History Summarized: Imperial China

In a shocking twist of fate, China stays in one piece for a majority of this video. The unfortunate side-effect is that when it does collapse, it collapses HARD. Find out how in this tour through the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties!

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[daneverharen]

“But what if I told you that in this video it only collapses once!” -Blue
Me- Confused screaming

[carmacksanderson]

"Steppe One"

Don't think I missed that, buddy

[jeythecount]

Qing be like: Conquer this useless, self-absorbed inefective state of Ming.
THEN:
Govern in exactly the same way, but worse.

[bankcolgate]

“Antagonize the British Empire! You can take ‘em!”

Top Ten Quotes said Moments Before Disaster.

[plolsteg]

Divided China: *exists*
Mongolians and japanese: *H I P P I T Y H O P P I T Y Y O U R’ E M Y P R O P E R T Y*

[kieranpiles]

“So, how many of these steps do you want to take to ruin a civilisation that wasn’t even yours to begin with?”
Qing Dynasty: yes

[DrSmollest]

Europe: No one can partition things like us!
China: *Hold my beer Eight-Nation Alliancers*

[Invinc]

I think the most impressive thing about China is how impregnable their identity is.

In most other cases in history, the conquerer imposes their culture on the conquered.

But China seems to be the only country where the conquerer becomes ends up adopting the culture and becoming Chinese. And not even in a Ptolemaic way.

The power of China isn't in it's military or it's economy. Those come and go. The one constant is the Chinese identity. It's like a nigh unlimited 1ups and continues even after a game over, compared to most other civilizations and empires that fade away once they shatter.

China simply refuses to go away.
It's the only nation that can trace her culture back to the river valley civilisations of antiquity that is still alive and active.

Even India cannot trace her entire culture back to the Indus Valley.

[wilsonli]

Couple of mischaracterizations:
1. The last Ming emperor didn't know about the Qing (Manchu) armies entering Beijing because he was already dead, having hung himself when a peasant army took over Beijing. The Qing army was allowed south of the Great Wall by a Ming general who decided their help was needed to quash the rebellion, and the Qing court would go on to claim to be the legitimate successors to the Ming, even while hunting down the actual former imperial family.
2. Cixi didn't just rely on "martial artists" to fight the Eight Nation Army, she ordered the actual imperial army to support them. That's why the Boxer Rebellion came back to bite her in the ass, because she couldn't pretend it was just an internal problem.

[AbsolXGuardian]

As a more poetic version of Bill Wurtz's "China is whole again....China has broke again" have extra history's "The empire long united must divide. The empire long divided must unite" instead.

[childeater]

Britain:lets trade
China:no
Britain:yes

[RamdomView]

3:55 By "massive", he means "can carry all of Columbus's ships in its hold."

[kukuandkookie]

As a Chinese-Canadian, I wanted to say thanks for covering dynastic China’s history! It’s very very difficult to learn about Chinese history in the west because it’s just not touched upon at school, but of course even parts of communist China prefer not to get too deep into it.

That being said, God it _grinds my gears_ hearing about the Opium Wars. When I was younger, my mother used to tell me about how so many countries wanted a piece of China and ended up invading, and while it never really crossed my mind back then, as I’ve grown older and desired a closer connection to my family’s home country (as most immigrant children do), I’ve realized the full extent of how awful what China went through is.

There’s a reason around the 19th-20th century of China is referred to as a “century of humiliation.” Besides Britain and the other countries you mentioned, Japan would really weaken China in the Second World War.

I won’t get into the Opium Wars and the Ming and Qing dynasties since this video was all about them, but I wanted to talk about some other stuff in the latter half of history.

While Chinese officials and the empire, as mentioned in this video, did do a bad job due to corruption etc, I’ve always disliked how quickly foreigners write China off as a shithole or a dictatorship without any freedoms “because that’s just how it is and that’s just how its people are.”

No, it’s not. History has made China the way it is.

China’s government’s current iron grip on its country even reflects the development of other countries throughout history. While most countries try to be democratic now, many countries have gone through empires and international conquests and colonialism.

I hope the mess that is the Second World War and the Cultural Revolution will get more coverage in the future, but for now I want to touch on some points:


I’ve done a lot of research on China in the Second World War for school papers, and it’s still true that many Japanese (and even Chinese) textbooks scrub these parts of history from the writings. They mention the Nanjing Massacre/Rape briefly as an “incident, ” and don’t mention Unit 731 at all.

To give an idea how bad some of what China went through in the Second World War is, here’s a look at the gruesome “experiments” of Unit 731. Doctors raped female prisoners, injected horse urine into prisoners’ kidneys, froze limbs only to put them in boiling hot water, did surgeries without anaesthetics, etc. They dehumanized the prisoners and called them logs because they secretly worked in a lumber mill.

And what happened to those that suffered? Most of them died, and most of their families never saw them again. They got nothing in return. And in the meantime, the US granted the doctors of Unit 731 immunity for the information. One of them even opened up a pharmaceutical company still operating today. Many doctors, despite their cruelties, were allowed to continue living like normal even after what they did.

And if some guilty doctors hadn’t decided to come forward with testimonies, perhaps we would have never known the full extent of a victim’s suffering.

And this is already adding onto the other things: Japan’s pillaging of Nanjing caused many deaths and rapes. I remember a story of a man, as a kid, watching his mother be stabbed to death before him. He watched his brother, only a baby, be skewered on the Japanese soldier’s bayonet. And even as she lay dying, his mother tried to breastfeed her baby so that he could stop crying in pain.

A girl around 14 let herself be raped to the point of unconsciousness and intense bleeding so that her grandfather could stop begging and putting himself in danger to protect her from a Japanese soldier.

Another person saw a relative be cut in half.

These stories are recorded in a documentary on the Nanjing Massacre that featured interviews with survivors. Feel free to do a quick YouTube search. Just a quick warning: it is quite brutal and emotional.

There were also the two Japanese soldiers racing to see who could behead 100 Chinese civilians the fastest, etc etc.


_Now_ I want to touch on Mao Zedong and how he came to power:

After everything that happened during the Second World War, China was weak and in decline. When Mao Zedong promised a better future, people chose to believe in him. Communism struck when the country was weak _because_ of all that China had suffered during that century.

Everyone likes to compare Mao Zedong to the Japanese empire. “What about him?” they ask. And yet, we should acknowledge Mao’s ascendance to power is also a result of the Japanese Empire’s invasion, among the other things presented in this video that led to China’s decline.

In addition to that, I’ve discussed with a Taiwanese friend of mine. When the communists pushed the Guomindang to Taiwan, that party was quite dictator-like there as well. Citizens who disagreed with the government still disappeared. So while perhaps they wouldn’t have been _as bad_ as Mao Zedong’s communist party, they wouldn’t necessarily be a vast improvement either.

Of course Mao wasn’t a good leader—I know his atrocities. I looked at adults in surprise when they preferred to pin the blame of Mao’s failings on his wife. I don’t like the idea of his influence being so washed of bloodshed. But that’s in China. In the west, Mao’s bloodshed is the only thing ever covered.

I did extensive research on him for a school project as well, where I acted as prosecution _against_ Mao in a mock trial, and I also _know_ people who grew up during his time in China, many of whom saw people be imprisoned and beaten publicly for supposedly disagreeing with the government.

Mao Zedong was an undeniable dictator with the pattern of paranoia and cruelty that often comes with communism, killing millions of civilians in his wake. But he did bring China out of complete and total poverty, even if he didn’t do a great job. *Mao did not build a perfect country. But he did rebuild a broken country, ensuring it would leave a mark on the world.*


I don’t want anyone to think I’ve made this comment to solely bash on Japan. I have no ill feelings toward Japanese people as a whole. I know I appear to be biased, and it’s undeniable I am, but knowing these things about history just matter a lot to me. I actually highly enjoy Japan’s culture and media and people, although I do wish more people will acknowledge Japan (and Korea)’s culture(s) being evolved from China.

Besides, Britain’s attempt to control China through opium is also extremely awful, and China is no way guiltless in its own downfall, but the joke about China censoring information and the mention of leaving Winnie the Pooh, while funny, doesn’t cover the whole picture.


Germany continues to apologize for Nazi atrocities and even US citizens are taught to feel guilty for dropping the nukes on Japan (ironically, Japan holds barely any grudges against the US because the US greatly helped Japan’s economy after WWII and disappearing US military bases from public view meant that Japan forgot USA’s occupation postwar was a militaristic one, as a Japanese scholar has proposed in a paper I read for my Japanese Cinema class).

I’m not defending communism. It just doesn’t work. But I also don’t want to deny that Mao did do some good things for China, including bringing it out of intense poverty and lack of global influence. Even China tries not to fully address these things, whether it’s about the mess-ups of the dynasties, other countries, or Mao Zedong.

After all, we’re often told that those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.

*TL;DR: China is hated because of its nature, but people forget Mao Zedong’s tyranny was partly a result of what happened during the Ming and Qing dynasties, along with what Japan did to China in WWII. China wouldn’t necessarily be better off with the Guomindang, and while still a dictator who killed millions, Mao did bring China out of poverty, even if he was a ruthless, cruel, paranoid dictator who failed just as much—if not more than—he succeeded.*

*Remembering history is important, and since Germany and the US cover it quite heavily, I hope to see the international world, as well as Japan and China, take a closer look at history as well.*

[solanceDarkMOW]

Any chance we can get a ReDux of the 5 Easy Steps to Ruin your Civilization for other nations too? Maybe a Western Roman version or a Collonial France...
That'd be neat.

[TheRealGuywithoutaMustache]

Just think about it. If Lu Bu was alive during this time period, nobody would pursue him.

[lidixakmartine]

You have left out a very important piece of story regarding the invading Manchu. In fact, the Manchurians did not manage to force through the Great Wall. Even the great Nurgachi was killed in one of such attempts. Instead, they were deliberately given an access to pass the Great Wall through an open gate by a Ming General (Wu San Gui) in a stupid attempt to neutralise the menacing rebels on Ming soil.

[andrewnessari]

“So in other words, leave Winnie the Pooh alone” perfection omfg

[SuperRavensblood]

"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide."
-Romance of the Three Kingdoms

[lunarotimas]

"they really should have built a... oh...ah...hnn... that really didnt work for them at all, did it? hmmm"

WOW. THE SHADE THO

[dttth]

South Korea is really like the Ming Dynasty of China. From etiquette to costumes, it is just a miniature version of the Ming Dynasty. After the demise of the Ming Dynasty, officials of the Qing Dynasty saw the North Korean messengers and saw the clothes they were wearing. The officials of the Qing Dynasty were sad and weeping.