@@samsonsoturian6013 The west was definitely not more developed throughout most of imperial China, especially between the 3rd and the 15th century. Your claim that Chinese mostly fought other Chinese is also illogical. They are only known as Chinese now because they are conquered and assimilated. It's like saying Romans mostly fought other Romans if their empire lasts for 2000 years and everyone within it consider themselves Romans.
@@sephiroxicalcloud3771 I mean you're right but this transition to the qing was the beginning of the end for china. they failed to keep up and innovate esp because of the tense situation between jurchen and han.
Kind of crazy how China was on the road to modernizing their military into a proper force that would be the indisputable most powerful in the world. But the Qing grew complacent, and decided to revert back to old methods, even going so far as banning their tributaries from modernizing and using firearms.
@@Gravitatis They didn't grow "complacent". Their economy just declined so much they couldn't implement all their modernizing efforts. The Qing on the other hand went through a long prosperous period after 1700, during which their military went from hero to zero by the 1800s.
@@majungasaurusaaaa the later ming dynasty was full of corrupt, stupid officials and poor generals the eight banner system was a better system than what the ming could practically produce at the time the ming basically just sat there and let the jurchen tribes unite into a formidable adversary on their front doorstep
@@GravitatisIn the late Ming Dynasty, there were still many excellent generals. Even in the last period of the Ming Dynasty, there were still generals such as Yuan Chonghuan, Lu Xiangsheng, Hong Chengchou, and Zu Dashou who had excellent combat capabilities in large armies. However, this is not mentioned in many foreign historical knowledge. The Chinese people generally believe that there are three reasons for the decline of the Ming Dynasty's military. The first is that the bureaucratic system of the Ming Dynasty emphasized the suppression of the military and military officers. The military officers of the same rank in the Ming Dynasty often need to kneel down when facing civilian officials. This situation reached its peak during the period of Wanli, the fourth last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and he did not even rise to some excellent grassroots generals. As a result, the front-line generals in the late Wanli Dynasty were generally over 60 years old, which made it difficult to cope with the complex and volatile war situation. On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty also relied too much on the military personnel system "garrison system" that he had established more than 200 years ago, but apparently did not apply to the situation at the end of the Ming Dynasty. The reform has been carried out in the later period of the reign, but the interest groups have been deeply rooted and cannot be shaken. The second reason is that the late Ming Dynasty did not have the right to mint coins. The Ming Dynasty highly relied on silver circulating from the Spanish through trade as currency. However, the Thirty Years' War led to a significant decrease in the amount of silver flowing into China. Due to corruption, land mergers, and other reasons, this situation was further exacerbated in the Ming Dynasty. Military salaries were often delayed for months or even years, and military strength was greatly reduced as a result. Third, the army building of the Ming Dynasty was a small-scale war against the Mongols, which was somewhat similar to the experience of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming army had rarely sent tens of thousands of people to large-scale and high intensity wars (the Korean War against Japan was not a big loss in the eyes of the Chinese, and the war intensity was not high). Until they met the Jurchen army, the battle of Sarhu was a large group of more than 100000 people when the two sides combined, and the Ming Dynasty was not familiar with the terrain. The group of 60 year old generals were obviously inexperienced, and eventually buried the most elite field troops of the Ming Dynasty, resulting in the Ming Dynasty being completely in a defensive state.
Cannons probably damaged the walls with their recoil, which is why they used them at first outside of them, this was a problem in Europe as well and would have required redesign and reconstruction of ramparts.
Lack of bastion forts really hurt the Ming. They attempted to implement them. But it was too little too late. The Qing, like the Ottomans being mostly on the offensive, had little use for expensive artillery forts.
I would imagine they put them down cause of blind spots under the wall, they look rather slim so i guess its not going to reach as far as western cannon.
@@robertkalinic335 well thats a completely different argument than saying that the cannons caused damage to the walls through recoil in fact you could almost say that your argument is the opposite of the op's
@@robertkalinic335 my guess is that they thought they just had a better shot on flat ground for whatever reason maybe they wanted to hit the enemy's horse, which would have been easier to hit on flat ground
Putting the cannons in front of the wall makes sense when your walls aren’t build for cannons Rdger Crowly mentions that the walls of Constantinople where damaged by cannons put onto of it…
the walls of Constantinople were tall and thin walls of stone, Chinese walls were lower and wider Earthworks. they probably just put the cannons outside for better aim until proper positions could be prepared.
@@semi-useful5178 there are variation in wall construction, but one style was to make the back side (toward the city center) as slopes, so no wall on the back side. in which case, there would be no problem to place canon on the wall.
Seems like a lot of battles are determined by who has the longer-ranged artillery pieces. If you can out-range your foe, you can break their army up into smaller pieces, classic divide-and-conquer tactics. The ancients' ability to innovate and adapt to new war tactics never ceases to amaze me.
It's basically like the Roman Military during the classical period, at first they have Greek style armies, later they adopted Manipular system and military gear from the Celts.
The Romans got the sword/armor design from the Celts but their tactics weren't a direct copy of anyone. They originally copied the Greeks because it is unclear to what extent they were Greeks. The Ming evolution of armaments is really the same process you see in most turdworld countries today where they use both what they have and what they can import and/or copy resulting in some interesting tactics
Well, it's 'basically like' that in the sense that military theory evolved to meet new challenges, just as it has all over the world at many different times in history. What's your point?
@@samsonsoturian6013 Not quite. The Ming didn’t just ‘copy’ others; they adapted and improved on what they encountered, just like many empires throughout history. They developed unique tactics suited to their own challenges, especially with nomadic threats in the north and maritime issues along the coast. Borrowing ideas wasn’t about blindly copying-it was about making strategic improvements.
The Qing conquest of Ming is way oversimplified. First of all, the main reason was the imperial coffer was already dried up from previous wars, e.g. Imjin War (1592 - 1598). Secondly, the Ming Empire had to deal with multiple fronts, e.g. Mongols from the North, rebellions in the South, and Wokou Pirates from the seas. Thirdly, by this late period of Ming, most of the Imperial Palace was run by Eunuchs who were the most corrupt & self-serving. Finally the main reason for the Manchu conquest was a a Ming General, Wu Sangui, was faced with a dilemma: either let the Souther Rebels take over the country and who also held his dad as hostage, or let the Manchus in through the Great Wall and assist him against the rebels. He chose the latter and ultimately led to the Fall of Ming.
While this video does a great job of covering artillery reforms, another thing to note is the introduction and integration of arquebus into the Ming arsenal. The arquebus was introduced to Ming China in the 16th century, and became popularised in Souther China, which had more coastal regions that would have contact with European traders, as well as with Japanese "Wokou" pirates (who also used arquebus). General Qi Jiguang, a military reformer and veteran in Southern campaign against the Wokou pirates, was a major advocate of the arquebus, and would develop formations, tactics, and drills to integrate arquebus with pikes and sabres, similar to western pike and shots developing in the same time. In the later years of his career Qi Jiguang would express his frustrations regarding Northern Ming Chinese soldiers refusing to adopt the newer and clearly superior arquebus, and stubbornly sticking to older and simpler hand cannons. It is likely that by the end of the Ming dynasty that the transition from traditional hand cannons and bows to arqebus was not fully complete, especially in the face of the declining finances of the corrupt and collapsing Ming empire, even if they recognised the superiority of western firearms. By contrast, once the conquest of China was complete, the Qing Manchurian elite had little incentive in having readily available firearms that any Han Chinese peasant can learn to use and overthrow their Manchurian overlords, and instead would have tried to monopolise their military dominance over the Han majority by limiting proliferation of firearms, so that Manchurian cavalry would remain decisive in putting down potential rebellions. Thus, Chinese firearm developments more or less halted after the 17th century until the Opium wars.
Yeah, the Ming was also on the verge of adopting bastion forts on a larger scale. Sun Yuanhua was a leading supporter of it, but he was executed on false charges in 1632. His death and the rapid decline of Ming finances in the 1630s meant that bastion forts were never implemented again in China.
The Qing really did screw it over for China. Granted, The Ming would have probably collapsed, but if the Qing hadn't taken over, The Chinese would have likely had a much better run of things coming into the 19th Century.
@@Gravitatis It's not strange when you realize that every decision in the Late Ming is dominated by factionalism. Sun Yuanhua and his teacher, Xu Guangqi, were some of the first Christian officials in Chinese history. But they belonged to a minority faction that supported better relations with the Europeans. Sun also had good relations with Yuan Chonghuan, who was executed in 1630 on.....false charges. This is the nature of Chinese court politics. One faction is always trying to get the other killed through any means necessary. This means that if the emperor (Chongzhen in this case) was swayed by one side to execute a member of a faction, then every other member should immediately disassociate themselves from the guilty members' history and ideology. One execution is often used as an excuse for further executions of the person's friends, allies, and family. Sun or Yuan Chonghuan's rivals in the Ming court would rather see them LOSE against the Manchus so that the emperor can favor their own faction. The portuguese were already unpopular with the majority of the Chinese gentry, which made Sun a prime target for his rivals. The Ming economy was also going down the drains, so it is unknown how many forts the Ming could have constructed even if Sun was still alive.
In the 17th century, the biggest advantage of China compared with Europe was that the Chinese people had more mature technology in steel forging, which was also talked about by Portuguese missionaries. However, because China had no demand for large guns, they did not explore how to forge a powerful gun. The Ming Qing War changed this point. It was a small-scale weapons revolution in Chinese history, but unfortunately it did not last long.
TBH the biggest reason for the Qing conquest was that the ming were disunited and feuding aswell as falling apart from the inside because of rebellions
If anything, it showed that even game changing technology is only as good as the regime itself. Hong Taiji was a master of propaganda, portraying himself as the carrier of the Mandate of Heaven to replace an old, corrupt regime falling apart.
Every time China gets conquered I'm pretty sure this is the reason. And that is probably why Sun Yat-Sen said that the Chinese people were like sand in a pan, alongside the fact China was also in a similar state during his time.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, an elite army equipped with Portuguese firearms was unable to receive supplies during their march, resulting in a hungry soldier stealing a chicken from a senior official's house. This was originally a small matter, but the official was very stingy and ordered the soldier to be executed. At this moment, the resentment of the army that had been oppressed by corrupt officials for a long time finally erupted, and the army mutinied and eventually fled the border to join the Qing Dynasty. Such incidents often occurred in the late Ming Dynasty
Similar things happened at the end of almost every Chinese dynasty, because China was so large that it controlled almost all habitable areas in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins, and the Siberian frigid zone, the Taklimakan Desert, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were all difficult to live in and pass through in ancient times. So under normal circumstances, ancient China could hardly collapse simply because of external military problems. Almost all of them were total collapses caused by the continuous accumulation of internal problems, the continuous expansion of corruption, and the continuous occurrence of riots.
Your videos are always refereshing either cos no one else talk about the topic or cos your take is a nice addition to trite topics. Such consistency is rare!
Thanks for the video! Every time I watch one of these, I find myself impressed enough to scroll up and subscribe (only to remember that I'm already subscribed). Please keep up the quality work! Especially on topics like this, the hard-to-find ones that we don't hear much about. No matter how good the creator, I'd much rather learn something new (or learn more about something niche) than hear the same story told a few dozen times. Your channel is a rare gem for that
This video portrays as if China didn't use cannons only rockets prior to the Manchu attacks and arrival of western imports. Ming Dynasty did have cannons which were mainly used for the battlefield, especially against cavalry charges of the Mongol armies (Northen Yuan Dynasty, the fragmented weaker successor of the Yuan dynasty). Ming China didn't develop siege cannons bc it made no sense in China. Mongols didn't have fortresses and Chinese walls are several times thicker than european walls. So to develop an effective siege cannons in preparation of a civil war makes little sense and would require the foresight of developing/investing in siege cannons even when they seem not to be able to penetrate chinese walls until skipping many iterations. So chinese did focus on developing field artilleries and Ming dynasty did import western and middle eastern cannons for their armies and for research much earlier. Ming Dynasty was a gun powder focused empire with vast use of hand cannons like tripple hand cannons which are effective to stop cavalry charges. They also developed tactics against infantry against japanese pirate armies where they have something like pike and shot, with tree branch like spears. They also developed volley shots and later ranked shots.
It’s worth mentioning also that Hong Taiji incorporated the Old Han Army into eight banners themselves in 1642. the Old Han Army Eight Banners or Hanjun.
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I love the illustration in the video thumbnail, it's very direct and attractive. The topic in question is very interesting, since there is nothing cooler than seeing how European military reforms were applied in other places like China. Now I would like to see the Japanese case, which was a century before China and has battles like Nagashino (the Pavia of Japan) and if you talk about the Korean case afterwards, even better.
Qing Dynasty never defeated Ming Dynasty before it collapsed to a huge peasant rebellion. Not sure why this is not mentioned in the video. When the rebel leader conquered Beijing, the commander of the northern armies (one of the strongest armies) was too late to help the Emperor who died so he decided to turn to the Qing Dynasty in an alliance to defeat the rebels. With the Great wall being opened by the commander and the army being allied they quickly defeated the rebels and pushed further south. Southern Ming Dynasty was no longer able to defeat Qing Armies allied with Ming turncloaks and the chaos. Eventually Ming Dynasty was defeated. The Turncloak commander was made a prince vassal along some other former Ming commanders but had to rebel too when it became clear that Qing Dynasty want to eliminate them too after several decades. It is uncertain if Ming Dynasty would have collapsed in this century without the two front war against Qing and rebels as Ming Dynasty was still powerful and had strong armies available. Possibly could survive long enough to take out the momentum of the Qing Dynasty. Or without the turncloaks they might have repeated the same situation as Southern Song Dynasty and Jin Dynasty splitting China.
The Ming were very weak internally. Sure, you can explain the loss of the north due to the rebellion. But had they gotten their shit together they could have held the south of the Yangtze like the Southern Song did. Even Koxinga with far less resources was able to hold on to the Ming cause better than the Southern Ming.
@@majungasaurusaaaaThe reason why the Ming Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty are different is that the Ming Dynasty was a dynasty that lasted for more than 200 years and nearly 300 years, while the predecessor of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Northern Song Dynasty, actually only lasted for 150 years and was still at the peak of its culture, population, and other fields before its downfall. The downfall of the Ming Dynasty was like an elderly person dying peacefully, while the downfall of the Northern Song Dynasty was like a sudden heart attack on a young person. This may explain why the Southern Ming and Southern Song dynasties are vastly different.
@majungasaurusaaaa its not entirely comparable. Song Dynasty was an economic miracle, Jin Dynasty didnt want to conquer China yet and stopped, even they were surprised by their victory when they captured the capital and emperor and they didnt have the most veteran and strongest army turncoat. Also the Ming emperor killed himself. While the rebellion had destroyed the empire to the core. The Song Dynasty lost bc of a strategic mistake, the empire wasnt in chaos by civil war. In the Ming Dynasty nobody knew who sits the throne with the rebellion declaring Emperor, the Qing conquering the north and the Ming being headless
@majungasaurusaaaa your argument was that the rebellion didnt matter for the loss of the entirety of the realm. When they not only could pass through the great wall bc of it but also gotten Ming Dynasty largest army as ally to conquer Ming Dynasty.
Except the Ming weren't "isolated" like let's say Edo period Japan. They just stopped funding naval voyages and forbade them. Which made sense considering they were in big military and financial trouble at the time from the mongol threat. Trade too wasn't that restricted. The Ming went on the catch up well in armaments. They were in the process of overhauling their fortification designs to artillery forts as well. But then their economy gave out. The Qing dominated in 1700. Afterwards there was a long period of prosperous peace that quickly deteriorated their military. Just goes to show that peace that equate progress. Without a free market, most tech innovations come from the need of war.
The relationship between the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty is very similar to the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussian Empire
@@Gravitatistoo true. It’s not entirely clear if things will change for the better, the developer Creative Assembly actually blew $100 million on a mediocre looking hero shooter that got canned before it even released. Instead of using that cash to improve the seriously shitty Warscape engine or at least improve their developmental stack which disgruntled former employees say is infamously bad as well…
@@thenoblepoptart i just got all 3 of the warhammer TW games for like 15 dollars, and im not really that impressed i think the series peaked with shogun like 15 years ago
@ they need to make a rich historical simulator, one that has crazy attention to detail, where it can replicate the exact circumstances of historical battles, in addition to dramatic fictions
At 9:11 the video says Hong Taiji recruited experts from Korea(Joseon in this period) to produce more guns. May I ask about the reference of this statement? Unfortunately I've never heard or found about the story of Hong Taiji using conquered Joseon to get more big firearms. Instead, there are records of Qing Army recruiting Joseon arquebusiers to aid Songshan battle, but not related to producing the firearms. The reason I'm asking this is because while Joseon was incapable of producing the Red barbarian Cannon(紅夷砲), they still can produce their own cannons or import the Western cannons by dock. Meanwhile, when the Qing Army invaded Joseon for the second time before the Songshan battle, the Qing Army's major victor factor was the Red barbarian Cannons produced by the defected Ming soldiers. I kinda do want to know how exactly things happened.
Europe: after a decade of political, and economical successes the king, supported by the pope, and all of Europe, could muster 20k troops. China: the battle turned out to be particularly bloody, and the warlord used the nearby village to replenish his losses of 80k men.
About Cannons outside walls, do we know how big was number of defenders? Becouse something like that actually happened in Easter europe during the sidge of Zbaraż castle. Defenders were entrenched outside the castle walls dude to fact that castle wasn't able to accommodate very high number of defenders.
The records of the Qing Dynasty did not acknowledge that his failure was due to Myanmar's weapons, but rather to Myanmar's climate. Two thirds of the casualties in the Qing Dynasty's Burma Expeditionary Force were caused by malaria and climate discomfort.
When the Ming Dynasty was founded, it defeated the Mongol cavalry of the Yuan Dynasty with better cavalry. When the Qing Dynasty was founded, it defeated the firearms of the Ming Dynasty with better firearms. Later, the Qing Dynasty faced Britain after the Industrial Revolution
They mastered gunpowder warfare quickly when there was a need. But the same Manchus went out of their way hamstring China's military technology for fear of Han rebellions being able to make use of them.
The Manchus are the Prussians of the East, and the relationship between the Ming and Qing dynasties is similar to that between the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussian Empire. China and Germany have a very similar history
in year 1592, Japanese armada invaded Korea, armed with Western Arquebuses. However, Koreans had old Asian style cannons, which were more effective in naval battle compare to arquebues. So, Japanese quickly imported Western cannons, but their ships' structure were unable to widthstand the recoil force of cannons, and render them ineffective.
There is an little error. the Chinese character “Qing（清）" should be directly translated into "clear" or "transparent", rather than pure. In old times, Chinese people use the metaphor of clear transparent water when speaking of good virtue. But things are different in the Christian world, where people believe in monotheism and value purity of divinity more.
The ming wernt isolationist they innovated with their weapons combined European guns with chinese chasting techniques created the hong yi pao. So stop saying ming was isolation qing was a han engineer invented a machine gun but was killed by qing due to fear of tech would help han overthrow tyrants also you forgot to mention the battle of bejing which was a ming victory
9:31 It is worth noting that the wages given to the defectors were genuinely much better than what the late Ming court offered their soldiers on the average, which would later be unsustainable and be one of the many reasons that lead to the revolt of the three feudatories in the early Qing rule. Thus the effects leading to defections to what would later become the green standard army were not only from propaganda but also from legitimate pay
If Jinzhou and Songshan were combined into one big city that encompassed the rivers and surrounded on all sides with walls that kept being supplied all the times by trade through rivers, would the outcome be different? Just imagined the troops of the Eight Banner and the Green Standard Army have to take on the fortified city that big that have the complete control of the rivers and also equipped with a lot of cannons must be quite challenging.
this area of china is so far away from the central plains, i imagine that even a large city would have been besieged and eventually captured by the jurchens they were basically the mongols 2.0, they were very smart guys
The Liaodong defensive line established by Li ChengLiang way earlier woud've likely been more effective had he not abandoned them voluntarily. Overall, the reason the Ming were defeated can be attributed to administrative and organisational shortcomings rather than anything else. Considering that with just the frankish engine (swivel gun) and rocket artillery etc that the Ming already had the technological advantage against the Jurchens initially, an increase in military tech, European or otherwise likely would've done little in the long run.
The biggest problem lies in internal corruption and political struggles, which means that the stationed troops in these areas are actually short of food and pay, and this is almost the last combat ready army of the Ming Dynasty. The shortage of personnel in other places will be even more serious. Through time tracing, we can also know that there are still a large number of falsely reported soldier positions to defraud military pay, but the actual number of combat troops is nearly half less than the book. The book number of troops in the late Ming Dynasty was 2.7 million, but in reality, there were only less than 1.06 million military personnel, and the actual combat ready troops would be even fewer. In contrast, the number of troops in the Qing army was 0.63 million. According to history, we know that these 1.06 million troops were shattered by 0.63 million
After all, in the front-line fortress area of Liaodong, the Qing army served as a strong quality inspector, so the combat effectiveness and combat readiness of the Ming army stationed here can be considered acceptable
At that time, solid shells were all used. He was hit by a large iron ball weighing 68 pounds moving at high speed and was able to lie in bed for 8 months before dying. This is impossible, so I analyzed that it was probably the shell hitting the ground that caused the splashing stones to injure him
This video doesn’t go into much detail about the Ming-Qing transition with regard to Western technology, but it can be summarized by saying that the Qing used their own technology to conquer the Ming, who were relying on European weaponry.
Before the Qing Dynasty unified the whole of China, the Ming Dynasty had already been overthrown by peasant uprisings. After seizing power, the peasant uprisings chose to suppress officials and nobles, seize their property, and after the Qing army entered Beijing, they chose to win over Ming officials and troops, giving them special treatment. Therefore, the peasant uprisings were no match for the Qing Dynasty
@anyiouo3814 To be precise, the peasant uprising army of the Ming Dynasty received a portion of soldiers who were owed wages. These soldiers were equipped with imitation Ottoman guns and Portugal farangi.but their firearms were not comparable to those of the Qing Dynasty army. The Qing Dynasty absorbed military technology from the Ming border troops, including imitation British cannons and better quality matchlock
@@linshitaolst4936 How equipped was the Qing army with European-style military technology, in percentage terms, compared to the Ming army during their invasion?
@anyiouo3814 The development of firearms technology in the Qing Dynasty was very limited, with the only advantage being the increase in production, which led to a high rate of firearms equipment in the Qing army, at most exceeding 80%. However, most of them were matchlock , and there were also 17th century technological cannons. The Qing emperor also considered imitating 18th century European weapons, such as flintlock, but the ability of domestic craftsmen was limited and could only rely on European missionaries to complete them
Forgotten Weapons has several videos about the guns made in the Qing and Republic periods and yes guns made in China were as cheap and unreliable as you'd think, but many of them were good copies of European guns.
Chariots were a common tactic of the Ming army, and Nurhaci, the founder of the Qing dynasty, had participated in the charge troops in the Ming army. When Nurhaci's entrepreneurial group had less than 10 people, he already had a chariot to help him participate in village battles. Later, this tactic was widely used in the Ming and Qing wars, until the Ming army introduced more powerful Western artillery
@@bvillafuerte179 The last one had Ming troops images to illustrate a Qing-Russia siege. And while their gear may have been somewhat similar, the Chinese characters on their helmets and armor as well as hairstyles are indicators which side they're on. The Qing had a very distinct hair style that they enforced upon the entire Chinese population on the pain of death. They beheaded violators and had their heads displayed outside of barber shops. Missing that shows the content creator is woefully new to far eastern history.
i feel this video lacks context on the difference between the artilleries pre-adoption of european cannons, or even the artilleries adopted by the Qing. using rocket artillery visually as an example of chinese artillery is a bit misleading since the video even mentions that the ming first tried using their own cannons but the switched to euro style guns. the benefits was chalked up to "efficiency" which is lacking. we also know that the ming had cannons , it was used during the imjin war and was something that the korean and the ming had that was better then the japanese. so it would be a good area of analysis of what were the actual difference between the cannon styles
The Ming had plenty of tube artillery used mostly as light field pieces. It was the heavy siege culverins and demi culverins that they lacked prior to hiring foreigners to assist. But rocket carts look cool and exotic for a thumbnail.
China was truly the center of human civilization for so long, with the most arable land, best technology, highest population, most centralized government and robust civil service, ETC… It’s beyond the scope of the video, but the collapse of the Qing dynasty and century of humiliation is, in my opinion, one of the most traumatic events in human history by sheer scale of suffering. Extreme tragedy
@@konradvonschnitzeldorf6506 i read one of the few accounts of the precolombian atlantic coast, sailors would describe smelling smoke at ANY point on the coast within 10 miles of land. The ENTIRE frontage was densely settled, and you could see the massive plumes of smoke from their colossal camps rising into the sky, even just observing from a ship at sea. The population difference between that time, and the post-exchange period, is easily -98%. Absolutely unreal devastating loses of native american civilization, who’s size and capability was such that they triggered a miniature ice age with the scale of their forestry industry and agriculture
Great video! Can someone explain to me: Why did the chinese after initially inventing black powder and firearms, fall behind in the technology, they had years of a start vs Europe and still got surpassed? Is it a lack of financing? Missing metalurgical technology? Missing good material? Any interesting sources to share?
Andrade suggests that one of the reasons why the Chinese didn't focus as much attention on developing cannons until the 16th Century could be due to the thickness of City Walls in China, which lead to a general disinterest in that field. China decided to focus on highly manueverable and lightweight weapons that would be effective against personnel, so they focused on rocketry instead.
@@thejackinati2759This can only be one aspect. The Chinese people generally believe that the slow development of China's guns and artillery is due to the fact that the opponents around China are too weak. The enemies of the Ming Dynasty who fought for a long time were the Mongols wandering on the grasslands. The war was always small-scale and low intensity. Therefore, the weapons of war should not be large caliber guns, or their mobility is too poor, and the muskets that cannot be loaded immediately were not popular in the Ming army in the north. Perhaps this can provide you with an idea.
@@董渊-k9t Mongols horrible killed ming dynasty for tumu crisis 1444 ad what a shame 400.000 K chinese death in battle and ming emperor became slave to mongols like genghis khan congueror half world guy against jin and song dynasties and Xiongu and gokturks beat Han china 209 BC Battle of baideng creation of great wall and tang dynasty 751 AD lose for karluk turks and arabs battle of talas influnce on and then manchus more similar mongols altiac faimlies Ging empire beat ming han china everyone not millitary biggest joke and manchus and mongols literally Helped Chinese for warfare system.
The Jin, Xi Xia and Southern Song were innovators of early gunpowder warfare were destroyed by the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire itself disseminated and absorbed technology but innovated little. So throughout the Yuan, China slowed down in gunpowder pace. But still, by the early Ming, Chinese troops had the highest ratio of gunpowder wielding troops in the world. It would take another 100 years for them to fall behind. There was little need for the Ming to focus on siege artillery since they weren't sieging fortifications, unlike the Mongol Empire before. They only needed anti personnel field pieces. In that regard, they were still ahead of the West for longer. Also, the lack of serious enemies that can threaten their very thickly built medieval style fortifications meant that they had no need to revise their construction and improve their field of fire with bastions. Sure, the Dai Viet, Burmese and Koreans were also starting to get their hands on more advanced artillery, but the Ming's sheer size meant these tributary allied states pose little offensive danger. So no need for heavy garrison pieces either. After the naval exploration and fleet were scrapped due to budgetary reasons, there was no need for a cutting edge navy. So no new naval artillery. And so by the late 1500s when the Jurchen threat arose, the Ming were left with the state of heavy artillery and fortifications that were at least 100 years behind what was cutting edge at the time. Small arms also suffered. While matchlocks have been adopted from the Ottomans and infantry tactics around them devised, most of the elite cavalry based northern troops held little regard for them. Handgonnes were still widely used. Pistols were also rare, despite being adopted by the Japanese, Koreans and Dai Viet. China had the material and manpower. But the Ming's increasingly struggling budget and economy meant that many reforms envisioned couldn't be carried out. The Europeans in the mean while were governed by smaller squabbling factions. When they weren't facing the Ottoman threat, they were busy cutting each other's throats. There were no hegemons. Every faction had to be on top of their artillery and fortification game to survive.
That and their very efficient logistics. The Qing were able to project slow, ammo heavy gunpowder heavy power into the steppes in a way the Ming could never hope to. Only the Russians were better at it.
Its always interesting seeing old Chinese weapons and war tactics that are rarely discussed much
Because the Chinese mostly fought other Chinese and didn't effect affairs in the developed world
@@samsonsoturian6013 The west was definitely not more developed throughout most of imperial China, especially between the 3rd and the 15th century. Your claim that Chinese mostly fought other Chinese is also illogical. They are only known as Chinese now because they are conquered and assimilated. It's like saying Romans mostly fought other Romans if their empire lasts for 2000 years and everyone within it consider themselves Romans.
@@samsonsoturian6013 "Developed world" as if China wasn't more developed than Europe for hundreds, and going back, thousands of years.
@@samsonsoturian6013 Chinese mostly fighting other Chinese, resulting in Hun tribes to scourge most of Roman Europe into the feudal ages.
@@sephiroxicalcloud3771 I mean you're right but this transition to the qing was the beginning of the end for china. they failed to keep up and innovate esp because of the tense situation between jurchen and han.
Very accurate depiction of late Ming cloth face armor, for both parties.
Kind of crazy how China was on the road to modernizing their military into a proper force that would be the indisputable most powerful in the world. But the Qing grew complacent, and decided to revert back to old methods, even going so far as banning their tributaries from modernizing and using firearms.
um, the ming dynasty also grew complacent
the ming dynasty fell to the jurchens precisely because it couldnt adapt to the times
>the old method
manchus weren't good at fire arms to begin with, their artillery forces were all chinese captives.
@@Gravitatis They didn't grow "complacent". Their economy just declined so much they couldn't implement all their modernizing efforts. The Qing on the other hand went through a long prosperous period after 1700, during which their military went from hero to zero by the 1800s.
@@majungasaurusaaaa
the later ming dynasty was full of corrupt, stupid officials and poor generals
the eight banner system was a better system than what the ming could practically produce at the time
the ming basically just sat there and let the jurchen tribes unite into a formidable adversary on their front doorstep
@@GravitatisIn the late Ming Dynasty, there were still many excellent generals. Even in the last period of the Ming Dynasty, there were still generals such as Yuan Chonghuan, Lu Xiangsheng, Hong Chengchou, and Zu Dashou who had excellent combat capabilities in large armies. However, this is not mentioned in many foreign historical knowledge. The Chinese people generally believe that there are three reasons for the decline of the Ming Dynasty's military. The first is that the bureaucratic system of the Ming Dynasty emphasized the suppression of the military and military officers. The military officers of the same rank in the Ming Dynasty often need to kneel down when facing civilian officials. This situation reached its peak during the period of Wanli, the fourth last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and he did not even rise to some excellent grassroots generals. As a result, the front-line generals in the late Wanli Dynasty were generally over 60 years old, which made it difficult to cope with the complex and volatile war situation. On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty also relied too much on the military personnel system "garrison system" that he had established more than 200 years ago, but apparently did not apply to the situation at the end of the Ming Dynasty. The reform has been carried out in the later period of the reign, but the interest groups have been deeply rooted and cannot be shaken. The second reason is that the late Ming Dynasty did not have the right to mint coins. The Ming Dynasty highly relied on silver circulating from the Spanish through trade as currency. However, the Thirty Years' War led to a significant decrease in the amount of silver flowing into China. Due to corruption, land mergers, and other reasons, this situation was further exacerbated in the Ming Dynasty. Military salaries were often delayed for months or even years, and military strength was greatly reduced as a result. Third, the army building of the Ming Dynasty was a small-scale war against the Mongols, which was somewhat similar to the experience of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming army had rarely sent tens of thousands of people to large-scale and high intensity wars (the Korean War against Japan was not a big loss in the eyes of the Chinese, and the war intensity was not high). Until they met the Jurchen army, the battle of Sarhu was a large group of more than 100000 people when the two sides combined, and the Ming Dynasty was not familiar with the terrain. The group of 60 year old generals were obviously inexperienced, and eventually buried the most elite field troops of the Ming Dynasty, resulting in the Ming Dynasty being completely in a defensive state.
Cannons probably damaged the walls with their recoil, which is why they used them at first outside of them, this was a problem in Europe as well and would have required redesign and reconstruction of ramparts.
Lack of bastion forts really hurt the Ming. They attempted to implement them. But it was too little too late. The Qing, like the Ottomans being mostly on the offensive, had little use for expensive artillery forts.
but these cannons werent even that big, surely the chinese cities had massive walls
they couldnt find _anywhere_ to put them?
I would imagine they put them down cause of blind spots under the wall, they look rather slim so i guess its not going to reach as far as western cannon.
@@robertkalinic335
well thats a completely different argument than saying that the cannons caused damage to the walls through recoil
in fact you could almost say that your argument is the opposite of the op's
@@robertkalinic335
my guess is that they thought they just had a better shot on flat ground for whatever reason
maybe they wanted to hit the enemy's horse, which would have been easier to hit on flat ground
Putting the cannons in front of the wall makes sense when your walls aren’t build for cannons Rdger Crowly mentions that the walls of Constantinople where damaged by cannons put onto of it…
the walls of Constantinople were tall and thin walls of stone, Chinese walls were lower and wider Earthworks. they probably just put the cannons outside for better aim until proper positions could be prepared.
Fair
@@semi-useful5178 there are variation in wall construction, but one style was to make the back side (toward the city center) as slopes, so no wall on the back side.
in which case, there would be no problem to place canon on the wall.
@@simhopp
Thanks for Clarification, that makes sense.
Seems like a lot of battles are determined by who has the longer-ranged artillery pieces. If you can out-range your foe, you can break their army up into smaller pieces, classic divide-and-conquer tactics. The ancients' ability to innovate and adapt to new war tactics never ceases to amaze me.
It's basically like the Roman Military during the classical period, at first they have Greek style armies, later they adopted Manipular system and military gear from the Celts.
The Romans got the sword/armor design from the Celts but their tactics weren't a direct copy of anyone. They originally copied the Greeks because it is unclear to what extent they were Greeks. The Ming evolution of armaments is really the same process you see in most turdworld countries today where they use both what they have and what they can import and/or copy resulting in some interesting tactics
Well, it's 'basically like' that in the sense that military theory evolved to meet new challenges, just as it has all over the world at many different times in history. What's your point?
@@samsonsoturian6013 Not quite. The Ming didn’t just ‘copy’ others; they adapted and improved on what they encountered, just like many empires throughout history. They developed unique tactics suited to their own challenges, especially with nomadic threats in the north and maritime issues along the coast. Borrowing ideas wasn’t about blindly copying-it was about making strategic improvements.
The Qing conquest of Ming is way oversimplified. First of all, the main reason was the imperial coffer was already dried up from previous wars, e.g. Imjin War (1592 - 1598). Secondly, the Ming Empire had to deal with multiple fronts, e.g. Mongols from the North, rebellions in the South, and Wokou Pirates from the seas. Thirdly, by this late period of Ming, most of the Imperial Palace was run by Eunuchs who were the most corrupt & self-serving. Finally the main reason for the Manchu conquest was a a Ming General, Wu Sangui, was faced with a dilemma: either let the Souther Rebels take over the country and who also held his dad as hostage, or let the Manchus in through the Great Wall and assist him against the rebels. He chose the latter and ultimately led to the Fall of Ming.
Agree
Early modern warfare is so fascinating!
Never clicked on a notification so fast in my life
While this video does a great job of covering artillery reforms, another thing to note is the introduction and integration of arquebus into the Ming arsenal.
The arquebus was introduced to Ming China in the 16th century, and became popularised in Souther China, which had more coastal regions that would have contact with European traders, as well as with Japanese "Wokou" pirates (who also used arquebus).
General Qi Jiguang, a military reformer and veteran in Southern campaign against the Wokou pirates, was a major advocate of the arquebus, and would develop formations, tactics, and drills to integrate arquebus with pikes and sabres, similar to western pike and shots developing in the same time. In the later years of his career Qi Jiguang would express his frustrations regarding Northern Ming Chinese soldiers refusing to adopt the newer and clearly superior arquebus, and stubbornly sticking to older and simpler hand cannons.
It is likely that by the end of the Ming dynasty that the transition from traditional hand cannons and bows to arqebus was not fully complete, especially in the face of the declining finances of the corrupt and collapsing Ming empire, even if they recognised the superiority of western firearms.
By contrast, once the conquest of China was complete, the Qing Manchurian elite had little incentive in having readily available firearms that any Han Chinese peasant can learn to use and overthrow their Manchurian overlords, and instead would have tried to monopolise their military dominance over the Han majority by limiting proliferation of firearms, so that Manchurian cavalry would remain decisive in putting down potential rebellions. Thus, Chinese firearm developments more or less halted after the 17th century until the Opium wars.
Yeah, the Ming was also on the verge of adopting bastion forts on a larger scale. Sun Yuanhua was a leading supporter of it, but he was executed on false charges in 1632. His death and the rapid decline of Ming finances in the 1630s meant that bastion forts were never implemented again in China.
The Qing really did screw it over for China. Granted, The Ming would have probably collapsed, but if the Qing hadn't taken over, The Chinese would have likely had a much better run of things coming into the 19th Century.
@@yuchenchen8012
seems strange that the modernization of the ming's fortifications all rested on the death of 1 man
@@Gravitatis It's not strange when you realize that every decision in the Late Ming is dominated by factionalism. Sun Yuanhua and his teacher, Xu Guangqi, were some of the first Christian officials in Chinese history. But they belonged to a minority faction that supported better relations with the Europeans. Sun also had good relations with Yuan Chonghuan, who was executed in 1630 on.....false charges.
This is the nature of Chinese court politics. One faction is always trying to get the other killed through any means necessary. This means that if the emperor (Chongzhen in this case) was swayed by one side to execute a member of a faction, then every other member should immediately disassociate themselves from the guilty members' history and ideology. One execution is often used as an excuse for further executions of the person's friends, allies, and family. Sun or Yuan Chonghuan's rivals in the Ming court would rather see them LOSE against the Manchus so that the emperor can favor their own faction.
The portuguese were already unpopular with the majority of the Chinese gentry, which made Sun a prime target for his rivals.
The Ming economy was also going down the drains, so it is unknown how many forts the Ming could have constructed even if Sun was still alive.
@@yuchenchen8012
sounds like ming politics could have benefited from the idea of the separation of powers
In the 17th century, the biggest advantage of China compared with Europe was that the Chinese people had more mature technology in steel forging, which was also talked about by Portuguese missionaries. However, because China had no demand for large guns, they did not explore how to forge a powerful gun. The Ming Qing War changed this point. It was a small-scale weapons revolution in Chinese history, but unfortunately it did not last long.
Loving these artwork
TBH the biggest reason for the Qing conquest was that the ming were disunited and feuding aswell as falling apart from the inside because of rebellions
If anything, it showed that even game changing technology is only as good as the regime itself. Hong Taiji was a master of propaganda, portraying himself as the carrier of the Mandate of Heaven to replace an old, corrupt regime falling apart.
Every time China gets conquered I'm pretty sure this is the reason. And that is probably why Sun Yat-Sen said that the Chinese people were like sand in a pan, alongside the fact China was also in a similar state during his time.
Nope the ming dynasty ald tried due to imjin war happened 1592-1598
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, an elite army equipped with Portuguese firearms was unable to receive supplies during their march, resulting in a hungry soldier stealing a chicken from a senior official's house. This was originally a small matter, but the official was very stingy and ordered the soldier to be executed. At this moment, the resentment of the army that had been oppressed by corrupt officials for a long time finally erupted, and the army mutinied and eventually fled the border to join the Qing Dynasty. Such incidents often occurred in the late Ming Dynasty
Similar things happened at the end of almost every Chinese dynasty, because China was so large that it controlled almost all habitable areas in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins, and the Siberian frigid zone, the Taklimakan Desert, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were all difficult to live in and pass through in ancient times. So under normal circumstances, ancient China could hardly collapse simply because of external military problems. Almost all of them were total collapses caused by the continuous accumulation of internal problems, the continuous expansion of corruption, and the continuous occurrence of riots.
Your videos are always refereshing either cos no one else talk about the topic or cos your take is a nice addition to trite topics.
Such consistency is rare!
-China: 7 grievances
-Germany: 95 theses
History repeats itself in different places
kind of a strange comparison but ok
History often rhymes.
Martin Luther had no intention of leaving the Catholic church, much less start a war.
China sent australia the "14 grievences" very recently - so its nice knowing that ol' empire mentality hasnt gone away
Really enjoying your Chinese military history series, rarely discussed
Thanks for the video!
Every time I watch one of these, I find myself impressed enough to scroll up and subscribe (only to remember that I'm already subscribed). Please keep up the quality work! Especially on topics like this, the hard-to-find ones that we don't hear much about. No matter how good the creator, I'd much rather learn something new (or learn more about something niche) than hear the same story told a few dozen times. Your channel is a rare gem for that
Best early modern warfare channel ever!
Love this channel
This channel is great! I loved this video. Thank you!
This video portrays as if China didn't use cannons only rockets prior to the Manchu attacks and arrival of western imports. Ming Dynasty did have cannons which were mainly used for the battlefield, especially against cavalry charges of the Mongol armies (Northen Yuan Dynasty, the fragmented weaker successor of the Yuan dynasty). Ming China didn't develop siege cannons bc it made no sense in China. Mongols didn't have fortresses and Chinese walls are several times thicker than european walls. So to develop an effective siege cannons in preparation of a civil war makes little sense and would require the foresight of developing/investing in siege cannons even when they seem not to be able to penetrate chinese walls until skipping many iterations. So chinese did focus on developing field artilleries and Ming dynasty did import western and middle eastern cannons for their armies and for research much earlier. Ming Dynasty was a gun powder focused empire with vast use of hand cannons like tripple hand cannons which are effective to stop cavalry charges. They also developed tactics against infantry against japanese pirate armies where they have something like pike and shot, with tree branch like spears. They also developed volley shots and later ranked shots.
It’s worth mentioning also that Hong Taiji incorporated the Old Han Army into eight banners themselves in 1642. the Old Han Army Eight Banners or Hanjun.
I love the illustration in the video thumbnail, it's very direct and attractive. The topic in question is very interesting, since there is nothing cooler than seeing how European military reforms were applied in other places like China.
Now I would like to see the Japanese case, which was a century before China and has battles like Nagashino (the Pavia of Japan) and if you talk about the Korean case afterwards, even better.
Fantastic video, never thought about this page of chinise warfare!
Sand and Dan Davis back to back? Thank you very much.
Qing Dynasty never defeated Ming Dynasty before it collapsed to a huge peasant rebellion. Not sure why this is not mentioned in the video. When the rebel leader conquered Beijing, the commander of the northern armies (one of the strongest armies) was too late to help the Emperor who died so he decided to turn to the Qing Dynasty in an alliance to defeat the rebels. With the Great wall being opened by the commander and the army being allied they quickly defeated the rebels and pushed further south. Southern Ming Dynasty was no longer able to defeat Qing Armies allied with Ming turncloaks and the chaos. Eventually Ming Dynasty was defeated. The Turncloak commander was made a prince vassal along some other former Ming commanders but had to rebel too when it became clear that Qing Dynasty want to eliminate them too after several decades.
It is uncertain if Ming Dynasty would have collapsed in this century without the two front war against Qing and rebels as Ming Dynasty was still powerful and had strong armies available. Possibly could survive long enough to take out the momentum of the Qing Dynasty. Or without the turncloaks they might have repeated the same situation as Southern Song Dynasty and Jin Dynasty splitting China.
The Ming were very weak internally. Sure, you can explain the loss of the north due to the rebellion. But had they gotten their shit together they could have held the south of the Yangtze like the Southern Song did. Even Koxinga with far less resources was able to hold on to the Ming cause better than the Southern Ming.
@@majungasaurusaaaaThe reason why the Ming Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty are different is that the Ming Dynasty was a dynasty that lasted for more than 200 years and nearly 300 years, while the predecessor of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Northern Song Dynasty, actually only lasted for 150 years and was still at the peak of its culture, population, and other fields before its downfall. The downfall of the Ming Dynasty was like an elderly person dying peacefully, while the downfall of the Northern Song Dynasty was like a sudden heart attack on a young person. This may explain why the Southern Ming and Southern Song dynasties are vastly different.
@majungasaurusaaaa its not entirely comparable. Song Dynasty was an economic miracle, Jin Dynasty didnt want to conquer China yet and stopped, even they were surprised by their victory when they captured the capital and emperor and they didnt have the most veteran and strongest army turncoat. Also the Ming emperor killed himself. While the rebellion had destroyed the empire to the core. The Song Dynasty lost bc of a strategic mistake, the empire wasnt in chaos by civil war. In the Ming Dynasty nobody knew who sits the throne with the rebellion declaring Emperor, the Qing conquering the north and the Ming being headless
@@ReuterL That's why I said they didn't get shit together. They had the resources, but not the leadership.
@majungasaurusaaaa your argument was that the rebellion didnt matter for the loss of the entirety of the realm. When they not only could pass through the great wall bc of it but also gotten Ming Dynasty largest army as ally to conquer Ming Dynasty.
first time watching, LOVE the incorporation of sources and historical depictions aswell as your own art, greets from züri!
Thanks RhandSoman.
@3:00 Chinese river battles never fail to impress
Isolation was the worst mistake they ever made….
But it's also the same mistake being done know
Except the Ming weren't "isolated" like let's say Edo period Japan. They just stopped funding naval voyages and forbade them. Which made sense considering they were in big military and financial trouble at the time from the mongol threat. Trade too wasn't that restricted. The Ming went on the catch up well in armaments. They were in the process of overhauling their fortification designs to artillery forts as well. But then their economy gave out.
The Qing dominated in 1700. Afterwards there was a long period of prosperous peace that quickly deteriorated their military. Just goes to show that peace that equate progress. Without a free market, most tech innovations come from the need of war.
@majungasaurusaaaa true most innovations come from the needs of war
@@majungasaurusaaaaI mean the Qing
Isolation is never a good hing.
The relationship between the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty is very similar to the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussian Empire
Thank you for making this! Rare to see Ming army content at all
great video. keep it coming :)
I love your channel!!
My favorite is siege videos
I would like to play a Total War Game based on the 1500s-1700s, especially covering the Imjin War, rise of the Qing, and colonial wars
i wouldnt, the TW games kinda suck
Only if they remove the godawful engine they’ve been using since Empire
@@Gravitatistoo true. It’s not entirely clear if things will change for the better, the developer Creative Assembly actually blew $100 million on a mediocre looking hero shooter that got canned before it even released. Instead of using that cash to improve the seriously shitty Warscape engine or at least improve their developmental stack which disgruntled former employees say is infamously bad as well…
@@thenoblepoptart
i just got all 3 of the warhammer TW games for like 15 dollars, and im not really that impressed
i think the series peaked with shogun like 15 years ago
@ they need to make a rich historical simulator, one that has crazy attention to detail, where it can replicate the exact circumstances of historical battles, in addition to dramatic fictions
Thanks for a fascinating video! ⚔🔥🙌
French Cannon is name for Breech-loading swivel gun that were introduced by Europeans.
before that, all Chinese cannons were muzzle loading.
Do more ancient Chinese stuff please.
1:57 Having a "wildly pointing at the thing" moment. That's the guy from the Indiana Jones movie!
At 9:11 the video says Hong Taiji recruited experts from Korea(Joseon in this period) to produce more guns.
May I ask about the reference of this statement?
Unfortunately I've never heard or found about the story of Hong Taiji using conquered Joseon to get more big firearms.
Instead, there are records of Qing Army recruiting Joseon arquebusiers to aid Songshan battle, but not related to producing the firearms.
The reason I'm asking this is because while Joseon was incapable of producing the Red barbarian Cannon(紅夷砲), they still can produce their own cannons or import the Western cannons by dock.
Meanwhile, when the Qing Army invaded Joseon for the second time before the Songshan battle, the Qing Army's major victor factor was the Red barbarian Cannons produced by the defected Ming soldiers.
I kinda do want to know how exactly things happened.
I always love the artistry love and time that goes into these videos. In a time of AI generated trash we need more of this.
Very informative article.
Europe: after a decade of political, and economical successes the king, supported by the pope, and all of Europe, could muster 20k troops. China: the battle turned out to be particularly bloody, and the warlord used the nearby village to replenish his losses of 80k men.
A chinese province has the population of a medium size european nation state. Some larger ones today have more than 100mil people.
Very informative ❤
really interesting! would be cool to get a video about india / mughal empire as well. maybe also japan.
About Cannons outside walls, do we know how big was number of defenders? Becouse something like that actually happened in Easter europe during the sidge of Zbaraż castle. Defenders were entrenched outside the castle walls dude to fact that castle wasn't able to accommodate very high number of defenders.
Not familiar with Chinese weaponry, I watched this informative and still beautifully illustrated video with great pleasure!👍👍😍😍
Excellent narrative
Kinda ironic because the Qing got defeated by the Konbaung who used better cannons and muskets. The Qings got out Qinged.
The records of the Qing Dynasty did not acknowledge that his failure was due to Myanmar's weapons, but rather to Myanmar's climate. Two thirds of the casualties in the Qing Dynasty's Burma Expeditionary Force were caused by malaria and climate discomfort.
When the Ming Dynasty was founded, it defeated the Mongol cavalry of the Yuan Dynasty with better cavalry. When the Qing Dynasty was founded, it defeated the firearms of the Ming Dynasty with better firearms. Later, the Qing Dynasty faced Britain after the Industrial Revolution
The Manchu's were proof positive that given the chance even barbarians could master advance technology given enough time.
After all, didn’t the people that the Romans considered barbarians later become the European powers we know of in history?
@@general_degenerate5902---yep
They mastered gunpowder warfare quickly when there was a need. But the same Manchus went out of their way hamstring China's military technology for fear of Han rebellions being able to make use of them.
The Manchus are the Prussians of the East, and the relationship between the Ming and Qing dynasties is similar to that between the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussian Empire. China and Germany have a very similar history
@@linshitaolst4936---I can't argue there
OH IT'S HERE
You really don't want to go up against an army with a well-trained artillery unit without your own.
Interesting!
Very interesting to leave the usual eurocentric horizon. Thank you very much!
Ming the Merciless
Very fascinant 👏 🔥 👏 🔥
Expect to learn about Cannons, learn about Dynasty transitions
in year 1592, Japanese armada invaded Korea, armed with Western Arquebuses.
However, Koreans had old Asian style cannons, which were more effective in naval battle compare to arquebues.
So, Japanese quickly imported Western cannons, but their ships' structure were unable to widthstand the recoil force of cannons, and render them ineffective.
There is an little error. the Chinese character “Qing（清）" should be directly translated into "clear" or "transparent", rather than pure.
In old times, Chinese people use the metaphor of clear transparent water when speaking of good virtue.
But things are different in the Christian world, where people believe in monotheism and value purity of divinity more.
The ming wernt isolationist they innovated with their weapons combined European guns with chinese chasting techniques created the hong yi pao. So stop saying ming was isolation qing was a han engineer invented a machine gun but was killed by qing due to fear of tech would help han overthrow tyrants also you forgot to mention the battle of bejing which was a ming victory
9:31 It is worth noting that the wages given to the defectors were genuinely much better than what the late Ming court offered their soldiers on the average, which would later be unsustainable and be one of the many reasons that lead to the revolt of the three feudatories in the early Qing rule. Thus the effects leading to defections to what would later become the green standard army were not only from propaganda but also from legitimate pay
明军不满饷,
满饷不可敌,
何处寻满饷,
建州皇太极。
If Jinzhou and Songshan were combined into one big city that encompassed the rivers and surrounded on all sides with walls that kept being supplied all the times by trade through rivers, would the outcome be different? Just imagined the troops of the Eight Banner and the Green Standard Army have to take on the fortified city that big that have the complete control of the rivers and also equipped with a lot of cannons must be quite challenging.
this area of china is so far away from the central plains, i imagine that even a large city would have been besieged and eventually captured by the jurchens
they were basically the mongols 2.0, they were very smart guys
The Liaodong defensive line established by Li ChengLiang way earlier woud've likely been more effective had he not abandoned them voluntarily. Overall, the reason the Ming were defeated can be attributed to administrative and organisational shortcomings rather than anything else. Considering that with just the frankish engine (swivel gun) and rocket artillery etc that the Ming already had the technological advantage against the Jurchens initially, an increase in military tech, European or otherwise likely would've done little in the long run.
The biggest problem lies in internal corruption and political struggles, which means that the stationed troops in these areas are actually short of food and pay, and this is almost the last combat ready army of the Ming Dynasty. The shortage of personnel in other places will be even more serious. Through time tracing, we can also know that there are still a large number of falsely reported soldier positions to defraud military pay, but the actual number of combat troops is nearly half less than the book.
The book number of troops in the late Ming Dynasty was 2.7 million, but in reality, there were only less than 1.06 million military personnel, and the actual combat ready troops would be even fewer. In contrast, the number of troops in the Qing army was 0.63 million. According to history, we know that these 1.06 million troops were shattered by 0.63 million
After all, in the front-line fortress area of Liaodong, the Qing army served as a strong quality inspector, so the combat effectiveness and combat readiness of the Ming army stationed here can be considered acceptable
I would not want to die a slow death because of cannonball injuries.
w
At that time, solid shells were all used. He was hit by a large iron ball weighing 68 pounds moving at high speed and was able to lie in bed for 8 months before dying. This is impossible, so I analyzed that it was probably the shell hitting the ground that caused the splashing stones to injure him
Very interesting
14:41
ROC moment
What is this wall above fortresses like border? Can't they just bypass fortresses by going north?
I am Brasil ❤ i love you Chanel
EVERY siege is staggering !!!
Commenting for the algorithm
This video doesn’t go into much detail about the Ming-Qing transition with regard to Western technology, but it can be summarized by saying that the Qing used their own technology to conquer the Ming, who were relying on European weaponry.
Before the Qing Dynasty unified the whole of China, the Ming Dynasty had already been overthrown by peasant uprisings. After seizing power, the peasant uprisings chose to suppress officials and nobles, seize their property, and after the Qing army entered Beijing, they chose to win over Ming officials and troops, giving them special treatment. Therefore, the peasant uprisings were no match for the Qing Dynasty
@@linshitaolst4936 and did these peasant used european military tech?
@anyiouo3814 To be precise, the peasant uprising army of the Ming Dynasty received a portion of soldiers who were owed wages. These soldiers were equipped with imitation Ottoman guns and Portugal farangi.but their firearms were not comparable to those of the Qing Dynasty army. The Qing Dynasty absorbed military technology from the Ming border troops, including imitation British cannons and better quality matchlock
@@linshitaolst4936 How equipped was the Qing army with European-style military technology, in percentage terms, compared to the Ming army during their invasion?
@anyiouo3814 The development of firearms technology in the Qing Dynasty was very limited, with the only advantage being the increase in production, which led to a high rate of firearms equipment in the Qing army, at most exceeding 80%. However, most of them were matchlock , and there were also 17th century technological cannons. The Qing emperor also considered imitating 18th century European weapons, such as flintlock, but the ability of domestic craftsmen was limited and could only rely on European missionaries to complete them
The chinese guy looks like he is trying to sell me fireworks
I never use any kind of wallet
Forgotten Weapons has several videos about the guns made in the Qing and Republic periods and yes guns made in China were as cheap and unreliable as you'd think, but many of them were good copies of European guns.
The Manchus used chariots?
Chariots were a common tactic of the Ming army, and Nurhaci, the founder of the Qing dynasty, had participated in the charge troops in the Ming army. When Nurhaci's entrepreneurial group had less than 10 people, he already had a chariot to help him participate in village battles. Later, this tactic was widely used in the Ming and Qing wars, until the Ming army introduced more powerful Western artillery
Next video : How chinese fireworks transformed western warfare .
Modernization goes hand in hand with war.
Finally some proper Ming and Qing illustrations after the fiasco last time.
Context, please.
@@bvillafuerte179 The last one had Ming troops images to illustrate a Qing-Russia siege. And while their gear may have been somewhat similar, the Chinese characters on their helmets and armor as well as hairstyles are indicators which side they're on. The Qing had a very distinct hair style that they enforced upon the entire Chinese population on the pain of death. They beheaded violators and had their heads displayed outside of barber shops. Missing that shows the content creator is woefully new to far eastern history.
@@majungasaurusaaaa Thank you.
i feel this video lacks context on the difference between the artilleries pre-adoption of european cannons, or even the artilleries adopted by the Qing.
using rocket artillery visually as an example of chinese artillery is a bit misleading since the video even mentions that the ming first tried using their own cannons but the switched to euro style guns. the benefits was chalked up to "efficiency" which is lacking.
we also know that the ming had cannons , it was used during the imjin war and was something that the korean and the ming had that was better then the japanese.
so it would be a good area of analysis of what were the actual difference between the cannon styles
The Ming had plenty of tube artillery used mostly as light field pieces. It was the heavy siege culverins and demi culverins that they lacked prior to hiring foreigners to assist. But rocket carts look cool and exotic for a thumbnail.
I would day no It was not enough give how history played out. But I migth be suprised.
loving the china content
fyi: gun powder and cannons were invented in China, not Europe.
Awesome stuff
why did the thumbnail changed?
17c, no "russia" but Muscovy
"Muscovy" was Polish-Lithuinian propaganda. XVII century had no "Muscovite Tsardom" but Russian Tsardom.
China was truly the center of human civilization for so long, with the most arable land, best technology, highest population, most centralized government and robust civil service, ETC…
It’s beyond the scope of the video, but the collapse of the Qing dynasty and century of humiliation is, in my opinion, one of the most traumatic events in human history by sheer scale of suffering. Extreme tragedy
china has high highs, but it also has low lows
History, progress, evolution, etc... is not static, the unpredictable happens.
Id say the fall of the american indians or the holocaust are more traumatic, considering that China came back
@@konradvonschnitzeldorf6506 i read one of the few accounts of the precolombian atlantic coast, sailors would describe smelling smoke at ANY point on the coast within 10 miles of land. The ENTIRE frontage was densely settled, and you could see the massive plumes of smoke from their colossal camps rising into the sky, even just observing from a ship at sea. The population difference between that time, and the post-exchange period, is easily -98%. Absolutely unreal devastating loses of native american civilization, who’s size and capability was such that they triggered a miniature ice age with the scale of their forestry industry and agriculture
China lacking behind in term science and technology since industrial revolution in 18th century
Great video! Can someone explain to me: Why did the chinese after initially inventing black powder and firearms, fall behind in the technology, they had years of a start vs Europe and still got surpassed? Is it a lack of financing? Missing metalurgical technology? Missing good material? Any interesting sources to share?
Andrade suggests that one of the reasons why the Chinese didn't focus as much attention on developing cannons until the 16th Century could be due to the thickness of City Walls in China, which lead to a general disinterest in that field. China decided to focus on highly manueverable and lightweight weapons that would be effective against personnel, so they focused on rocketry instead.
@@thejackinati2759This can only be one aspect. The Chinese people generally believe that the slow development of China's guns and artillery is due to the fact that the opponents around China are too weak. The enemies of the Ming Dynasty who fought for a long time were the Mongols wandering on the grasslands. The war was always small-scale and low intensity. Therefore, the weapons of war should not be large caliber guns, or their mobility is too poor, and the muskets that cannot be loaded immediately were not popular in the Ming army in the north. Perhaps this can provide you with an idea.
@@董渊-k9t Mongols horrible killed ming dynasty for tumu crisis 1444 ad what a shame 400.000 K chinese death in battle and ming emperor became slave to mongols like genghis khan congueror half world guy against jin and song dynasties and Xiongu and gokturks beat Han china 209 BC Battle of baideng creation of great wall and tang dynasty 751 AD lose for karluk turks and arabs battle of talas influnce on and then manchus more similar mongols altiac faimlies Ging empire beat ming han china everyone not millitary biggest joke and manchus and mongols literally Helped Chinese for warfare system.
The Jin, Xi Xia and Southern Song were innovators of early gunpowder warfare were destroyed by the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire itself disseminated and absorbed technology but innovated little. So throughout the Yuan, China slowed down in gunpowder pace. But still, by the early Ming, Chinese troops had the highest ratio of gunpowder wielding troops in the world. It would take another 100 years for them to fall behind.
There was little need for the Ming to focus on siege artillery since they weren't sieging fortifications, unlike the Mongol Empire before. They only needed anti personnel field pieces. In that regard, they were still ahead of the West for longer. Also, the lack of serious enemies that can threaten their very thickly built medieval style fortifications meant that they had no need to revise their construction and improve their field of fire with bastions. Sure, the Dai Viet, Burmese and Koreans were also starting to get their hands on more advanced artillery, but the Ming's sheer size meant these tributary allied states pose little offensive danger. So no need for heavy garrison pieces either. After the naval exploration and fleet were scrapped due to budgetary reasons, there was no need for a cutting edge navy. So no new naval artillery.
And so by the late 1500s when the Jurchen threat arose, the Ming were left with the state of heavy artillery and fortifications that were at least 100 years behind what was cutting edge at the time.
Small arms also suffered. While matchlocks have been adopted from the Ottomans and infantry tactics around them devised, most of the elite cavalry based northern troops held little regard for them. Handgonnes were still widely used. Pistols were also rare, despite being adopted by the Japanese, Koreans and Dai Viet.
China had the material and manpower. But the Ming's increasingly struggling budget and economy meant that many reforms envisioned couldn't be carried out.
The Europeans in the mean while were governed by smaller squabbling factions. When they weren't facing the Ottoman threat, they were busy cutting each other's throats. There were no hegemons. Every faction had to be on top of their artillery and fortification game to survive.
@@majungasaurusaaaa
Great answer! Thanks makes sense
So to summarize, western weapons is the reason China is so large. Yw.
That and their very efficient logistics. The Qing were able to project slow, ammo heavy gunpowder heavy power into the steppes in a way the Ming could never hope to. Only the Russians were better at it.
Thibet was a Khanate O_O
8:11 chariots??
6:05 Swedish King
The reason why China isnt called Mina
^Top
Massss
People are always competing to create the weapon that kills the most people.
It's human nature
well i mean it is kinda useful to have sometimes
Great
👍
amazing! so, china was quite a bit ahead of Europe. europeans just sold back what they initially brought back from china?
Damn this reminds me of the boshin war but what heppend after was the opposite lol.
Loco Lococo