The Ming Empire of China has had a vast and diverse history ranging across the centuries. Many historians have commented on this–Paul Kennedy and Charles Mann being two of the most vocal. What must be taken into account, however, is that Kennedy did not focus on the minutiae of the Ming Empire nearly as much as Mann and others, and as such, many of his arguments do not hold up. The Ming Dynasty lasted from 1368 to 1644, spanning many emperors, upheavals, and changes that led to its eventual decline. Kennedy attributes many facts to the decline of Ming China, while providing no background to his assertions, while Mann, though he takes a different path and provides more detail, ultimately ends with the same conclusion as Kennedy made. While Kennedy states that the stagnation of the Ming Dynasty and the cessation of foreign trade were to blame for the downfall of the Ming Dynasty, Mann and other authors find that Kennedy’s assertions are not the true cause of the downfall of the dynasty, though the end result of the Ming Empire falling was the same.

While Kennedy states that the Ming economy stagnated due to their refusal to continue their technological progression, Mann contradicts this point by talking about the troubles with Chinese currency that led to the stagnation of the Ming economy, not the lack of technological progression. According to Kennedy, along with the degradation of many inventions, “the astronomical docks were disregarded, and the ironworks gradually fell into desuetude. These were not the only disincentives to economic growth”. Mann finds that rather than the empire choosing to stop their progression and as such ceasing to expand economically, that “China had severe money woes. Literally so—the empire had lost control of its own coinage, and merchants had to buy and sell goods with little lumps of silver”. This happened because the currency of China was originally “round coins made of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin” . Eventually, the empire ran out of bronze, and due to the fact that bronze was a form of commodity money, it became too expensive to produce. Thus, the government created fiat money, or paper money, but during a war with the Mongols an emperor “turned the printing presses on high” and inflation was the result, until the fiat (paper) money was practically worthless and the people went back to commodity money like silver. Unfortunately, since the “ national government required silver for taxes but disbursed little silver in its expenditures” and “there was a continuing decline in the ability of the political administration to regulate commercial affairs”. Many emperors neglected their duties completely, according to Mann, and chose to follow their own interests while ignoring the empire. Due to this, the economy of China fluctuated wildly until the government lost complete control. Thus, though Kennedy does postulate that the Ming economy stagnated, he ignores many details about the currency of Ming China that contributed to its downfall that Mann elaborates on, though they lead to the same end result.

Kennedy also asserts that due to conservative politics, exploration was terminated, while Mann blatantly rebuts this, stating that China had no reason to continue it’s exploration of other lands. According to Kennedy, “the Chinese expedition of 1433 was the last of the line, and three years later an imperial edict banned the construction of seagoing ships”. Thus, exploration was sharply terminated by an emperor. What he ignores, however, is something that Mann does not—“No matter how far [they] travelled from home, [they] never encountered a nation richer than [their] own”. Kennedy brushes by the fact that “the attempted Chinese expansion southward into Annam (modern day Vietnam) was proving fruitless and costly” but ultimately ignores it, while Mann compares the state of affairs to that of the US—“The empire stopped long range exploration for the same reason the United States stopped sending men to the moon—there was nothing there to justify the cost of such voyages”. Trade was also not stopped entirely, just those from the north, because northwestern “foreigners are recalcitrant and their greed knows no bounds” while for the people in the South, “their goods are useful to us just as ours are to them”, according to a scholar from Ming China. This had to do with the fact that when trading with people from the South, China had more power and got what they wanted easily, thus benefiting them. Ultimately, though other scholars, such as David Landes, have stated that “the Chinese lacked range, focus, and above all, curiosity”. It was not a cessation of trade and travel due to “the sheer conservatism of Confucian bureaucracy” , as Kennedy asserts, but rather the fact that there was no reason to continue exploration because Mann provides more proof and explanation.

Kennedy’s assertions that the stagnation of economic growth and the conclusion of foreign trade and exploration led to the decline of Ming China are ultimately true, but the author does not elaborate on his assertions at all, providing little to no proof. The blanks are then filled in by Mann, who, while providing a great deal of context to Kennedy’s statements, ends up agreeing with Kennedy on one thing only—that the Ming empire declined. Without Mann to provide background in his own book, however, most of Kennedy’s arguments do not hold up simply because he provides little background or evidence is provided to support them. Thus, putting Kennedy and Mann’s arguments into dialogue, Kennedy’s argument barely holds up, and only due to the fact that Mann reaches the same conclusion while taking a different, more comprehensive path.

Bibliography

History.com Editors. “Ming Dynasty.” History.com. January 10, 2018. http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-china/ming-dynasty.

Kennedy, Paul M. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. Random House, 1990.

Landes, David S. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Abacus, 1999.

Mann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

“The World’s Favorite Online Thesaurus!” Thesaurus.com. http://www.thesaurus.com/.

Zhang Han (1510-1593), was a Ming official who writes Songchuang Meng Yu (松窗夢語) during his retirement.  This is from a chapter, “On Trade.”

Brook Zhang Han article selection.pdf.

Agrawal, Nikki, and Sarah W. 16 Sept. 2019.