Page 30 - Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasty by Johnathan Hay

N.B. Numbers in parentheses in bold refer to the page of the Italian text (appended) on
which the relevant illustration may be found.

THE QING DYNASTY

The collapse of the Ming and the Manchu invasion in 1644 threw China into what
came to be known as "the Great Chaos". In its wake, however, the claim of the Qing (Pure)
dynasty of the Manchus withstood the test of decades of resistance. As China slowly

recovered from the trauma of those events and came to terms with the new, alien dynasty,
entrepreneurial society gradually recovered its late Ming momentum. Unlike their Ming
predecessors, the first Manchu rulers proved to be excellent managers, and made a virtue of

the association of state and commerce. State priorities began to shift, however, following the
accession of the Qianlong emperor in 1736 who diverted cultural policy from an ideal of
efficiency toward the pursuit of absolute ideological control. This entailed enormous
expense, which sapped the resources both of the state and of traditional entrepreneurial
society. Even at the height of the Qianlong reign, however, there existed a vast alternative

world of cultural networks and microcultures which escaped state control and expressed
vastly different values. In the early nineteenth century, the ports of international trade began
to surpass in importance the traditional urban centers of the south-east, effectively creating a

division between two worlds. Whereas most of the country still belonged to a hinterland
culture tied to the state, there now came into being an alternative culture which declared its
independence in favor of direct links with the outside world and an engagement with
modernity.

SHUNZHI TO EARLY KANGXI (1644-1680)

The beginning of the Qing dynasty is now conventionally dated to 1644, when the

Chongzhen emperor hanged himself on top of the hill which overlooked the northern gate of
the palace. From the Manchu point of view, however, the dynasty had already begun in 1636,
when Abahai changed the name of the Later Jin dynasty (the Manchus were descendants of
the Jurchens) to "Great Qing". Nor did everyone at the time accept that the Ming dynasty had
ended in 1644. While Manchu armies quickly went on to put most of China under Qing

control, active resistance in the Ming name continued for almost twenty years. As late as the
1670s, the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories came close to bringing down the new dynasty.
These first troubled decades of the Qing dynasty prior to 1680 have a distinct character. The

country was plunged into economic depression, the court had not yet developed a distinctive