East Asia's Great Powers: Qing China, Tokugawa Japan and Joseon Korea

The biggest state on Earth

In the 1700s, Qing China had more people than all of Europe. By around 1800 its population had roughly doubled in a century, to about 300 million. Its silk, porcelain and tea were wanted everywhere, and much of the silver mined in Spanish America ended up in China to pay for them.

Europeans in this period often wrote about China with admiration: philosophers such as Voltaire praised its examination system and its Confucian ethics. Studying East Asia reminds us that in 1700 the centre of the world economy was not in Europe.

How the Manchus ruled China

The Manchus came from northeast of the Great Wall. They were far fewer than the Han Chinese they conquered after taking Beijing in 1644. To rule, they combined two strategies:

• Keep Manchu identity and military power. The banner armies, organized in eight banners, were the core of the army. Manchus kept their own language at court. Han Chinese men were ordered to wear the Manchu queue hairstyle (front of the head shaved, long braid at the back) as a sign of loyalty; refusing could mean death.
• Govern as Confucian emperors. The Qing kept the Ming system of ministries and the civil service examinations, which recruited officials by merit in the Confucian classics. Many top posts were paired, with one Manchu and one Han official.

Resistance continued for decades. The Revolt of the Three Feudatories (1673–1681), led by former Ming generals in the south, nearly split the empire. In 1683 the Qing took Taiwan from the Zheng family, the last Ming loyalists.

Three emperors, 135 years

• Kangxi (ruled 1661–1722) crushed the Three Feudatories, took Taiwan and signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) with Russia, fixing part of the border. He studied mathematics and astronomy with Jesuit missionaries at court and sponsored huge scholarly projects, such as the Kangxi Dictionary (1716).
• Yongzheng (ruled 1722–1735) strengthened central control. He created the Grand Council, a small group of advisers, and reformed taxes and fought corruption, relying on secret reports sent directly to him.
• Qianlong (ruled 1735–1796) brought the empire to its greatest size. Qing armies destroyed the Dzungar state in the 1750s in campaigns that killed a large part of the Dzungar people, and added the vast region later called Xinjiang. Qianlong sponsored the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku Quanshu), copying thousands of works, while also ordering the destruction of books judged hostile to the Manchus. By his last years, corruption and rebellion were growing.

Managing foreigners: tribute and Canton

The Qing saw their emperor as the centre of the civilized world. Neighbouring rulers, such as the kings of Korea, the Ryukyu Islands and Vietnam, sent tribute missions with gifts and ceremonies. In return they received recognition, gifts and trading rights. The system was flexible: Russia was treated as an equal partner at Nerchinsk, and private trade with Southeast Asia flourished.

European merchants were confined more and more. From 1757, under the Canton System, they could trade only at Guangzhou (Canton), only in the trading season, and only through licensed Chinese firms called the Cohong. Europeans bought ever more tea, but China wanted few European goods, so Europeans paid in silver. This imbalance is the background to the Macartney mission of 1793 and the Opium Wars studied in The World, 1789–1900.

Tokugawa Japan: peace by control

After a century of civil war, the Tokugawa shoguns unified Japan from 1603. The emperor in Kyoto kept ceremonial and religious status, but the shogun in Edo (today's Tokyo) governed. Japan then enjoyed about 250 years without major war.

How did the shoguns keep order?

• Daimyo ruled their own domains but had to obey the shogun. Under sankin-kōtai (alternate attendance), they spent every other year in Edo and left their wives and heirs there. The costly travel kept them busy and loyal, and it built roads, inns and a national market.
• Society was ordered by an official status system: samurai, farmers, artisans and merchants. In practice, merchants in Osaka and Edo grew rich while many samurai fell into debt.
• Christianity was banned (from 1614, and suppressed harshly after the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–1638), and from the 1630s Japanese people were forbidden to travel abroad.

A "closed country"?

Textbooks long called Tokugawa Japan a closed country (sakoku). Historians now question this. The word sakoku was coined only in 1801, by a Japanese translator of a Dutch-language book. Foreign contact was controlled, not ended, through "four gates":

• Nagasaki: Dutch traders, confined to the small artificial island of Dejima, and Chinese merchants.
• Tsushima: trade and diplomacy with Joseon Korea, including large Korean embassies to Edo.
• Satsuma: the Ryukyu Kingdom (today's Okinawa), which also sent tribute to China.
• Matsumae: trade with the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Ezo (today's Hokkaido). In 1669 the Ainu leader Shakushain led a major war against Matsumae's unfair trade terms; after his defeat, Japanese control over Ainu lands tightened. Ainu communities continue their culture and their struggle for recognition today.

Through Dutch books, Japanese scholars pursued rangaku (Dutch learning). In 1774 a team led by the physician Sugita Genpaku published a translation of a Dutch anatomy book after comparing its drawings with a real dissection.

Joseon Korea

Korea's Joseon dynasty (1392–1897) was a strongly Confucian kingdom. After Manchu invasions in the 1620s and 1630s it became a Qing tributary, though many Korean scholars privately saw Korea as the true heir of Ming Confucian civilization. In the 1700s kings Yeongjo and Jeongjo promoted reforms, and scholars of Silhak ("practical learning") urged attention to farming, trade and technology.