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India

p The main states which took shape on the Indian peninsula in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the Moslem Empire of the Great Moguls in the north and the Hindu Empire of the Vijayanagar in the south. Each of these empires consisted of a number of individual princedoms and had its own political centre. Despite the heterogeneous ethnic and religious composition of these princedoms they were linked by a common economic and social structure.

p These two empires followed different courses of economic development. In the south trading cities flourished. The original communes gradually disintegrated, giving way to an infinite number of tiny feudal estates the owners of which hired out strips of land to the peasants on quite crippling terms. The property of these petty landowners was regarded as a form of payment for military service from the sovereign, the supreme landowner. Exceptions in the overall system of state ownership of land were the large estates belonging to the temples and the small and medium-sized estates belonging to members of the Brahmin caste. The absence of universal private ownership of land and the retention of the princes’ privileges, despite the existence of strong state power and a welldeveloped administrative apparatus, were to determine the history of the Vijayanagar Empire. By the end of the sixteenth century the gradual disintegration of the empire had run its course.

Events took a very different turn in northern India. Here the constant danger of war and the need to maintain large irrigation systems led to the consolidation of strong central government. This was also important as far as the towns were concerned, since they depended for their livelihood on internal trade. It was in the north that the largest, most advanced and centralised state of mediaeval India was to take shape—the Empire of the Great Moguls. A 266 factor which was to play an important part in the development of this empire was the setting up of new overland trade routes in the sixteenth century, once the Portuguese pirates had established their ascendancy on the sea. Equally important was the need to consolidate the rule of the Moslem rulers in a country where the mass of the population adhered to the Hindu faith and where Hindu rulers outnumbered the Moslem ones.

The Mogul Empire

p These conditions enabled the ruler and talented military commander Kabul Babur to achieve considerable successes in his efforts to centralise the empire. Babur succeeded in breaking down the resistance of both Moslem and Hindu princes in northern India, and founded a state which came to be known in Europe as the Mogul Empire (1526).

p Babur did not live long enough to create a strong state apparatus and a streamlined system of economic exploitation: this was carried out by the energetic ruler Sher Shah (1539-1545). All those engaged in agriculture were directly dependent on the state; each peasant had to pay the state a fixed tax-rent. In Sher Shah’s reign a number of internal customs duties were lifted, the coinage system was improved, important roads were built and a complex centralised administration network was set up. Landowners in the emperor’s service were subjected to state supervision and their ranks became much more closely knit as social differences between Moslems and Hindus lessened.

p The consolidation of the class of landowners and the establishment of a clearly-defined administrative system enabled the Moguls to start working towards the unification of the whole of India. The necessary historical and cultural unity already existed and differences of language and economic development now played a less significant role than had once been the case. Akbar (1556-1605) ruled over the whole of northern India and the northern half of southern India.

p As a result of these conquests a hybrid class of feudal lords grew up, which consisted of representatives of both the conquering and subject peoples, of Moslems and Hindus. The state policy aimed at consolidating central power won wide support among the lesser members of this class regardless of their religious beliefs; the most loyal supporters of Mogul rule among them were the Rajputs who were Hindus. The traders from the towns of northern India were also in favour of unification.

p Unification considerably furthered economic progress. The introduction of a fixed tax-rent led to a definite advance in the 267 development of the peasant holdings and that of urban and village handicrafts. In the villages the peasant communes virtually disappeared; throughout the country two new groups emerged to replace them, a prosperous minority and a class of landless peasants working land hired out to them. However, the disappearance of the commune traditions was a relatively slow process which took place as items pioduced by craftsmen in the towns gradually flowed into the villages and came to replace the work of the commune craftsmen.

p The development of the large cities of northern India depended to a large extent on whether they were administrative centres or not. Feudal lords gathered in the administrative centres bringing their suites and servants with them, and most important of all their custom, which fostered the growth of trade. Almost everywhere urban crafts attained a high level of perfection and the social patterns of urban administration gradually came to resemble those of self-government.

p The townspeople frequently came out in protest against caste canons of social inequality. The most important of the religious movements advocating reform was the Bhakti movement which upheld the idea of equality before God and the decisive role of 268 personal effort in the redemption of man’s soul (which implied a negation of the role of the Brahmin). The Bhaktas employed exclusively peaceful means in their campaign.

p Far more radical were the aims of the Hindu Sikh sect, whose main adherents were once again rich towndwellers unwilling to reconcile themselves with their low caste status. Although initially this movement also confined itself to non-violent methods and was tolerated by the Moguls, the Sikhs eventually went still further in their demands for social equality and resorted to force. Similar movements also grew up among the Moslem townspeople (for example the Mahdist movement).

p In the first half of the sixteenth century the Mahdists, who preached the imminent dawn of the kingdom of justice and economic equality, resorted to active protest, relying on the support of the urban poor. However, they were soon suppressed.

p The reform movements of this period also spread to the villages, the most significant of them being the Roshanite movement among the Afghani peasants. Unlike the Sikhs or the Mahdists, the Roshanites rose up against the upper feudal stratum of Afghani society in an effort to retain the communes. This movement was finally quelled only in the seventeenth century.

p In this period of great internal unrest the feudal government introduced a number of reforms which to a certain extent stopped the opposition movements resorting to armed struggle. These reforms ensured more uniform methods of labour exploitation, the consolidation of feudal patterns of landownership and a centralised state apparatus. A fixed individual tax-rent to be paid in money was established throughout the country. Initially this made life easier for the peasants; however, the enormous taxation bodies which the state had recently created made it possible to introduce more severe taxes and this, combined with the fact that they had to be paid in money, soon led to mass impoverishment of the peasantry. This in its turn was eventually to undermine the might of the Mogul Empire since the state, which owned the land, was unable to gather in a large part of the taxes from the now povertystricken peasants.

p In the second half of the sixteenth century the feudal lords in state service were deprived of a large number of their rights to direct exploitation of the peasants, from whom tax-rents were gathered by official tax-collectors of the central government. The system of conditional landownership in Mogul India of that period made it practically impossible for such estates to eventually become permanent property. This system led to bitter resentment among the feudal lords, who did not however resort to open revolt until an attempt was made to substitute salaries for the revenue they derived from the land. This last measure, quite inappropriate 269 at that stage of India’s economic development was revoked, but conditional landownership remained in force. At the same time Hindus and Moslems were granted equal rights and a short-lived attempt was made to introduce a universal religion. All these measures served to unite the ranks of the feudal lords, leading to a worsening of the peasants’ lot.

All this, in turn, served to weaken the power of both the state machinery and the armed forces. This weakness was clearly reflected in relations with European powers. Portuguese traders succeeded in gaining strong footholds in a number of coastal towns while English, Dutch and French merchant companies also set up fortified trading posts in various parts of the country.

China in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

p China developed slowly under the Ming dynasty.

p At the beginning of the sixteenth century the system of peasant allotments, which emerged at the same time as state ownership of land was established, began to break up. New landowners in state service, powerful feudal lords and the emperors themselves set up new estates and in order to extend the arable land in their possession, drove the peasants from their holdings, later taking them into the service under crippling conditions. Land hunger obliged the peasants to become tenant farmers paying rent to the landowners and taxes to the state. For the land still in their possession outside the estates of the large landowners the peasants also paid taxes. Landowners of small and moderate means were also liable for taxation. A large part of these taxes had to be paid in money and usury became deep-rooted in rural life. These developments were to start spreading on a large scale only at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and during the first 150 years of the Ming period the internal affairs of the country were relatively calm. Uprisings occurred predominantly among minority (non-Han) peoples, who were subjected to particularly cruel oppression.

p The development of commodity-money relations in the villages and the increasing power of money-lenders was accompanied by the growth of peasant home industries, craft guilds in both towns and villages, state-owned industry and manufactories. Firearms were produced and the first newspapers appeared during this period. The first long voyages to foreign lands were undertaken by Chinese seamen. In the sixteenth century Europeans made their way to the Chinese Empire and European culture started to gain a foothold in China.

p The foreign policy of the Ming rulers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was of a defensive character and in many 270 271 respects was reminiscent of that pursued by the Sung rulers. There were repeated Mongol invasions from the north, Japanese attacks from the east, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Manchurians started to sally forth into China from the north-east.

p The situation soon became extremely dangerous, but the conflict between representatives of various groupings in the ruling class hindered the pursuance of any active counter-measures. Another factor complicating the situation was the growing resistance on the part of the peasants to increasing exploitation.

The administrative officials in the lower and middle ranks of the state bureaucratic apparatus came out against the powerful landowners and irresponsible cliques of eunuch courtiers. However, their attempts to rebel (undertaken by the Tung-lin party and other groups) in 1567, 1620, 1628 ended in failure. At that time there were no large-scale popular uprisings and consequently the need for reform did not make itself urgently felt. Nor did the reformers themselves look to the masses for support, preferring to pin their hopes on the good-will of the emperor. Individual emperors did introduce various reforms proposed by the lower and middle ranks of the landowning class; however, these efforts were ineffective, although reforms were already called for by the 1630s when internal conflict was rife and there was a mounting tide of peasant unrest.

Peasant War in China

p In 1628, soon after yet another reforming emperor had failed to restrict the power of the landowners, isolated peasant uprisings started to develop into a large-scale war. The rallying of various peasant bands was made easier since a large body of government forces at that time was engaged in warding off Manchurian attacks on the northern border. By 1636 the uprising had taken on such dimensions that the landowners in the emperor’s retinue were obliged to change their approach to the peasant question. While cruelly repressing the rebellions where possible, at the same time they were also obliged to make various concessions. However, in 1639 the rebellion spread with even greater momentum than before. Under the command of Li Tzu-ch’eng the insurgents defeated the imperial army and seized the capital, proclaiming Li Tzu-ch’eng Emperor.

p In contrast to peasant movements of earlier periods the rebellion of 1639-1644 resulted in the setting up of a system of centralised state administration for both military and civil affairs and serious attempts were made by the peasant government to regulate the country’s economy. The insurgents were soon in control of the whole of the lower and central parts of the Yellow River valley. 272 The population south of the Yangtze took little part in the uprising (nor was the South a bastion of the imperial army and the nobles’ retainers). The powerful nobles pinned their hopes on the army of Wu Sang Hui which was then stationed on the northern border, warding off Manchurian attacks.

Fearing to rely on their own strength, the Chinese nobles with Wu Sang Hui at their head betrayed the interests of their country for the sake of preserving their privileges and resorted to forming an alliance with the Manchurians to break the new peasant rule. The united forces of Wu Sang Hui and the Manchurians succeeded in driving the insurgents from the capital and its environs. After the Manchurians entered the capital they declared their leader Emperor of China. South of the river Yangtze the Chinese nobles proclaimed another member of the Ming dynasty Emperor. The peasant insurgents continued their resistance but their strength was already on the wane. After Li Tzu-ch’eng and his men had suffered a number of defeats, the state administrative apparatus and the army of the peasant rulers collapsed and the vacillating townspeople and petty landowners deserted the insurgent camp. In 1645 Li Tzu-ch’eng was killed. His death marked the beginning of an era of feudal reaction and oppressive Manchurian rule.

South-East Asia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

p By the beginning of the sixteenth century the states of the majority of the larger peoples of this area had come to occupy roughly the same territory as today. This applied to the Indonesians, Vietnamese, Khmers, Burmese, Thai and Laotians. In the Philippines and Malaya no states with definite centres had as yet emerged, and constant feuds raged between petty princes.

p The majority of the states of South-East Asia were of an advanced feudal variety. In all of them land was owned by the state, a feudal bureaucracy existed and a landowning class was taking shape. Typical features of these states were the continued presence of well-established communes and the practices that went with them, all-important irrigation systems, the absence of large centralised empires and a single cultural, economic and military centre.

p These feudal states can be divided into three types. The first included advanced feudal states such as Vietnam and Central Indonesia where well-developed agriculture over a limited area led to rural overpopulation and the emergence of complicated types of feudal exploitation. Military campaigns led by the monarchs of these states resulted in annexations, partial settlement of new lands and frequent assimilation of conquered peoples.

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p The second type were equally close-knit feudal states such as Cambodia or Siam, where there were large tracts of uncultivated land and as a result bond peasants represented a valuable source of wealth. Wars in these lands tended to be waged over peasants, who were carried off in hundreds of thousands, rather than over land and state ownership of land was less undermined by the spread of landed estates.

The third group included the Burmese state of Ava, the Laotian state of Lan Xang, the sultanates of the Philippines and the Malaccan peninsula and those of western Malaya. In most of these states state administration was still run by groups of feudal lords descended from tribal leaders, feudal patterns of agriculture were not particularly advanced and a large part of the population still lived mainly in accordance with tribal custom.

The State of Daiviet

Among these states those which had reached the highest stage of economic development were the Vietnamese state of Daiviet and the Indonesian state of Majapahit. In the thirteenth century Daiviet succeeded in warding off three Mongolian invasions. Reforms introduced at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century firmly established state ownership of land and the role of the lesser and middle echelons of the bureaucracy. The fifteenth century was marked by rapid economic and cultural development in the centralised Vietnamese state and considerable territorial expansion to the south and west. In the sixteenth century, commune agriculture started to disintegrate, giving way to small and medium-sized estates belonging to the warlords. At the end of the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century the central power and the power of the bureaucrats who received remuneration for their services gradually weakened. The seventeenth century saw the emergence of two main centres in Daiviet, one in the north and the other in the south. After a long struggle the country was divided into two fairly centralised states which remained independent under the nominal power of the L6 dynasty.

The Majapahit Empire

p The history of Indonesia took a very different course. This state grew up centred round the island of Java, where the Majapahit Empire had been established since the end of the thirteenth century (from 1293 to approximately the second decade of the sixteenth century).

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p The formation of a united state incorporating most of Indonesia and centred on Java was facilitated both by the rapid development of trade and cultural links between the various Indonesian islands and also by the fact that Java became the source of rice for many of the other islands which in their turn produced crops mainly for export. Java maintained a united empire firstly by setting up political and dynastic links between the various parts of the empire, and later by the successful military subjection of all other states within the archipelago.

p In the course of these developments a talented statesman, Gadjah Mada, came to the fore who was to become the virtual ruler of the Majapahit Empire from 1328 to 1364. After a series of long wars he succeeded in implementing a unification policy in the interests of the feudal lords of Java. He conquered Western Java, part of the Sumatran coast, the southern part of the Malaccan peninsula, the Bangka and Mentawai islands, the northern and southern coasts of Kalimantan, the Banda islands, the Moluccas and other islands. In all these areas the feudal leaders became vassals of the Majapahit Empire. The emergence of feudal patterns of agriculture led to precise division of the land into communal, temple, bestowed or private lands (in the case of the more powerful nobles). Among the class of feudal lords there soon emerged a group of powerful landowners who occupied important posts at court and who were generally related to the ruler, while on the other hand there also existed a large host of landowners whose property was granted them in return for service to the state. The large central state apparatus was designed to ensure strict supervision of the distribution of landed property which was the state’s main source of income. Instruments of coercion such as the law courts or the police service were carefully organised and equipped with elaborate systems of rules and a detailed code of laws.

p The fourteenth century was one of war and reforms, which saw the final flowering of mediaeval Indonesian culture. The great epic poem Negarakartagama dates from this period, which also produced a number of other masterpieces and impressive temple buildings. By this time Indian cultural influences were starting to decline although traces of the caste system were still to be found in the laws of that period.

In the mid-fifteenth century the Moslem coastal princedoms of the Malaccan peninsula and Sumatra grew more independent and came to constitute a threat to Majapahit foreign trade. By the end of the fifteenth century the Majapahit Empire was bereft of all its island possessions and the northern part of Java. In the second decade of the sixteenth century the remnants of the former empire were in the hands of the coalition of trading principalities 275 of northern Java. Soon new hostilities broke out as the sultanate of Mataram attempted to set up a new centralised state but these attempts were obstructed and later rendered quite fruitless by the arrival of the Europeans.

Portuguese Conquests

In 1511 Malacca was conquered by the Portuguese, who started to contend the control of the trade routes in this part of the world with Arab and Indonesian merchants. The Portuguese succeeded in establishing a stronghold in the Molucca Islands, the main source of spices, and a number of other places in Indonesia long before this issue had been finally settled. Portuguese command of the sea routes undermined local trade and led to intensified exploitation of the peasants by the local landowners in an attempt to compensate for their commercial losses. This weakened the power of the Indonesian states but the majority of them nevertheless succeeded in maintaining their independence.

Dutch Territorial Gains

The situation in Indonesia changed after the arrival of Dutch merchants and soldiers of the Netherlands East India Company in 1603. After capturing the Molucca Islands and subjugating the local rajahs, the company built a network of fortresses throughout the whole of Indonesia and gradually gained control of more and more territory. The success of the company was based on unbridled plunder of the islands’ natural resources and cruel exploitation of the native population. The Dutch traders made their main bases on the north-western coast of Java where they founded the town of Batavia. Dutch trade thrived in the area and the company gradually expanded its territorial gains. However, by the middle of the seventeenth century the Dutch were still not undisputed masters even of Java, where they were challenged by the strong Mataram and Bantam sultanates.

Japan in the Sixteenth
and Early Seventeenth Centuries

p The Mongolian invasion brought a series of significant changes to life in Japan. The centralised shogunate which relied on the Samurai for its support came to an end. Large landed estates belonging to the leading nobles or daimyo predominated. Each of 276 these powerful landowners ruled over a number of Samurai as his vassals. The political legalisation of this new system was introduced after the victory of the princes from the south-west over the shogun when power passed from the latter into the hands of the house of Ashikaga at the end of the fourteenth century.

p During the reign of the Ashikaga dynasty the number of large landed estates gradually decreased and the Samurai who were now dependent on the powerful nobles no longer constituted a united class. The dispossession of the Samurai in the fifteenth century was but one aspect of a general agrarian crisis, the root cause of which was the land shortage, the intensified exploitation of the peasants and feuds between individual princes. Meanwhile, however, urban handicrafts and trade were expanding, control of taxation was put into the hands of leading traders, who also had a monopoly of spirits production. With increasing frequency the landowners were finding themselves in the power of money-lenders and traders. Although the government frequently annulled debts the Japanese nobles did not resort to any drastic measures against the money-lenders, traders and townspeople. Trade flourished, and merchants and craftsmen soon came to enjoy certain privileges—Japan being the only state in the Far East where this was the case. Fine artefacts and copper ore were among Japan’s main exports. Many ports were self-governing and had their own city guard. Large profits from the export of gold, silver and copper ore meant that the landowners, well aware of the limited prospects of agriculture, far from harassing the townspeople, themselves started to organise mining projects.

p Meanwhile in the villages profits were possible only at the expense of the peasants who were subjected to drastic exploitation: fifty per cent of their harvests had to be handed over to their liegelords and they were continually at the mercy of money-lenders. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries peasant uprisings were common occurrences and the ranks of the peasants were often swelled by urban craftsmen and dispossessed Samurai. This latter fact meant that the peasant uprisings were well organised, usually being led by distinct religious sects or factions from among the urban poor. At the same time the frequent internecine strife between the nobles led to Japan becoming split into a number of separate princedoms by the middle of the sixteenth century. One of the main reasons behind these petty wars was the need for a redistribution of the land since the existing system no longer corresponded to the actual level of social and economic development. The sixteenth century was a time of endless internal wars accompanied by attempts at territorial expansion in Korea. The Europeans introduced firearms to the Japanese and later initiated them into the secrets of their production. As a result, within a short 277 space of time the decisive role in military encounters was played by the peasant infantry which ousted the equestrian knights and gradually came to be organised on a professional basis.

p Contact with Europe also resulted in the spread of Catholicism which undermined the unity of the Japanese people. Unity had been somewhat tenuous earlier and the growing number of armed peasant detachments, particularly in the south, pointed to the fact that the nobles and the Samurai would be unable to preserve their domination over the other classes without a strong central power. Thus they naturally sought to centralise state power and consolidate Japanese unity.

p The nucleus of the new centralised Japan was the central region of the country and (he main forces working towards unity were the middle and lower echelons of the landowning class under the leadership of Oda Nobunaga. In the course of a grim struggle lasting from 1568 to 1582 Nobunaga succeeded in setting up a centralised state in the northern half of the country after winning over to his side the merchants from the main towns and suppressing peasant uprisings. Nobunaga’s work was continued by Hideyoshi during the period from 1583 to 1598. He launched a campaign to conquer Korea which ended in failure, but was far more successful in suppressing peasant disturbances at home. Hideyoshi tried to solve the land problem by disarming the Japanese peasants and making them serfs.

Increased labour productivity in peasant agriculture made it possible for the landowners to demand 66 per cent of their peasants’ harvests as against the former 50 per cent, while the new centralised government was able to disarm the peasants and bind them to their respective holdings. The peasants paid tax-rents to their lords and the collection of these taxes was supervised by the lord’s or the shogun’s vassals. The stabilisation of the internal situation facilitated expansion of home markets.

The Establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate

p The setting up of a feudal system with peasant farmers bound to the land was completed bv the shoguns of the house of Tokugawa, who came to power in 1603. This system was based on centralisation and universal conservative regimentation. It was the Tokugawa who finally put an end to peasant unrest (the largest outbreak was that in Shimabara in 1637), banned Christianity, set limits for political and trading relations with foreign countries and restricted the independent powers of the coastal towns and the nobles in the south. Foreign trade became a state monopoly; the rights and obligations of all social estates ( 278 Samurai, farmers, craftsmen and traders) were drawn up in detail and state supreme ownership of land was introduced (but seldom implemented except in the case of confiscation of lands by way of punishment for state treason). The noble landowners had the right to pass sentence on their vassals, to keep armed retainers and collect taxes, but they remained subject to the laws of the shogun and were not allowed to wage war on their neighbours. Seventeen large towns were made directly responsible to the shogun and removed from the sphere of the nobles’ jurisdiction. This series of strict regulations affected the traders and craftsmen considerably less than the peasants, since the shogunate sought to encourage trade and crafts rather than obstruct their progress.

The cessation of local feuds and the setting up of a powerful state apparatus to ensure all-pervasive control of the peasants made it possible for the landowners to squeeze the very last drop out of the peasantry, in short, all that was possible at a given stage of economic development. This exploitation was facilitated by the country’s isolation from the outside world which meant that the towns concentrated their energies on the home market, which in turn favoured the advance of agricultural production. New instruments of production and technical improvements were introduced and new crops were experimented with, including those brought over from Europe. Commodity-money relations made deep inroads into village life and the era of natural economy was soon a thing of the past. Centralised and scattered manufactories sprang up. Yet, all in all, the economic development of seventeenth-century Japan took place within the framework of a feudal system which the government of the period spared no effort to consolidate.