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Qianlong Reign (1736 - 1799)
General state of China
- Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong reigned from 1661 to 1799. Compared with shifts in other regions of the world at the time (example used, restoration of Charles II to the industrial revolution) China showed extraordinary stability to foreigners
- Spence defines general macro regions to describe the state of China at the time
- A macro region was defined by a core city or region with heightened economic activity and advanced transportation
networks. Why are these macro regions useful in understand China at the time?
- ”Since each of the macroregions had its own internal economic logic, there was always danger that differences with other macroregions might escalate into conflict… The task of the state, therefore was to bond the macroregions together by ideological and administrative means”
- Demographic catastrophe’s may have made possible the economic revival and population rise of the 18th century. Through the early 17th century China’s population is expected to have dropped by about 50 million.
- The General picture for the Qianlong period is repidly expanding population.
- If China’s population had climbed back to 150 million in Kangxi’s reign (from the apparent late Ming disasters) Then it dhoubled by the end of Qianlong’s
- Although old lands were resettled the acreage of arable land only doubled while the population tripled.
- Families expanded into the upland areas of the Yangzi an Hang rivers and Southern Manchuria but due to intensive agriculture and use of human fertilizer exhausted upland soil which could not be replenished easily so some of it had to be abandoned.
- New crops introduced though contributed to caloric intake of workers and enabled the population to rise in areas of otherwise marginal productivity.
- Spence also talks about what must have been frustration for about 20% of men (in specifically Daoyi) who could not find someone to marry. “This was just one more of the many areas in which sources of social discontent were always present, and yet could seldom be articulated because of China’s prevailing social beliefs.
Qianglong
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Qianlong’s most important achievement was the conquest of Xinjiang in the state.
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The sense of dynamic central leadership faded away with the Grand council growing larger from Yongzheng’s reign and Qianlong leaving decision making to his grand councillors.
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Rich provinces were made to give surplus revenue to poorer ones, but this disincentivised either for innovation
- In analysing the fall of the ming scholars fell on Song Confucianism where their were underlying principles that explained heaven’s sanctions and guided human conduct.
- Introduction of the Kaozheng methodology, practicing evidential research.
- What effects did this change in thought have?
- They devoted energy to linguistics, maths, astronomy, geography confident that these would lead to greater certainty about what the intentions of the sages had been. And how to live. p.103
- ”Thus by the end of Qianlong’s reign, as literacy spread…it was perhaps no coincidence that the most highly educated men developed new modes of cultured expression” out of the reach of most people. Similar to what Norman Davies says about Nietzsche and his popularity
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End of his reign with military campaigns despite domestic discontent with various rebellions
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Possibly due to manchu policies that alienated with widespread corruption.
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The dream of the Red chamber p.108