Page 338 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

CHINA IN THE AGE OF COLUMBUS

E W. Mote

A... more important failure occurred in it is therefore obvious why I missed the me before 1963 My excuse is that the
chapter 10, which treats world affairs centrality of China and Chinese civilization historiography available a generation ago still
between A.D. 1000 and 1500. In this case, in these centuries.... In retrospect it is fasci- reflected the traditional valuations of China's
new scholarship since 1963 has pointed the nating to see how some of the material for a past my ignorance (and residual
way to a firmer and better understanding of proper appreciation of Chinese primacy Eurocentrism) hid this from me in 1963.
what was going on in the Eurasian world, and between A.D. 1000 and 1500 was available to This indeed is the central failure of the book.

So writes the eminent historian William H. possibilities in maritime expansion, but instead Science and Technology
McNeill in a recent essay reflecting on his turned away from that kind of engagement with
powerful work of world history, The Rise of the the rest of the world, has come in recent times Throughout the histories of all civilizations,
West, first published in 1963; twenty-five years to intrigue many historians in China and else- advances to positions of preeminence have
later he finds it in serious need of revision in where. McNeill observes: always been built upon the command of knowl-
only one or two respects. In particular he notes Scholarly investigation of what happened in edge. The capacities to generate new knowledge
that he had underestimated China's social orga- China and why the Ming dynasty chose to (often stimulated in some measure by
nization, political sophistication, high develop- abandon overseas ventures after the 14305 borrowing), to preserve essential knowledge so
ment of craft industry and commerce, and remain very slender by comparison with the that it accumulates and is not dissipated, and to
application of technology in many aspects of abundant literature on European exploration transmit knowledge effectively to succeeding
life. He now presents convincing evidence that of the new worlds their navigation opened to generations in circumstances that reward its
China was the most advanced civilization in the them. Comparative study of the dynamics of application and refinement —these capacities
world throughout the half-millennium that Chinese and European expansion before and have always been crucial to the advance of civili-
ended in A.D. 1500. "The rise of the west to after the tip point that came about 1450 to zation. Special features of Chinese life early
world hegemony/' the dominant process in 1500 offers an especially intriguing topic for established the necessary conditions for the
world history from that time onward into the historical inquiry today, poised as we are on effective command of important fields of
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twentieth century, got quickly underway only the horizon of the twenty-first century, knowledge. More than three thousand years
after 15OO. 1 when, for all we know, the displacement of ago China independently produced one of the
William McNeill has been one of the most the far east by the far west, that took place in world's two or three fully developed writing
influential historians of our time. In his view the sixteenth century, may be reversed. systems. Westerners in recent centuries, having
— now widely held among historians — the voy- found Chinese writing difficult to learn, have
ages of the European navigators and empire It is, nonetheless, worth noting that just as invented groundless deprecations of the
builders in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth China's rise after A.D. 1000 had depended on Chinese writing system —that the complicated-
centuries marked the beginnings of Europe's prior borrowings from the Middle East, so looking characters functioned to deny literacy,
rise to dominance in world history. Thereafter, Europe's world success after 1500 also and thereby knowledge, to the common people,
by many measures of their relative strengths, depended on prior borrowings from China. or that the nature of the writing system limited
China was overtaken by the West. Yet it would ... any geographical displacement of world the ability of the Chinese to think in general or
be incorrect to speak of an absolute decline in leadership must be prefaced by successful in abstract terms. But young Chinese lucky
the quality of China's civilization, and even its borrowing from previously established cen- enough to receive education learn their logo-
"decline" relative to a newly invigorated Europe ters of the highest prevailing skills. 2 graphic script as easily and quickly as young
was within the technical means of China to have McNeill's reassessment of China's place in world students elsewhere learn their alphabetic ones;
contested, had it chosen to do so. Why it did not history helps us to focus on several issues: (i) having learned it, they have acquired a powerful
contest with the European powers for control, at the development and diffusion of those kinds of tool better suited to China's linguistic condi-
least of East Asia, in the centuries following science and technology that supported the fif- tions than a strictly phonetic script. The com-
1492 is a question that proceeds from European teenth century's great maritime adventures, and plex but culturally rich Chinese writing system
assumptions about what civilizations should do; China's contributions to the ebb and flow of has in fact been an effective instrument of unity
to understand China's relationship to the rest of such international cultural borrowings; (2) and of continuity, both in transmitting knowl-
the world in the time of Columbus we must set China's record as a maritime power and the role edge and in serving the needs of governing.
those assumptions aside and look at the civiliza- of the state both in supporting and, by the mid- China's rate of literacy in the fifteenth century,
tions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries fifteenth century, in curtailing that; (3) some and for many centuries before and after, appears
from the ground of their own histories. special characteristics of China's ruling institu- to have been higher than that of any other soci-
It is not well known that Ming dynasty China tions—emperor, court, and scholar-officialdom; ety of the premodern world. Finally, any lan-
(1368-1644) had been the world's greatest mari- (4) the qualities of Chinese life that might have guage can adapt to any needs, can express
time power in the first half of the fifteenth cen- impressed Columbus had he succeeded in reach- whatever its speakers wish to express; the
tury. That the Chinese state did not pursue the ing "Cathay"; (5) art and Chinese civilization. quaint notion that either the Chinese language

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