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Essay on Ming And Qing China
Mongol rule in China was brought to an end after civil war among Mongol princes and an increasing conversion to the sedentary Chinese way of life that robbed the Mongol military machine of much of its effectiveness. Repeated natural disasters were followed by a massive peasant rebellion that the alien rulers could not quell.
The Mandate of Heaven now shifted to Zhu Yuanzhang, a peasant leader who became eminent during the rebellions. After eliminating his rivals, Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty in 1368, with his capital city first in Nanjing and later in Beijing. Zhu Yuanzhang was historically known as Emperor Taizu.
The Ming Dynasty was the last native Chinese dynasty to rule the empire.
Spanning almost three centuries between the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271 - 1368) and the rise of the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911), the Ming reunited what is now called China proper after almost 400 years of foreign incursion and occupation (Wu, 2000).
The Ming reached their zenith of power during the first quarter of the fifteenth century. The territory they controlled was smaller than that of the Yuan. However, at the height of their power, they controlled the Mongols in the north, captured the Western Region in the west, conquered the Jurchen (also Nuzhen) in the northeast, governed Tibet in the southwest and established the Jiaozhi Prefecture in the south.
During the Ming period, Zheng He's long voyages to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean made the Ming much more influential abroad than the Tang and no less influential than the later Qing.
The Ming period seems to have been one of China's most prosperous. Pressure from the Neo-Confucian bureaucrats led to an agrarian-centered based society. This was a stable period and the population numbered some 100 million. The incredible advances in the sciences....
