The Late Dynasties

Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368 C.E.)

During the Yuan Dynasty, China was the center of a vast empire that extended across Asia to Eastern Europe. It was the first empire to include all of the territory comprising modern-day China. While the warlord Genghis Khan is most closely associated with the Mongol Empire, much of China was still not under his control at the time of his death in 1227 C.E. His third son and successor, Ogadei Khan, completed the conquest of the Jin Empire, invading the Jin capital of Kaifeng in 1233 C.E. Another 43 years passed before the Khan armies, now under the rule of Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai, conquered the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou. Three years later, the elimination of the last vestiges of Song resistance marked the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty.

It was during the reign of Kublai Khan that Marco Polo traveled eastward to China. His subsequent written accounts of his time in the empire of the Great Khan are still in print today. While some have questioned the accuracy of Polo’s writings, and even whether he actually made the journey that he describes, much of what he wrote agrees with other historical materials and accounts of that period of Chinese history.

During the Yuan Dynasty, a new capital was built at Dadu, in what is modern-day Beijing. (The Jin Dynasty capital of Zhongdu, also in Beijing, was destroyed during the initial Mongol assaults into northern China.) The Grand Canal was extended to Beijing during this time. Other public works, including the construction of palaces, increasingly depleted the empire’s funds, as did the restrictions placed on Chinese trade by the Mongol rulers. The Khans, like previous non-Chinese rulers, tried to govern China based on its traditions and customs, but they denied Han Chinese access to positions of power and responsibility. The result was dissension among the Chinese nobility and general mismanagement of many governmental business and financial affairs.

Despite its military might, the Yuan Dynasty’s control of the whole of China lasted less than 100 years. The 14th century saw numerous rebellions, many of them in South China. The most notable of these was engineered by the Red Turbans, a group eventually led by a peasant and former Buddhist novice named Zhu Yuanzhang. In 1368 C.E., during a Yuan Dynasty succession battle, Zhu declared himself emperor and established modern-day Nanjing as his capital. A year later the Yuan capital at Dadu (Beijing) was captured. The Mongol rulers retreated to Mongolia, where they established the Northern Yuan Dynasty, and they never again made significant advances into China.

Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 C.E.)

The Ming Dynasty was the last dynasty to be governed by native Chinese rulers. The dynasty’s first emperor is remembered as a tyrannical ruler who nevertheless helped reestablish China after years of Yuan misrule. Administrative, legal, and land reforms were all initiated during his reign. Under Emperor Yongle, the third Ming Emperor, the Ming court returned to Beijing. The old Yuan palace was destroyed and replaced by an even more remarkable one in the walled compound we know today as the Forbidden City.

Early in the Ming Dynasty, great naval expeditions set out to Southeast Asia and beyond, but these expeditions were diplomatic and trade-oriented rather than militaristic. However, changes in foreign policy were already brewing. Influential Confucian scholars in the imperial court warned of the dangers of increased dependence on foreign goods. By the middle of the 15th century, after years of continued skirmishes with the Mongols to the north, China became increasingly isolationist. Naval expeditions were halted, and shipbuilding of large vessels also ceased, which heightened the country’s vulnerability to pirating along the coast.

To the north, the empire began expanding and refortifying the Great Wall, a major construction project that continued for 200 years.

Today, most of the Wall that remains standing was built during the Ming Dynasty period.

Ultimately, the arrival of foreign parties could not be completely precluded, and by 1553 the Portuguese had established Macau on China’s southern coast.

This was the first permanent European trading settlement in that area. Trade was primarily conducted in Guangzhou (Canton) in the nearby Zhujiang Sanjiaozhou (Pearl River Delta). Portuguese trade led to the introduction of agricultural products from the New World, such as potatoes and corn. Chili peppers, a staple of southern Chinese cooking, also came to China via trade during the Ming period.

The decline of the Ming Dynasty followed a familiar pattern. Weak or disinterested emperors allowed court intrigues to preoccupy the government. Meanwhile, taxes were increased to pay for the lavish needs of the imperial court, and to finance military actions against the Mongols and the Jurchens in Manchuria.

Eventually the rampant banditry occurring throughout the country developed into active rebellions, which were exacerbated by severe economic conditions in the wake of devastating droughts and floods in North China.

Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 C.E.)

The advent of the Qing Dynasty marked the second time that all of China was ruled by foreigners. Unlike the earlier Yuan Dynasty, however, the Qing peoples were capable rulers, and they were able to maintain imperial control for a longer period of time. They emerged from Manchuria, where in the early 17th century a tribal chief named Nuerhachi had united all three tribes of the Jurchen people, who were thereafter known as the Manchus.

The Manchus successfully expanded their domain via warfare and alliances to encompass Mongolia and Korea. Utilizing unique civil-military units known as “banners,” which incorporated many non-Manchus, they were able to rapidly build a formidable and loyal military structure. As rebellion swept though China during the late stages of the Ming Dynasty, a Ming general stationed in the northeast allowed the Manchu army to pass through the Great Wall. He requested their help to suppress a rebel leader who had marched into Beijing, deposed the Ming emperor, and declared a new dynasty. The combined Ming and Manchu forces were able to put down the rebellion, after which the Manchu leader declared himself emperor of the new Qing Dynasty. After 40 years, the last pockets of Ming resistance to the new dynasty were extinguished, leaving all of China under Qing control.

The early Qing rulers avoided many of the mistakes of earlier foreign-run dynasties. Significantly, they incorporated Chinese Han into important administrative positions, although they still maintained authority over government matters. Economically, they instituted tax relief and encouraged land cultivation.

However, the Qing were quite adamant that the conquered Chinese completely submit to their rule, and they established unpopular measures to assure compliance. One such measure was the sweeping imposition of the Manchu queue hairstyle, consisting of a shaved head with a long tail in the back, which was required for all men. Resistance to the queue resulted in death. Attempts were also made to ban the practice of foot-binding by Chinese women, but the Qing were less successful in enforcing this directive.

Despite their expansion of the Chinese empire to the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, the Qing were generally isolationist in their foreign policies, and they encouraged agriculture over industrial development. Ultimately, these policies were partly to blame for the eventual downfall of the dynasty.

Early in the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese economy flourished, and China saw a period of rapid population growth. However, the increasing demands of a growing population led to economic challenges, particularly as the Qing leaders were forced to invest more of the empire’s wealth into military actions against rebellions in central China. The most famous of these uprisings was the White Lotus Rebellion, which lasted nine years around the beginning of the 19th century.

Meanwhile, China faced a new threat from foreign powers in its southern port of Guangzhou (Canton). During the late 1700s and early 1800s, the British East India Company shipped thousands of tons of opium from India into China in exchange for Chinese tea and other goods. This not only created social problems for the Chinese, but it eventually became an economic issue as the silver payments for the opium began to drain China’s reserves. Despite imperial bans instituted on the opium trade in the 1830s, British

traders continued to pursue the lucrative business and had little problem, at least initially, finding Chinese merchants willing to import the opium.

Eventually, confrontation over the opium shipments led to war. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their military forces were ill prepared to fight against the modern British forces, which had cannons and muskets. The Chinese defeats during the First Opium War, and twelve years later, the Second Opium War, resulted in a series of one-sided treaties that granted numerous trade concessions to the British, French, Russians, and Americans.

During the 1850s and 1860s, rebellions grew in southern China and spread north, while mostly Chinese Muslims in the western provinces clashed with non-Muslim Chinese. Adding further fuel to the growing domestic fire was a terrible drought in 1877-78, which caused great suffering for millions of people in the northern provinces.

As discontent grew, attempts by the Chinese government to industrialize and modernize their military were in turn hindered by general corruption and mismanagement.

Thus, as the 19th century drew to a close, Chinese rulers found themselves increasingly dominated by the colonial powers that had established trading and missionary activities throughout China. They also had to confront rising internal conflicts and discontent with Qing rule. Furthermore, the emperors of this time often came to the throne when they were young children, and, in these cases, power was transferred to regents, the most notable of whom was the Empress Dowager Cixi. In 1898, she usurped power from the reform-minded Emperor Guangxu, who was of mature age. He was placed in internal exile, but was never forced to abdicate, even though he had no powers.

Shortly thereafter, Empress Dowager Cixi threw her support behind yet another indigenous rebellion. This group was known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, but foreigners referred to them as “Boxers” because of their martial arts skills. The Boxers turned their fury away from the ruling Qing Dynasty and toward the foreign powers in China, unleashing a wave of attacks on missionaries and Chinese converts. They marched toward the capital, where foreign diplomats fought off the Boxers with a small group of military personnel until a faction of international troops, including American forces, arrived and was able to rescue the diplomats and drive back the Boxer forces.

The failure of the Boxer Rebellion heralded the end of the Qing Dynasty. While the Empress Dowager was allowed to continue to rule, the true power in China was rapidly shifting to the colonial interests, who intensely pursued “spheres of influence” within the country. Meanwhile, far from Beijing, a revolution was brewing in South China that would soon bring an end to the long string of Chinese dynasties.