to a trickle. What became known as the “Japanese pirates” were actually bands of Chinese and Japanese merchants and pirates, often based in Japan, conducting illegal trade, raiding ships, and looting Chinese coastal towns and villages. It remained a challenge to the government throughout the Ming Dynasty.
Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662) is an interesting case study of the true nature of the so‐called “Japanese pirates.” His father was a Han Chinese who was the head of a huge group of pirates and maritime merchants. He had a home in Japan, and one of his wives was a Japanese woman who was the mother of Zheng Chenggong. The Ming government seduced him to return to China by granting him a high position in the Ming navy. While commanding Ming troops, he continued to conduct trade with Japan. He brought his son back to China to receive a Chinese education, and the son grew up to manage much of his father’s military and mercantile enterprise. When the Manchus were in the course of conquering China, the father went over to the Manchus. The son broke with his father and became a major resistance leader. He established his base along the coast and on the offshore islands, and conducted maritime trade and piracy. The largest island off the coast was Taiwan, which had been under Dutch control for nearly three decades. Zheng sent his troops to retake it by force, and governed it in the name of the Ming Dynasty. He also tried to extend his control to Southeast Asia through the local Chinese population, but was unsuccessful. The Manchus managed to capture Taiwan in 1683, thereby removing the last anti‐Manchu stronghold and bringing all of China under Manchu rule.
The Ming government faced another challenge of a philosophical nature. Wang Shouren (1472–1529), who was a scholar‐official and army general of high standing, put forth the “Doctrine of the Heart,” despite the government’s harsh enforcement of Zhu Xi’s ultraconservative Neo‐Confucianism. His theory claimed that both Heaven’s principles and human’s good conscience exist in an individual’s heart, that truth can be found through introspection, and that “knowing is acting, and acting is knowing.” His philosophy substituted an individual’s personal beliefs in Confucian classics as the basis for ultimate truth. It was a liberating force that restored an individual’s autonomy and freed an individual from the shackles of Confucianism’s classics and its hierarchy. Obviously, it was a frontal attack on Zhu Xi’s demand to “promote Heaven’s principles; wipe out human desire,” and was viewed as out‐and‐out heresy. But it had a flip side. Carrying individualism to absurd extremes, many of Wang’s followers indulged in unchecked flights of fantasy and empty talk, and lost their anchor in reality. Scholars would pride themselves on not reading and not discussing real issues, and officials would brag about their ignorance of matters of state.
Ming China reached great heights of achievement. It was the world’s largest country in terms of territory and population, and also the world’s richest country. It had the world’s most advanced science and technology. But all that power and splendor was a swan song. In late Ming, the malignant growth of political corruption, high‐level infighting, eunuchs’ interference in state affairs, and the employment of secret agents were out of control. Against this background of rot and decay, two major forces rose to bring down the dynasty. One was a storm of peasant rebellions, and the other was the non‐Han Manchu invasion.
Li Zicheng (1606–1645) was the leader of the strongest peasant rebel army. He started life as a shepherd boy, then worked at a government post house. When wanted for multiple murders, he fled and joined the army, where he was promoted, but was again involved in murders. He incited a mutiny, joined a rebel army (1629), and worked his way up to becoming the commander of the largest rebel army of half a million strong. He engaged government troops in hit‐and‐run warfare, never bothering to establish a permanent base. His marauding troops left behind large swaths of devastation as they swept through the country, and they eventually took the Ming capital Beijing (1644); the cornered Ming emperor hanged himself. Li declared himself emperor, as his rebel troops indulged in looting luxurious homes, and raping and killing freely. The rebel army’s fighting capacity melted away, as discipline broke down and infighting broke out.
While China was in turmoil, the Manchus on China’s northeastern frontier were getting ready to launch an invasion. Ming General Wu Sangui went over to the Manchus and joined their fight against the rebels. When they breached the defenses of rebel‐held Beijing, Li Zicheng fled and continued to fight and run till he was presumed dead. How he died is one of the more intriguing enigmas in Chinese history. The Ming regime had collapsed, and the rebellion was crushed. The invading Manchus took over the country, and Han Chinese fell under Manchu rule for the next three centuries, just as they had earlier been under Mongol rule for one century.
Why Not?
Ming China more or less coincided with the Europe that was emerging from the Middle Ages and entering the Modern Age. But China never took the step forward. China was large and prosperous. It had a large and thriving domestic market, advanced science and technology, a huge reserve of capital, and a vigorous merchant class, so why didn’t modern capitalism develop there? Scholars cite a range of reasons, but they all boil down to the absolute power of the emperor and his government.
Emperors always viewed large concentrations of wealth as prey or threat. With absolute power and unrestrained by law, they could arbitrarily prevent the formation of great concentrations of wealth, or exploit or destroy it.
1 State monopolies had existed since the Han Dynasty. These supersized economic entities used ultra‐economic measures to take control of upper‐stream resources, such as rice, salt, iron, copper, gold, and silver. The imperial nation’s wealth was actually the private property of the emperor and a few high officials. They had many ways of confiscating large concentrations of private wealth on false charges or demanding big merchants to donate to state projects and supply the government with funds for war. The cards were stacked against the merchants without government ties.
2 The state ideology of Confucianism ranked merchants at the very bottom of society. The ultimate goal of a rich merchant was, rather than encouraging his sons to be more successful in his business, to instead give his sons a good education in the hope that someday they would pass the imperial examinations and enter the establishment as government officials. China’s merchant class could never develop into a revolutionary force as its Western counterparts did.
3 The abolition of primogeniture was a uniquely Chinese way to prevent wealth concentration and weaken potential threats to the throne. By demanding the equal division of an inheritance among the sons, the fortunes of a potential rival were scattered and the threat was defused.
Ming merchant Shen Wansan (1296–1376) was a good example of how vulnerable a wealthy merchant was, as he was exposed to the emperor’s arbitrary powers and unprotected by the law. Shen had accumulated his legendary wealth by doing overseas trade and expanding his landholdings. He was said to have made large gifts of gold and silver to Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, and paid for one‐third of the cost of building the city wall of the capital Nanjing. But the paranoid and envious emperor saw him as a threat. He exiled Shen to the frontier and let him die there. Still unsatisfied, he later found excuses to imprison and execute major members of Shen’s extended family, thus bringing an end to the family commercial empire.
China under Sinicized Manchu Rule: The Early Qing Dynasty (1644–1839)
The Manchu Qing Dynasty compiled the Complete Collection of Chinese Classics, and in the course of it brought about the demise of Chinese classics.
—Wu Han, modern Chinese historian
The Manchu (the early Nüzhen) were a seminomadic people who lived along the rivers and valleys of Manchuria in northeastern China Proper. As the tribes grew in population and strength, they coalesced under one ruler and readied themselves to invade China Proper. They saw their opportunity when the Ming capital fell to Li Zicheng’s rebel army and the Ming emperor hanged himself. They launched their invasion, defeated the rebel army, captured Beijing, and declared that the Ming Dynasty had run its course and that Heaven had passed the “Mandate of Heaven” to the Manchu. They founded the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
The