Quote:
Originally Posted by Parihaka
The rest of the world was paying attention to China long before China paid attention to them. The mindset simply wasn't there, in just the way the maps showed the rest of the world as minor bits of island around the Middle Kingdom.
Here's a letter sent by Qian Long to George III in 1793
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Ancient China is the typical earth and agriculture civilization. This may to some extent explain why ancient China had no incentive to know more about the countries in the other sides of oceans.
Firstly, Chinese didn’t confront the threat of ocean countries until the humiliating Opium Wars in 1839–42 and 1856–60. Before Opium Wars, the biggest threat to China was nomads. Actually, the history of ancient China may be read somehow as a history of the wars and conflicts between agriculture and nomadic civilizations. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor who untied China, built the Great Wall to protect its country from the invasion of nomads. The northern nomad, Man, won the last war in ancient China history by conquering China and establishing the Qing dynasty.
Secondly, it was believed that agriculture is the key to make China prospective and stable and commerce was choked back. The trade with ocean countries never meant a lot to ancient China except bringing luxury goods to emperors and their families.