Why did the Chinese invent guns and gunpowder and then just sort of not continue their advancement, leading to them getting raped when Europeans showed up with their gun advancements?
Why did the Chinese invent guns and gunpowder and then just sort of not continue their advancement...
Thomas Lopez
Other urls found in this thread:
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Jayden Stewart
Iirc it took a while for gunpowder weapons to actually become worthwhile to use on the battlefield, and given that China didn't have a bunch of small states constantly at war, it would seem that they had less development in military technology
Thomas Miller
>China didn't have a bunch of small states constantly at war,
Wut
Anthony Adams
First gunpowder guns were no better than spears.
Jaxson Peterson
Like Yuan and after there tended to be only one or two major players until the 20th century, whereas Europe had tiny states that were constantly at war
Oliver Perry
Similar to the question why Romans fucked around with steam power, but went nowhere with it - not seeing any immediate benefits, I guess.
Plus, didn't Confucianism shoot progressive thought in the crotch?
Elijah King
Because Qing were retards.
Ming experimented with and developed a lot of gunpowder weaponry, all kinds of artillery and small arms. Although you can blame Ming's later isolationism as reason for them being replaced by Qing later.
Joseph Martin
tbqh I think China had gotten to a sufficiently comfy point in their culture (at the start of the Han) that they didn't want to fuck it up by changing anything. They could tolerate foreign invasion. Now they've become forced to become Western/universal.
Duibuqi wode heigui. Ni zhiyao wo xuyaole dui tamen zuo zhege.
Andrew Stewart
> Why did the Chinese invent guns and gunpowder and then just sort of not continue their advancement, leading to them getting raped when Europeans showed up with their gun advancements?
The Song Dynasty got conquered by the Mongols, who were less partial to gunpowder weapons than the Song themselves.
Then once the Ming overthrew the Mongols, they went back to making lots of guns, but the lead they had in gunpowder technology was reduced. Ming gunsmiths recognized that European/Turkish matchlocks were superior to the Ming firearms by the 1530's, and copied them with local improvements.
Unlike the Song, the Ming were extremely conservative, and advances in technology were sidelined in favor of philosophy and the arts. However, the technology base was still there, and the copied Ming firearms were on par with European arms. The Portuguese noted that the local copies of European artillery was superior to the original.
When the Ming fell, the Qing were downright reactionary, and like the Mongols, favored bows over firearms. Archery was included in the civil exams to become a military officer, but firearms proficiency wasn't. Then 100 years of peace caused the Qing military to atrophy significantly. When the British came knocking in 1840, the Qing military was a farce. The poor organization, morale, and training of the Qing military had far more to do with their repeated defeats on land than technology. A matchlock is worse than the British flintlocks, but not all that much worse, and the Afghan tribes inflicted defeats upon the British while armed with matchlocks.
The technological gap at sea was another matter. Steamships and modern cannons made absolute mince of the sail-powered Qing navy with obsolete (and few) cannons.
Henry Williams
Because war was a show for the Qing, their bows were stupidly big and shot spears a shit distance too, they relied on intimidation rather than actual effectiveness, it took a fucking American to show them a Chinese army could be armed with western arms and succeed
en.wikipedia.org
Connor Wood
>Duibuqi wode heigui. Ni zhiyao wo xuyaole dui tamen zuo zhege.
Why would you not just type this in characters so I can actually read it. Or at least include tones.
Eli James
> Those who assist a leader by means of the Tao do not use arms to coerce the world, for these things tend to reverse - brambles grow where an army has been, bad years follow a great war.
> Weapons are inauspicious instruments, not the tools of the enlightened. When there is no choice but to use them, it is best to be calm and free from greed, and not celebrate victory. > Those who celebrate victory are bloodthirsty, and the bloodthirsty cannot have their way with the world.
Adam Bailey
"Sorry my niggers. You know I had to do it to them."
Parker Harris
sorry my nigger, you only me to [possible typo] do this to them.
That's what I see anyways.
Maybe his computer doesn't have a mandarin software keyboard.
Nathan Ramirez
That's what I read too, but that doesn't make sense, So I assumed I was reading it incorrectly and characters would help.
Jaxon Taylor
...
Ryan Barnes
有。这是纯粹的懒惰
Still learning.
Aaron Wilson
你为什么学习汉语?
你对中国美女感兴趣?
Grayson Smith
Because I like it. I did briefly date a Chinese girl. Daoism, getting to know another culture.
Ayden Johnson
>he fell for the yellow fever meme
John Adams
中国女人的脚丫好看
Samuel Morgan
I find them quite worldly and intelligent compared to Westerners. *tips 斗笠*
Speaking of which, does anyone know how to express tipping a hat in Mandarin? What word should be used for "tip"?
Isaiah Turner
>When the Ming fell, the Qing were downright reactionary, and like the Mongols, favored bows over firearms. Archery was included in the civil exams to become a military officer, but firearms proficiency wasn't. Then 100 years of peace caused the Qing military to atrophy significantly.
>100 Years of Peace
>Qing
The Qing continued the firearms production of the Ming. In fact they had more guns than the Ming. Which is how the Qing were able to conquer China and the fucking steppes in the first place. Heck, the fact that the Steppes were conquered and subjugated for good for the first time ever by a China-based power was a testament to how much the Qings were reliant on firearms. If there's anything you can accuse the Qing, it's that they didn't bother to experiment with guns no longer and rested on the stuff the Ming made.
And I have no idea where you asspulled that "100 years of peace" considering the Conquest of China by the Manchus was then followed by the Three Feudatories war, and then 1700s was a conquering spree by the Qing, culminating in the Ten Great Campaigns of Qianlong's Reign. Throw in the rebellions, the Qingz were never at peace within 50 years of any of their Emperors.
>When the Ming fell, the Qing were downright reactionary, and like the Mongols, favored bows over firearms. Archery was included in the civil exams to become a military officer, but firearms proficiency wasn't.
Further asspuls
The reason why Archery is still taught in officer courses is because officers were supposed to be competent in any form of weapon. In addition, being an elite trooper in the Qing meant induction into the bannermen, where your role is that of an armored horse archer. But the Qing still had masses of infantrymen, with loads of muskets among them.
Heck, even then, we see in period artwork of dismounted bannermen wielding muskets in the paintings of Imperial reviews of the military.
Bentley Fisher
Blaming the Qing as being reactionary is wrong as this guys says But then we do need to explain why the Qing sucked by the time of the Opium War (1839-1842). The correct answer is found not in military technology but rather Manchu society. The Qing relied on the Manchu bannermen for their army. These Manchus lived in 3 places.
1) Manchuria, Mongolia, Central Asia: very few, living the traditional lifestyle of part hunting and part agriculture. Potentially good soldiers but simply too few in number.
2) Beijing: very few, elites living with the emperor in the capital, they got their incomes from lands near the capital, and generally were well off. These guys were ineffective in war because as urban city dwellers, many of them lost their military preparedness.
3) In garrisons scattered across former Ming China: the majority. In the early years they had land surrounding their garrisons producing income for them. And during the early years they focused on preparing for war and fighting for the emperor to get a chance for promotion (the ultimate reward was to live in Beijing with the emperor). This explains the martial prowess of the Manchus in the early years.
However, by the 18th century the generals in charge of these garrisons had effectively seized the lands as their private property, and the Manchus living in these garrisons were now living in poverty. This severely weakened the Bannermen as a military force (they were now focused on making a living rather than training for war).
That's why out of Qianlong's 10 Campaigns the later ones were pretty awful.