AP Chapter 22 Asian transitions in an Age of Global Change

Bonds of Commerce: The Asian Sea Trading Network, c When Vasco de Gama reached Asia in his caravel ships he found Asians were only interested in the silver they had on board and that Muslims were already entrenched in Asia The Asian Sea Trading network was broken into three main zones, each of which was focused on major centers of handicraft manufacture

Caravel

3 Main Zones of Trade In the west was an Arab zone anchored on the glass, carpet, and tapestry making Islamic heartlands at the head of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf India, with its superb cotton textiles China, excelled in producing paper, porcelain and silk textiles

Continued Of the raw materials, circulating in the system, the broadest demand and highest prices were paid for spices, which came mainly from Ceylon and the islands at the eastern end of what is today the Indonesian Archipelago Much navigation was of the coasting variety There was no central control of trade Military force was usually absent from commercial exchanges within it

Continued Although Arab sailors and merchants were found in its ports throughout much of the network they had no sense of common cause Because all the peoples participating in the network had something to trade for the products they wanted from others, exchanges within the system were largely peaceful

Trading Empire: The Portuguese Response to the Encounter at Calicut Unwilling to forgo the possibilities for profit that a sea route to Asia presented, the Portuguese resolved to take by force what they could not get though fair trade Their sudden appearance in Asian waters and their interjection of sea warfare into a peaceful trading system gained the European intruders an element of surprise that kept their adversaries off balance in the critical early years of empire building

Portuguese Bartering

Continued From 1507 onward the Portuguese strove to capture towns and building fortresses at a number of strategic points on the Asian trading network In 1507 they took Ormuz at the southern and of the Persian Gulf; in 1510 they captured Goa on the western Indian coast; most critical of all, in the next year they successfully stormed Malacca on the tip of the Malayan peninsula

Continued Ships and naval stations became the key components of a Portuguese trading empire that was financed and directly by the kings of Portugal The aim of the empire was to establish the Portuguese monopoly control over key Asian products, particularly spices, such as cinnamon

Portuguese Vulnerability and the Rise of the Dutch and English trading Empires The Portuguese managed, for some decades to control much of the flow of spices, such as nutmeg and mace, which were grown in limited areas They simply did not have the soldiers or the ships to sustain their monopolies much less the licensing system

Continued The overextended and declining Portuguese trading empire proved no match for the Dutch and English rivals, whose fleets challenged it in the early 17 th Century The Dutch decided to concentrate on the monopoly control of certain spices rather than on Asian trade more generally The Dutch had more numerous and better armed ships and went about the business of monopoly control in a much more systematic fashion

Dutch East India Company

Continued The Dutch found that the greatest profits in the long run could be gained from peacefully working themselves into the long established Asian trading system The Dutch came to rely mainly on the fees they charged for transporting products from one area in Asia to another

Continued The English also adopted the peaceful trading patterns although their enterprises were concentrated along the coasts of India and on the cloth trade rather than on the spices of southeast Asia

Going Ashore: European’s Tribute Systems in Asia As Europeans moved inland and away from the sea, their military advantages and their ability to dominate the Asian peoples rapidly disappeared By the mid-18 th Century, the Dutch not only controlled the coffee growing areas but were the paramount power on Java

Trade Routes

Continued The conquest of Luzon (Philippines) by the Spanish was facilitated by the fact that their animistic inhabitants lived in small states the Spanish could subjugate one by one In each area where the Europeans went ashore in the early centuries of expansion, they set up tribute regimes that closely resembled those the Spanish imposed on the Native American people of the New World

Continued Tribute was paid in the form of agricultural products grown by the peasantry under forced labor systems supervised by the peasants own elites

Spreading the Faith The spread of Roman Catholicism was a fundamental part of the global mission of the Portuguese and Spanish India appeared to be one of the most promising fields of religious conversion The untouchables and other low caste groups made it nearly impossible for the missionaries to approach prospective upper caste converts

Continued Perhaps the greatest successes of the Christian missions occurred in the northern islands of the Philippines, which had not previously been exposed to a world religion such as Islam or Buddhism Almost all Filipinos clung to their traditional ways and in the process seriously comprised Christian beliefs and practices

Ming China: A Global Mission refused Zhu Yuanzhang declared himself the Hongwu emperor in 1368, which was the founding of the Ming Dynasty Another scholar-gentry revival began Because he was poorly educated Zhu viewed the scholar-gentry with suspicion He reinstated the civil service examination system and insured they were well versed in the Confucian classics

Zhu Yuanzhang

Continued In the Ming Era and the Qing that followed, the examinations played a greater role in determining entry into the Chinese bureaucracy than had been the case under any earlier dynasty

Reform: Hongwu’s Efforts to Rout Out Abuses in Court Politics Early in his reign, Hongwu abolished the position of chief minister, which had formerly been the key link between the many ministries of central government The powers that had amassed by those who occupied this office were transferred to the Emperor himself

Continued He introduced the practice of public beatings for bureaucrats found guilty of corruption or incompetence Hongwu also introduced measures to cut down on the court factionalism and never ending conspiracies that had ended the power of earlier dynasties

Continued He decreed that the emperors wives should come only from humble family origins He warned against allowing eunuchs to occupy positions of independent power and sought to limit their numbers He established the practice of exiling all potential rivals to the throne to estates in the provinces, and he forbade them to become involved in political affairs

A Return to Scholar-Gentry Social Dominance Hongwu introduced measures that would improve the lot of common people He promoted public works projects aimed at improving farmers’ yields Hongwu decreed that unoccupied lands would become the tax exempt property of those who cleared and cultivated them He lowered forced labor demands on the peasantry

Continued He promoted silk and cotton cloth production and other handicrafts that provided supplemental income for peasant households Gentry households with members in government service were exempted from land taxes and enjoyed special privileges Many gentry families engaged in money lending on the side

Continued Almost all added to their estates either by buying up lands held by peasant landholders or by foreclosing on loans made to farmers in times of need in exchange for mortgages on their family plots Displaced farmers become tenants of large landowners or landless laborers moving about in search of employment The virtues of the gentry class were celebrated in stories and popular illustrations

Continued At most levels of Chinese society, the Ming period continued the subordination of youths to elders and women to men that had been steadily intensifying in earlier periods

An Age of Growth: Agriculture, Population, Commerce, and the Arts The first decades of the Ming period were an age of buoyant economic growth in China that both was fed by and resulted in unprecedented contacts with other civilizations overseas The introduction of maize (corn), sweet potatoes, and peanuts by the Spanish and Portuguese was very important in the Yangtze region

Yangtze Economic River Area

Continued The new crops was an important factor behind the great surge in population growth that was underway and the end of the Ming Era Agrarian expansion and population increase were paralleled in early Ming times by a renewal of commercial growth The terms of trade ran very much in China’s favor

Continued The merchant class reaped the biggest profits from the economic boom Europeans were allowed to trade only in Macao and Canton (Ming China) A good portion of their gains was transformed to the state in the form of taxes and to the scholar-gentry in the form of bribes for official favors

Continued Ming prosperity was reflected in the fine arts, which found generous patrons both at court and among the scholar-gentry class more generally Major innovation was occurring in literature The full development of the Chinese novel occurred during this time

An Age of Expansion: The Zhenghe Expeditions

Continued Between 1405 and 1423 the admiral Zhenghe, one of Emperor Yunglo’s most trusted subordinates, led seven major expeditions overseas A mix of motives, including a desire to explore other lands and proclaim the glory of the Ming Empire to the wider world, prompted the voyages

Continued The last three expeditions reached as far as Persia, Southern Arabia, and the east coast of Africa The initial fleet contained 62 ships

Zhenghe

Chinese Retreat and the Arrival of the Europeans In 1390, the first imperial edict aimed at limiting Chinese overseas commerce was issued Christian missionaries infiltrated Chinese coastal areas and tried to gain access to the court, where they hoped to curry favor with the Ming Emperors The chief advisors became the prime target of the Jesuit Mission

Continued Most court officials were suspicious of these strange looking “barbarians” with large noses and hairy faces, and they tried to limit their contacts with the imperial family

Ming Decline and the Chinese Predicament By the late 1500s the Ming retreat from overseas involvement had become just one facet of a familiar pattern of dynastic decline Decades of rampant official corruption, exacerbated by the growing isolation of weak rulers by the thousands of eunuchs who gradually came to dominate life within the Forbidden City, eventually eroded the foundations on which the empire was built

Forbidden City

Continue Public works projects fell into disrepair and floods, drought, and famine soon ravaged the land Some peasants sold their children into slavery to keep them from starving True to the pattern of dynastic rise and fall, internal disorder resulted in and was intensified by foreign threats and renewed assaults by nomadic peoples from beyond the Great Wall

Continued The Chinese bureaucrats and military forces were unable to put an end to the epidemic of Japanese (and ethnic Chinese) pirate attacks that ravaged the southern coast in the mid 16 th Century The dynasty was finally toppled in 1644 by rebels from within

Fending off the West: Japan’s Reunification and the First Challenge By the 16 th Century, the Daimyo stalemate and the pattern of recurring civil war were so entrenched in Japanese society that a succession of three remarkable military leaders was needed to restore unity and internal peace The first leader was Nobunaga,

Nobunaga

He was the first of the Daimyos, to make extensive use of the firearms that the Japanese had begun to acquire from the Portuguese in the 1540s In 1573, Nobunaga deposed the last of the Ashikaga Shoguns By 1580, he had unified much of central Honshu under his command In 1582 one of his vassal generals killed him

Ashikaga Japan

General Toyotomi

Continued General Toyotomi Hideyoshi matched his master (Nobunaga) in military prowess but was far more skilled at diplomacy By 1590 he became the military master of Japan He launched two attacks against Korea (one in 1592 it failed, the other in 1597 was going on when he died in 1598)

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Tokugawa Ieyasu succeeded to Hideyoshi’s power In 1603 he was granted the power and title of Shogun by the Emperor The following centuries became known as the Tokugawa Shogunate Most of the lands in central Honshu either were controlled directly by the Tokugawa family, who now ruled the land from the city of Edo (later Tokyo), or were held by Daimyos who were closely allied with the Shoguns

Continued It was soon clear that Tokugawas victory had put an end to the civil wars and brought a semblance of political unity to the islands

Dealing With the European Challenge European traders brought the Japanese goods that were produced mainly in India, China, and Southeast Asia and exchanged them for silver, copper, and lacquer ware European traders and the missionaries who followed them to the islands brought firearms, printing presses, and other western devices such as clocks

Continued The guns revolutionized Japanese warfare and contributed much to the victories of the unifiers Nobunaga saw Christians as a counterforce to the militant Buddhist Hideyoshi was lukewarm toward the missionary enterprise With the fall of the Buddhist sects the missionaries were of no longer use to Hideyoshi

Japan’s Self-Imposed Isolation Growing doubt about European intentions, and fears that both merchants and missionaries might subvert the existing social order, led to official measures to restrict foreign activities in Japan, beginning in the late 1580s Hideyoshi ordered the Christian missionaries to leave the islands

Continued By the mid 1590s, Hideyoshi was actively persecuting both Christian missionaries and converts Ieyasu officially banned Christianity in 1614 In 1616, foreign traders were confined to a handful of cities, in the 1630s, all Japanese ships were forbidden to trade or even sail overseas

Continued By the 1640s, only a limited number of Dutch and Chinese ships were allowed to carry on commerce on the small island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay By the mid 17 th Century, Japan’s retreat into almost total isolation was complete

Deshima Island

Continued Much of the 18 th Century was spent in consolidating the internal control of the Tokugawa Shogunate by extending bureaucratic administration into the vassal Daimyo domains throughout the island The school of National Learning was a new ideology that laid great emphasis on Japan’s unique historical experience and the revival of indigenous culture at the expense of Chinese imports such as Confucianism