Changes

==The Fall of the Ming==

==The Fall of the Ming==

The Ming suffered their first defeat to the Manchus in [[1619]], and lost Beijing in 1644. Ming loyalists remained active in southern China and Taiwan into the 1680s, however, and sent numerous requests for aid to Japan. The Japanese referred to those bringing these requests as ''Nihon kisshi'' (日本乞師). None were offered aid by the shogunate.<ref>Mizuno Norihito, “China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China,” ''Sino-Japanese Studies'' 15 (2003), 138.</ref>

In the early decades, a weakened Ming Dynasty saw the rise of numerous rebel and bandit groups, in part in response to famines and onerous tax burdens. One rebel leader, [[Li Zicheng]], known by some as a "dashing prince," captured Beijing in [[1644]], finding only a few companies of soldiers and a few thousand eunuchs defending the city's twenty-one miles of city walls. The [[Chongzhen Emperor]] hanged himself two days later.<ref name=tignor500>Tignor, Elman, et al., 501.</ref>

 

Meanwhile, the Ming had been fighting the Manchus in the north, suffering a notable early defeat in [[1619]], but otherwise managing to hold back the steppe nomads. Hearing of the fall of Beijing, however, the commander of the Ming armies in the northeast enlisted the aid of the Manchus to help oust Li Zicheng. The Manchu armies, led by Ming forces to Beijing, did just that, defeating Li Zicheng, but afterwards, they kept Beijing for themselves, going on to conquer the remainder of China in the ensuing decades.<ref name=tignor500/>

 

Ming loyalists remained active in southern China and Taiwan into the 1680s, and sent numerous requests for aid to Japan. The Japanese referred to those bringing these requests as ''Nihon kisshi'' (日本乞師). None were offered aid by the shogunate.<ref>Mizuno Norihito, “China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China,” ''Sino-Japanese Studies'' 15 (2003), 138.</ref>

The Ming continued to live on in the popular imagination throughout the region. Japanese popular publications continued to associate the Ming with the true Chinese rulers, or the true Chinese culture, down into the 19th century, and the royal courts & aristocracies of [[Joseon Dynasty|Korea]] and Ryûkyû considered themselves, in certain respects, the successors to the Ming tradition - the inheritors of the true Chinese civilization, as China proper had fallen to the "barbarians" (the Manchus).

The Ming continued to live on in the popular imagination throughout the region. Japanese popular publications continued to associate the Ming with the true Chinese rulers, or the true Chinese culture, down into the 19th century, and the royal courts & aristocracies of [[Joseon Dynasty|Korea]] and Ryûkyû considered themselves, in certain respects, the successors to the Ming tradition - the inheritors of the true Chinese civilization, as China proper had fallen to the "barbarians" (the Manchus).