Foreign Relations of Imperial China - Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

Further information: Tibet during the Ming Dynasty

The Ming, after the Han and T'ang, was another high point in China's power. The first emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), was the head of the Red Turban Rebellion when he routed the rival rebel Chinese leaders and then forced the Mongol leaders of the Yuan Dynasty to flee north, back into the Mongolian steppe. The Ming Dynasty made a string of conflicts with the Mongols thereafter, some of which were successful, and others of which were not. An example of the latter would be the Tumu Crisis in 1449, where the Zhengtong Emperor was captured by the Mongols and not released until a year later.

The Hongwu Emperor allowed foreign envoys to visit the capitals at Nanjing and Beijing, but enacted strict legal prohibitions of private maritime trade by Chinese merchants wishing to travel abroad. After the death of Timur, who intended to invade China, the relations between the Yongle Emperor's China and Shakhrukh's state in Persia and Transoxania state considerably improved. Both the Chinese envoy to Samarkand and Herat, Chen Cheng, and his opposite party, Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh, left detailed accounts of their visits to each other's country.

The greatest diplomatic highlights of the Ming period were the enormous maritime tributary missions and expeditions of the admiral Zheng He (1371–1433), a favored eunuch commander of the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402-1424). Zheng He's missions docked at ports throughout much of the Asian world, including those in Borneo, the Malay state of the Malacca Sultanate, Sri Lanka, India, Persia, Arabia, and East Africa. Meanwhile, the Chinese under Yongle invaded northern Vietnam in 1402, and remained there until 1428, when Lê Lợi led a successful native rebellion against the Chinese occupiers.

Large tributary missions such as these were halted after Zheng He, with periods of isolationism in the Ming, coupled with the need to defend China's large eastern coastal areas against marauding Japanese pirates. Although it was severely limited by the state, trade was overall not forbidden. After 1578, it was completely liberalized. Upon their arrival in the early 16th century, the Portuguese traded with the Chinese at Tuen Mun, despite some hostilities exchanged between both sides. The Ming Chinese also traded avidly with the Spanish, sending numerous Chinese trade ships annually to the Philippines in order to sell them Chinese goods in exchange for mita-mined silver from the New World colonies of Spain. There was so much Spanish silver entering China that the Spanish minted silver currency became commonplace in Ming China. The Ming Chinese attempted to convert the silver currency back to copper currency, but the economic damage was done.

Meanwhile, the Chinese under the Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620) became engaged in a somewhat costly war defending Korea against Japan. The Japanese regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) and his predecessor Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) brought about the prosperous Azuchi-Momoyama period in feudal Japan, putting an end to the turbulent era of the Sengoku period. However, the Japanese staged an enormous invasion of Korea from 1592 to 1598. The aim of the Japanese was to ultimately invade prosperous Ming China, but in order to do so it would need to use the Korean Peninsula as a staging ground between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea. Although initially successful, Toyotomi's efforts were sullied with the naval victories of the Joseon admiral Yi Sun-sin (1545–1598). Throughout the war, though, the Ming Chinese suffered significant casualties, and had spent a great deal of revenue sending troops on land into Korea and bolstering the Korean navy in battles such as the Battle of Noryang Point.

The decline of Ming China's economy by inflation was made worse by crop failure, famine, sudden plague, and agrarian rebellion led by those such as Li Zicheng (1606–1644), the Ming Dynasty fell in 1644. The Ming general Wu Sangui (1612–1678) was going to side with the rebels under Li, but felt betrayed when one of his concubines was taken by Li, and so allowed the Manchus under the Shunzhi Emperor (1638–1661) to enter a northern pass and invade northern China from their base in Manchuria.

The first Jesuit missionaries to visit China did so during the Ming Dynasty. The most prominent one was the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). Matteo is famous in China and the West for many reasons. He was the first to translate the Chinese classic texts into a Western language (Latin), and the first to translate the name of the most prominent Chinese philosopher Kong Fuzi as Confucius. Along with another Jesuit father, he was the first European to enter the Forbidden City of Beijing, during the reign of the Wanli Emperor. Matteo Ricci and his baptized Chinese colleague, the mathematician, astronomer, and agronomist Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), were the first to translate the ancient Greek mathematical treatise of Euclid's Elements into Chinese.