Page 12 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Hongxi, Xuande and Zhengtong emperors, covering the and continued for several centuries, till, in the years of the
years from 1403 to 1449, was based on the argument that Christian era 1400, the Emperor Yonglo [sic.] arose to revive
these initial and terminal years represent important turning the learning of the East; while about the same time the
points in China’s history, and that the years between them Medicean family laboured to raise infant genius from the
have a distinctive character. In the first turning point, the cradle. Thus we see politeness spreading over every part of the
Yongle emperor overthrew his nephew following a major world in one age, and barbarity succeeding in another; at one
period a blaze of light diffusing itself over the whole world, and
war, and began the ultimately decisive process of moving the at another all mankind wrapped up in the profoundest
political (if not the economic) centre of gravity of the realm ignorance. 8
back to his own power base in the north. Described at the
time as a ‘second founding’ of the Ming dynasty, the While there might be no doubt that the Yongle emperor
relocation of the capital accompanied a forward military certainly saw himself and his reign as ‘a blaze of light
policy in the steppe, which paralleled the famous voyages of diffusing itself over the whole world’, he might have been less
Zheng He discussed in several chapters in this volume (see willing to share the honours with a family of Italian bankers.
Chapters 2–3, 12, 20, 22, 26–9). In the latter year of 1449, the More recently the work of the late Jack Goody, in his volume
disastrous military adventure of Tumu, with the imperial Renaissances: The One or the Many, draws on Arnold Toynbee’s
person lost to the Mongols as a helpless captive, marked an 1954 Study of History in preferring to see the Song period
era in which the ‘residual interpenetration of China and the (960–1279) as ‘China’s Renaissance’. Building on the idea
9
steppe came to an end’, and served as a ‘symbolic terminus that a rebirth of an ancient culture is a recurring
for the transitional era that began in 1127 with the Jurchen phenomenon in human history, Goody nevertheless might
conquest of North China’. 4 be criticised for working with a very old-fashioned notion of
The exhibition Ming: 50 years that changed China, and even ‘Renaissance’ (developed in the 19th century by Jacob
more perhaps this volume of essays, took very seriously the Burckhardt, and seen as characterised above all by the rise
importance of ‘integrative’ or ‘connective’ history, through of secularism and individualism), which is now considered
which more and more historians have seen the period problematical by scholars working on this era of Europe’s
1500–1800 (whether it is classified as ‘early modern’ or not), past.And parallelisms which see one local phenomenon

as one of parallel developments without a single point of replicated in another place, surely do more to reinforce than
5
origin occurring in different parts of the globe. These to challenge the view of some local histories (in this case that
‘connective’ developments of course themselves have a of Europe) as being the global norm (the same argument has
history which in some aspects goes back beyond the been made in regard to the term ‘early modern’).
centuries 1500–1800, as many writers here demonstrate. The However equally powerful to those analyses which see
historian Janet Abu-Lughod some 25 years ago saw 1250– parallels in historical developments, are those which assert
1350 as the century in which a ‘world system’ came into the Sonderweg, the ‘special way’, of China’s history. One of
being, although whether it went out of existence with the end the most recent and most forceful statements of this position
of Mongol hegemony is something explicitly challenged by was made on 14 October 2014, coincidentally during the
6
many contributors in this volume, as well as by others. Thus course of the British Museum Ming exhibition, by China’s
the huge spike in the price of pepper on European markets President Xi Jinping, who said in a widely reported speech:
between 1410 and 1414 (which for instance saw the price of Several thousand years ago, the Chinese nation trod a path that
pepper in England increase eightfold from 1410 to 1411), has was different from other nations’ culture and development…It
recently been attributed by economic historians to the huge is not a coincidence that we started up ‘socialism with Chinese
amounts of the South Indian spice purchased (or extorted) characteristics’. It was decided by our country’s historical
by the fleets of the Ming admiral Zheng He at precisely this inheritance and cultural traditions…History is created by the
time. It has been argued that: ‘Thus, any impact of Zheng people and so is civilisation. We should be more respectful and
10
He in deflecting pepper and other spices away from the mindful of 5,000 years of continuous Chinese culture.
Levant and Europe would have taken place mainly between Arguably Xi Jinping’s claim of China’s ‘different path’ is
1411 and 1422. It is only a correlation, of course, but this itself an artefact of a common path which led in the 19th
exogenous Asian supply-side shock seems to offer the most century to the creation of the idea of nations and of cultures
likely explanations for the European pepper price spike in as bounded entities, in opposition to Goldsmith’s
the early fifteenth century’. 7 Enlightenment era notion of a universal ‘politeness’. It is
The idea of parallel developments happening in different worth considering the extent to which comparative histories,
parts of the globe at the same time also has itself a long if soundly based on a firm footing of specialist studies, can
history, ranging back well before the modern era. The reign help us to look not only at connections and contacts between
of the Yongle emperor (1403–24) was explicitly set up as a polities, but at the similarities and differences which both
parallel to the Italian Renaissance as long ago as the second link and separate them. 11
half of the 18th century, when the Anglo-Irish novelist, Comparative history will be both conceptually and
playwright and poet Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74) in his tract, empirically weak if it restricts itself to the search for laudable
The Citizen of the World, wrote: traits in one part of the globe, which are then identified as
In succeeding ages Confucius and Pythagoras seem born existing (and usually existing earlier) in another. There are
nearly together, and a train of philosophers then sprung up as certainly unattractive aspects of the history of Europe in the
well in Greece as in China. The period of renewed barbarity years 1400–50 which appear to be absent in China: the list
began to have a universal spread much about the same time, might be headed by judicial murder on account of religious

2 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450