Week 5.

1
Rise and Decline of the
Qing State:
Qing Expansion (ca.
1600–1800)

MIN Zhen, Cat and Butterfly, 1788

Today’s agenda
• Finish up a few slides from last Thursday on Tokugawa Japan & Joseon Korea
• Rise and flourishing of the Qing Dynasty (1636/1644–1911), China’s last
imperial dynasty
 Further Edo
Developments: Overview
• Commercialization
• Expansion of Tokugawa state
• Rising peasant unrest
Shopping street in Edo (Tokyo). Note prominent shop signs, including
Mitsui’s logo.
 Expansion into
Hokkaido and Decline
of Ainu People
• Expansion of the polity to the
far northern island of Hokkaido
• Displacement and assimilation
of non-Japanese Ainu people
 Transformation of
the Countryside
• Increasing independence of
countryside and villages
• Rising income inequality amongst
farmers
• Increasing peasant unrest in late
Tokugawa
• Center of activity begins to shift
back from castle towns to
countryside because of monopoly
restrictions, taxes, and price
regulation in cities: “Now people
from the castle-town go to the
country to shop!” (early 19th c.)
 Transformation of
the Samurai Class
and Identity
• Study of martial arts,
Confucianism
• Yamaga Sokō (1622–
1685) 山鹿素行 and
development of Bushidō
武⼠道 (‘the warrior’s
Way’)
• Reduction of samurai
stipends by 30-40%,
leaving lower-level
samurai in near poverty
Korea
• Distinctive Korean polity emerges ca. 300
CE: “Three Kingdoms” period
• Silla unites peninsula in 668 CE, reaffirms
tributary status with China (Korea = “little
brother”)
• Koguryo (Goguryeo) rises up in 918; re-
unifies the peninsula in 936, names polity
Koryo
• Kingdom of Koryo, 918-1392
 Joseon (Chosŏn)
Korea, 1392-1910
• 1200s: rise of the Mongols, 1231
invasion of Korea (Koryŏ Dynasty)
• 1392 General Yi Sŏnggye establishes
Chosŏn Dynasty; uninterrupted rule
by Yi kings until 1910
• Establishes new capital along the
banks of the Han River: Seoul
• Reaffirms status as loyal tributary of
China
• Yangban 양반 / 兩班, the “two
orders” of civil and military
aristocracy
 “The Lovers
Under the
Moon,”
Hyewon (1758-
1813)
Yangban women
during the 19th c.
19th c. Western
etching of Yangban
men
 Later Joseon
Period, 1600-1910

• 1592-98: Japanese warlord Hideyoshi

invades Korea (Imjin War)
• 1627 and 1636: Manchus invade Korean
peninsula and temporarily subjugate
Korean court to Manchu administration.
Korea formally becomes a tributary state
to the Manchu-led Qing State (1636–
1911)
• Increasing instability in 19th c., with
struggles between conservatives and
reformers
Rise of Qing 清: Overview
• The Decline of the Ming (1572-
1644)
• The Rise of the Manchus (1590s-
1644)
• The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911):

• “High Qing” 1644–early 19th c.

• “Long Nineteenth Century”
(Thursday)
 Decline of the Ming（1368–1644）
• Poor leadership: the Wanli Emperor (reigned 1572-1620) spent
only one out of every three days attending court, eventually
stopped going altogether starting in 1589. Since appointments
and promotions required his approval, court grinds to a standstill

• Misallocation of state resources: increased taxes and government

corruption

• Popular revolts due to high taxes, crop failures

 The Japanese Invasions of Korea (1592-1598)
• Initiated by the hegemonic warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi
(1537-1598), with plans to invade Ming China next
• Korea’s Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897) a tributary kingdom of
the Ming, requested aid once Pyongyang was threatened
• The Ming court surprised by the successes of Hideyoshi’s
army, eventually sent tens of thousands of troops over the
course of Hideyoshi’s campaigns
• The combined Joseon and Ming forces forced Hideyoshi’s
forces to withdraw from the peninsula in 1593 and again in
1598
• Expenditures hurt the Ming court’s finances, also
weakened hold on Manchuria
 The Manchus
• Descendants of the Jürchen ⼥真 people who
founded an earlier dynasty called the Jin ⾦朝
(1115-1234)

• Lived in regions northeast from Chinese

territory (today this area is part of China, in
modern-day Heilongjiang and Jilin Provinces)

• Largely a semi-nomadic, hunter-gatherer

peoples. Though some groups did practice
farming and lived in towns alongside Han
Chinese

• The Ming Dynasty frontier defense tried to

control their expansion, granted official titles
and giving trading privileges
 Nurhaci (1559-1626)
• Born to a noble family of Jürchen 女真

• Offered to assist the allied Joseon and Ming forces against

Hideyoshi’s armies in the 1590s, received honorific titles in return
(though he did not participate)

• Supposedly broke relations with the Ming in 1610 because the local
Chinese governor killed his father and grandfather

• Worked to unify the various Jürchen and Mongol tribes between

1610 and 1620, organizing the people under his rule through the
Eight Banners system

• Invaded China’s northeastern territory of Liaodong, attempted to

rule equitably and benevolently until Han uprising in 1623, after
Jürchen and Han people were physically separated, and Han people
were punished much more severely
Imperial Banquet in the Garden of Ten-Thousand Trees, 18th c.
 The Eight Banners
System
• Nurhaci’s method for organizing his
troops and their families

• Eight groups distinguished by color

(yellow, red, white, and blue) and
whether or not they have a border

• The banners were used as

identification devices during battle

• And as the basis for the population

registration system
Plain Blue Banner Bordered Blue Banner
 Hong Taiji/Abahai (1592-1643)
• Nurhaci’s eighth son, in charge of the plain yellow and bordered yellow
banners

• Began civil service examinations, and ordered alterations in the Jürchen

written language for the purposes of record-keeping and official
documentation

• Welcomed numerous Ming defectors, many of whom were generals who

brought their troops with them

• Established the Qing 清 Dynasty in 1636, renaming his people as “the

Manchus” 满族 (may or may not be based on a Buddhist term meaning “great
good fortune”)

• In 1638 forces the Joseon Kings to switch loyalties and become a tributary

• Suddenly died in 1643, leaving his younger brother Dorgon (1612-1650) as

regent for his successor, still a child at the time
 Adapting to China
• Dorgon issued decrees ordering Han Chinese men to shave the fronts of their
heads and braid their hair in the hairstyle known as the queue.

• Followed by orders to wear Manchu clothing (high collar and tight jacket
fastened at the right shoulder) and the banning of footbinding among Manchu
women

• Manchu bannermen could take Han Chinese women as consorts or concubines,

though their children were considered Manchus.

• Adoption of Ming structure of government: six ministries model from the Ming,
with a Manchu and a Han Chinese president and two Manchu and two Han
Chinese vice-presidents for each

• Civil service exam based on the classical literary tradition reinstituted in 1646

• Manchus a minority in an increasingly multi-ethnic state, as military campaigns

expanded the Qing government’s reach to Tibet, Xinjiang, and more
Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722)
• Ruled from 1661 to 1722, the longest of any emperor in Chinese history

• Issued the “Sacred Edict” in 1670 to extol Confucian values while studying
the classics so as to portray himself as a sage king

• Hired numerous scholars to write dictionaries, encyclopedias, collections

of prose and poetry, etc., even allowed arias from the pro-Ming play The
Peach Blossom Fan to be performed at court

• Engaged in border campaigns against Russia around Albazin on the Amur

River, leading to the Jesuit-mediated Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, settling
the border roughly to the present day

• Also attacked the Zunghar Tribes in the far wester (modern-day Xinjiang)
and installed a pro-Qing Dalai Lama after invading Tibet
Expanding the Empire: Comparing Ming to Qing

NB: Tibetan Plateau, Xinjiang area, Mongolia, etc.

Qianlong Emperor (1711-1799)
• The longest-reigning de facto ruler in Chinese history, ruling personally from
1735 to 1796 and informally from 1796 to 1799 (so as not to rule longer than his
grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor)

• Complete the subjugation of Xinjiang in 1759, placing it under the control of the
Manchus and some Han Chinese bannermen while allowing locals to continue
their own cultural practices (Islam, no queues)

• Patronized Jesuit painters, including Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), famous

for his fusion of European and Chinese painting styles

• Dealt with the collapse of the Qing-backed Le Dynasty (Vietnam) in 1788,

conflict with the Gurkhas of Nepal invading Tibet in the early 1790s, and a
number of uprisings across China caused by general discontent and anger
towards official corruption
 Inspections of Suzhou
• “Tours of inspection to the south” (南巡
nanxun), by the Kangxi Emperor in 1689 and
the Qianlong Emperor in 1751, traveled by both
roads and the Grand Canal

• The inspections served the purpose of

integrating the south, where the Ming court
had fled

• Each depicted in series of twelve scrolls by the

court painters

• Much attention to the inspections of Suzhou, a

major commercial center and the largest non-
capital city in the world at the time.
Detail from scroll depicting Kangxi Emperor’s southern inspection tour, 1689
Note camels carrying collapsed yurts on their backs
Qianlong inspections of Suzhou
 China and Trade
with West in 18th c.
• 1685: Qing opens trading
ports at Canton and Ningbo
• Hong (⾏) merchant
monopolies, and Cohong
system
• Lord Macartney’s mission
for trading privileges,
expanded access, end to
the Hong system, and
permanent diplomatic
residence in China
Demeaning Images in England Following Lord
Macartney’s meeting with Qianlong, 1793