China - Empire in Numista is used to refer to the various dynasties of the Chinese "Celestial Empire" from the Tang Dynasty (608-906 AD) until the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1912). The territories of the various dynasties vary greatly, but most span the general eastern, populated area of what is today the People's Republic of China. Dynasties from before the Tang are classified under China - Ancient in Numista.
(left) European-style official flag of the Qing Dynasty, in use 1889-1912, (right) Imperial seal of the Qing; other dynasties' seals differed
History
China is one of the world's oldest civilisations; the first civilisations in the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers date back to more than 5000 years ago, as old as, and perhaps even predating the civilisations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt. The fertile regions in eastern China allowed for rice crops to be plentiful, a crop that allowed for large population growth; China is the most populous country in the world even today. The first recorded dynasty was the Xia (夏, approx. 2070-1600 BC) which remains shrouded in mystery to modern historians who debate the existence of it's founders and rulers. It was succeeded by the Shang (商, approx. 1600-1046 BC), the first dynasty with solid archaeological evidence to support historical claims, and then by the Zhou (周, 1046-256 BC) which saw a centralisation of authority by the ruling dynasty which had been divided into the Western and Eastern Zhou (division was a common theme in multiple dynasties). This period also saw the emergence of the "Mandate of Heaven", a supposedly "divine" justification of the ruling dynasty's status.
Map of the Warring States period; with the Qin state highlighted in red, which would later take over the other states and assume the "Mandate of Heaven" in 221 BC.
In the final days of the Zhou dynasty, the centralised authority collapsed into the Warring States period, of which the Qin (秦, 221-206 BC) eventually emerged victorious and "reunited" China, claiming the Mandate of Heaven under the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, the first "emperor" of a unified "China". He famously began the construction of projects like the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army, but the Qin dynasty was short-lived and collapsed with the emergence of the rebel-led Han (漢, 202 BC-220 AD), which like the Zhou, split into various parts then reunified around 0 AD. This was the first time when China supposedly had indirect contact with the West in the Roman Empire via trade. By 220 AD, the warring factions within the Han had led to it's dissolution and the beginning of another "Warring States" period, known as the "Three Kingdoms". China was again "reunified" under the Jin (晉, 265-420 AD), which in it's waning years again dissolved into civil war (notice a theme?) which eventually simplified down to Northern and Southern dynasties, reunified as the Sui (隋, 581-608 AD) and ended the frequent raids from northern "barbarians" such as the Huns.
Map of the Tang Dynasty; note it's territory outside "China proper" (Turkestan), part of the Silk Road, an infamous trade route from East Asia to the Arabic world and Europe.
The Sui was usurped by the Tang (唐, 618-907 AD), which is often seem by historians as a turning point in China's history; it is the point at which Numista begins documenting China - Empire coins. Apart from a brief interruption when the Empress Wu Zetian (the only female emperor) reigned, the Tang's prosperity and longevity was almost unprecedented in comparison to earlier centuries of division and reunification; trade with the Islamic world flourished at the height of the Silk Road as China expanded outside China proper for the first time. Another era of civil war literally called the "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms" followed, until one, the Song (宋, 960-1279) led a reunification of China, ending the last period of serious internal division in Imperial history. The Song led a campaign to pacify the Jin peoples in the north, but by the 13th century a more serious threat, the Mongols, unified under Genghis Khan swept into China and overthrew the Song, establishing the Yuan (元, 1271-1368) which was ruled by Kublai Khan, part of the vast Mongol Empire that stretched all the way to the borders of Poland and Hungary. Under the Yuan, China's borders stretched farther than ever before; ironically under a non-Chinese dynasty, and was famously visited by Venetian explorer Marco Polo. However, as the Mongol Empire fractured, the Yuan declined in power and eventually factions began fighting for power over the lands of the crumbling Yuan dynasty.
The Mongol Empire at it's height in 1294; the Yuan dynasty part is in yellow. The other parts of the Mongol Empire were relatively unaffiliated with the Yuan.
The Ming (明, 1368-1644) seized power and burned Kublai Khan's famous palace of Xanadu to the ground, re-establishing a Chinese-led dynasty. The Ming has been called the most prosperous and peaceful period in China's Imperial history, with arts and commerce flourishing; in the 15th century famed Chinese admiral Zheng He led naval expeditions as far as East Africa. After a period of internal instability, the Ming stopped funding these voyages and became more isolationist, preferring to expand it's power closer to home in wars with Joseon (Korea) and Japan. The later Ming also coincided with the European Age of Discovery, with Portuguese traders setting up a base at Macau, near Canton in 1557, and the Spanish and Dutch doing so on Formosa (Taiwan). However, with peasant revolts and famines in the 17th century, northern Manchu tribesmen, unified under Nurhaci as the Qing, began a campaign to take over the weakened Ming, establishing the Qing (清, 1644-1912) and eliminating the last pockets of Ming resistance by 1662, forcing them to flee to Formosa, with their final defeat there in 1681 as the Manchus consolidated their hold over China proper, now again under a non-Chinese dynasty. Under the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors, the Qing expanded it's empire in the early 18th century into Xinjiang, Tibet, and subjugated Dai Nam, Joseon and central Asian khanates as tributaries.
The Qing Empire in 1820, at it's nominal zenith; yellow is for "China proper", lighter yellow for Qing provinces, and orange for Qing tributary states.
Meanwhile in Enlightenment era Europe, a craze for East Asian tea, silks and porcelain (Chinoiserie) and the rise of mercantile capitalism meant increased demand for Chinese products, which was hampered by the Qing's isolationism and reluctance to allow European merchants direct access to its ports. Trade with Europe was limited to the port of Canton, with local merchants (Cohong), and efforts by the British Macartney mission in 1793 to negotiate trade facilitation came to nothing. Chinese self-sufficiency meant merchants accepted only silver, not European goods for payment, to the extent that a trade imbalance and silver drain became serious problems to British merchants (of the East India Company) in particular. By the 1820s, a produce of British India, opium had begun flowing into China as a consumer product; the combined addictive properties and trade imbalance now in favour of the EIC concerned the Qing, and in 1839 British opium was seized and destroyed by Chinese officials. The resulting diplomatic incident caused the First Opium War (1839-42), fought in the name of opening China to free trade by force but condemned by many as the British government's endorsement of opium traders. An industrialised, modern British fleet highlighted how China had fallen so far behind Europe, as British cannons blasted junks out of the water.
Depiction of a steamer of the East India Company firing on and destroying Chinese war junks in the First Opium War.
The resulting Treaty of Nanjing (1842) gave Britain Hong Kong; it opened Chinese ports to European traders, and set a precedent for European powers to coerce the Qing into "unequal treaties", beginning a so called "Century of Humiliation" for China. By the mid-19th century unrest in the peasantry had grown to the extent that the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) led by Hong Xiquan seriously threatened the Qing, and was barely put down with European assistance. Incidents with European personnel in China led to the Second Opium War (1856-60), again resulting in Chinese defeats, with Anglo-French forces taking Peking and burning the Summer Palace. The Russian Empire also extended it's dominion in Asia with the Peking Convention (1860), which gave Outer Manchuria to Russia. In the following years, the Qing would suffer Muslim rebellions in Xinjiang, and further encroachment by European powers such as in the Sino-French War (1884-5) which ended Qing influence in Indochina. The rise of Japan, considered a tributary for centuries by China, as a modern, Westernised power led to confrontations in 1874 over Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands, and eventually to China's military humiliation at Japan's hands over Korean suzerainty and the cession of Formosa in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5).
French political cartoon from 1898 satirising the "Scramble for Concessions" by European colonial powers and Japan as "China" looks on helplessly.
In 1897-8, European powers, taking advantage of a China weakened by its recent war with Japan carved spheres of influence in the interior of the declining Qing Empire, establishing treaty ports such as Kiauschou (Germany), Kwangchowan (France) and Port Arthur (Russia) as well as legations in cities like Tientsin and Peking. The Guangxu Emperor tried to conduct his "Hundred Days' Reform" in vain, as a coup d'état by conservative, reactionary elements in the Qing court opposed to Westernisation (such as the Dowager Empress Cixi) thwarted efforts to modernise the Chinese army and navy. These same reactionaries pledged their support to anti-foreign groups like the Boxers, who in 1900 besieged the foreign legations in Peking, resulting in the Qing's disastrous war against the Eight-Nation Alliance, which relieved the legations and forced the Qing court to pay huge indemnities. In the last decade of it's existence, the Qing, once the hegemonial power in East Asia, was now relegated to the "Sick Man of Asia", as foreign conflicts (e.g. the Russo-Japanese War) were fought on it's sovereign territory. The "Late Qing" reform efforts came too little too late; when the infant Puyi came to the throne in 1908, dozens of uprisings occurred by disgruntled student intellectuals against the Qing, and one of them, the Wuchang Uprising (1911) succeeded in sparking the wider Xinhai Revolution; the following year, Puyi's regent signed the instrument of his abdication, ending thousands of years of Imperial rule in China.
Coinage
China's first "coinage" existed in the forms of cowry shells and other items; by the time of the Zhou dynasty cast bronze spade and knife money were very common and were sometimes melted down after being traded and recast into actual knives or spades for use. Coinage in the form of round holed metal discs began appearing around the 4th century BC; they were often cast in bronze by plural amounts in the early years of use, and very common by the time the Qin state gained prominence amongst the warring states around 250 BC, which is when the first such cash coin listings appear in Numista; earlier Chinese coins usually have cruder inscriptions and shapes (compared to how characters on coins of later dynasties), as well as larger square holes (sometimes with perimeters almost reaching the rim) compared to the diameter of the coin itself.
(left) Knife money; (centre) Spade money; (right) a coin from the Han Dynasty, bearing a crude early iteration of the Chinese characters for "五" (5) and "錢" (Cash/Zhu). Chinese is usually read right to left, or up to down.
Fewer varieties of coins were made during the turbulent years in the middle of the 1st millennium, with Chinese dynasties constantly rising and falling apart into civil war, but the basic design of the cash coin remained unchanged throughout the centuries for well over 2000 years. Chinese tributaries also adopted currencies based on Chinese cash, such as the Japanese mon, or Vietnamese van. The most common method of making coins was via casting, usually brass, copper or bronze, but occasionally more valuable, high denomination cash coins were made of silver and gold in the later dynasties; these coins are often very rare, since larger amounts of money in the form of precious metals were usually transported in the form of sycees, or yuanbao until the Qing. From at least the Tang dynasty, it became common practice to thread stacks of 100 or 1000 cash coins together and to exchange those in transactions, with some coins occasionally taken out for smaller payments. Later on, coin collectors would search these strings for older and rarer coins and take them out much like how modern collectors might search bank rolls.
(left) A sycee ingot also known as yuanbao usually with stamps, not in Numista; (centre) Example of a Song dynasty copper coin; most common cash coins are denominated as 1 cash, with diameters of around 24mm; many cash coins from the Tang onwards have "寶通" (tongbao) along with the ruler's regnal name on them; (right) a 19th century photograph of coin strings. 1000 Cash made 1 Tael, with 100 a Mace and 10 a Candareen.
With the arrival of European traders in the Ming dynasty, much trade conducted with the Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish revolved around silver until the late 19th century. The Qing in particular only accepted silver payment for goods, as European goods were of little desire by China; the "silver drain" that resulted meant that at one point, over half of the silver mined in the Spanish New World ended up in China, usually 8 reales coins that would be chop-marked repeatedly by merchants; this practice continued in the 19th century with Mexican reales/pesos, American and British trade dollars, and to a lesser extent the French Indochinese piastre and Japanese trade yen.
(left) US Trade Dollar, heavily countermarked; (centre) Chinese "Old Man" dollar, issued to pay soldiers in the mid 19th century, heavily countermarked; (right) My own example of a Spanish 8 reales coin bearing Chinese countermarks.
In 1889, the Yuan was introduced as a Westernised, modern currency unit, with machine-struck coins. It was at par with the Mexican peso, and for a while these were struck at the Kwangtung mint with similar dimensions to many European currencies, thus being easily convertible. They were quite commonly denominated in old Cash units, however, with indications like "3.6 Candareens" or "1 Mace 4.4 Candareens" or "10 Cash". Most of the 18 provinces of the Qing Empire issued Yuan coinage of their own bearing the province name and sometimes provincial mintmarks, with the furthest reaches of the Empire (such as Xinjiang and Tibet) issuing their own coinage and denominations (Miscals, etc.). Cash coins were still circulating alongside these, usually in more rural areas, and cash coins (sometimes machine struck) were struck up until 1912.
(left), (centre) Example of a 1 Yuan (7 Mace 2 Candareens) coin from Kwangtung province, obverse and reverse; the dragon motif is very common. (right) a 10 Cash copper coin by a provincial mint (Hupeh).
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/ancient-china-1.html
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/chine_empire-1.html
Stay tuned for China-Republic, coming soon. I'll try get it done before I head to Spain next week.
