East Europe (1636–1647 CE): Romanov Stability and Emerging Challenges

The Dutch, who had arrived in Asia a century after the Portuguese, had soon become active in the region's opium commerce.

Instead of trading directly with China like the Portuguese, the Dutch had established a permanent port at Batavia (modern Jakarta) in 1619.

They begin purchasing opium from Bengal in 1640 to supply Java's limited demand.

The Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-38, in which discontented Christian samurai and peasants rebel against the bakufu—and Edo calls in Dutch ships to bombard the rebel stronghold—marks the end of the Christian movement.

Soon thereafter the Portuguese are permanently expelled, members of the Portuguese diplomatic mission are executed, all subjects are ordered to register at a Buddhist or Shinto temple, and the Dutch and Chinese are restricted respectively to Deshima and a special quarter in Nagasaki.

Besides small trade of some outer daimyo with Korea and the Ryukyu Islands, to the southwest of Japan's main islands, by 1641 foreign contacts are limited to Nagasaki.

The major intellectual development of the Tokugawa period is the flourishing of neo-Confucianism.

Confucian studies have long been kept active in Japan by Buddhist clerics, but during the Tokugawa period, Confucianism emerges from Buddhist religious control.

This system of thought increases attention to a secular view of man and society.

The ethical humanism, rationalism, and historical perspective of neo-Confucian doctrine appeals to the official class, and by the mid-seventeenth century, it is Japan's dominant legal philosophy and contributes directly to the development of the kokugaku (national learning) school of thought.

Long wars with the Mongols, incursions by the Japanese into Korea, and harassment of Chinese coastal cities by the Japanese in the sixteenth century weaken Ming rule, which becomes, as earlier Chinese dynasties had, ripe for an alien takeover

In 1644 the Manchus take Beijing from the north and become masters of north China, establishing the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911).

Japanese society of the Tokugawa period is influenced by Confucian principles of social order.

At the top of the hierarchy, but removed from political power, are the imperial court families at Kyoto.

The real political power holders are the samurai followed by the rest of society, in descending hierarchical order: farmers, who are organized into villages, artisans, and merchants.

Urban dwellers, often well-to-do merchants, are known as chonin (townspeople) and confined to special districts.

The individual has no legal rights in Tokugawa Japan.

The family is the smallest legal entity, and the maintenance of family status and privileges is of great importance at all levels of society.

Economic development during the Tokugawa period includes urbanization, more shipping of commodities, a significant expansion of domestic and, initially, foreign commerce, and a diffusion of trade and handicraft industries.

Edo has a population of more than one million and Osaka and Kyoto each have more than four hundred thousand inhabitants by the mid-eighteenth century.

Many other castle towns grow as well.

Osaka and Kyoto become busy trading and handicraft production centers while Edo is the center for the supply of food and essential urban consumer goods.

The construction trades flourish along with banking facilities and merchant associations.

Increasingly, han authorities oversee the rising agricultural production and the spread of rural handicrafts.

Japan’s Edo Shogunate, in the interest of regulating and weakening the daimyo, has decreed that each daimyo must spend alternate years in the capital and in their country mansions.

Because of this rule, Japan’s transportation and lodging systems evolved enormously; further, the decree promoted cultural exchange between Edo and the provinces.

The shogunate, staffed by the Bushi, or Samurai, class of warriors turned bureaucrats, promulgated a rigid class system, Shi-no-ko-sho.

The merchant class, Sho, though socially inferior to the warrior (Shi), farmer (No) and artisan (Ko) classes, became wealthy and enjoyed the richest life of the four upper classes.

The shogunate also established two lower classes: the Eta, assigned such “unclean” occupations as butcher or tanner; and the Hinin, “inhuman” or criminal class, from which one could potentially re-ascend to one’s original class.

Thousands of heavily taxed farmers in Japan’s Amakasu province on Japan’s western shore rebel against their daimyo in 1637 and capture the castle of Shimabara.

The daimyo turn for help to the shogunate, whose army arrives to slaughter the rebellious, and mostly Christian, peasant families to the last child.

The Japanese government under Tokugawa Iemetsu, the third shogun, prohibits Christianity and erects an isolation policy called sakoku, expels from Japan all foreign traders—except the Chinese and the Dutch, who may only call in Nagasaki’s Dejima port.

Japan, now effectively closed to outside influences; will remain so for more than two centuries.

Massive epidemics had broken out in northern and central China in 1640 and raced south down along the Grand Canal of China and the densely populated settlements there, from the northern terminus at Beijing, to the fertile Jiangnan region.

The epidemic wipes out ninety percent of the local populace in some areas and towns.

Many of the Torghut, the westernmost of the Oirat Mongols, have meanwhile begin to migrate westward in approximately 1620.

Possibly the movement is a reaction to the growing dominance of the Dzungar Mongols, an Oirat subclan and neighbors of the Torgut to the south.

In any event, the Torghut fight their way through Kyrgyz and Kazakh territory, to cross the Embe River.

Becoming better known as the Kalmyk tribe, they subsequently settle in the Trans-Volga steppe and raid Russian settlements on both sides of the river.

Finally submitting to Russia in 1646, they maintain  autonomy under their own khan.

They become an excellent source of light cavalry for the Russians, who will later use them in campaigns against the Crimean Tatars and in Inner Asia.