Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
was governed by a succession of emperors until 1912. One must go back to ancient Egypt
to find another system of government that had remained intact for more than 2,000 years.
It was a system built on the two Chinese social inventions now used almost everywhere
in the world: bureaucrats and a civil service appointed by means of a competitive written
examination. [196]
In China's long history, more than a dozen clans held the imperial throne. Some held it
for centuries, others for only decades. The emperor's territory and writ varied with his mil-
itary power and his ability to suppress rebellion. In times of widespread civil unrest, China
broke into small kingdoms (e.g., the Three Kingdoms, 220-265 CE; the Five Dynasties and
Ten Kingdoms, 907-60 CE). Regimes were overthrown by foreign conquest and by rebel-
lion. China is huge, but land suited to agriculture is small (only 15 percent of the total).
Peasant uprising was a frequent aftermath of crop failure and widespread famine.
HORSEMEN FROM THE NORTH
Two of the most powerful dynasties were established by hard-riding conquerors from the
north. The Mongol dynasty was founded by Genghis Kahn, whose armies swept through
Asia and conquered Russia. His great empire extended east-west from the Sea of Japan
to Poland and north-south from Siberia to Persia. His grandson, Kublai, consolidated the
empire by toppling the dynasty in 1279, and Kublai established his capital in Peking. He
offered safe journey across his empire, particularly on the Great Silk Road. One such jour-
ney brought three members of a Venetian family to China to trade: Nicolai, Maffeo, and
young Marco Polo. The year was 1271. With a flair for languages, quick-witted Marco
served for twenty-five years as messenger and diplomat for the Great Kahn. When he re-
turned to Venice in 1295, he brought with him the “secret” of a sea passage from Europe
to the Far East. That knowledge would later carry the Portuguese around Africa to the Far
East and would inspire Christopher Columbus to attempt an alternate route to the riches of
Asia. [197]
The armies of the Ming Dynasty, who in their turn were deposed by what was to be the
last imperial rulers, the Manchus (called in Chinese the Ch'ing in Wade-Giles, or in Pinyin,
Qing ). Their ancestral homeland was in the north in Manchuria. Manchu armies conquered
China in about 1644. Organized into fighting units, each bearing a distinctive banner, the
Manchus attempted to keep themselves separate from their subject people. Chinese men
were forced to shave their foreheads and wear a long braid at the neck (called pigtails by
Westerners). Manchu women shunned the fashion of Chinese women: they did not bind
their feet. The Manchus ruled China for almost 300 years until the revolution of 1912.
The Manchu centuries (1644-1912) were the centuries of China's long slide into hu-
miliation. This mighty country, whose rulers dismissed Westerners as barbarians who had
nothing to teach China, was unable to prevent them from setting up European-controlled
 
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