--
On 12 Nov 2004 at 15:08, Tyler Durden wrote:
> The Qing were 1) Manchus (ie, not Han Chinese)...they were
> basically a foreign occupation that stuck around for a while;
> and 2) (Nominally Tibetan) Buddhists. Although they of course
> adhered to the larger Confucian notions, they in many ways
> deviated from mainstream Confucian beliefs.
The mainstream Confucian belief, like the mainstream legalist
belief, was that the emperor should have absolute power. The
Qing dynasty was successful in giving effect to this belief,
and justified that effect on confucian grounds. This makes
them more confucian, not less confucian, than the Sung dynasty,
for the Sung were confucian merely in intent, much as the
current chinese regime is communist merely in intent.
> Also, you need to get more specific about WHEN during the
> Qing dynasty you believed this occurred. During the 19th
> century this is most certainly NOT true, and there are many
> famous naval battles that occurred between the British and
> the Chinese navies (in fact, the famous Stone Boat in the
> Summer palace was built using funds that were supposed to pay
> for real ships).
The Qing dynasty prohibited anyone other than themselves from
owning seagoing boats - that is why I called it the equivalent
of the iron curtain.
> But this has nothing to do with Confucianism per se, but is
> more directly related to good old traditional Chinese
> xenophobia.
The prohibition was not against foreigners sailing, but chinese
sailing, so the intent was not fear of foreigners, but as with
the iron curtain, fear of chinese wandering outside government
control and being contaminated with unauthorized foreign
thoughts.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
QpsnWCawMTxeL36my3kdz4SvKVqTYqmGh2nPCY2E
4vCwJru3POMcSWlMD2yDlvSJWTIOuNvDNItpg37fe
