Good Morning!Please pick up:

• Map (for you)• Articles (3)• AP info- only if

you are planning to take the exam

Please get out your Gunpowder

Empires assignment.

Today’s Agenda• Finish Impact of Maritime Empires• Ming China & trade of the 1st

global commodityHMWK: Study for the Period 4 Test and CCOT essay.

East Asia; 1450-1750

China (Ming), Japan (Tokugawa) are the most resistant to European advancesSoutheast Asia becomes the most affected by the Europeans

Philippines by the SpanishIndonesia by the DutchThus, Europe will trade indirectly with China.

Why Silver? Peru is producing 85% of the world’s silver, along with Mexico and Japan (much smaller sources)40% of the world’s silver production goes to ChinaChina has tea, porcelain items, and silkChina does not have precious metalsChina obtains silver and “monetize” it –

Assign a weight based value and make it the standard currency for trade.

Create wage-based labor

Peru Netherlands MexicoChina Indonesia JapanManila Portugal SpainBaltic Sea Baghdad

“Who’s Driving? The Birth of World Trade: Silver and 1571.

Europe pulls into 1st place….The powerful Chinese and

the militaristic Japanese did not take the Europeans seriously and ignored their technological advances and innovation.

MING CHINAEmperor Zhu Di r. 1402-1424

AKA Emperor YongleOverthrows emperor and establishes new capital in Beijing- does he really have the Mandate of Heaven or is his reign doomed?Builds Forbidden Palace-

• documentary recommendation- China’s Forbidden City episode 1 by Smithsonian (available on Netflix or here )

Sponsors Zheng He’s expeditions in the Indian Ocean

Navigator Number of Ships Number of Crew

Zheng He (1405 - 1433) 48 to 317 28,000Columbus (1492) 3 90Da Gama (1498) 4 ca. 160Magellan (1521) 5 265

Professor Wu began by briefly retracing the history of Zheng He's voyages. Upon the orders of the emperor Yongle and his successor, Xuande, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions, the first in the year 1405 and the last in 1430, which sailed from China to the west, reaching as far as the Cape of Good Hope. The object of the voyages was to display the glory and might of the Chinese Ming dynasty and to collect tribute from the "barbarians from beyond the seas." Merchants also accompanied Zheng's voyages, Wu explained, bringing with them silks and porcelain to trade for foreign luxuries such as spices and jewels and tropical woods.

These voyages, Professor Wu noted, came a few decades before most of the famous European voyages of discovery known to all Western school children: Christopher Columbus, in 1492; Vasco da Gama, in 1498; and Ferdinand Magellan, in 1521. However, Zheng He's fleets were incomparable larger. According to figures presented by Professor Wu:

Moreover, Zheng He's ships, Professor Wu explained, were impressive examples of naval engineering. His so-called treasure ships (which brought back to China such things a giraffes from Africa) were 400 feet long. Columbus's flagship the St. Maria, in contrast, was but 85 feet in length. Zheng He's treasure ships, Professor Wu mentioned, displaced no less than 10,000 tons and had an aspect ratio (width:length) of 0.254; in other words, they were wide and bulky—"the supertankers of their day." Aside from the treasure ships, Zheng He's fleet also contained a variety of other, specialized vessels: "equine ships" (for carrying horses), warships, supply ships, and water tankers.

Professor Wu invited the audience to imagine the scene of Zheng He's 300-vessel fleet on the sea, spread out over many square miles. ("Sailing ships," Wu pointed out, "require room to maneuver" and thus the fleet would have blanketed a wide swath of the ocean.) If an object of the voyages was to display the glory and might of China, then there can be no question but that this magnificent fleet would have awed all who witnessed it. It is ironic, then, that today little is known of Zheng He's voyages. This is, Wu pointed out, mainly the doing of the Confucianists in the imperial court, who saw to it that Zheng's ships were burned after his last voyage and who made every effort to "systematically destroy all official records of the voyages." Their motives were purely political. During much of the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644), the eunuchs exercised great power in the imperial court, at the expense of the Confucian civil bureaucracy. The expeditions of Zheng He, who was himself a eunuch, were strongly supported by eunuchs in the court and bitterly opposed by the Confucian scholar bureaucrats.

http://www.international.ucla.edu/china/article/10387 Engineering an Empire: Chinahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3u5dv4xrrc

STAR RAFTS (DRAGON FLEETS)

• Chinese fleet had 100’s of ships • 130 meter long, 9-masted, 3,000+ tons• Crews of thousands, tons of cargoes • Watertight bulkheads, retractable rudders

Zheng He’s Seven Voyages

The inscription below was carved in 1431 on a new temple (for the Celestial Goddess) in the Fujian province (the southeastern coast of China--the mainland opposite Taiwan). 

The Imperial Ming dynasty in unifying seas and continents . . . even goes beyond the Han and the Hang . . . the countries beyond the horizon and from the ends of the earth have all become subjects . . . Thus the barbarians from beyond the seas have come to audience bearing precious objects. . . . The Emperor has ordered us, Zheng He . . . to make manifest the transforming power of the Imperial virtue and to treat distant people with kindness. . . .We have seven times received the commission and ambassadors [and have visited] altogether more than thirty countries, large and small. We have traversed immense water spaces and have beheld huge waves like mountains rising sky high, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails loftily unfolded like clouds day and night controlled their course, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare. . .We have received the high favor of a gracious commission of our Sacred Lord, to carry to the distant barbarians the benefits of his auspicious example. . . .Therefore we have recorded the years and months of the voyages. [Here follows a detailed record of places visited and things done on each of the seven voyages.] We have anchored in this port awaiting a north wind to take the sea, and have thus recorded an inscription in stone . . . erected by the principal envoys, the Grand Eunuchs Cheng Ho and Wang Ching-hung and the assistant envoys.

What are the impacts of Zheng He’s voyages? What is his legacy?http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0507/feature2/multimedia.html

For further study- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ancient-chinese-explorers.html

In the 15th century, Zheng He, seen here with one of his massive ships in a painting at a temple shrine in Malaysia, led seven enormous seafaring expeditions.

NEW WORLD ORDERAll continents eventually connected by trade

American silver & foodstuffs spread throughout worldTerms of trade tend to favor Western Europeans for first timeCommerce generated wealth, which only agriculture had in pastEuropeans began to dominate world tradeIncrease of wage-labor systems to support commercialization• Rise & fall of Atlantic Slave trade• Spread of serfdom in Russia

Changes in non-European social classesMuslim merchants largely replaced by European merchantsRise of African slave trading states, kings who made great wealth

Ming Dynasty Decline• corruption of the court officials and the domination of the

eunuchs. In that period, both the exploitation from the ruling class and natural disasters caused the rebellions that racked the country in the 17th century and the aggressive military expansion of the Manchus.

• By 1643 the government was bankrupt from fighting and the peasants were broke because of the constant taxes imposed to pay the armies to fight

The Ming  Ends• Northern Chinese Manchu slowly grew in power until they

threatened the Ming Dynasty

• Ming military grew weak so Ming often used Manchu to stop the “barbarians” from taking China 

• One leader, Manchu rebel Li Zicheng, eventually decided to take China rather than protecting it.  He entered Beijing in 1644 as he did so the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, hanged himself on a tree overlooking the forbidden palace

For more info see http

://apworldhistory101.com/history-of-china/ming-2

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UNEXPECTED POP QUIZ

1. What was discovered in Peru that made silver extraction easier?2. What straits separate North Africa from Spain?3. What year did Muhammad go from Mecca to Medina?4. What early-modern Muslim Empire had the “Din I Ilahi?5. How many questions on the WHAP multiple-choice test (the one you

are taking next class)?6. How many minutes to complete the multiple choice test portion of the

WHAP exam on May 12?7. What group succeeded the MING?8. What Catholic order attempted to convert the Ming to Christianity?9. Who unified Japan?10. Name one thing the Japanese banned in the 17th century11. Correctly Name from EAST to WEST the early-modern Muslim

Empires

Quickly form into 3-4 groups.