The History of China - #247 - Ming 32: State On the Wane

Episode Date: January 8, 2023

As Ming China enters the 16th century, the Wanli Emperor, his ministers, a new canal, Portuguese & Spanish explorers, the usual gaggle of Chinese neighbors, the Philippines, the Christian Church, The White Lotus, and - of course - the Jesuits all start becoming one another problems... Time Period Covered: ~1600-1617 CE Major Historical Figures: MING: The Wanli Emperor (Zhu Yizhun) [r. 1572-1620] Li Zhi, persecuted Neo-Confucian philosopher [1527–1602] Li Rusong, Ming Commander in Chief [d. 1598] Wang Yangming, Master of the "School of the Mind" [1472–1529] Wang Zhicai, politician & assaultee [d. 16??] Zhang Zha, the "Attack With the Club" Intruder [d. 1617] OTHERS: Limahong (Lin Feng), Pirate Leader out of Manila [1499-1574] Wang Wang Gao, Ming Captian/Spanish Liason [15??] Fr. Martin de Rada [1533-1578] Nurhaci, Mysterious Aisin Gyoro Leader [1559- 1626] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history.

Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 247, State on the Wane. We start off today with the story of Li Jie, who's generally regarded as the greatest iconoclast of the era, who's putting forth a strange proposal. He says that the restrictions on individual freedom, which are implicit in the prevailing social norms, still should not apply to the general public, but that men and women of unusual talent should be accepted from the conventional requirements when their achievements outweighed their transgressions. The exception was justified not on legal, but on philosophical grounds. An adherent of Wang Yongming's School of the Mind, Li Jie argued that since ultimate reality exists only in the mind, a superior mind,

with its innate capacity for transcending evil, should be allowed freedom to act even at the expense of public morality. His limited goal of giving more discretionary powers to outstanding ministers and generals can't really be called radicalism, however. The radical aspect of his proposal lies in the means by which he sought to achieve it. In this age of the dawn of the 16th century, when jurisprudence was underdeveloped and the philosophical discourse was supreme, Lee went even a step further than that by suggesting that the conventional norms of behavior embodied in statutory law could be supplanted by intellectual understanding. Unfortunately for Lee, as is so often the case, because that point of view directly challenged the superiority of moral law and those old

curmudgeons who spend their lives so angry about it, Lee had to die in prison for espousing such non-conformist ideas. His suicide in 1602 ended every effort to amend the highly stylized constitution of the dynasty and its accompanying code of ethics, even by his oblique and well-intentioned means. Bad for him, but good for us because that means that we get to try again right here and now. Yet the constitutional deadlock that involved the emperor and his bureaucrats did not develop into a crisis. True, the ceremonial proceedings requiring the emperor's presence were abandoned, along with disputes over the responsibilities of the throne. Some proposed the practical issues that were held in place unrescripted, given a de facto imperial veto. Nevertheless, other business

went on, the documents apparently being given personal attention by the emperor. In 1620, about three months before his death, he complained to Grand Secretary Fang Ceng Shi about a mass of official papers that still required his attention. When high government positions remained unfulfilled, deputies and junior bureaucrats carried on as usual. Famine relief was handed out, internal rebellions were crushed, and the frontier incursions The most tangible accomplishment of the later Wanli period was the completion of the Jia Canal. After the Grand Canal had been repeatedly stilted up and inundated by the Yellow River, construction of an alternate channel paralleling it to the east to avoid altogether the rapids near Shuzhou was contemplated. The proposal had, at one time, occupied the attention of Zhang Zhuzheng. However, construction only started in

1593, and the project soon ran into difficulties. More stone than had been anticipated had to be removed, and work was suspended several times, owing to a shortage of funds. Then, in 1603, construction was resumed with vigor. The new channel, 110 miles long, was finally opened for traffic in 1609. The deterioration of the government continued, although in less conspicuous ways. The decline was gradual but constant. The bureaucracy had to rely on the morale and faith of its members to function properly. The moral fervor in the Donglin

movement was the one expression that commitment, which was still a powerful force in the workings of society at all levels. The wanli emperor contributed nothing to the maintenance of that public morale. On the contrary, his personal affairs further dampened the spirit of those who wished to rally behind the throne. He responded to the factional conflicts of the central bureaucracy, which often resulted from his perverse behavior and vengeful spirit, by obstructing the bureaucratic channels through which government was normally conducted. He simply ignored the day-to-day operations of both the inner and outer courts. Most notably, he refused to acknowledge or to make the required administrative response to memorials requesting

appointments and resignations. In his analysis of the facts of the huge number of vacancies in the higher levels of bureaucracy that resulted from the emperor's behavior in this request, one modern historian concludes that this signifies several things about the emperor's changing role as the head of his government from about 1600 on. First, having been repeatedly rebuffed by his bureaucrats manned and leaderless, he pointedly accepted from that treatment all those agencies of the civil bureaucracy that were concerned with garnering wealth. Third, he was content to see staffing reduced because salaries not paid to the contemptible bureaucrats could be diverted to his privy purse. To illustrate the extent of the impasse, one may cite the Grand Secretary Shen Yiguang's

Desperate Memorial in early 1603, in which he reported to the throne that of the 13 regional inspectories of the censorate, nine of them had long remained vacant, although candidates had been repeatedly nominated to fill them. All these recommendations were, of course, ignored. In 1604, the Ministry of Personnel urgently reported that almost half of the prefectural magistrates of the realm were vacant, and that well over half the ministerial and vice-ministerial posts of the right and left in both Nanjing and Beijing remained unfulfilled, despite repeated efforts to fill them. The throne had simply ignored the requests.

On several occasions, the officials still on duty at the capital devised extraordinary means of approaching the emperor, who now rarely have ever attended meetings of the court when he did not expect it, to beseech him to authorize routine administrative appointments and to grant retirement to officials who had long since departed without official sanction. On some occasions, they knelt en masse in the courtyards of the palace, chanting and wailing to gain his attention. But to no avail. Unanswered memorials were allowed to pile up year after year. Many vacancies in the eunuch staff also went unfulfilled, especially such leading positions as those in the Directorate of Ceremonial, which normally required the concurrent approval of the outer court or the Grand Secretaries. That displayed the emperor's contempt for the leading division of the eunuch bureaucracy,

which, in his view, had been a willing agent of the capital bureaucracy in imposing constraints on him in the past. Only those divisions of the eunuchs and the outer court administrative bureaucracy directly engaged in tax collection and in new revenue initiatives, the eunuch tax and mining intendants receiving his close attention. Those were maintained in full or expanded and changed to operate effectively. Whether he deserved it or not, this ruler earned a reputation as the most venal and avaricious occupant of the imperial throne in history. He constantly devised ways of denying revenues to the government, and of enhancing his own private treasury. The contempt felt by the bureaucracy for this emperor permeated the government, and had a profound impact on bureaucratic morale,

which still further reduced the capacity of the administration that was not only understaffed, but also denied career mobility. The greatest damage was done in 1615, in the aftermath of the Attack with a Club, which thoroughly exposed the Wanli Emperor's inadequacy not only as emperor, but also as the head of his own household. In the evening of an early summer day, a husky young man wielding a thick club was arrested inside the imperial city at the heir apparent's residence. He had already wounded a eunuch attendant. The trial, by the officials of the Ministry of Justice, established the intruder's name as Zhang Zha. The court was about to conclude that the man, mentally unbalanced, had intended to settle his grudge against two palace eunuchs whom he'd met outside the city.

The case could have been closed at this point by summarily sentencing the man to death, since the law required this extreme penalty for offenders who so much as even menaced the palace with gestures. The verdict was, however, prevented from being finalized by a junior official in charge of prisons. The official, Wang Jizhai, contested the claim of insanity. During a private interrogation inside the cell, he'd established that the prisoner was sane and alert. He'd been coached to carry out a conspiracy. A review of the case, conducted publicly by members representing all the offices of the Ministry of Justice, confirmed the finding by naming two palace officials as instigators. Their closeness to Lady Zheng and her brother seemed to substantiate the general suspicion

that the intruder had been sent to murder the heir apparent so that her son, the Prince of Fu, might eventually ascend the throne. Zhang Jia said that he was to have been promised immunity and a reward. In the wake of protests and criticism, the wanly emperor made an unprecedented move. He called all the officials into the palace. Normal protocol was dispensed with. The sovereign spoke impromptu in front of the kneeling courtiers, with the heir apparent with his three sons and one daughter standing on the stone staircase one step or two below him. At one point, he held the hand of the heir apparent to demonstrate his personal affection toward his son and to assure the officials of the order of succession was irrevocable.

He then demanded that Zhang Jia and the two eunuchs implicated in the case would be executed. At this point, several high officials from the Ministry of Justice challenged the emperor's decision to mete out the death penalty to all three of the suspects. Subsequently, the grand secretaries interceded. Zhang Jia was sentenced to die the next day. But the two eunuchs, still under arrest inside the palace, were to be turned over to the civil officials for trial. The Emperor consented to this. Yet in the end, the eunuchs were never handed over. After Zhang Jia's execution, they were brought to the Wenhua Gate for questioning by civil officials, but they remained in the custody of eunuch officials.

They insisted on their innocence, and so no verdict could be handed out. Now, the heir apparent came forward to speak on their behalf, claiming that they had in fact been framed by the madman Zhang. The ministerial officials then petitioned the throne for permission to cross-examine them again, but the permission was never granted. The ministerial officials then petitioned the throne for permission to cross-examine them again, but the permission was never granted. On the fifth day at the emperor's audience, both eunuchs in question were reported to have died while confined within the palace.

Two years later, during the personal evaluation of 1617, Wang Zhicai, the energetic official who had investigated this case, was cashiered for corruption. Several officials who had previously advocated a quick settlement of the case had by then been labeled as members of the Zhejiang faction. A partisan line decided the outcome of the case. Its confidence shaken in its sense of direction gone, the civil service became an unmanageable body. Skepticism and disbelief spread slowly but irreversibly to the lower echelons of administration. Under the Ming system, the quality of local administration depended, to a great degree,

on the character and integrity of individual magistrates. In preventing the exploitation of the populace by local gentry, they were often forced to act alone. Now, their merit was hardly ever recognized, and their fortitude went unsupported. The demoralizing effect of partisan politics consequently reached to every level of the imperial administration. One can garner from across accounts by Europeans who visited China or had a glimpse of it from Macau in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, that the empire was conceived of as a rationally ordered entity, which, however, failed to prevent numerous

irregularities and widespread corruption in its administration. These writers were also impressed by the numerous towns and cities and the greater variety of goods produced in the country. There arose a consensus, in fact, that China was very rich but weak. During the ages of voyages and discoveries, these conditions provided an irresistible temptation for military conquest. In fact, Philip II of Spain was repeatedly urged to send an expedition to conquer China, with earnest entreaties coming from the lay and religious groups alike. This proposal to open China by force, if it had been carried out, would have preceded the Opium War by two and a half centuries.

But in fact, Philip remained unmoved, and the proposal never came to anything. In view of what happened to the Dutch colonists decades later, the decision taken by Madrid was not unwise. Western powers had not yet harvested the advantages of their technologies. Only after they'd done that could they sustain the forces needed to bring China's imperial order to an end. The Ming Dynasty in the late Wanli period presents a paradox. Its weaknesses lay exposed to European and indigenous observers alike, yet it was able to fend off assaults both from within and without. The Ming case demonstrates the enduring validity of the doctrine of the

mandate of heaven. It was not that the Chinese populace by nature had more tolerance for misgovernment, but the peasantry, maneuverable only en masse, was at the command of an evenly deployed bureaucracy. Unless the scholar-official class agreed to or was compelled to change its allegiance, a dynastic turnover would not occur. In other words, the dynasty endured not only by virtue of its intrinsic strength, but by virtue of its non-competitive position. The lack of an effective rival was sufficient to warrant its continued existence. Before the 16th century came to a close, the Wanli Emperor had yet to celebrate the successful conclusion of his three major campaigns, or San Dazheng. Suffice it all to say that during the last three decades of his

long reign, a year rarely went by without some sort of an internal rebellion or frontier crisis. Social Turbulence and Border Crisis During this period, domestic uprisings took place in several provinces. Among the most serious were those supported by the White Lotus, or the Maitreya sect in Shandong, which flared up in 1587 and again in 1616. After Atlan had been pacified in 1571, there were few raids along the frontier of the north and west of Beijing. The once-powerful Mongolian confederation began to break apart. Altan's successors, Kerkuka and Butuku, were unable to control all the tribes.

However, this did not stop the Ordos Mongols from invading the Gansu-Gokonor region. In subsequent engagements against the Ordos hordes, the Ming army was, on the whole, successful, owing to assistance from Tibetan and Uyghur tribes in the area. But border clashes and minor campaigns went on incessantly throughout the period. Meanwhile, the Eastern Mongols continued to migrate southward into Liaodong, modern Manchuria, where they frequently raided Chinese border outposts. In 1519, the tribesmen succeeded in ambushing and killing Li Jusong. In 1598, the tribesmen succeeded in ambushing and killing Li Jusong. In 1598, the tribesmen succeeded in ambushing and killing Li Jusong, the Ming commander-in-chief.

Until the Manchus appeared under the Jurchen or Manchu leader, Nurhasi, the Mongols continued to occupy the attention of the Ming forces in the northeast. They were able to bring in between 30,000 and 50,000 cavalries into a battle. Intermittent border wars were also fought in the southwest between Ming forces and the Burmese. In 1582 to 1583, a punitive expedition led by Liu Ting penetrated deep into Burma. In 1584, Liu again defeated the Burmese. Despite these victories, the frontier remained subject to attack. In the last decade of the 16th century, the Burmese again invaded the Yunnan border. During this period of confusion, even the Vietnamese became restless. In 1607, they made raids along the borders of Yunnan and Guangxi.

None of these crises and uprisings could have toppled the Ming state, although they caused enough problems and sometimes anxiety. They failed to pose any serious threat to the imperial order. No group managed to build a logistical base or to gain control of enough territory to sustain further growth. To do this, they needed the support of the educated elite. Unless a rebel could rally the local gentry behind his cause, his messianic message offered deliverance only in the life hereafter. Unless a frontier chieftain could recruit enough collaborators to organize a state on the Chinese model, as Altan had once tried to do, and as Nurhasi and his descendants later in fact did, he could not hope to found a dynasty in China. These cases again make clear

the point that no alternative to the ideological state of the Chinese tradition existed in China. The Ming Empire's failure could be attributed to its success. Its conceptual constitution enabled it to cling tenaciously to its mandate, and so long as that remained the case, its misgovernment had to be tolerated. Living state during the Wanli period, the tributary system had deteriorated since the founding of the dynasty. Nevertheless, the system was far from abandoned. It continued to serve the interests of the empire and served it well. But the terms were now open to negotiation, whereas earlier they had been dictated by the Ming court. Altan and his vassals had been accommodated as a modified form of tributary relationship

The exchanges of compliments and goods taking place at the frontier post rather than at the capital Toyotomi Hideyoshi was close to being persuaded to present himself as the tribute-bearing king of Japan The withholding of the subsidies to Kukure A privilege tied to the tributary relationship Was regarded as instrumental in subduing the Mongols in 1590 The withholding of the subsidies to Kukure, a privilege tied to the tributary relationship, was regarded as instrumental in subduing the Mongols in 1590. In 1594, the government of Yunnan was able to organize an attack against Burma jointly with Siam. A year before his open break with the Ming court, Nihasi dispatched his last tributary emissary to Beijing. However, policies that tied foreign aid to the recipient's voluntary subordination to the Celestial Empire had limitations.

Such arrangements might reinforce an armed peace, but they could not substitute for armed force. This was amply demonstrated by Nurhasi, and Annam, or Vietnam, provides another case in point. When the Ming court was unable to arbitrate the feud between the Le and Mak families, its commanding position over Annam vanished. The arrival of Europeans created a new problem. The major concern of the Ming Empire was not to allow coastal trade to disturb the social life of its agrarian society. The Portuguese were permitted to continue residing in Macau. The legal status of the colony was never brought up, for no dispute had arisen over the issue. In practice, the Portuguese paid the magistrate of Xiangshan County a nominal rent.

Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy.

It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. At a Chinese customs house in Macau collected import and export duty and tonnage fees, with preferential rates for the Portuguese. In 1574, a barrier wall was erected to seal off the colony and to keep the foreigners inside. Within the colony, however, the Portuguese enjoyed self-government.

After Philip II seized the throne of Portugal, the residents of Macau decided to form a senatorial administration based on a municipal franchise granted by their mother country, the sanction for which was eventually secured from the Viceroy of India. Thus, while paying lip service to Philip as their king, the colonists managed to keep their port city free of Spanish intervention. These details were of no concern to the Chinese. Although they admitted that foreign trade could not be prohibited, officials were expected to prevent Chinese from going abroad, for they were unable to handle the problems that would result from a mixed Chinese and foreign population. A colony administrated under foreign law therefore served their purpose. The duties and tonnages of foreign trade did not appear as income for the state. The proceeds, which were not

carefully audited, were distributed for local use. Chinese sources bear witness that after collecting their own customary fees, the Mandarins allowed customs declarations to pass with few questions asked. In 1567, the Ming court lifted its ban on Chinese participation in foreign trade and also designated Yuegang near modern Amoy as the port through which such maritime trade should pass. This was a special concession to the population of Fujian, which had taken to piracy and armed uprisings. Local people were now allowed to go to sea. The policy actually encouraged emigration and accounts for the emergence of a number of Fujianese communities in Southeast Asia at this time. The shift of trading from Macau upriver to Canton seemed to have begun in 1578. In that year, the Macau Portuguese were permitted to travel to Canton, the capital of Guangdong province, to purchase Chinese goods. Canton had been closed and opened for foreign trade intermittently

throughout the 16th century, the major consideration that determined its status being law and order. Provincial officials in Guangdong had worked out a detailed set of procedures to regulate the foreign trade under their jurisdiction. Foreigners had to reside in designated areas. They were secured by wealthy Chinese merchants who were designated by a circuit intendant. The trading period was limited to one session and later two a year. The Chinese had also developed a technique for coercion. They withheld services and supplies from foreigners who would not adhere to these procedures. When customs duty collection was shifted from Macau to Canton, all the elements of the 19th century Kohang trade system,

which was, in reality, a modification of the tributary system, were already in place. At the same time that the Macau Portuguese secured their colony, the Spaniards tried to acquire a similar foothold in China through diplomatic negotiations. For a while, the prospects for the undertaking seemed good. Chinese officials shared their interest in destroying the pirate leader Lin Feng, known as Lin Eifeng, Limahong, or Dimmon in Western sources. In 1570, the Spaniards had arrived at Manila, where a handful of Chinese had long been in residence and established a colony. Late in 1574, his offer to submit to

Chinese authorities having been turned down, Lin entered the Bay of Manila with a fleet of 62 vessels loaded with men and women, arms, and farm implements, apparently with a view to colonizing. Lin's men had no difficulty overpowering a Spanish vessel on their way, but their engagement with the Spaniards on land was unsuccessful. The pirate group then turned north and eventually constructed a stronghold at Pongasinan at Lingayen Bay. In March 1575, the Spaniards organized an expedition and took the Chinese by surprise. Having destroyed most of the pirate ships, they laid siege to the fortress. The siege lasted for four months. While the fighting was going on, Wang Wanggao, a Chinese naval officer in command of two warships who was searching for Lin Feng,

had also arrived in Luzon. He was invited to Manila and given a warm reception. Wang, in turn, agreed to take back to China with him a Spanish embassy headed by the missionary empire builder, Friar Martin de Rada. Evidently, Chinese officials at this point wanted the Spaniards to fight for them. And the Spaniards, in addition to securing the island of Luzon, also sought to open China for trade and for them. And the Spaniards, in addition to securing the island of Luzon, also sought to open China for trade and missionary work. When the Spanish mission arrived at Fuzhou, its members were cordially received. The Chinese governor promised to forward their requests to Beijing. What was unexpected was that while the embassy was still at the guesthouse in Fuzhou,

the pirates under Lin Feng, whom the Spaniards thought were surrounded, had secretly constructed more than 30 ships and dug a canal to escape to the sea. To make things even worse, once free on the high seas, they returned to the Formosa Strait and created problems for Fujian officials. Those officials now had less enthusiasm for advancing the Spaniards' cause. Dorada's mission was turned back empty-handed. Further wrangling only intensified bad feelings on both sides. These circumstances prompted the governor in Manila, as well as Friar Dorada, to recommend the military conquest of China.

The proposed expedition never materialized because Philip II rejected the suggestion. But large-scale bloodshed was yet to occur, the victims being the Chinese civilians on Luzon shores. After the Spanish had established themselves in Manila in 1571, Chinese immigrants thronged there in large numbers, much to the dismay of the Spanish colonists. In 1602, on the recommendation of a certain Zhang Yi, the eunuch intendant in charge of business taxes and mining in Fujian obtained the Wanli emperor's permission to mine for precious metals on Mount Ziyi, on a remote offshore island. There's no evidence that the emperor realized where this

island was, or that he was aware of the impending conflict with the Spaniards. His permission was granted in the face of strong protests from his censorial officials. Actually, Zhi Yi might well have been the city of Cavite on the island of Luzon. When the Chinese delegation, including Zhang Yi, arrived to investigate the possibilities, the Spanish authorities became enraged and the delegation was turned back. But Governor Don Pedro Bravo de Acuna suspected that this was some Chinese plot. Just nine years earlier, the mutiny of Chinese conscripts under Spanish command had already cost a governor's life. It was rumored that a Chinese invasion was imminent and that Chinese immigrants were going to aid the invaders.

When Spanish authorities took the precaution of searching the Chinese population for weapons and even iron objects, panic spread. Soon, the Chinese community began to plan for self-defense. The ensuing massacre of October 1603 might have been sparked by minor clashes. But as it gained momentum, it became a full-scale war between the Spanish forces and the Chinese community. The chase started from Manila. The defeated Chinese were driven to Batangas, where the native Filipinos also fell on them. The total loss of life is said to have been over 20,000 by the Chinese count, and 15,000 according to Spanish records. The incident was not reported to the emperor until a year later. The Wanli emperor put Zhang Yi, whose false report had provoked the Spanish atrocity, to death.

Beyond that, little could be done. In 1605, the new governor of Fujian sent a note to the Spaniards asking only that the windows and orphans be repatriated. The proposal to put forth by the Ministry of War that the Red Barbarians within the inner ocean be driven out was in keeping with the pretensions of the Celestial Empire, but altogether impractical. Bloodletting of such magnitude only strengthened the cultural barriers between China and the West. The task of establishing communications had to be achieved by some

non-violent means, and the Jesuits were moving in this direction. For a quarter of a century, since the death of Francisco Xavier on the island of San Cien in 1551, a growing number of Christians had been agitating for the forceful opening of China to Christianity. In 1577, when Friar Alessandro Vallagnano arrived at Macau, the missionary enterprise was given a new direction. As the new visitor of the Jesuit mission in the East Indies, he established the policy of cultural accommodation. He demanded that missions to China first became sinicized. Valignano himself had never set foot in China. He remained in the Portuguese colony on Macau, but his efforts bore fruit. His followers, Michel Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci, did. In the small church of Chaoqing, in modern Gaoyao,

50 miles west of Canton, established in 1583, Ricci eventually worked his way to metropolitan areas, arriving in Nanjing in 1595 and Beijing in 1598. During his second trip to Beijing in 1602, he established himself there permanently. This enabled him to devote the last busy decade of his life to preaching Christianity and to disseminating Western scientific knowledge among members of the imperial court. His success in Beijing made missionary work in other cities possible. Ricci's ability to win confidence is well known. Endowed with inexhaustible patience and an aptitude for learning about things firsthand, he was an ideal ambassador. He not only became accepted by China's educated elite, he virtually charmed them. Despite this success, he did not raise the cultural barrier. He merely made an

opening in it and squeezed himself in through it. Which sounds vaguely familiar, come to think of it. The Jesuit father's own journal reveals that he did not consider his work an astounding success, even though he made converts, among them a few Chinese dignitaries. The upper-class Chinese, Ricci complained, were seeking personal enlightenment rather than affirming their faith. The lower classes, on the other hand, indulged in idolatry and superstition. This is not difficult to understand. The dichotomy he stretches is in reality a reflection of China's social structure, with a huge literate bureaucracy governing millions of peasants, Neither group concerned deeply about the

issues and dogmas of a foreign religion. At a time when the role of arbiter with the transcendent had been assumed by the head of the state, there was little room for Allah or Jehovah. In this way, China did not need to fight a religious war to settle the issue. All creeds were appreciated for their relative value, but none of them had a claim on absolute truth, which was reserved for the cult of the state alone. Under these circumstances, the rights controversy that eventually set the Chinese throne up against the people in the 18th century is not surprising. The policy of cultural accommodation had already caused some strain within the church. Niccolo Longobardi, Ricci's designated successor, did not wait long until after the master's death in 1610 to register his dissension. In 1617, before the reign of the Wanli emperor, not a man of

religious bigotry, had come to an end, the new church in China suffered its first persecution, albeit a mild one. That is actually where we are going to leave off today. Next time, we will get into the three campaigns, which are, in effect, three entirely separate military engagements that China undertakes all at once, and yet, for some reason, they decided to call them all as the same name. Regardless, see you next time, and as always, thanks for listening. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe.

Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.