chefoo

Convention; in 1862 France had acquired Cochin China, in 1864 Cambodia,

in 1874 Tongking, and in 1883 Annam. This led in 1884 to war between

France and China, in which the French did not by any means gain an

indubitable victory; but the Treaty of Tientsin left them with their

acquisitions.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1875, the young Chinese emperor died of

smallpox, without issue. Under the influence of the two empresses, who

still remained regents, a cousin of the dead emperor, the three-year-old

prince Tsai T'ien was chosen as emperor Tê Tsung (reign name Kuang-hsü:

1875-1909). He came of age in 1889 and took over the government of the

country. The empress Tz[)u] Hsi retired, but did not really relinquish

the reins.

In 1894 the Sino-Japanese War broke out over Korea, as an outcome of the

undefined position that had existed since 1885 owing to the

imperialistic policy of the Japanese. China had created a North China

squadron, but this was all that can be regarded as Chinese preparation

for the long-expected war. The Governor General of Chihli (now

Hopei--the province in which Peking is situated), Li Hung-chang, was a

general who had done good service, but he lost the war, and at

Shimonoseki (1895) he had to sign a treaty on very harsh terms, in which

China relinquished her protectorate over Korea and lost Formosa. The

intervention of France, Germany, and Russia compelled Japan to content

herself with these acquisitions, abandoning her demand for South

Manchuria.

10 _Russia in Manchuria_

After the Crimean War, Russia had turned her attention once more to the

East. There had been hostilities with China over eastern Siberia, which

were brought to an end in 1858 by the Treaty of Aigun, under which China

ceded certain territories in northern Manchuria. This made possible the

founding of Vladivostok in 1860. Russia received Sakhalin from Japan in

1875 in exchange for the Kurile Islands. She received from China the

important Port Arthur as a leased territory, and then tried to secure

the whole of South Manchuria. This brought Japan's policy of expansion

into conflict with Russia's plans in the Far East. Russia wanted

Manchuria in order to be able to pursue a policy in the Pacific; but

Japan herself planned to march into Manchuria from Korea, of which she

already had possession. This imperialist rivalry made war inevitable:

Russia lost the war; under the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 Russia gave

Japan the main railway through Manchuria, with adjoining territory. Thus

Manchuria became Japan's sphere of influence and was lost to the Manchus

without their being consulted in any way. The Japanese penetration of

Manchuria then proceeded stage by stage, not without occasional

setbacks, until she had occupied the whole of Manchuria from 1932 to

1945. After the end of the second world war, Manchuria was returned to

China, with certain reservations in favour of the Soviet Union, which

were later revoked.

11 _Reform and reaction: the Boxer Rising_

China had lost the war with Japan because she was entirely without

modern armament. While Japan went to work at once with all her energy to

emulate Western industrialization, the ruling class in China had shown a

marked repugnance to any modernization; and the centre of this

conservatism was the dowager empress Tz[)u] Hsi. She was a woman of

strong personality, but too uneducated--in the modern sense--to be able

to realize that modernization was an absolute necessity for China if it

was to remain an independent state. The empress failed to realize that

the Europeans were fundamentally different from the neighbouring tribes

or the pirates of the past; she had not the capacity to acquire a

general grasp of the realities of world politics. She felt instinctively

that Europeanization would wreck the foundations of the power of the

Manchus and the gentry, and would bring another class, the middle class

and the merchants, into power.

There were reasonable men, however, who had seen the necessity of

reform--especially Li Hung-chang, who has already been mentioned. In

1896 he went on a mission to Moscow, and then toured Europe. The

reformers were, however, divided into two groups. One group advocated

the acquisition of a certain amount of technical knowledge from abroad

and its introduction by slow reforms, without altering the social

structure of the state or the composition of the government. The others

held that the state needed fundamental changes, and that superficial

loans from Europe were not enough. The failure in the war with Japan

made the general desire for reform more and more insistent not only in

the country but in Peking. Until now Japan had been despised as a

barbarian state; now Japan had won! The Europeans had been despised; now

they were all cutting bits out of China for themselves, extracting from

the government one privilege after another, and quite openly dividing

China into "spheres of interest", obviously as the prelude to annexation

of the whole country.

In Europe at that time the question was being discussed over and over

again, why Japan had so quickly succeeded in making herself a modern

power, and why China was not succeeding in doing so; the Japanese were

praised for their capacity and the Chinese blamed for their lassitude.

Both in Europe and in Chinese circles it was overlooked that there were

fundamental differences in the social structures of the two countries.

The basis of the modern capitalist states of the West is the middle

class. Japan had for centuries had a middle class (the merchants) that

had entered into a symbiosis with the feudal lords. For the middle class

the transition to modern capitalism, and for the feudal lords the way to

Western imperialism, was easy. In China there was only a weak middle

class, vegetating under the dominance of the gentry; the middle class

had still to gain the strength to liberate itself before it could become

the support for a capitalistic state. And the gentry were still strong

enough to maintain their dominance and so to prevent a radical

reconstruction; all they would agree to were a few reforms from which

they might hope to secure an increase of power for their own ends.