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In contrast to the sea-based empires developing in Europe, land-based empires remained the dominant political form in other parts of the eastern hemisphere. The era between 1450 and 1750 saw the appearance of several land-based empires who built their power on the use of gunpowder: the Ottomans and the Safavids in Southwest Asia, the Mughals in India, the Ming and Qing in China, and the new Russian Empire. All had huge land armies armed with guns. These empires developed relatively independently from western influence, and to some extent they counterbalanced the growth of European power and colonization.
An important consequence of the appearance of the Gunpowder Empires was their conquest of most nomadic groups. Since the nomads had less access to guns, the empires were finally able to conquer and subjugate them. In many areas direct relations among states or merchant groups replaced nomadic intermediaries for international contact. For example, European kings invited diplomats from other countries to join their courts, and China also received foreign representatives.
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In the previous era, the political power of Muslim lands had been crushed by Mongol invasions in the 13th century and those of Timur, a central Asian of Mongol descent, in the 14th century. Three new empires &endash; the Ottoman, the Safavid, and the Mughal - rose between 1450 and 1750, and collectively they supported a new flowering of Islamic civilization. However, competition between them also led to important political divisions and military clashes. All three originated in the Turkic nomadic cultures of the central Asian steppe, and they all had absolute monarchs who modeled their courts on those of earlier Islamic dynasties.
Although each of the Muslim Empires had their own special problems, they faced some similar ones that eventually led to their decline.
- Inadequate transportation and communication systems - Although they had the necessary military technology to control their empires, transporting it to where it was needed was another issue. The larger they grew, the more difficult it was for the infrastructure to be adequate for the task.
- Unruly warrior elites and inadequate bureaucracies - The military leaders knew their importance to the state, and they often operated quite independently of the government. Even in the Ottoman Empire, where the bureaucracy was the strongest, the sultan eventually lost control of the Janissaries, who rebelled against him when their constant demands went unfulfilled.
- The rise of European rivals - Ultimately, the Europeans benefited more from the gunpowder revolution than the Muslim Empires. European countries were smaller, both in population and land space, and so mobilization of their human and natural resources was easier. They were also in such strong competition with one another that the Europeans were spurred on to try new technologies and reforms.
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The Ming and Early Qing Dynasties in China
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The Ming Emperors continued to rule China until the mid-1600s, but the dynasty was in decline for many years before that. Although its cultural brilliance and economic achievements continued until about 1600, China had some of the same problems that the Muslim empires had: borders difficult to guard, armies expensive to maintain, and transportation and communication issues. Some particular factors that weakened Ming China included:
- Climatic change - A broad change of climate swept from Europe to China during the 1600s, with the weather turning much colder. This change seriously affected agriculture and health, and also contributed to serious famine across China. These conditions led frustrated peasants to frequent rebellion.
- Nomadic invasions - The 1500s saw the reemergence of the Mongols as a regional power, this time with the help and support of Tibet. In gratitude, the Mongols bestowed the Tibetan leader with the title of dalai lama, or "universal teacher" of Tibetan Buddhism. The Japanese also attacked Korea, a Chinese tributary state, requiring Ming armies to defend the area.
- Pirates - As sea-based trade became more and more important, the number of pirates also increased in the Chinese seas, just as they did in the Americas. Pirates were both Chinese and Japanese, and they lay in wait for ships going in and out of Chinese ports.
- Decline of the Silk Road - After so many centuries, the famed Silk Road trade finally fell into decline during this era. New technologies and European control meant that more and more trade was conducted by water, and land-based trade decreased.
- Inept rulers - The last emperors lived in luxury in the Forbidden City, and had little to do with governing the empire. For example, the last emperor was so disengaged that he did not know that he was under attack until the enemy literally was climbing over the palace walls.
The Early Qing Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty was finally overthrown in 1644 by the Manchus, a northern power that had previously helped Ming emperors fight the Mongols and Japanese. The Manchus turned on the Ming once they discovered how weak the empire was, and they called themselves the Qing ("pure") Empire because they saw themselves as restoring China to glory. However, the Manchu were seen by some as not being truly "Chinese" because they were northern people from the outside, just as the Mongols had been almost four centuries before.
The Qing Dynasty was to rule China until 1911, and in the years before 1750, the empire was very strong. The emperors ruled under many of the same precepts that China had always had, such as the mandate of heaven, which they saw as justification for their takeover. The Manchu did keep their ethnic identity, forbidding intermarriage between Manchus and Chinese. They also outlawed the Chinese from learning the Manchurian language, and they required Chinese men to shave their heads and grow long queues at the back of their heads as a sign of submission.
Despite the problems that China faced as a land-based Gunpowder Empire, the early Qing Dynasty - until the late 18th century - ruled over a "golden age" of Chinese civilization. Two of its early emperors had long and prosperous reigns: Kangxi (1661-1722) and Qianlong (1736-1795). Kangxi was an enlightened, brilliant ruler whose many talents illustrate the era. He was a Confucian scholar, poet, and supporter of education, but he was also a conquering warrior who understood the importance of military might. China was so prosperous in these early Qing days that Qianlong cancelled taxes on several occasions because the government simply didn't need the money.
Chinese Contact with Europeans
East-west contacts between China and Europe intensified during the early Qing Dynasty. One type of contact - Christian missionaries from the west - had probably come to China as early as the 7th century, but the plague and the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty had all but stopped the interchange. Contact revived during the 16th century when the Jesuits first began arriving in China. The Jesuit priests were an order of the Catholic Church that specialized in international missionary work. One of the early Jesuits, Matteo Ricci, very much impressed the Chinese, who admired his education, brilliance, and respect for Chinese customs and accomplishments. The Jesuits dazzled their hosts with European science and technology. For example, they were able to use their math skills to correct Chinese calendars that up until then had miscalculated solar eclipses. They prepared maps of the world, and charmed the Chinese with gadgets (like chiming clocks), and the emperors saw to it that Jesuits had a special place in their courts. However, they had limited success in converting people to Christianity. After the Pope condemned what he called "ancestry worship," Kangxi ordered the end to Jesuit ministries.
The Jesuits did inspire trade demands as word about the riches and sophistication of Qing China got back to Europe. Chinese products - tea, porcelain, silk, wallpaper, and decorative items - became quite fashionable among the European elite, and Kangxi was commonly seen by Europeans as a great philosopher king. The Chinese reacted by opening the southern port of Canton to Europeans, but again, the Middle Kingdom was very wary of foreign contact, and so they closely supervised the trade.
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A "gunpowder empire" emerged in Japan, unusual in the sense that Japan was not land-based. The Japanese daimyos, or regional lords, had operated fairly independently from the shoguns before the early 17th century, when these military, feudalistic leaders were unified under one powerful family, the Tokugawa. The emperor was still honored as the ceremonial leader, as reflected in the name given to the Tokugawa government &endash; the bakufu, or the tent government that temporarily replaced the emperor. The tent government eventually settled in Edo (modern Tokyo), and ruled their independent subjects by instituting alternate attendance, the practice of daimyos spending every other year at the Tokugawa shogun's court. This requirement meant that daimyos had limited time to focus on building armies back home, and they also had to maintain expensive second homes in Edo.
The Tokugawa shoguns had less patience with Christian missionaries from the west than the Chinese did. Their aversion to Europeans was based partly on their observation of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, a fate that they did not want to share. They also worried that Europeans might conspire with the daimyos to destroy Tokugawa control. In the 1630s the shogunate literally "closed Japan," by forbidding all Japanese from going abroad and expelling all Europeans from Japan. They carefully controlled trade with other Asians, and European traders could come no closer than nearby islands. These policies were strictly enforced as far as the shoguns were able to, although daimyos on far islands were difficult to control.
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By the time of the golden age of the Qing Dynasty, the Russian Empire had expanded all the way from its origins in Eurasia east to the Pacific coast. There they came into border conflicts with the Chinese, but they also shared they problem of attack by Mongols and other nomadic people of Central Asia. However, Russian tsar Peter the Great, who ruled Russia during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, cast his eyes in the other direction, toward Europe, for guidance in strengthening his growing empire. Russia's early days had been shaped by the Byzantine Empire, and when the Byzantine's power faded, so did that of the early Russian tsars. Before Peter's rule, Russians had had almost no contact with Europe, and their lack of access to warm water ports crippled their ability to participate in the Maritime Revolution. The feudalistic political and economic structure meant that tsars had trouble containing the boyars, or Russian nobility, who often plotted against them. Partly because of this threat, the tsars practiced absolutism, with the power of the tsar backed by divine right granted by the Russian Orthodox Church. Peter's Russia was a vast, cold empire with almost no infrastructure &endash; no navy, a limited army, very few decent roads, and few warm water ports.
Peter hoped to strengthen his country by westernizing it. As a boy he frequently visited the "German suburb" of Moscow, the place where all foreigners were forced to live, apart from Russians. Peter was intrigued with their maritime talk and with the sea-faring instruments they showed him. As a young man he took the first of several trips to Europe, where he studied shipbuilding and other western technologies, as well as governing styles and social customs. He returned to Russia convinced that the empire could only become powerful by imitating western successes, and he instituted a number of reforms that revolutionized it:
- Military reform - He built the army by offering better pay and also drafted peasants for service as professional soldiers. He also created a navy by importing western engineers and craftsmen to build ships and shipyards, and other experts to teach naval tactics to recruits. Of course, his Gunpowder Empire developed better weapons and military skills.
- Building the infrastructure - The army was useless without roads and communications, so Peter organized peasants to work on roads and do other service for the government.
- Expansion of territory - The navy was useless without warm water ports, and Peter gained Russian territory along the Baltic Sea by defeating the powerful Swedish military. He tried to capture access to the Black Sea, but he was soundly defeated by the Ottomans who controlled the area.
- Reorganization of the bureaucracy - In order to pay for his improvements, the government had to have the ability to effectively tax its citizens. The bureaucracy had been controlled by the boyars, but Peter replaced them with merit based employees by creating the Table of Ranks, eventually doing away with titles of nobility.
- Relocation of the capital - Peter moved his court from Moscow to a new location on the Baltic Sea, his "Window on the West" that he called St. Petersburg. The city was built from scratch out of a swampy area, where it had a great harbor for the navy. Its architecture was European, of course.
When Peter died, he left a transformed Russia, an empire that a later ruler, Catherine the Great, would further strengthen. But he also left behind a new dynamic in Russian society &endash; the conflicting tendencies toward westernization mixed with the traditions of the Slavs to turn inward and preserve their own traditions.
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In 1450 Africa was a diverse continent with a blend of large civilizations, city-states, rural villages, and hunter and gatherer societies. Many people in the north, Subsaharan and eastern coastline areas were Muslim, but many native religions remained quite strong.
The largest and most organized empire of Africa from the middle of the 15th century until the late 16th century was Songhay (Songhai) in northwest Africa in areas that had been controlled by the earlier Kingdom of Mali. The empire was organized under Sunni Ali, a leader who brought the important trading cities of Timbuktu and Jenne under his control. He developed a centralized government with governors to oversee provinces, as well as an army and navy to protect trade. Songhay was prosperous, its cities boasted beautiful public buildings, and Islam was strongly supported by the elite. But the Songhay did not have guns, and that was their downfall. In 1591 a Moroccan army opened their muskets on the Songhay forces, and they were defeated.
The 16th century also saw the destruction of most of the Swahili city-states. Vasco da Gama had noticed them when he passed through on his way to India, and within a few years the Portuguese had aimed their cannons at all the cities, and either captured them or burned them to the ground.
The fate of the Kingdom of Kongo was an early sign of what contact with Europe was to bring to Africa. Kongo was on the Atlantic Ocean in central Africa, that developed into a centralized state during the 14th century. The Portuguese set up a trading relationship with them in the late 15th century and converted the Kongo kings to Christianity. From the beginning, the Portugues traded textiles, weapons, advisors, and craftsmen for gold, silver, ivory and especially slaves.
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