14 Aborigines of South China, of the 'Black Miao' tribe, at a festival. China-ink drawing of the eighteenth century.
Collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. No. ID 8756, 68.
15 Pavilion on the 'Coal Hill' at Peking, in which the last Ming emperor committed suicide.
Photo Eberhard.
The decline of the Manchu dynasty began at a time when the European trade was still insignificant, and not as late as after 1842, when China had had to submit to the foreign Capitulations. These cannot have been the true cause of the decline. Above all, the
decline was not so noticeable in the state of the Exchequer as in a general impoverishment of China. The number of really wealthy persons among the gentry diminished, but the middle class, that is to say the people who had education but little or no money and property, grew steadily in number.
One of the deeper reasons for the decline of the Manchu dynasty seems to lie in the enormous increase in the population. Here are a few Chinese statistics:
| Year | Population | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1578 (before the Manchus) | 10,621,463 | families or | 60,692,856 | individuals |
| 1662 | 19,203,233 | families | 100,000,000 | individuals * |
| 1710 | 23,311,236 | families | 116,000,000 | individuals * |
| 1729 | 25,480,498 | families | 127,000,000 | individuals * |
| 1741 | 143,411,559 | individuals | ||
| 1754 | 184,504,493 | individuals | ||
| 1778 | 242,965,618 | individuals | ||
| 1796 | 275,662,414 | individuals | ||
| 1814 | 374,601,132 | individuals | ||
| 1850 | 414,493,899 | individuals | ||
| (1953) | (601,938,035 | individuals) | ||
| * Approximately | ||||
It may be objected that these figures are incorrect and exaggerated. Undoubtedly they contain errors. But the first figure (for 1578) of some sixty millions is in close agreement with all other figures of early times; the figure for 1850 seems high, but cannot be far wrong, for even after the great T'ai P'ing Rebellion of 1851, which, together with its after-effects, costs the lives of countless millions, all statisticians of today estimate the population of China at more than four hundred millions. If we enter these data together with the census of 1953 into a chart (see p. [273]), a fairly smooth curve emerges; the special features are that already under the Ming the population was increasing and, secondly, that the high rate of increase in the population began with the long period of internal peace since about 1700. From that time onwards, all China's wars were fought at so great a distance from China proper that the population was not directly affected. Moreover, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Manchus saw to the maintenance of the river dykes, so that the worst inundations were prevented. Thus there were not so many of the floods which had often cost the lives of many million people in China; and there were no internal wars, with their heavy cost in lives.
But while the population increased, the tillage failed to increase in the needed proportion. I have, unfortunately, no statistics for