Did Europe Have Little Impact on East Asian Developments Prior to the 19th Century - Essay Example

Prior to the 19th Century Europe Had Little Impact on East Asian Developments The history of European penetration into East Asia is a really a field-to-plough for a researcher. Nevertheless it is not a perspective that tries to cover all of imperialist efforts of Europe as well as of the Occident as a whole. The beginnings of European expansion in the countries of the Far East could be traced as far back as the Age of the Great Discoveries. It was the time when the first European maritime empires sprang up. Those newly appeared empires with the exception of Spain deferred local kingdoms so intercourse with local cultures was between cultural, yet not religious, equals. White presence in the countries of the Far East was predominantly commercial and confined to the coastal settlements where traders and soldiers got together under the auspices of Western men-of-war, yet in truth relied on their hosts’ goodwill. For the major empires of China or Tokugawa Japan shogunate they were both strategically and politically marginal and insignificant1. Furthermore in China, Joseon Korean kingdoms and in Japan religious and social structures were rather resistant to rapid change and conferred much stability continuity. The systems of Buddhism and Taoism were taking hold along with Confucianism that emphasized individual moral obligations to the society. Neither in China nor in Korea nor in Japan was an individual viewed as ultimately autonomous. Furthermore these societies did not focus on individual freedoms. Nevertheless continuity and stability are relative notions. Asian cultures developed a curious patchwork of social customs, languages, religious beliefs and different ways of thinking. Ancient varieties of astrology, geomancy and animism were still omnipresent, particularly in rural areas where pantheism offered plenty of opportunities for religious tolerance. In China, Korea and in Japan reverence for elders, ancestors and deities of nature, dating from thousands of years before Christ, were considerably amalgamated into newer mode of thinking. In most places religious systems were linked to the complicated social structures. These cultures were not fit to separating political and social affairs from belief or faith. Such distinctions made no sense in most parts of East Asia. Likewise they make no sense nowadays either. Religious and quasi-religious systems are present in all aspects of human life: in politics, family and social relations, in philosophy2. For example, Confucianism is notable for both being a system of political, personal and social ethics as well as for being an effort to explain the world as a whole in rational terms. It lays down a rule of life that tends strongly to keep social hierarchy and order. It has long existed side by side with Buddhism, Taoism and even with Marxism. There even have been several religious wars in Japan and in China similar top those in Europe. The imperial “Celestial” monarchy of China went on to look predominantly inwards. Within a period between 750 and 1100 the population of almost doubled so by the beginning of the 16th century China, with her 100 million people, had already had the largest number of subjects than any kingdom of that time civilized world. Yet in 1386 the Chinese Ming defeated the heirs of Mongol Kublai Khan, expelled Mongols and assumed the imperial power. They developed sciences, arts and various technologies to rather high level. At the beginning for the fifteenth century, they moved their capital northward from Nanjing to Beijing. This 800-mile transfer involved great expenses for new walls palaces and for the transport. For all those cultural developments, nevertheless, there was much ossification. As for Europeans time has always been linear for the people of Far East cultures time have been cyclical. European societies tended toward the rule of law. Their despotisms were mollified by custom, privileges, charters and rights of towns and after all by law. Celestial Empire in its turn developed bureaucratic and centralized methods of government. Although small in number, the mandarin class evolved. Being selected by rigorous examination, strong on styles and traditional thought, selected by strict examination it was extremely devoted to the state administration. Its powers were extremely great and administration standards were rather high. The mandarins served as the custodians of a stable and peaceful order, defined the doctrine and often judged mode of behavior and even thought. Nevertheless, any dissents were stifled; with the technological progress people were often treated as the inanimate objects. From its early years China possessed an abundance of coke, coal and textiles, most of the materials which centuries later made industrial revolution in Europe possible. However, they failed to develop all these materials. Although China had lots of inventions, they had no follow-up3. Likewise China has never had any property rights similar to those European elites have ever had. There was no encourage for independent judiciary or private enterprise. On the contrary there was emphasis on both collective and mutual responsibility at district and local levels. There were customs, regulations and rules that govern everything, qualified enough yet also reinforced by stress on consensus. Imperial order in the Far East was both religious and human. The emperor was both temporal and spiritual ruler, guardian of the people’s prosperity and peace. The monarch himself served as example of justice and morality. Whoever was emperor he ruled by the “heavenly mandate.” As the sovereign in both realms he appointed priests of the temple hierarchy, civil officials and presided during the ritual beginning of farm work4. If that mandate shifted, it happened because of the emperor and his kinsmen violated certain standards of virtue so it was a high time for someone else to become the true leader. Lack of virtue in the emperor resulted in such disasters as floods and peasant rebellions. Between 1627 and 1636 peasant unrests and crop failures from the far west to Fujan were followed by 1644 Manchu invasion. As late as 1975 floods and earthquakes were viewed by the common people as the sign that the rule of Mao was coming to its end. In 1976 he died confirming the ancient Chinese saying: “Heaven sees with the eyes of the people”. This sentiment echoed in other words by the Founding Fathers of t he United States5. The Chinese viewed their empire as the centre of the civilized world. A Chinese bureaucrat or a scholar did not think about some Chinese Civilization or about China proper in the modern sense of these notions. For them there were Han race and beyond that was barbarism only. Whatever did not belong to Chinese civilization was, by definition barbaric. This concept viewed the Chinese civilization as such without neighbors since the idea of neighbor means somebody else who is as civilized as you are. Therefore, China did not resemble a present-day “state”. China was the civilized society above the elements of the world from one side and barbarians from another. Eventually the emperor could not be simply primus inter pares ruler, reigning one state among others. This concept was not only alien to the Chinese. They deemed it irrational. The emperor was viewed as the apex of civilization, the mediator between the earth and the heaven in the system where the Occidental division between spiritual and temporal had practically no meaning. While the rulers of the Occident could deem themselves as political figures both local and temporal, the Chinese emperor had global significance. No one could imagine concluding any treaties between sovereign states. All the non-Chinese were barbarians by definition; therefore they were viewed as incapable of any human virtue so they may have been held in line by a system of awards and punishments. Strangers could appear from time to time from time to time from distant regions to admire Celestial civilization and purchase its products, yet they could scarcely be of much concern to Chinese empire. Both the Emperor and his officials required from their subjects was that they must not disturb the Celestial Empires harmonious order. All barbarians beyond that order ought to have to pay tribute homage to the Chinese Emperor. Any foreign relations were viewed as nothing but tributary relations with barbarians paying homage and tribute to the Emperor. Furthermore, since any foreign societies were nothing else but tributaries of the Celestial Empire, this tribute meant not just conciliating the superior, yet much more importantly, the recognition of the proper order. It was not viewed as the tribute to the Chinese monarch and state. It was viewed as the tribute to the civilization proper, embodied in the Celestial Emperor. Refusing to pay this tribute was regarded not only as an insult to the monarch’s person, yet a disharmonious note in the universal model of things. The emperor could not tolerate such an unnatural act so his duty was to maintain universal harmony. During the nineteenth century, Joseon Korea did her best to regulate foreign influences by closing her borders to all strangers except China. In 1853 the US ship South America visited Busan, stayed there for a decade and enjoyed amiable contact with local Koreans. Several American citizens which were shipwrecked on that country in 1855 and 1856 were likewise treated well and sent to Chinese Empire to be repatriated6. The Joseon imperial court that ruled Korea was well aware of the treaties that involved Qing China as well as of the foreign invasions it endured. Opium Wars inevitably resulted in cautious policies of relationships with the West. After the great numbers of Koreans adopted Christianity Korean court imposed restrictions upon the contacts with French missionaries. In 1866 both Korean converts and French missionaries were massacred. This year the French invaded and occupied parts of Ganghwa Island. The Korean army sustained heavy losses though the French left the island7. This very year General Sherman, the British-owned armed merchant schooner made an attempt to open Korean state to trade. After initial misunderstanding the ship went upriver and got stranded at Pyongyang. After Korean officials ordered the ship to leave, the American crew killed four Koreans, kidnapped a Korean officer and engaged in a skirmish that lasted four days long. After Koreans’ two attempts to destroy USS General Sherman failed the ship after all was set afire by Korean fire ships loaded with explosives. It was nit until 1876 that modernizing Japan forced Korean state to open its ports. The Japanese challenged thus the backward Qing Chinese Empire in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). The Japanese were also involved in the murder of Korean Empress Myeongseong that happened in 1895. The Empress sought for Russian support yet after she was murdered the Russians had to retreat from Korean peninsula. This notwithstanding, they returned at the beginning of the twentieth century8. All these events made up a new era known as “the New Imperialism”, which is viewed as a shift in focus from trade to formal colonial control of huge overseas territories ruled as some extensions of the mother territories. Despite of all the efforts far East countries authorities had been making in order to “close” their countries to any influence form overseas, they failed withstand the pressure of technologically far more advanced Europeans and Americans. References Christie. CJ 2001, Ideology and revolution in Southeast Asia, 1900-1980: political ideas of the anti-colonial era, Richmond, England, Curzon Ebrey, PB 2009 East Asia: a cultural, social, and political history, 2nd ed. Boston, Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Gelber, AG 2001 Nations out of empires: European nationalism and the transformation of Asia, Basingstoke: Palgrave Goody, J 2010 The Eurasian miracle, Cambridge, England, Polity Press. Gunn, GC 2003 First globalization: the Eurasian exchange, 1500-1800, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. Masselos, J 2010 The great empires of Asia, Berkeley, Calif, University of California Press Prakash, O 1997 European commercial expansion in early modern Asia, Aldershot, England; Brookfield, USA: Variorum Preston, PW (Peter Wallace) 2010 National pasts in Europe and East Asia, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY, Routledge Reid, A. 1997 The last stand of Asian autonomies: responses to modernity in the diverse states of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750-1900, Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, New York, St. Martins Press Read More