EQ: How did the land based empires administer their empires?

Do-Now: Map Analysis

Name of Land Based Empire Monarch/Leader Monumental Architecture

(Focus on the Middle East, South found in their borders
Asia, and East Asia)
Ottoman
Shah Abbas n/a
Taj Mahal
Qing n/a
Tokagawa Ieyasu
Versailles
Peter the Great

Unit 3: Land Based Empires

While the Europeans in Unit 4 were overseas exploring, making transoceanic connections and colonizing the land and
people in the Americas, other land based empires were growing at the same time. Major maritime powers of the time
included Portugal, Spain, France, and England, however, the major land empires included the Ottoman, Safavid, Ming,
Qing  China, the  Mughals, Russia, & Tokugawa Shogunate. These empires used a variety of methods to expand,
administer and legitimize their power. The Qing dynasty (pronounced “Ching”) was the last imperial dynasty to rule
China. Established in 1644 by the Manchus, who overthrew the native Ming dynasty by aggressing expanding their
control from the north, the Qing dynasty endured until the founding of the Republic of China in 1912. The Qing Dynasty
was the second time when the whole of China was ruled by foreigners, the Manchu. The first time was during the Yuan
Dynasty when China was controlled by the Mongols. The 268-year reign of the Qing (Manchu) was dominated by the
rule of two monarchs: the Kangxi (“Kang-she”-- “ka” sounds like “ba”) Emperor, who ruled from 1662-1722, and his
grandson, the Qianlong (“Chee-en-lung”) Emperor, who ruled from 1736-1795.  These two emperors, each of whom
reigned for about 60 years, would set the course of Qing history. They created in large part the political, economic, and
cultural legacy inherited by modern China.

The Kangxi Emperor (1662-1722) The Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795)

EQ: How did the Qing Dynasty administer their empire?

Read the following and create a tree map answering the essential question.

Qing Government
The Chinese system of rule relied on a strong central government headed by an emperor, who, with his many relatives,
constituted a ruling family and lineage. But the emperor did not necessarily have the absolute power that is often
associated with traditional monarchy. The Chinese never had an understanding of the power of the king in terms that
were used in Europe. That is, the Chinese never believed in the "divine right of kings." Rather, they believed that an
emperor had to be an exceptional being — a sage king — who could mediate the cosmic forces. The emperor was also
not invulnerable. His actions had to be tempered by basic political expectations, and he had to do the things that an
emperor should do. If he did not do these things, he could be overthrown, and this would be considered legitimate. If
such a thing occurred, the emperor would be understood to have lost the "Mandate of Heaven." When a new dynasty
was established, it was believed that the Mandate of Heaven had passed to the ruling house. It is interesting to note that
when the Manchus, a nomadic group from the northern plains, overthrew the reigning Ming dynasty and established the
Qing dynasty, they announced that the Ming had lost the Mandate of Heaven. And yet, in fulfilling their ceremonial
responsibilities as the new holders of the Mandate, the Qing emperors continued to venerate the Ming emperors. The
ritual veneration of emperors from the fallen dynasty was important because the Ming had legitimately held the
Mandate of Heaven at one time. By ceremonially honoring the Ming as past holders of the Mandate and their legitimate
predecessors, the Qing were actually justifying their own claim to the Mandate of Heaven, by asserting their own
position as the Ming's legitimate successors. The Chinese government during the Qing was an integrated bureaucracy —
that is, political power flowed from the top to the bottom through a series of hierarchically ordered positions that
extended down to the county level, where a local magistrate headed a county office, called the yamen. This
hierarchically integrated bureaucracy was remarkable because the people who had positions as officials within the
bureaucracy were not there because they were members of a hereditary aristocracy. Rather, they had acquired their
positions according to a system of merit. This system of meritocracy — perhaps the first of its kind in the world — was
established on the basis of government examinations.

Those who had the ambition to become government officials were schooled from an early age in the canonical literature
and the philosophical works of China's great Confucian tradition. It was through this learning that would-be officials
would not only be able to formulate a personal, moral and ethical structure for themselves, their family, and their local
community, but also develop an understanding of how one should appropriately act as a member of the group of people
that rules the state. Examinations were given at the county level, and successful candidates progressed to higher levels,
all the way to the highest-level examinations, which were given at the imperial capital. If one could pass the
examinations at this level, then chances were very great that one would certainly become a member of the small coterie
of elite bureaucrats that ruled China. Of course, the ability of someone to get the education needed to sit for these
examinations relied to a certain extent on wealth, although families often coordinated their wealth so that the brightest
and most promising of their children would be able to rise through this system.

An important consequence of this system of meritocracy that peopled the Chinese bureaucracy with the best and the
brightest of the literati was that the state was not ruled by aristocrats that had inherited their positions. Rather, it was a
state ruled by those who were of the "common people," although often they were the elite among the common.
Nevertheless, they had ties to families, relatives, and others who were engaged in non-government occupations (such as
merchants, farmers, and landowners). During the time that the Qing dynasty ruled China, these ideas (of a civil
government based on meritocracy and social responsibility) were admired and promoted by Western philosophers.

QING CHINA'S ACTIVE ECONOMY

China did not have a single central market during the Qing dynasty (Shanghai, for example, was just a small town until
the late 1800s), but it was big enough to have many important markets and goods moving amongst them. Some goods --
particularly specialty items — moved across great distances. Medicinal herbs from the mountains in West China moved
East, where they were used for medicines and salves. Cotton moved from North China to cotton weavers in Central
China. Rice moved in much more localized markets because of its bulk and because it was readily available in many
places. But where there was a market for a certain product, Chinese merchants were there to create the facility to move
the product.

During the Qing period, all Chinese people had to pay part of their taxes to the government in money, usually copper
coins or silver, as opposed to goods-in-kind. This meant that the farmers, especially, had to sell what they produced in
order to acquire currency for their taxes. In fact, one could say that the Qing government's tax policy was one of the
factors that pushed economic growth in China during this time.

To a certain extent, the Qing state itself facilitated the movement of goods to market by locating Beijing, its capital, far
to the north, away from the rich and prosperous rice growing areas of Southern China. This resulted in a natural market
for the demand of goods in the North, if for no other reason than to feed the imperial household and court. This was
one of the reasons why it was so important to keep the Grand Canal working. The Grand Canal was a major conduit for
grain, salt, and other important commodities. Any taxes that were paid in kind were paid in grain, which was shipped
along the Grand Canal. Thus, control of the Grand Canal was of critical importance to the Qing government.

Those who would argue that China was not involved in the world economy by the Qing period have only to look at some
of the consequences of China's use of currency -- both copper and silver. China under the Qing had an enormous unmet
demand for silver. As the economy grew, the populace needed silver for transactions in the marketplace. As early as the
1720s, Mexican silver dollars were used in transactions in Southern China. Mexican silver had the advantage of already
being in coin form and being reliable for its weight in silver, so that one did not have to go to a money changer to have
him weigh the silver and take a fee for attaching a certificate. The Chinese government did not mint silver coins, so
throughout this period people were using minted and raw silver coming into the country through the Philippines and
other areas that were points of trade in the Southern China region. Western European nations during this time had very
few commodities other than silver to sell to China in exchange for the tea, porcelain, and silk that were being imported
to meet their own growing demand. Indeed, this inflow of silver from the West is one reason for the rapid expansion of
China's economy during the 18th century.

The notion that the Chinese government feared foreign traders and did not want foreign traders on its shores is a major
misconception. Although foreign trade was not a dominant source of revenue for the imperial household, it was taxed at
a number of ports along the Chinese coast and was an important source of revenue for the central government. It was
not until the 1760s that China really began to limit foreign trade to the single port of Canton, and there is much
speculation about why this happened. Some scholars have related this to Chinese awareness of the activities of the
British East India Company in India in the 1750s, when Britain was effectively colonizing India, and the Chinese
government's fear of similar foreign encroachment on its own soil. Other scholars see the creation of the single port of
call for European ships at Canton as being a mutual decision, because, in fact, Canton was the only port that really could
provide the kind of facilities that foreign traders needed. Canton had a sufficient number of merchants, sufficient capital
to be able to bring goods from the interior in sufficient amounts to make it worthwhile for foreigners to come all the
way from England to China. The trip from England to China during this time was indeed very long, and ships only came
once a year. The merchants bought everything they could to fill up the ships and soon set sail again.

Qing Society

Manchu ruling elites schooled in Chinese language and Confucian thought, received support from scholar-bureaucrats. It
was important to appease, to a certain degree, the native Chinese because the Chinese outnumbered Manchu 30 to 1.
So, they gave lower military and government jobs to Chinese, but kept top tier jobs for themselves. Yet the Manchus
also wanted to maintain their culture so they outlawed marriage between Manchu and Chinese, forbade the Chinese
from traveling to Manchuria and from learning Manchurian language and forced Chinese men to shave their heads
leaving a single queue, or braid, at back of head . If the Chinese men didn’t, they’d be executed; It was said “Keep your
hair and lose your head or lose your hair and keep your head”.

To that end, beginning in late sixteenth century, Portuguese merchants began coming to trade in southern China,
bringing Jesuit priests along with them. Jesuits, notably the Italian Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), aimed to convert members
of the scholar-official elite who, they hoped, would then assist in spreading their religion among the people. While at
first welcomed by the late Ming and early Qing emperors for their expertise in areas such as astronomy, calendar-
making, cannon and other firearms, and mathematics, the Jesuits made relatively few converts. By the late seventeenth
century, Christianity faced growing opposition among the officials and from the imperial government and they were
forced to leave.

The rigid patriarchal structure of Chinese society also determined rigid gender roles, and within that structure girls and
women had little room to maneuver within the male-dominated world. Most women’s lives were centered on
maintaining a household, although among some lower-class families women might work in the fields or sell produce in
the market. Marriages were arranged by the fathers of the groom, and they often chose brides from families from a
slightly lower class. Because such marriages required families to provide expensive dowries, raising a daughter could be
a financial liability. When they left with their dowries, they became members of their new household and subservient to
a new patriarchal head of household. On the other hand, a family who raised a son could hold out hope that the boy in
time might land a lucrative career in civil service and be able to provide for his parents. These circumstances led parents
to prefer boys to girls, and resulted in a high rate of female infanticide in Ming and Qing China, where eventually men far
outnumbered women in the population as a whole. At the other end of their lives, women in China fared little better, as
widows were virtually prohibited from remarrying, and society honored those women who committed suicide to follow
their husbands to the afterlife. A custom that had most likely originated during the Song dynasty centuries earlier, foot
binding was practiced widely during the Ming and Qing eras. Young girls’ feet were broken and bound tightly in strips of
linen so that over time, the bones grew bent and deformed. The painful procedure was intended to give adult women
tiny and dainty feet, which were seen as beautiful and attractive to men. The now-notorious practice, which remained
popular into the twentieth century, prevented such women from performing physical labor, and further relegated
females to a life of few opportunities. Foot binding was especially popular among the wealthy, but sometimes a
common family would bind the feet of a baby girl in the hopes of someday marrying her to a prosperous family

If you could sum up the way the Qing administered their empire in three phrases what would they be?

Think political/social and economic but don’t use those words.

Think: But Use:

Political
Social
Economic

Now use those phrases above as the categories for your tree map