The Manchu (Ch’ing [Qing]) Dynasty

1

• The Manchu (Ching Qing) Dynasty
• (compiled/edited by Prof. Fred Cheung)
• Main sources
• John King Fairbank, et al., eds., East Asia The
  Great Tradition, and
• Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China.

2

• The Manchu (Ching Qing) Dynasty witnessed both
  the zenith and the dark side of Imperial Chinese
  history in the eighteenth century, the
  population and territory of the Chinese Empire
  were the largest they had ever been yet the
  nineteenth century brought disasters internally
  and especially externally.

3

• The success story of the Manchus was like that of
  the Mongols under Genghis Khan a powerful leader
  united his people, set them on the march, won on
  the horseback, and ruled China.

4

• The Creation of a Sinicized Manchu State.
• Nurhachi (1559-1626), the founder of the Manchu
  state, followed the tradition of Genghis Khan in
  fighting his way to power on the pretext of
  avenging the deaths of his father and
  grandfather. Nurhachi is said to have mobilized
  his family and tribe and exterminated his rivals
  by 1586. He fortified his home and married the
  daughter of one powerful chief and the
  granddaughter of another. Through 30 years of
  negotiation, political marriages and alliances,
  and warfare, Nurhachi united the 4 main Jurchen
  tribes to the north and rose to power.

5

• Then, Nurhachi concentrated on uniting his own
  people. His greatest achievement was to develop
  new administrative institutions, especially the
  Banner system, which came into being gradually
  after 1601. 300 warriors were grouped at first
  under 4 banners, colored yellow, white, blue, and
  red. 4 more were later added, of the same colors
  but bordered with red, except for the red banner,
  which was bordered with white.

6

• Under these 8 banners, all the tribesmen were
  enrolled and thus a transition was made from
  tribal to bureaucratic organization.

7

• In 1618, Nurhachi openly attacked the Ming
  Dynasty, took part of Liaotung, and developed a
  civil administration. In 1625, Nurhachi moved
  his Capital to Mukden. After his death in 1626,
  he was given the title of Tai Tsu (Grand
  Progenitor). He was followed by capable
  successors his 8th son Abahai (1592-1643), and
  especially his 14th son Dorgon (1612-1650), who
  dutifully refused the imperial title in favor of
  a 6-year-old young nephew Shun-chih, r.
  1644-1661, but actually ruled as Regent and
  finally, Nurhachis great grandson the Kang-hsi
  Emperor, under whose 61-year reign from 1661 to
  1722, the Manchu Dynasty was firmly established.

8

• In 1627, Abahai attacked Korea, and again in
  163-1637, making it a vassal state. He defeated
  the Inner Mongols and made them his vassals, too.
  In 1636, Abahai renamed his Dynasty the Ching
  (Pure).

9

• General Wu San-kuei (1612-1678) Chen
  Yuan-yuan
• Rebel Li Tzu-cheng
• Emperor Kang-hsi (r. 1661-1722)
• Kang-hsis main ideological success was with the
  Chinese scholars. He himself was well versed in
  the Classics and had strong intellectual
  interests.
• In 1679, Kang-hsi held a special examination to
  select the compilers of the Ming History and
  succeeded in getting 152 top scholars to take it,
  out of 188 whom he invited.

10

• He also selected Chinese scholars, calligraphers,
  and artists to serve within the palace.
  Important works were produced under his
  patronage, often with a preface by him. These
  included the famous Kang-hsi Dictionary, an
  administrative geography of the Empire, and the
  complete works of Chu Hsi.
• He also supported a massive encyclopedia,
  Synthesis of Books and Illustrations of Ancient
  and Modern Times (Ku-chin tu-shu chi-cheng),
• Thus, Kang-hsi had become an ardent and great
  patron of scholarship.

11

• Much of the intellectual activity of the 18th
  century was carried on in the shadow of the
  imperial institution.
• Emperor Yung-cheng (r. 1723-1735) subsidized
  academies to give employment to scholars.
• Emperor Chien-lung (r. 1736-1795) held power
  for 63 years sponsored 57 large publications
  compiled by a host of learned editors.

12

• In 1773, Tai Cheng was one of the leading
  scholars appointed by Emperor Chien-lung to
  compile a great imperial manuscript library
  called The Complete Library of the Four Treasures
  (Ssu-ku chuen-shu), that is, the 4 branches of
  literature --- the Classics, history, philosophy,
  and belles-lettres.

13

• Military Deterioration
• Certain signs of decline had appeared by 1800
• military ineffectiveness of the banner forces,
• corruption at the top of the bureaucracy, and
• difficulties of livelihood among a greatly
  increased population.

14

• The White Lotus Rebellion
• Population growth
• The official population estimates record a
  year-by-year increase
• In 1741 142 million
• In 1851 432 million
• In an ancient and thickly populated agricultural
  state like China in the 18th-19th centuries, the
  population growth eventually destroyed both the
  prosperity and the peace, which had made it
  possible.

15

• Early Western Contact
• The Rise of Great Nations
• The Portuguese adventurers

16

• The Jesuit Success Story
• God, Gold, Glory theory
• During the decline of the Ming Dynasty and the
  Manchus conquest, some Jesuit missionaries came
  to China, and they became well versed in Chinese
  culture, secured the patronage of high officials,
  and even gained court positions at Peking.

17

• The greatest of these Jesuit pioneers, Matteo
  Ricci (1552-1610) was assigned to China in 1582.
  Ricci was an Italian of impressive personality,
  with beard and blue eyes, They adopted Chinese
  forms as far as possible - they dress in
  Confucian scholars gown. Instead of
  preaching, they held conversations with Chinese
  scholars, arousing their curiosity with
  demonstrations of prisms, clocks, and
  geographical knowledge.

18

• The Jesuits became fluent in Mandarin and
  literate in Chinese Classics. This enabled Ricci
  to represent Christianity as a system of wisdom
  and ethics compatible with Han Confucianism.

19

• Map of the world with China in the middle - the
  Middle Kingdom
• Riccis successors (the later Jesuits) found that
  they could make themselves most useful by
  applying their Western knowledge of astronomy to
  the revision of the Chinese calendar.

20

• In 1622, Johannes Adam Schall von Bell
  (1591-1666), a German Jesuit, came to China. He
  was a knowledgeable astronomer and he secured a
  position in the palace, where he celebrated mass
  in 1632.

21

• The combination of western science and Christian
  moral teachings (some of which, such as love,
  kindness, humanity, benevolence, are similar to
  Confucianism) attracted a number of outstanding
  converts, who were capable of collaborating in
  truly bicultural endeavors.

22

• The most outstanding convert was Hsu Kuang-chi
  (Paul, Christian name, 1562-1633), who became a
  Christian even before he passed the highest
  examination and entered the Hanlin Academy in
  1604.

23

• With Ricci, Hsu completed the translation of the
  first 6 books of Euclids geometry.
• In 1632, Hsu was made a Grand Secretary.
• Both Hsu and Adam Schall also helped the Ming
  court obtain western military arms.
• In 1636, Adam Schall cast some 20 big guns
  (canons) to fight off the Manchus.
• In short, western technology gained acceptance
  more readily than western religion.

24

• After the conquest of 1644, the Manchu kept Adam
  Schall as chief astronomer.
• The young emperor saw him very often, and even
  called him Grandpa, and permitted the building
  of a Christian church at Peking. During the long
  reign of Kang-hsi, the Jesuit mission at Peking
  reached the height of its influence. Their
  position was that of courtiers to the emperor.

25

• The Jesuits were pioneers in contact between 2
  great cultures. Unfortunately, facing 2 ways,
  they eventually suffered attack on both fronts.
  However, the main attack came from their European
  competitors.

26

• The image of China conveyed through the
  influential Jesuit writings from Peking figured
  in the Enlightenment as an example of an ancient
  society, which had a natural morality. In the
  philosophical debate over the relationship
  between morality and religion, the China depicted
  by the Jesuits was cited approvingly by Voltaire
  especially (who gave Confucius and Mencius their
  Latinized names after reading their books).

27

• Furthermore, 18th century Europe enjoyed Chinese
  things, not only an idealized image of rational
  Confucian ethics and benevolent despotism in
  government but also a craze of Chinese things,
  such as the Chinese style in architecture,
  porcelain, furniture, and decoration (in addition
  to tea and spice).

28

• At Peking, the Jesuits continued to serve as
  astronomers, interpreters, painters, architects,
  and engineers. But the Jesuits were
  missionaries, and their effort to apply the
  universal principles of Christianity to the
  realities of China led them into the path of
  cultural accommodation - in short, Sinification.
  

29

• Actually, accommodation had been the secret of
  the Jesuit success in China.
• As Paul Hsu put it, Christianity does away with
  Buddhism and completes Confucianism (Fairbank,
  p. 249). Christian faith could be added to
  Confucian practice.

30

• The Jesuit compromise met with challenges,
  especially in the ritual problems such as
  ancestral worship. To some theologians, the
  Chinese ancestral worship was not simple civil
  rite but pagan worship, which could not be
  allowed in monotheistic Christianity. So, some
  theologians believed that the Jesuits compromise
  went too far, that in making Christianity
  acceptable to Chinese classical scholars, the
  early Jesuits had destroyed its essential
  monotheistic principles of faith.

31

• By the 1640s, the controversy over the rites to
  be permitted had been referred to Rome by
  mendicant friars of the Dominicans and Franciscan
  orders.
• The Rites Controversy boiled along for a century
  (1640-1742), both within and between the various
  Catholic orders and missions in China and their
  supporters in Europe, eventually even between the
  Pope and the Ching Emperor.

32

• The Confucian scholars hostility to Christianity
  was based on the following points
• 1. Rational skepticism about such doctrines as
  original sin, the virgin birth, and the divinity
  of Jesus
• 2. A defense of Taoism, Buddhism, and the
  Confucian teachings and
• 3. Xenophobic emotion and cultural pride etc.

33

• Invasion and rebellion in 19th-century China
• Traditional Chinas resistance to change
• The ruling class and its agrarian outlook and
  thinking
• The inertia of government - stability for too
  long - conservative
• Corruption

34

• Chinas image of the west --- the barbarians
  paying tribute to the Middle Kingdom
• Imbalance of trade - the rise of the opium trade
• God, Gold, Glory theory
• The Opium War, 1839-1842
• The Treaty of Nanking, 1842

35

• Difference in cultures and in legal
  concepts/procedures
• The Anti-Opium movement
• Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu (1785-1850) at Canton
• The first treaty settlement
• Treaty ports Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and
  Shanghai
• Western influence through the treaty ports

36

• The rise of rebellions
• The Taiping Kingdom
• The Nien and Muslim rebellions
• Chinas response to the west
• The Tung-chih Restoration (cf. Japanese Meiji
  Restoration?)
• (Mary Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese
  Conservatism just white-washing)

37

• The Ching Dynasty (1644-1911)
• Emperors Reign period
• Shun-chih 1644-1661
• Kang-hsi 1662-1722
• Yung-cheng 1723-1735
• Chien-lung 1736-1795
• Chia-ching 1796-1820
• Tao-kuang 1821-1850
• Hsien-feng 1851-1861
• Tung-chih 1862-1874
• Kuang-hsu 1875-1908
• Hsuan-tung 1909-1911