Page 347 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

afto be dangerous; then defensive measures an economic necessity to China. From a twenti- Christendom's triumph over "idolatries and
were appropriate. Such savages apart, it was eth-century point of view we can argue that an heresies." He wrote:
assumed that all borderland peoples, and even expanded foreign trade could have greatly
[following the
same month
Later in that
some of those at more remote distance, would enriched the producers of its goods and the January surrender of Granada], because of the
want to come to Beijing and show their reepect ports through which they passed, and might report that I had given to Your Highnesses
for the Chinese throne. also have stimulated significant growth
That is the underlying meaning of what is throughout the entire economy. Yet it is not about the lands of India and about a prince
who is called "Grand Khan," which means in
called the "tribute system" of Chinese foreign difficult to see why China's scholar-bureaucrats our Spanish language "King of Kings"; how,
relations. Notwithstanding that idealized pic- could overlook the potential benefits of trade; many times, he and his predecessors had sent
ture of the world, the Ming Chinese could be they were concerned with social needs for to Rome to ask for men learned in our Holy
far more pragmatic when circumstances which appropriate solutions lay elsewhere. Faith in order that they might instruct him in
demanded. Central Kingdom or no, they knew Guarding the northern land frontiers along it and how the Holy Father had never pro-
that China could be coerced by steppe nomads which the steppe peoples could invade, limiting vided them
with superior military power, and they could the burdens of government that fell on the
devise realistic settlements under the camou- hard-working farmer-taxpayers, and upholding That clearly refers to the exchanges between the
flage of ritualized patterns. And the high offi- the time-honored conservative social ideals — popes and the Mongol emperors Chinggis (Gen-
cials of the court (as no doubt also the private these tasks had prior claim on their political ghis) Khan and his successors. 23 Chinggis
merchants) were not unaware that tribute-bear- energies. Overseas adventurism was to be Khan's grandson Khubilai Khan ruled China at
ing envoys and heads of state were motivated avoided. When the two early emperors who for the time of Marco Polo's sojourn there, 1275-
more by the opportunities for trade that tribute personal reasons had sponsored the expeditions 1292, and figured prominently in Polo's
status brought than by any belief in Chinese of Zheng He had passed from the scene, it is not account. It seems certain that Columbus had
cosmological pretensions. Yet the antique, ideal surprising that the high officials of the court long known about the Venetian's great travel
world view, revived by the Ming, was upheld to would urge discontinuing the voyages on the book, but his careful study of it and the mar-
the fullest extent possible. Zheng He's manage- grounds of waste and frivolity. After 1434 ginal notes he made on his copy of the book
ment of the situations he encountered in his China totally abandoned all state interest in may date from a time following his return from
voyagings can be explained only by invoking such expeditions. A powerful sense of competi- the First Voyage in 1493. 24
the grandiose model of the tribute system. tion among the European powers drove their
China's search for advantage in its relations with empire-building efforts. China was not in com- Polo's account mentioned earlier contacts
other peoples had to be measured in those ideal, petition with any other state; the very idea was between Christendom and the Mongol world
nonmaterial terms. To abandon the notion that inconceivable. empire, but his references to Christian groups
China was the center of the civilized world encountered in China concerned Inner Asian
would have been too destabilizing. Chinese did Nestorian Christians, not missionaries and
not have to think seriously about such a possi- Europe's Awareness of the East travelers from Catholic Europe. It was not until
bility until the nineteenth century. in the Age of Columbus two or three years after he left China for Venice
There was also a more practical, domestic, In the "Prologue" to his Diary of the First in 1292 that the first Franciscan fathers sent
side to the equation. The statesmen who super- Voyage in 1492-1493, Christopher Columbus from Rome arrived in Khanbaliq (as the Mon-
vised China's government knew what made addressed the king and queen of Spain: gols called their capital, present-day Beijing).
their society function. China was a highly Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and They began a new chapter in relations between
developed agrarian society, and a generally Princes, and enemies f.... all idolatries and Europe and China, but one which appears to
o
prosperous one. The ordinary Chinese of Ming heresies, you thought of sending me, Cris- have slipped from European memory by the late
times probably were the best-clothed and tobal Colon, to the said regions of India to see fifteenth century. The Franciscan friar John of
housed and best-nourished people in the the said princes and the peoples and the Montecorvino (c. 1246-1328) left Europe for
21
world. Their family-based village society lands.... And you commanded that I should China by the overland route in 1289, probably
worked rather well, held together, as they all not go to the East by land, by which way it is arriving in 1293 or 12 94- O the basis of his
n
knew, by Confucian ethical norms. The state customary to go, but by the route to the hopeful letters the Pope elevated him in 1307 to
flourished when village society was stable and West, by which route we do not know for Archbishop of Khanbaliq and sent him seven
the agricultural population prospered. China certain that anyone previously has passed. 22 suffragan bishops, followed by three more in
had no hereditary aristocracy. Its elite stratum 1310. Some of his letters sent back to Rome
was dominated by the scholar-officials, recruited Columbus describes "the said regions of India" have survived. We also have letters from the
by civil-service examinations, and these hailed in terms drawn from Marco Polo's description Franciscan Andrew of Perugia, Bishop of Zayton
predominantly from the villages, whether or of China and Inner Asia, as Polo observed them (present-day Quanzhou, the great port city in
not from farming households. The scholar- in the late thirteenth century. That was a time Fujian), whose last known letter to Rome is
25
officials thus understood the needs of the farm- when Europeans traveled to the East via the dated 1326. A number of letters to Europe
ing people; they came from the same social Central Asian caravan routes in unusually large from these missionaries and envoys in China
base. China, moreover, had a self-sufficient numbers. Yet Columbus' comments in the are preserved in European collections, as are
economy. With very few exceptions (cavalry "Prologue" suggest that India and China had documents referring to the dispatch of Euro-
horses, copper, etc.) it had no need to import merged in his consciousness, for clearly he was peans to the empire of the Great Khans. These
any essentials, and exports of China's famed referring to China. Columbus suggested to Fer- and other travelers from Rome to China created
luxury goods and craft products were con- dinand and Isabella that their sending him to an interesting though not enduring chapter in
sidered a boon to the outside world rather than the East was the next logical step in pursuing Christian mission history, but one that was

346 CIRCA 1492