Commerce, Disease and War in Eurasia, 1200-1900
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
From Climactic Destruction to Economic Revitalization: Commerce, Disease and War in Eurasia, 1200-1900 Emory Endeavors in History, Volume VI History 489RW: The Gunpowder Age, 900-1900 Professor Tonio Andrade Cover Illustration: Yokohama kaigan tetsudo jokisha no zu. Utagawa Hiroshige III, 1874. U.S. Library of Congress cph.3b52234 Editor- in-Chief Peter Bozian Designer Kolia Kroeger Cover Design Kyeong-bok Lee Chief Copy Editor Mary Anderson Copy Editors Jack Kuhr and Mina Mukherjee Publishing Liaison Shine Sun Marketing and Publicity Warren Kember Introduction Composer Tonio Andrade Table of Introduction ..................................................................................... 6 Tonio Andrade The Not So Little Little Ice Age: Climate Change Impacts on the Collapse of the Yuan and Ming Dynasty ............................. 12 Mary Anderson Peaceful Buddhists Monks Transformation into Martial A1is Masters: An Examination of the Development of Martial Arts at the Shaolin Monastery ..................................................... 30 Warren Kember Beyond Yi Sun-Shin and the Ming: The Performance of the Korean Army during the First Japanese Invasion of Korea, 1592-1596 ............................................................................ 44 Kyeong-bok Lee The Self-Strengthening Movement: Inevitable Failure? A historiographical review on the Self-Strengthening Movement in comparison with the Meiji Restoration ......... 74 Shine Sun The Role of Ortoy Merchants in the Mongolian Court: From the Rise of the Mongol Empire to the Fall of Yuan Dynasty .... 90 Peter Bozian The Rise and Fall of Khoja Rule in Altishahr ............................ 112 Kolia Kroeger Early Modern Understanding of Medicine: A Historiographical Revievv ............................................................................... 136 Mina Mukherjee The Transportation Revolution: The Narrative of a Revolutionized Economy ............................................................................ 152 Jack Kuhr 6 Andrade Introduction 7 Kung Fu emerged from bandit bands, or pirates, or when monks were called upon to defend their home from others. It is even suggested that the monks hired thugs and warriors to help defend TONIO ANDRADE the monastery from attack, and learned the fighting styles from It is a pleasure to introduce Volume VI of Emory Endeavors in them. But the author of the article in this volume, Warren Kember, History. This issue has eight articles that cover a broad span, both argues that this is too facile. In fact, there is good reason to believe geographically and chronologically. that monks' religiosity was central to the emergence of Kung Fu, an argument he makes by looking at religious imagery, meditation The volume opens with an article by Mary Anderson, who brings practices, and comparative data - monks in other Buddhist an environmental perspective of history to the fall of two dynasties societies in East and Southeast Asia similarly developed martial in China: the Yuan Dynasty (1279 -- 1368) and the Ming Dynasty arts practices. (1368-1644). She surveys the historiography of the collapse of these two dynasties and argues that an underlying factor in nearly In Korea, monks fought against the Japanese during one of the all of the causes of collapse that historians have adduced - most important and destructive wars in East Asian History: the famines, droughts, floods, class conflict, factionalism, fiscal crises, Japanese invasion of Korea of 1592-8. In the next article in this and rebellions - was climate. Climatic variation associated with the volume, Kyeong-bok Lee examines that war, although his focus is Little Ice Age affected agriculture and caused more frequent and not maiiial artists but Korea's standard armed forces. Lee advances severe weather-induced natural disasters during the mid-1200s and a bold, revisionist perspective. Previous work has treated the mid-1300s. She does not discount the effect of non-climatological Korean land forces as ineffective, suggesting that the Japanese factors but argues merely that climate must be taken into account. were driven back by Chinese forces and the Korean Navy. In that sense, her article is an example of the increasing attention Drawing on recent work by Western and Korean scholars, historians are paying today to the role of climate in world history, however, Lee argues that in fact the Korean army played a as evidenced by seminal recent works, most notably Geoffrey significant role in the war. Thanks to effective guns and good Parker's Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century. 1 leadership, it was perhaps even more significant in driving back the Japanese than were the vaunted Ming forces that have hitherto The fall of dynasties was, of course, accompanied by much received most of the credit. Indeed, he argues, the Ming forces fighting, and among those who took part were martial artists were considerably less devoted to Korean welfare than most Ming associated with Buddhist monasteries. The next article in this sources would suggest. Korean sources record that Ming forces volume focuses on the most famous monastery: the Shaolin sometimes even protected Japanese forces against Korean attacks, Temple, whose monks gave birth to Chinese Kung Fu. Past with the aim of facilitating Japan's smooth withdrawal from the scholarship has suggested that the emergence of Kung Fu had little peninsula. This article is a reminder of how Korean sources often or nothing to do with the monks' religious thought or practices, that tum accepted wisdom on its head. I Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2013). 8 Andrade Introduction 9 The Japanese eventually left Korea, in 1598, and for nearly three advanced a number of arguments to understand and explain hundred years \Vere involved in no overseas wars. That all merchants' behavior, and the continuing supp01i of the court, and changed, however, during the late nineteenth century, when Japan Bozian evaluates these arguments and proposes his own underwent rapid modernization, building up its military and interpretation, holding that court profligacy played a significant engaging in imperialistic ventures. One of the most intriguing role in its slavish support if the merchants. questions in world history is why the Japanese were so spectacularly successful in their modernization attempts, whereas Kolia Kroeger's article also looks at central Asia, but during a later China and Korea were not. Shine Sun's article focuses on China's period. Its focus is the Uyghur Turks who lived in what is today Self-Strengthening Movement, which has long been considered a China's Xinjiang Province. Kroeger points out that much current failure. After all, in 1895, China was defeated by Japan in the historiography has treated these people from the perspective of the Sino-Japanese War. But in recent years, a number of scholars have empires that ultimately came to rule over them, but Kroeger raised revisionist perspective on the Self-Strengthening Movement, suggests that in fact we need a different perspective, one from arguing that, in certain respects, Chinese modernization was quite below. The Uyghur peoples (and, as the article makes clear, the effective. China's industrial arsenals and shipyards were capable of tenn Uyghur - like so many other ethnic and political designations producing powerful vessels, good munitions, and decent guns. In in the region - is much debated and contested) themselves played a 1894, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, China's navy was in role in the imperial rivalries that played out in their lands, engaging many ways better than that of Japan. Sun's article examines this in alliances and dalliances with the various strong powers. To revisionist perspective based on recent work in Chinese. Although understand the region we must have a detailed understanding of all her conclusions are still tentative, it seems that there is some the actors and their motivations: political, economic, and religious. reason to doubt the revisionist position. Reform is about more than The result is a much fuller and more satisfying narrative. building and buying weapons. The late Qing Dynasty did not Mina Mukhe1jee's article focuses on conceptions of disease and commit itself to the types of political and organizational refom s 1 medicine in early modern Europe. Surveying a wide variety of that were required to compete in the modem world. secondary literature, she provides a snapshot of the state of the Having looked at China, Korea, and Japan, we novv move field of the history of medicine. At the center of historiographical westward, to central Asia, and back in time, to the Mongol Empire perspectives on early modem medicine is God. This shouldn't of the 1200s. Peter Bozian's article sheds light on one of the most come as a surprise, of course, but it is salutary for us modems to important institutions of the empire: the Ortoy Merchants. The remember the extent to which our forebears blamed maladies not Mongol comt took trade very seriously. Via the Ortoy system it on germs or infections, but on spiritual malaise, or on malignant would contract with individual merchants, providing capital, often forces, such as the devil himself. from plunder. In return, the merchant and the court would split We end the volume with Jack Kuhr's article, which engages one of profits. The system, however, turned out to be controversial. The the most important debates in world history