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Ming Dynasty

Decent Essays
The Great Ming dynasty has been a dynasty where the basis of its rulings and organizations have been derived from Confucian ideals. Its Emperors held titles as the "Son of Heaven", making them almost deities who should possess the wisdom as well as integrity to oversee such an enormous and centralized empire. Still, in 1644, the Hans were overtaken by a growing power the of brave warriors on horseback who had an expertise of western firearms. The Great Ming dynasty, arguably China's most flourishing period of scholarship, arts and capitalist market economy ushered in a new ethnic ruling class, the Manchus. Although the year of the official Ming-Qing transition was recorded in 1644, the fractioning and deterioration of Ming government…show more content…
If an eunuch can gain an immense amount of power by ways of bribery and intimidation, then what legitimacy would there be government exams for the selection of scholar-officials? In turn, it is reasonable for one to assume that the high-ranked officials in the late Ming dynasty arose to their position of power not by scholarly achievement or political competence, rather, perhaps improper negotiations of bribery and family connections. Huang also described human predicament such as that people by nature are incline to seek pleasures and engaged in indulgences. This could be seen in Charles Horner's account of the late Ming dynasty being " a time of mass vulgar consumption and unstrained materialism- an era of self-indulgence that the stern moralist then and now cannot help to find offensive aesthetically and to the stability of the society."(Horner, 2009). According to Horner, the late Ming was a time where there was not only the government deteriorations, but also the moral deterioration of the society at large which Huang would say is a form of humanity giving in to its indulgent nature and refusing to follow Confucius' virtues of hard work, diligence, and delaying satisfaction. These of course, on the orders of civilians or government infrastructure will contribute to the demise of the dynasty. Lastly, there is a question of Ming's lack of understanding and mastery of western firearm had contributed to its fall. Although the Manchu had an significant
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