HIS280Y1 Lecture : The Collapse of the Ming and the Founding of the Qing Dynasty.docx
Document Summary
Factional conflict, eunuchs, the decline of the centre and gentry reorganization. Aspects of the late ming collapse: environmental disaster and epidemics, peasant and bondservant/ slave rebellions. Society of the late ming period is much more commercialized than the early ming society. This led to a number of consequences that shape the collapse of the ming. For one, at the level of the elites, china"s involvement in the early modern global economy and the increasing wealth in chinese society tended to make many people rich who, according to standard confucian theory, shouldn"t have been rich. Start to get a class of extremely wealthy merchants based on their trade rather than their learning in the confucian texts. Conflict between the old elite (who feel that status should be earned by civility and education) and the new elite who are gaining status by buying it.
