Archive | 2019
Long-Lived Dynasties: Ming and Its Contemporaries
Abstract
East Asia was finally united and usually peaceful for a very long time. The Little Ice Age kept the colder parts of the region in difficult straits. In China, the Ming Dynasty consolidated control, sent out huge exploring expeditions but abandoned them, and settled down to a dull rule. Korea, inspired by China, threw off the Mongol yoke and unified under the Yi Dynasty, which was to rule until the end of the nineteenth century. Japan suffered more violent times, with catastrophic civil war in the sixteenth century, resolved by unification under the powerful and efficient Tokugawa shogunate. Vietnam dealt with Ming invasion and brief conquest, then had to deal with uncertain and contested rule. Particularly cold and harsh conditions in the early seventeenth century did not stop the northern Manchu armies from conquering China in 1644. Japan and Vietnam, buffered by geography from the cold, consolidated and flourished.