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Eventine

Senior Member
Registered Member
Iracundus said:
We are looking at this with the benefit of hindsight with our modern lenses. For most of human history, technological progress was so slow as to be invisible to nearly everyone. Inventions were often seen as curiosities rather than paradigm shifting changes. Even practical inventions did not substantially change the quality of life for average people. For example, for nearly all of human history, any improvements in agricultural technique or technology did not result in a raised standard of living for peasants. It resulted in more peasants (i.e. a population increase). The political problems were the same for nearly all dynasties, namely the issue of foreign threats and the issue of internal revolt/corruption.

The solutions of the time we now know caused problems but they were a result of the technological limitations of the time. The jiedushi of Tang for example were an attempt to deal with foreign threats in a time of slow communication by empowering local governors with power to act quickly without having to wait for orders from the central government, a process that would have been slow, rigid, and unwieldy. Obviously that raised the issue of regional warlordism, but it is the same issue with Western feudalism and local dukes acting as independent warlords.
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The jiedushi were not a solution imposed from a position of strength; they were a consequence of the Tang court's weakness after the An Lushan rebellion. Not only was the court broke (literally in debt to Uyghur bankers), but they lost much of their central armies putting down the rebellion; the commissioning of the jiedushi was more like an official acknowledgement of what had already happened (decentralization), than a top-down edict. It was, in many ways, similar to what happened during the late Qing with the rise of the provincial warlords.

Compare this to the history of the Han, where during the early decades of the dynasty, the empire was decentralized, but over time, it actually became more centralized as the Han court maneuvered itself into greater power and influence. The Han faced some of the same issues the Tang did in having to respond quickly vs. nomadic raids and foreign threats, but they did not end up decentralizing. Why? Because the Han court crushed the Rebellion of the Seven States in three months, thus ending any movement towards decentralization for centuries. By contrast, the An Lushan rebellion lasted for almost a decade and devastated the Tang economy and the court's authority.

Of course, the Han would eventually also decentralize - involuntarily - towards the end of its reign. That also basically signaled the fall of the dynasty.
 
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Iracundus

Junior Member
Registered Member
Eventine said:
The jiedushi were not a solution imposed from a position of strength; they were a consequence of the Tang court's weakness after the An Lushan rebellion. Not only was the court broke (literally in debt to Uyghur bankers), but they lost much of their central armies putting down the rebellion; the commissioning of the jiedushi was more like an official acknowledgement of what had already happened (decentralization), than a top-down edict. It was, in many ways, similar to what happened during the late Qing with the rise of the provincial warlords.

Compare this to the history of the Han, where during the early decades of the dynasty, the empire was decentralized, but over time, it actually became more centralized as the Han court maneuvered itself into greater power and influence. The Han faced some of the same issues the Tang did in having to respond quickly vs. nomadic raids and foreign threats, but they did not end up decentralizing. Why? Because the Han court crushed the Rebellion of the Seven States in three months, thus ending any movement towards decentralization for centuries. By contrast, the An Lushan rebellion lasted for almost a decade and devastated the Tang economy and the court's authority.

Of course, the Han would eventually also decentralize - involuntarily - towards the end of its reign. That also basically signaled the fall of the dynasty.
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The first jiedushi with combined financial, civil, and military power were created decades before the An Lushan rebellion, so yes they were originally a creation from the top. The problem was after the An Lushan rebellion the jiedushi broke the leash of the central government and became warlords, passing on their titles to their sons. The central court could do little than accept this and approve their appointment for fear of triggering another rebellion. Then eventually these warlords started taking on new titles and it became the 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms period. The Song dynasty stripped military power from the jiedushi to break the cycle of warlordism.

When the speed of communication is limited to horse courier, there is a limit to how quickly any central government can respond to crises at the border and no pre-modern government really solved the problem. There is a theory that the maximum size of any pre-modern land empire was 6 months travel/communication time from the center to the border (meaning it took 1 year for a round trip). The problem of the jiedushi or feudal dukes or any warlord system is that it is a system that works only as long as the central government can keep a tight leash on them. The more successful one is, the greater the suspicion at the central court. An unsuccessful attempt to strip a regional warlord of power is what precipitated the overthrow of the Ming Jianwen emperor. Even the An Lushan rebellion can be seen as a pre-emptive strike by An Lushan as he anticipated an attempt to purge him. He failed so he became a villain. Zhu Di succeeded so he became Yongle emperor.
 
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FriedRiceNSpice

FriedRiceNSpice

Major
Iracundus said:
An unsuccessful attempt to strip a regional warlord of power is what precipitated the overthrow of the Ming Jianwen emperor. Even the An Lushan rebellion can be seen as a pre-emptive strike by An Lushan as he anticipated an attempt to purge him. He failed so he became a villain. Zhu Di succeeded so he became Yongle emperor.
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Zhu Di was an imperial uncle and the son of Zhu Yuanzhang, so there is quite a difference there.
 
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Iracundus

Junior Member
Registered Member
FriedRiceNSpice said:
Zhu Di was an imperial uncle and the son of Zhu Yuanzhang, so there is quite a difference there.
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It is a matter more of the degree of initial support he might have gotten. A son of the founder would get more support from other relatives whereas someone like An Lushan would not have that initial base of family support. However An Lushan had the support of his troops and would have used the ideology of claiming the Mandate of Heaven from an unjust ruler as his excuse if he had succeeded. That same rationale was used later by warlords of the 5 dynasties for overthrowing their predecessors. The essential situation though is the same: a warlord on the border rising up to overthrow the center when the center lacked the power to enforce its will.
 
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ACuriousPLAFan

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
bebops said:
Japan is a very resilient civilization throughout thousands of years like Jiang said. China cannot control, blockade, defeat or get rid of Japan. History similarly repeat and rhyme itself in the past and future. The biggest threat to Japan is the Mongol empire which had failed twice trying to conquer them.
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Kindly remind me: At which point in history did the Mongol Empire have warplanes, cruise/ballistic/hypersonic missiles, warships, drones, etc - Alongside the material, financial, and manpower capability required to enable printing them out like sausages?
 
FriedRiceNSpice

FriedRiceNSpice

Major
Puss in Boots said:
The Qing Dynasty was the successor to the Ming Dynasty. If it wanted to become a great era, it had to do better than the Ming, instead of shifting all blame onto the previous dynasty. It cannot be simply assumed that the Qing Dynasty bore no responsibility for the decline of Chinese civilization because the previous dynasty was ineffective. In this respect, modern "democratic systems" are very similar, believing that as long as they shift responsibility to the previous administration, they absolve themselves of all responsibility.

Qin Shi Huang's high historical status is due to his unification of China; Emperor Taizong of Tang brought Chinese civilization to new heights. Only those who can change the course of history deserve historical recognition, not emperors who merely complain about the previous dynasty without implementing any changes themselves.
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China was unable to respond effectively to the West due to complex structural and systemic reasons. The Qing just happened to be the dynasty that was in charge when China first encountered an industrialized Western power. The capability gap between pre-industrial and industrial societies is insurmountable. China wasn't the only pre-industrial empire that failed to resist the industrialized powers of Europe - all of the major empires of the time failed (Ottomans, Persians, Indians).
Eventine said:
Tang achievements are honestly overrated. The dynasty was only truly prosperous during its first 100-150 years. An Lushan's rebellion wrecked Tang imperial power, and the subsequent decentralization under the jiedushi might as well be considered another "age of fragmentation" (which formally became so during the Five Dynasties & Ten Kingdoms, allowing the Liao, the Jin, and the Western Xia to annex territories from the Song).

Tang, despite being open to foreign influences and ideas, was also not that technology savvy. The core Guanlong elites basically inherited the values of the Northern Dynasties aka "horse cavalry > all." Because of this and their reliance on nomadic mercenaries / auxiliaries, they never invested much into technological innovation, like the Song did.

But if we're talking about the dynasties that truly screwed China over on the technology front, it was equally the Ming and the Qing. Both were so stuck up in their own **** (whether it's neo-Confucianism in the case of the Ming, or the Manchu banners system in the case of the Qing) that they were essentially not curious about the rest of the world. Both conducted more literary inquisitions than any other dynasty in history, and the late Ming / late Qing were text book examples of elite paranoia & paralysis causing their respective down falls.

Regardless, it's not as though China was an exception in the larger context - most of the world was like this. Europe was the actual exception, and European exceptionalism was what led to 500 years of colonial dominance - something that China could at best have imitated earlier if the Ming & Qing weren't so stuck in their ways.

But you know who wasn't stuck in their ways? The PRC. It was the PRC that led China into becoming the global industrial super power that it is today. It was the PRC that allowed China to catch up to the Europeans, and you only have to compare it to the various corrupt regimes and oligarchies of the Middle East, Africa, South America, South Asia, West Asia, etc. to see examples of what could've happened instead if a less competent government led China. So, in historical terms, the greatest Chinese "dynasty" is none other than the Chinese government today.
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The golden period for all Chinese dynasties lasts at most 100-150 years. What was remarkable about the Tang wasn't purely their military conquests (ironically, early Qing nearly matched the Tang in terms of military success and territorial expansion) - it was the creativity, openness, and receptiveness to new ideas that characterized the first half of the dynasty. The only period in Chinese history that matched the Tang in creativity and the generation of new ideas was the Spring and Fall / Warring States period. The Ming and Qing by comparison were deserts of intellectual and philosophical development. Early Tang would have been the most likely Chinse dynasty to have been able to adapt rapidly enough to the emergence of industrialized Western powers.
Iracundus said:
We are looking at this with the benefit of hindsight with our modern lenses. For most of human history, technological progress was so slow as to be invisible to nearly everyone. Inventions were often seen as curiosities rather than paradigm shifting changes. Even practical inventions did not substantially change the quality of life for average people. For example, for nearly all of human history, any improvements in agricultural technique or technology did not result in a raised standard of living for peasants. It resulted in more peasants (i.e. a population increase). The political problems were the same for nearly all dynasties, namely the issue of foreign threats and the issue of internal revolt/corruption.

The solutions of the time we now know caused problems but they were a result of the technological limitations of the time. The jiedushi of Tang for example were an attempt to deal with foreign threats in a time of slow communication by empowering local governors with power to act quickly without having to wait for orders from the central government, a process that would have been slow, rigid, and unwieldy. Obviously that raised the issue of regional warlordism, but it is the same issue with Western feudalism and local dukes acting as independent warlords.
Click to expand...
Eventine said:
The jiedushi were not a solution imposed from a position of strength; they were a consequence of the Tang court's weakness after the An Lushan rebellion. Not only was the court broke (literally in debt to Uyghur bankers), but they lost much of their central armies putting down the rebellion; the commissioning of the jiedushi was more like an official acknowledgement of what had already happened (decentralization), than a top-down edict. It was, in many ways, similar to what happened during the late Qing with the rise of the provincial warlords.

Compare this to the history of the Han, where during the early decades of the dynasty, the empire was decentralized, but over time, it actually became more centralized as the Han court maneuvered itself into greater power and influence. The Han faced some of the same issues the Tang did in having to respond quickly vs. nomadic raids and foreign threats, but they did not end up decentralizing. Why? Because the Han court crushed the Rebellion of the Seven States in three months, thus ending any movement towards decentralization for centuries. By contrast, the An Lushan rebellion lasted for almost a decade and devastated the Tang economy and the court's authority.

Of course, the Han would eventually also decentralize - involuntarily - towards the end of its reign. That also basically signaled the fall of the dynasty.
Click to expand...

A central and recurring challenge confronting successive Chinese dynasties was the management of local elite power: specifically, how to prevent the consolidation of regional bases of authority that might, over time, rival and ultimately undermine the supremacy of the imperial center. Successive dynasties had the tendency to overcorrect based on the experiences of the previous dynasty, yet no dynasty ever managed to find a lasting solution to the problem. The solution adopted by the Song/Ming and later the Qing was the keju and elevation of Song-Ming rationalism - which not only ultimately failed, but also hamstrung intellectual advancement.
 
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