Treatment of China in Textbooks

Different textbooks may treat the same material in different ways, placing greater emphasis on one aspect of the issues raised, using different authorities as the source, or choosing one interpretation over others as the one to be preferred. There are also differences in terms of when the textbooks were written and used, indicating different views of the importance of China and so in the need for students to know about Chinese history. The treatment of China from the Ming Dynasty to the Mid-Manchu Dynasty is given different treatments in different textbooks, and the text by McKay will serve as the base for a comparison to other textbooks on the issues raised and the treatment afforded this era in history.

McKay refers to the general period from 1400 to 1800 as a period of dynamic growth and change in East Asia. He sets forth at the beginning of the section explicit statements of what he intends to explore in the pages that follow, relating changes in China to changes in Japan at the same time. In terms of China as such, he says that he will explore how the Chinese thinkers interpreted and explained the shift form the Ming to the Manchus. He refers to the Mongol repression under the Yuan Dynasty and other problems such as rapid inflation of currency, disputes over succession, and the growth of peasant secret societies at the beginning of the era, which specifically begins when Hong Wu in 1368 pushes the Mongols out of China and founds the Ming Dynasty, one of only two m

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e happened in China during this period and as if what did happen was confined largely to China proper, McKay notes the maritime expansion undertaken in the Ming period by Yong Lu and his successor. McKay also addresses the issues raised in the decline of the Ming Dynasty at great length and points to a number of dynamics ignored by Swain. Swain makes the end of the era the result almost entirely of invasion, while McKay points to the tensions taking place inside China, beginning with a bitter struggle for the throne after the death of Hong Wu and also involving the extravagance of the imperial court, which created economic difficulties for the country. The reason the invasions were successful this time was that Yong Lu's successors lacked his drive and ability. One inexperienced emperor was captured by the Mongols in 1450. The empire held together, however, and portions of it enjoyed great prosperity even as other regions declined economically. McKay also takes a different view of the increasing relations between China and the West, seeing this as evidence that China was participating more in an emerging global economy rather than that China was only a trading satellite for the West: By the late sixteenth century China wa

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