World History: The Ming and their Exploration

Hello and welcome to Cloaker's Education Foundation providing quality content for amazing teachers and students. This is our world history series and this lesson is on the Ming and their exploration. Don't forget before we get started you can check out the link in the description below for a set of free guided notes to go along with this lesson. So let's dive in. We have one major essential question for this lesson and that is how was the exploration of the Ming similar to and differ from that of the Europeans. So our lesson is divided into four parts the Ming and the Qing dynasty, the voyages of Zheng He, the Ming relationship with foreign countries, and contact with Japan. Now if you forgot let's set the stage East Asia was the hot spot and the source of most luxury goods especially to the Europeans. Many European nations and traders are looking to get their hands and establish trade with not just China but with also Japan. You can see on this map the Silk Road leading from China all the way across into the Middle East into Europe and a special emphasis on the Spice Islands down in Southeast Asia. If you remember from one of our past units on the Mongols or our previous lesson on the Ming dynasty the Chinese people are going to rebel against the Yuan dynasty the Mongols and they're going to drive the Mongols out and establish the Ming. Now this is around the mid 1300s and the Ming are going to be coming out of the northern parts of China, Manchuria to be specific. The Ming are going to rule for just about 200 years before finally collapsing into what is later known as the Qing dynasty which is also coming from Manchuria and the Qing are going to rule for about 260 years and you can see how much more territory the Qing are going to conquer and expand compared to the Ming dynasty. When we speak about the Ming and their exploration we are really focusing on two rulers that is Emperor Hongwu and his son Yongluo. They're going to be super curious about what the outside world has to offer Ming China and so they task an admiral by the name of Zheng He to lead voyages out of Ming China to the different regions of the world and gather goods so that way they can be brought back to show off the power and the might of China. You can see on this map they first make it to Southeast Asia and then to India and then eventually to Southwest Asia or the Middle East and Africa. Now as we've spoken with the rise of Islam in 600 and the Mongols and the empires that are going to come and caliphates that come after the Mongols Zheng He making it to Southwest Asia is super instrumental. It's the first time the Chinese made it that far but Zheng He is going to be very well accepted within Arabia because Zheng He's family was Islamic. They were Muslim. They were raised within that faith and so not only is that going to allow him to connect very easily to the traders in India and Southwest Asia and Africa with the shared faith it also allows him to raise up in the ranks faster because he is not viewed as being loyal to any one faction or party within Ming China. Now his voyages are going to range from Southeast Asia to the coast of Eastern Africa and his fleet is also going to vary in size. Some ships will be rather small and others will be incredibly large. Entire fleets such as large as 300 being the largest reported one. Some ships will be relatively small others like his flagship will be incredibly long over 400 feet long that is over the length of a football field both in zones and then some it is an incredibly large ship that was absolutely massive and dwarfs anything Europe had at the time. Unfortunately they're never going to make it all the way to Europe on his voyages. He of course took sailors and soldiers and carpenters as would be needed to repair the ships, interpreters, accountants, religious leaders and people of all factors that are going to help them on these voyages. Unfortunately Zheng He is going to die after his seventh voyage and so with the death of this famous admiral the Ming dynasty is no longer going to pour money into foreign trade, into exploration and we see China withdrawing back into isolation. So as China enters the 1500s their policies reflect that isolation. The Ming policy was that if nations wanted to trade with China they needed to come to China and they needed to follow the Chinese rules because they did not want the Europeans threatening the peace and the prosperity that the Ming dynasty had brought to China after the Mongols and China had already had a long history of being self-sufficient. If you remember back from our ancient river valley civilizations they are very well protected from outside entities and were forced to be self-sufficient throughout human history. With all of these new and strict rules that the Ming are in placing after the death of Zheng He they're going to say that only the government has the authority to trade especially when it comes to foreign nations and trading will only be allowed at certain ports. With this China is also expecting Europeans to pay tribute to the Ming leaders by peace tax and please don't invade me or murder me if you will including several other practices such as following Ming law the kowtow ritual which required someone to kneel in front of the emperor and touch their forehead to the ground nine times and sometimes in heated arguments you might hear someone say I'm not going to kowtow to your beliefs this was used to say I am not going to bow down to you. Of all the European nations that are trying to get goods and trade in the east shockingly the only nation that's going to accept all of these terms are going to be the Dutch which is going to give them a remarkable advantage compared to the other European powers. In 1467 a civil war known as the Onan war is going to shatter Japan's feudal system and the company becomes absolutely mayhem warrior chieftains called daimos they are the medieval equivalent of lords they are going to be battling each other over power and authority as well as wealth and stature within Japan and of course this brings into the conflict of the emperor who is supposed to be the figurehead of Japan and the shogun who is really the political leader and we've spoken about this hierarchy developed very similar to that of the medieval hierarchy and the feudal system in Europe. Europeans are going to first start showing up in Japan in the 16th century after the civil war and they'll generally be welcomed however within a few short decades these aggressive Europeans are going to have worn out their welcome they're going to be despised by many of the Japanese natives and they are not going to be viewed as contributing to the Japanese society as they previously were. It is around this time that we see several instrumental items making its way to Japan such as clocks, eyeglasses, tobacco, and firearms all brought by the Portuguese. We see that the priests such as Jesuits make it to Japan and begin spreading Christianity if you remember our three G's God, Gold, and Glory, the reasons for exploration, wealth, power, and stature, and the spread of Christianity. Unfortunately there will be a peasant rebellion within Japan against the shogun and the emperor and unfortunately as most of those rebels were Christian after the rebellion is put down the shogun is going to begin persecuting Christians and exclude priests and missionaries from coming to Japan as well as excluding Japanese Christians from society. In 1639 the shogun seals off the borders of Japan removing all foreigners from Japan as well as excluding merchants and missionaries from even arriving at port. Only the port of Nagasaki is going to remain open and only the Dutch and the Chinese will be allowed to show up and trade there and this just goes to show that the length of the Dutch were willing to go in order to maintain those good relationships. This closed-door policy is going to last for over 200 years and it is instrumental for the development of Japan as Japan was passing a law that forbid Japanese citizens from leaving. They didn't want to bring back foreign ideas to Japan and Japan wanted to be self-sufficient not reliant on European powers and so we see as a result of China and Japan both closing their doors to Europeans that Europeans began to explore west across the Atlantic to the New World. So take a few moments and go ahead and answer our essential question how is the exploration of the Ming similar to and differ from that of Europeans? That wraps up our lesson ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for watching as always don't forget to like and subscribe to see what's new and what's next in our series click here for something you might like click down below and to subscribe to our channel click here all this and more is just a click away thanks for watching