If China had a better emperor...

If China had a better emperor, could/would they have followed up on Zheng He's voyages and get colonialism started earlier?

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dunno lol

No colonialism is based on a European sociocultural train of thought to civilize and subjugate other populations (White mans burden, Spread of Catholicism, Human rights and Democracy promotion fuck even Neoconservatism and Neoliberalism) Chinese culture on the other hand was more isolationistic and Xenophobic especially during the Ming which was founded after the Yuan which was Mongol led.

what reason would they have for sailing east into open ocean for thousands of miles across the entire pacific? they had much less motivation to try to reach europe by sea than europe had to try to reach china by sea

The purpose of Zheng He's expeditions was never profit or territorial expansion, it was a prestige project to expand the number of states involved in China's tributary system (which contrary to the name was an expense for China because as the senior member of the tributary system they gave gifts to their vassals that were more valuable than the tribute they received) The treasure fleets themselves did not conduct any trade other than buying rare animals and artifacts to show off to the emperor, and there were no efforts made to set up new trade routes after the expeditions paved the way. No efforts were made to conquer strategic ports or set up colonies. As time went on the Ming leadership was increasingly concerned with defending the northern frontier and so didn't have money for such an expensive prestige project like the treasure fleets.

Its wrong to view the treasure fleets as the Chinese equivalent to the European voyages of discovery, they were undertaken with completely different motivations and goals. China was a complete world, it had all the land and trade goods it needed right there in China, additionally Confucianism looked quite disdainfully at trade, and the Mings were ardent confucians. There was no drive to establish new trade routes or colonies. The European expeditions themselves were a direct reaction to the ottomans gaining control of the spice trade.

>would
>colonialism

user, China IS the result of colonialism over millennia. They've been doing so wayyy before Europeans.

>Uyghur Moslem west
>Tibetan kingdom
>Manchuria Koreans
>Inner Mongolia
>Hong Kong
>Taiwan

All these are under the imperial control of the industrialized southeastern coastal line, full blown mercantilism inside.

You have to understand that there are maritime empires, which run on their navy (uk, Spain, Portugal) and land based traditional empires, that run in their armies (Rome, China, Russia, HRE)

That doesn't mean China colonized a fuck ton of places. Just not in the new world.

...

>Qing is founded in 17th century, conquers Xinjiang and Tibet in the 18th
>European colonialism starts in 15th century
user are you retarded?

European countries needed colonialism because of mercantilism, none of them were able to control all the resources of Europe and so needed to go overseas to find what they needed. The earliest colonists were the Portuguese and Spanish who had jack shit for resources on the Iberian peninsula.
China didn't need colonialism because they already had everything they needed in their land-based empire. The purpose of the treasure fleets was to project political power to the tributary states and show off how rich they were.

Also Koreans in Manchuria are refugees from Japanese conquest of the Korean peninsula

>European colonialism starts in 15th century
Wut

It wouldn't have been as successfull if you take a look here European colonialism was only effective because they were backwards and behind China for most of history and ergo filthy and diseased . I think China had an autistic obsession with cleanliness so while they would have had some parts of America, just not a lot.

Xinjiang has been under Chinese dominion for far longer than the Qing, user. The South of China was also a result of colonialism by the Qin dynasty way back in 220BC.

They're talking about europe as a whole. You can say Spain and the Balkans were colonized for centuries similarly.

>conquest = colonisation
Only legit colonisation the Chinese have done have been the sinification of Southern China.

So were India, Malaya, Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong etc conquests or colonisations?

Why the fuck would China ever engage in Euro-style colonialism in the first place? The Chinese brand of colonialism worked just fine. For fuck's sake, why do you think the Opium War happened? HINT: Because China had absolutely no fucking reason to ever leave what was already China.

Depends on which definition of colonization you use. The ethnic displacment one or the resource extraction one. If you use the former they weren't if they were the latter than Euros have been doing that shit as well as every single other peoples. See Alexander the Great, or even earlier the spread of Indo-European languages.

colonization doesnt start because an emperor feels like it. It's based on a culture of competition for scarce resources and a relatively fractured landscape as opposed to the chinese pearl delta geography.

i know this sounds like meme dawkins but i find it to be true

>India
Colonization but a mix of buying pretty much everybody and forcing down the few ones that don't comply.
>Malaya, Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong e
Conquest.

>Iran and Afghanistan were never colonized by Europe

wat

That was millennia ago. The pic you replied to is about the past 500 years (even though most of the Spanish colonies were lost by the time they invaded Africa and Central Asia + MENA would be invaded in modern history)

Chinese colonialism isn't sailing west across a barren ocean, it's sending armies east across the silk road to where the money is.

basically what has already been said in this thread, western colonialism was born out of a power struggle between several competing mercantilist states.

china (during the early ming) had noone that could remotly compete with them and an abundance of untapped ressources inside their sphere of control already.

there was simply no need to colonize.

now , for a more interesting question. what would have happened if Ming Chinas wouldent have collapsed in 1644, lets say the Emperor wouldent have sidelined and then executed Yuan Chonghuan (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Chonghuan), he would have destroyed the bandit uprisings in central china (he was on the verge of suppressing them befor his execution) and he would have been a competent enough general to force the Manchus to accept a settlement.

My guess is that China would have modernized way earlier , probably along a similar route to japan, all those government ressources that went into suppressing anti manchu/qing sentiment could have been employed productivly instead

Even in the past 500 years Iran was invaded by the British and Soviets, and Afghanistan by Soviets.

but only set up spheres of influence to further control oil prices.

iran is mountain steppe which means that its a bunch of unfertile hills where temperatures go up to 40 celsius, nobody wants it

still a pretty good strategic holdout

No

European colonialism wasn't something that was decided collectively by Europeans so they could conquer the world, it was a culmination of centuries of warfare, conquest, bitter rivalries, population boom, technological advancement, rediscovery of ancient greco-roman knowledge, existential struggle against islam and finally the loss of the land trade route to asia to the turks was the spark that set Europeans to explore and expand all over the world

also forgot to mention another powerful motivating factor was Christianity and spreading the gospel, which the bible demands(jesus said to spread it to all creatures in the world)

no, romans did colonise and build cities mainly due to the marian military reforms, but colonialism dates even back

Portugal had some colonies in it.

>The Chinese didn't do colonialism.
PROTIP: they actually did.

Compared to Euronigs however, it was unofficial. The Chinese shift to sea trade following the end of the 1300s led to coastal Merchant clans competing against each other in the lucrative Spice Route trade.

To one up each other, clans frequently sent their families abroad in Southeast Asia to set up trading posts across the region. These were veritable villages of families who either live in settlements under Southeast Asian kingdoms, or settled in the "empty" areas of what is now Philippines, Borneo, and Indonesia.

It was a practice frowned upon by Ming and Qing governments largely because the trading colonies were associated with smuggling and piracy. However

The greatest of these were the "Kongsi Republics" in Borneo, the greatest being Lanfang. These started as trading/mining colonies in Borneo that grew up to be a state entity in itself. It was governed via "Kongsi" (Chinese word for "Clan Hall") because the government basically is a bigger version of Chinese village government where the whole state is basically one big clan and every family is represented by its patriarch who sat in the government of the colony.

Chinese colonialism is pretty much not recognized as "colonialism" by history largely because many trading posts did not aim to spread the "Chinese empire" or whatever. With the exception of the Kongsi Republics (nominal Qing territory), most didn't care about politics as they are private enterprises who cared about trade. However as they are pretty much large numbers of Chinese sent abroad to live in large trading posts the size of towns to corner trade for their clans, it is pretty much a private colonial endeavor

Didn't the Qing basically sentence anybody who left for SEA to death if they ever came back?

That was during the Qing Dynasty's "Great Clearance" which discouraged settlement in the coast to combat Koxinga's loyalist Kingdom in Taiwan for much of the late 1600s.

Following the fall of Taiwan, trade resumed in the 1720s.

Besides in numerous incidences of sea-bans, the Chinese looked the other way in terms of their trading posts abroad because they made people wealthy. It was still frowned upon though.

OP here, thanks everyone!

That's true though. Also who is "Europe"? The majority of European countries never had empires and colonies

>implying anyone gives a fuck about Eastern Europe

Bump

didn't Poland-Lithuania grab some random island in the Carribbean?

It would have been really interesting if instead slaughtering the previous dynasties, new dynasties banished old ones to the new world.

Bump

>conquest=colonize

Maybe they would have dominated SEA, but honestly they already did, I don't really see the Chinese making the much harder Pacific voyage ahead of the Europeans considering their inferior naval tradition, need to explore, and the overall isolationism that dominated the Ming.