Nick says...11/12/09

Class today started off a little strange as Conelly came into class singing a song about candy or something. Of coarse, him and Mehlman argued for a little and then class got started. Once everything was settled we focused on the topic for the day which was the Ming Dynasty. We broke up into groups and did a reading on the Ming. The reading explained the major events of the Ming and focused on the founder of the Ming, Hongwu, and his self consciousness plus violent thinking. Also, it mentioned the government structure of the Ming. Hongwu set up a Confucian based government, but also had an extremely powerful military to defend against the Mongol invasions that were taking place. Because of Hongwu's former peasanthood, if that's a word, he made life easier for the peasants in his empire. He lowered the land tax and stocked up the granary. He also changed the currency. At first, paper money was being used. But because Hongwu didn't understand that him giving out money would cause inflation, the had to switch to copper coins, but that didn't work either because they were easy to counterfeit. So the finally ended up using coins processed in the mints of every provence with some lead added to measure value.
The Ming were also the only dynasty to implement oceanic exploration. They used routes to trade between Japan and southern Asia. The only famous Chinese explorer, Zheng He, went on several journeys starting in 1405. The farthest he got was the east coast of Africa. China was way more advanced than any other civilization at the time, and if exploration hadn't been outlawed, they would have probably reached the west coast of Africa and dicovered the Americas way before the Europeans would.
Even with the improvements and changes that the Ming Dynasty implemented, they would still eventually fall. The Ming would fall due to internal power struggles and alliances of the people against the government. That forced young children to become rulers before they were able to gain any experience or maturity which ended up being what cost the Ming the Mandate of Heaven.
I hope this helped everyone with understanding today if it was hard. The next person to blog is going to be..........MITCHELL!!!!!!!!