ABSTRACT
In 1800, China functioned as East Asia's geographical, political, economic, and, to a lesser degree, cultural center, a role that it had played for more than 2,000 years. Perhaps the most striking is that it was ruled by a non-Chinese group, the Manchus. There was another important side to Qing China's relations with its East Asian neighbors, the movement of Chinese goods, merchants, and settlers into the region. Developments in Japan during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries resemble those in China insofar as civil war gave way to domestic peace, economic growth, and serious socioeconomic problems. The Tokugawa political system was highly successful to the extent that it ended the feudal anarchy of earlier centuries, and gave Japan some 260 years of unbroken peace and order. The Korea and Vietnam were quite different societies in other respects, both enthusiastically emulated China. They adopted its ideographic writing, its art and architecture, and its Mahayana Buddhist and Neo-Confucian belief systems.
