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Now, I know what you're thinking. China Part 3?!
Blue, come on! We've been over this so many times already!
We all know it's just gonna fall apart again.
Uh-huh. Uh-
*But* what if I told you that in this video,
it only collapses once?
I know, that's a hefty swerve from the way things have been going so far,
but the neat thing about late dynastic China is that it stays in one piece for like seven hundred straight years.
wait is that a new record--? GUYS!
That's a new record. Yeah, China you did it!
So we got a lot of China to get through in not a lot of time,
so to figure out how the last dynasties kept it together,
for better and for worse,
Let's do some history.
Step one is the Mongols,
who swept in from the north to conquer the Jin dynasty at the start of the 1200s
and then the lower Song Dynasty
in the latter part of the century.
I've talked about the Mongols elsewhere,
but to briefly recap, small tribes become big Empire and split into four khanates.
Kublai Khan's Yuan dynasty became the hot new Empire in charge of China while the rest of the Mongol Empire fell to the three other
grandsons of the big Genghis and kubal I wasted no time in harnessing a freshly conquered Asia to kick-start a new great era for the
Silk Road
The four khanates worked together to transport goods and ideas between east and west for the first time in several centuries
Trade prosperity helped Kublai amass great prestige and treasure for the yuan dynasty and his newly constructed capital in Beijing became legendary in part
Thanks to the good press from outside visitors like Marco Polo a lot of what we know about the Yuan Dynasty
Comes from the Polos journals written after spending 17 years working in Kublai's court. A detailed Chinese
geography and the extensive canals, the bureaucratic system of governments, social welfare programs and immense riches that were first regarded with skepticism
But a solid proportion of it has since been corroborated
One thing he noted was that while Kublai knew his Chinese culture inside and out
He and all the other Mongols were still fundamentally outsiders and much of the ethnic Han-Chinese
population really didn't like this Khan dude rolling in and opening up their civilization to so many foreigners, you know
They really should have built uh-oh. Oh, right. That one didn't work at all did it? Ooh?
Ready? Okay moving on. The Yuan Dynasty had other problems too for one the bureaucrats that Kublai imported to govern weren't all up to the
task of managing such a large Empire. They also accidentally destroyed their currency, but explaining monetary policy is kind of a nightmare.
So the point is maybe not a surprise, in retrospect, but running an empire with the horsie shootie guys who are primarily famous for destroying
Empires is a fundamentally risky play political infighting also plagues the latter half of the dynasty
So for all it did along the Silk Road to bring Europe closer to Asia
It couldn't save itself from a nationalist rebellion that overthrew the Yuan Dynasty and founded the Ming Dynasty in 1368
They and their successors, the Qing Dynasty have a mixed reputation
depending on who you ask. On the upside the Ming did three huge things
They stabilized China and held down the fort for 300 peaceful years
They got stupid rich in the process and they pulled off one of the biggest cultural preservation programs in history
But it came at the substantial cost of a vastly diminished outside influence on the world around them, which would have catastrophic
Consequences down the line and also the first Ming Emperor was a bloodthirsty tyrant who killed for sports
Pros and cons. Step one for the Ming's revitalisation of Chinese culture was reinstating the Confucian civil service examination
Which the Mongols had axed a century earlier the test guaranteed that only the best scholars worked as bureaucrats
But also ensured that the government ran on a firm Confucian foundation by testing students on history philosophy and composition skills
The tests were grueling
Even for the students that could afford the best tutors because proctors literally threw you in a locked room for three days while you wrote
the test, you know
It's legit when modern college admissions look like absolute
Weak sauce by comparison with so much attention placed on this exam by families schools and government
It's no surprise that Ming China had arguably the best educated populace in history up to that point. Step two of the Ming Dynasty
Goes hard took them out to sea as Emperor Yongle charged a Muslim eunuch named Jung ha to go on a series of naval
expeditions across Southeast Asia with a fleet of
Inconceivably massive ships Zheng He traded goods acquired treasure and told everybody he came across how positively dope the Ming Dynasty
Was a century before Vasco da Gama reached India
Zheng He was bouncing around East Asia and the Indian Ocean spreading Chinese culture like a personal single fleet Silk Road
I can't even begin to talk about just how cooled Zheng-He is without derailing this entire video. Annoyingly
The voyages were stopped for a few reasons soon after emperor Yongle died
And as far as I'm concerned
It's everybody's loss
Resources had to be diverted towards refurbishing the Great Wall to key the Mongols from coming back since the Ming army had become laughably
ineffective, so the great wall that you see today is the Ming wall and it looks cool,
it's got a bunch of pretty watch towers and most importantly it's you know
not broken in the middle of it like the old wall was
Whoops, but as we'll see in a little bit it still only vaguely helped between axing the naval expeditions and doubling down on the wall
The mid-1400s is where the Ming's conservatism came to bite them in the collective
But while they did preserve Chinese culture for centuries of peace
they completely abdicated China's historical role as a cultural trendsetter and
Technological innovator right when European powers were getting ready to flex on the entire globe
But this isn't just a dramatic alas for the history. That could have been this also caused like real
problems that led to the collapse of the Ming Empire
Big oof. By the mid 1500s the Ming's retirement from international
affairs turned into full-on political frailty as corrupt officials did whatever they wanted,
the army was useless against northern invaders and the Navy was useless against pirates in the 1500s
They couldn't organize famine relief in the early 1600s and the Emperor's lived
Completely oblivious to everything going on outside of the Forbidden City in Beijing
you know how the earth king from Avatar went his entire life without even leaving his palace and seeing the city of Ba Sing Se
that he lives in! Yeah, this is where that trope comes from by now
Yeah, China wasn't actively civil warring for centuries
But also no one was shocked when the Manchu invaders from the north swept in and conquered the Ming Dynasty in 1644
The government was so useless that it didn't even know
It was getting invaded until the army showed up in
Beijing and let me tell you that is a terrible surprise to wake up to in the morning. And this takes us to the Qing
Dynasty who, for reasons that will become painfully clear in a few minutes, is the last dynasty in Chinese history, but first
Let's talk about the not Empire crushing stuff because in the 16 and 1700s things were actually going really well
Although the Manchu rulers were foreigners
they kept Confucianism as the philosophy of state and continued promoting Chinese culture maybe unsurprising
But the early Emperor's were also very skilled conquerors
Kangxi nearly doubled the size of the Empire and Qanlong pushed considerably further west during his more than six decades long reign. That's
impressive. However, all of their conquering may have slightly bankrupted and broke the military
But right now it's fine
The 1700s were extremely kind to the Qing as they collected antiquities and amassed enough revenue to completely cancel
yearly taxes on four separate occasions at that point you might as well be
Actually growing money on trees and speaking of growing, peace and prosperity helped China's population to more than double during the 1700s
Tell you if you've been around the block on this channel, you've seen a lot worse than that
But now that we've gotten a good century under our belts
Let's see just how badly everything is going to fall apart to that end
I present to you how to ruin your civilization in five easy steps! Step one:
Actually governing your empire is for boring nerds
So like do literally anything else: wine, women, anything but work. Step two: You know
the new agricultural goods you import in order to keep pace with your wildly expanding population?
You don't need them! Can find the Portuguese to Macau and stick the Brits in Canton!
Foreigners are weird and you don't want them gumming up your nice empire. Just be sure to ignore the fact that the Qing ruling class
is entirely composed of non Chinese Manchurians and it'll work out great. Step 3:
You see those tiny European nations building global mercantile super powers? Dumb! The world is too big and change is scary
so stick your head in the dirt and ignore everything from the outside world.
Yeah
You could be out there
gallivanting across the seas to share goods
culture and ideas making everybody better off in the process and increasing your own prestige and well being but that's like
effort? No! See step one
gross
step four
Antagonize the British Empire you can take him actually
Just exist in the 1800s and be non Britain and then Britain will just make your life hell anyway
How could they do that you ask?
Buckle up say for instance that you're running a huge trade surplus with the outside world and Britain would do anything to sell you stuff
Including and not limited to growing opium in India and exporting it illegally to China in
Shockingly large quantities going from about 700 tons of opium in 1820 to over triple that fifteen years later
Then after failing to address the problem for multiple decades
Confiscate all of the opium, imprison British merchants and form a blockade of the port of Canton, then, uhh
you get war declared on you
Twice. Britain will probably bring in an armada and wreak havoc up and down the Yangtze River until you surrender at point
They'll force you into an extremely humiliating treaty ceding the island of Hong Kong, opening more ports, paying war
reparations and waving all of Britain's import taxes. Yikes.
rinse and repeat
except this time add France and America to the mix and become helpless to every major foreign power carving up your empire and hijacking your
economy.[breathes] So, um, that would be how Britain could make your life hell in the 1800s
step 5!
No matter how bad things look make sure to resist every conceivable opportunity to actually fix your problems until it is
absolutely too late.
When for instance
revolutionary school teachers call for modernizing reforms and then inside the 14 year long Taiping rebellion in
1850 just ignore all of their suggestions. You don't need them
You're doing great
Don't mind that the rebellion decimated the agriculture of the Yangtze River basin and now you have no way to feed your massive population
That's a Venn problem. Even when parts of your government do start reforming crippled them at every point in the process
Are they trying to industrialize great! Embezzle the money to make a new boat for your palace. Problem solved! Better yet?
Start your own rebellion against foreign influence and storm all of the foreign embassies in Beijing
It doesn't matter that you're revolutionaries are primarily martial artists and the foreigners have guns
Details... Then after that you too can be on your way to foreign exploitation and imperial atrophy
Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. So that's basically how to ruin your empire in five easy steps
It's really amazing. What you can do when you stick your head in the sand and ignore all of your problems
Hmm. Anyway towards the end China looks a lot like Ottoman history where major European powers and also in this case Japan dug their claws
in dismantling the Empire piece by piece. In 1912, the six-year-old Emperor Puyi abdicated the throne bringing
4000 years of dynastic rule to an end and an entirely new conflict for dominion of China began in earnest
What happens next is that they're a puppy?
In conclusion leave winnie-the-pooh alone
Sorry got sidetracked there. In any case that's the history of late dynastic China as I've argued before with the Ottomans
I don't like calling
Stagnation onto a period in history as some justification for outright
dismissing it. We often look at what isn't or what could have been but history is fickle
So it pays to also reflect on what still is
But beyond that I'd say the takeaway here is that there's a balance to be struck with which way you face. If you look outwards,
there's a promise of influence, power and a chance to connect the world
But you risk losing your own identity if you prioritize
productivity over culture, by contrast facing inward like the later Ming and the Qing allows the society to live largely
peacefully and in accordance with ancient customs, but clinging to the past
suffocates innovation and history will steamroll you without mercy.
To put it another way, there are advantages to both. But whichever way you push, be careful that you don't push too hard.
History likes to push back.
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you. Again, That's thegreatcoursesplus.com/overlysarcastic. And for real, good luck on those finals guys. You can do it
Thanks so much for watching. This China series was a lot of fun to work on these past few months
And I hope you enjoyed watching it as much as I enjoyed making it big and far away topics
Like this can be pretty scary to just jump in to you, but I'm looking forward to taking more swings at history
That's well
Not just the Mediterranean... What? I know what I like. Sue me. Next video for me will be something that's not strictly
educational, but still a historical and definitely fun. I'll see you then