The Ming and Qing dynasties (before the Opium War) witnessed unprecedented consolidation and development of China as a unified multi-ethnic country.
The Qing conquest of the Ming, also known as the Ming–Qing transition and as the Manchu conquest of China, was a period of conflict between the Qing dynasty, established by Manchu clan Aisin Gioro in Manchuria (contemporary Northeastern China), and the Ming dynasty of China in the south (various other regional or temporary powers were also associated with events, such as the short-lived Shun dynasty). Leading up to the Qing conquest, in 1618, Aisin Gioro leader Nurhaci commissioned a document entitled the Seven Grievances, which enumerated grievances against the Ming and began to rebel against their domination. Many of the grievances dealt with conflicts against Yehe, which was a major Manchu clan, and Ming favoritism of Yehe. Nurhaci’s demand that the Ming pay tribute to him to redress the seven grievances was effectively a declaration of war, as the Ming were not willing to pay money to a former tributary. Shortly afterwards, Nurhaci began to force the Ming out of Liaoning in southern Manchuria.
At the same time, the Ming dynasty was fighting for its survival against fiscal turmoil and peasant rebellions. On April 24, 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt, who then proclaimed the Shun dynasty. The last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City. When Li Zicheng moved against him, the Ming general Wu Sangui shifted his alliance to the Manchus. Li Zicheng was defeated at the Battle of Shanhai Pass by the joint forces of Wu Sangui and Manchu prince Dorgon. On June 6, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor as Emperor of China.
The Kangxi Emperor ascended the throne in 1661, and in 1662 his regents launched the Great Clearance to defeat the resistance of Ming loyalists in South China. He then fought off several rebellions, such as the Revolt of the Three Feudatories led by Wu Sangui in southern China, starting in 1673, and then countered by launching a series of campaigns that expanded his empire. In 1662, Zheng Chenggong founded the Kingdom of Tungning in Taiwan, a pro-Ming dynasty state with a goal of reconquering China. However, the Kingdom of Tungning was defeated in the Battle of Penghu by Han Chinese admiral Shi Lang, who had also served under the Ming.
In the early 16th century, the western colonial forces rapidly expanded into the eastern world following Portugal and Spain’s successful opening of the navigation routes. In 1548, troops of the Ming Dynasty heavily defeated the invading Portuguese fleet in Shuangyu near Ningbo, Zhejiang, burning seventy-seven battleships of different sizes. After that incident, the Portuguese employed means of deceit and bribery, saying their commercial ships had suffered windstorm, and were thus permitted to set up sheds in Macao to rest and dry their clothes. They went on to build ramparts, barbettes, and official mansions on the pretext of defending the invasion of the Dutch. In 1621, the Ming government destroyed the Qingzhou city built by the Portuguese, and levied an annual tax of 20,000 taels of silver upon the Portuguese in Macao. That paved the way for Macao’s later development into a colonial site, though the Ming Dynasty still had sovereignty over Macao.
In the middle Ming Dynasty, Japanese warriors, merchants, and pirates oft en harassed the southeastern coastal areas. They even once attacked Shanghai and Suzhou and finally reached Nanjing. In 1555, Qi Jiguang was entrusted to resist the Japanese pirates in eastern Zhejiang. He won nine battles in Taizhou and drove the Japanese pirates away in 1565.
In 1598, the Spanish attacked Guangdong, building houses at Hutiaomen. But their houses were later burnt down by the Ming troops, and the Spanish were chased out of Chinese territory.
In 1642, Dutch colonists invaded and occupied Taiwan, where they cruelly exploited the Taiwanese and their resources. In 1661, Zheng Chenggong, who had initiated wars against the Qing Dynasty in southeastern coastal areas, led a troop of 25,000 soldiers and hundreds of battleships to cross the straits eastward from Jinmen, successfully capturing Chiqian City, the strategic site of the Dutch troops. After another eight months of siege, he launched a fierce attack and finally forced Frederick Coyett, the Dutch Governor, to sign a document of surrender. Zheng’s successful reoccupation of Taiwan checked the further eastward expansion of the western colonists, ensured the stability of China’s southeastern provinces, and played an indirect role in protecting other Asian countries.
In the 1640s, Russian troops launched large-scale invasions into the mainland of China, occupying such northeastern areas as Yakesa and Nerchinsk. They brazenly plundered the areas, severely infringing upon the sovereignty of the Qing Dynasty and endangering both life and property. Qing troops waged two counterattacks in Yakesa in 1685 and 1686, defeating the Russian troops, who were forced to agree to a peace talk with only dozens of remaining soldiers. In 1689, both parties signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk, finalizing Qing sovereignty over the drainage areas of the Heilong and Wusuli rivers, including Kuyedao (Sakhalin Island). The treaty also provided that traveling businessmen of both countries could cross the borders for trade by presenting their passports. After the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the eastern part of the border areas between China and Russia enjoyed a relatively peaceful and stable situation that greatly facilitated bilateral trade.
The period from the Ming Dynasty to the early Qing saw effective counterattacks for safeguarding sovereignty, as well as zigzag but generally upward development in border areas where ethnic groups lived.
In the early Ming Dynasty, the remaining forces of the Yuan Dynasty that retreated to the Mongolian Plateau launched constant military attacks against the southern areas. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Wala unified all the Mongolian tribes, defeating a 500,000-soldier troop of the Ming Dynasty at Tumubao. He captured Emperor Yingzong alive and threatened the capital city of Beijing. In the early Jiajing Period of the Ming Dynasty, the Andahan Tribe of Tatar grew particularly strong. Between the Longqing and Wanli periods, Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng initiated new reforms in the bordering areas with a view to “increasing the exchanges between the Han and Mongolians externally and reinforcing defensive systems internally.” Vigorous efforts were made to amend and cement the Great Wall and consolidate northern border defenses. As a result, Andahan couldn’t get through the northern border. His people urgently needed to exchange their goods for the farm produce of the central plains, so he begged for peace talks. The court of the Ming Dynasty accepted his request, conferring the title of King of Shunyi upon Andahan, and agreed to open eleven markets for exchange. From then on, the northern border areas saw a growing population, an increase in reclaimed land, and frequent commodity exchange.
Certain key border towns developed into “pearls at the frontiers” that differed little from the central plains. The Mongolian areas boasted not only a booming stockbreeding sector, but also a fast-developing agriculture, a vast area of reclaimed land, numerous villages, and the rise of Guihua City (present- day Hohhot). The Mongolians and Han people gradually merged with one another in many ways, such as ideology, culture, and folk customs. According to historical records, the Han people “living in bordering areas somewhat looked like the foreign people,” and were called “Han aliens” (Han Yi) during the Wanli Period. The Mongolian leaders also practiced the customs of Han, and even “prayed to be a member of Han in the afterlife.”
After coming into power in the middle 17th century, Galdan, from Mongolia’s Junggar Tribe in the West Desert, constantly launched attacks on its neighboring tribes. He later occupied areas both north and south of the Tianshan mountain range and colluded with the Russians to wage a large-scale rebellion. In 1690, Galdan attacked Inner Mongolia, also threatening to attack Beijing. To maintain national integrity, Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty personally led his army in war and defeated the rebel forces in Uklark Poktu. Qing troops carried out wars against Galdan and his successors for another seventy years. They eventually destroyed the aristocratic forces of Junggar in 1571 and unified the areas north of the Tianshan mountain range.
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Ming Invasion of Vietnam
number of major military expeditions into Southeast Asia occurred during the Yongle reign. In 1406, in an effort to increase Ming influence and power in Đại Ngu (Vietnam), the country that was known to the Ming as Annam (the “Pacified South”), it had appeared that Hồ Quý Ly, a powerful noble of Vietnam had seized power in Vietnam and attempted to murder all members of the current Trần ruling family. The Yongle emperor attempted to solve the problem peacefully, dispatching envoys and the self-claimed surviving member of the House of Trần, Trần Thiên Bính to Vietnam. He was assassinated and in that same year, two huge Chinese armies were sent along two routes, via Yunnan and Guangxi, into Đại Ngu. Chinese forces claimed that seven million Vietnamese were killed in this initial campaign to take the polity. In 1407, Đại Ngu became Ming China’s 14th province, and remained so until 1428, when the Ming were forced to withdraw by a Vietnamese independence movement led by Lê Lợi. In contrast to the name Annam (“Pacified South”), this 21-year period was one of almost incessant fighting.
As soon as the Ming forces took control of the polity, changes were instituted. In the first year, 7,600 tradesmen and artisans (including gun founders) captured in Đại Ngu were sent to the Ming capital at today’s Nanjing. This stripping of some of the most skilled members of society extensively affected Vietnamese society. Subsequently, more Chinese and non-Chinese troops were brought into the region to maintain some semblance of control, and a wide range of new organs of civil administration were re-established. By 1408, Annam had 41 subprefectures, and 208 counties, all administered in a Chinese mode but often staffed by Vietnamese. Regardless of the extent to which political hegemony was thrown off in the late 1420s, when the Ming were driven out, the administrative legacy of the Chinese occupation must have had a major and wide-ranging impact on the society of the country. In a claimed effort to further inculcate Chinese ways, Confucian schools, which existed already from several hundred years before, were re-established in Chinese style, and Chinese were appointed to teach in them. In an attempt to assimilate the country into the Chinese cultural sphere, this period saw an invaluable part of Vietnamese academic and historical works destroyed by the Ming authorities.
The year 1407 also saw a new Maritime Trade Supervisorate being established at Yuntun, while two new such offices were established at Xinping and Shunhua in 1408. Thus, within two years, three maritime trade supervisorates had been created in this new province, the same number as existed in the rest of China. This was a clear indication of the desire of the Ming to control maritime trade to the south, and exploit the economic advantage of such control.
Other economic exploitation involved grain taxes, annual levies of lacquer, sappanwood, kingfisher feathers, fans and aromatics, and the imposition of monopolies on gold, silver, salt, iron, and fish. In addition, eunuchs were sent to Jiaozhi with the task of collecting treasure for the Emperor, but an equal amount of treasure collection appears to have been done for themselves. The rapaciousness of the eunuchs, at least as depicted in Ming accounts, was such that even the emperors intervened in appointments. The Hongxi Emperor objected to the re-sending of the eunuch Ma Qi to Annam, when he attempted to have himself reappointed to control the gold, silver, aromatics and pearls of the region in 1424.
By 1414, the Ming was sufficiently well-entrenched in the northern Annam to allow it to push further, establishing four further subprefectures in a region south of Annam, which had formerly been administered by the Hồ dynasty and still free from Chinese influence, as well as some parts of northern border of Champa. There are authors who believe that the Chinese occupation of Ðại Việt in this period played some role in the later southward expansion of the Vietnamese state. However, the Vietnamese southward expansion had begun in the Lý dynasty of Ðại Việt and the major advances were made by Nguyễn Lords at least two centuries later. The levies and demands made on the new province by the Ming meant that its capacity to feed itself suffered. On numerous occasions in the 1420s, it was necessary to arrange transport of grain from Guangdong and Guangxi into Jiaozhi. Such deficiencies would have had profound effects on the social structure and social stability of the region, compounded by warfare and the imposition of Chinese norms. The range of colonial policies the Ming pursued had wide-ranging effects, both on the society at the time, as well as on the future development of the Vietnamese state.
