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  With the completion of Boot’s fortress, Mexico would feel prepared to withstand the assault from the Dutch VOC. How did that private enterprise become so influential as to require such measures? In England Francis Bacon, the statesman and scientist, attributed northern Europe’s new capability for global financial operations to three new “mechanical discoveries,” or technologies, that, he said, had “changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.” These three inventions were paper, the compass, and gunpowder. Though Bacon didn’t realize it, all three were Chinese inventions.

  In the fourth century BCE, two millennia before Bacon enthused over what he thought were Europe’s new technologies, a Chinese philosopher named Xun Zi had posed a riddle:

  There is a thing: its body is naked but can transform itself many times, like a god. It can clothe and ornament everything under heaven to the ten thousandth generation. Because of this thing, rites and music are performed, and the noble are distinguished from the base…. When its merit is established its body is destroyed. When its work is completed its house is overthrown — its elders are thrown out and its posterity seized. Men profit from it but birds hate it.

  The answer to Xun Zi’s riddle was the caterpillar of the Bombyx mori, a large, pale, blind moth that is incapable of flight. In its larval stage it prefers to feed on the leaves of the white mulberry tree. It molts several times during its life cycle, at one point in the process spinning a cocoon that will protect it while it is in the pupal state. That cocoon is raw silk.

  In China mulberry trees had been cultivated since ancient times to feed the silkworms, and elaborate procedures established to maximize the yield of silk. Mulberry trees and silks are mentioned numerous times in the Book of Songs (Shi jing), one of the primary Chinese literary classics and the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems, assembled perhaps as much as a millennium before the beginning of the common era. The songs collected in the ancient classic evoke the rustic, agricultural origins of Chinese civilization. They suggest that harvesting mulberry leaves for feeding the silkworms was a task for farm girls:

  Days grow warm in spring

  Orioles sing

  Girls take beautiful baskets

  Along narrow paths

  And pick soft mulberry leaves

  The mulberry groves must have been pleasant places, and convenient locations for the girls to meet their lovers.

  Oh, Zhongzi, don’t jump over our wall

  Don’t break our mulberry trees

  It’s not that I mind about the mulberries

  But I’m afraid of my brothers.

  You I would embrace

  But my brothers’ words —

  Those I dread

  Who knew where such assignations might lead?

  When the mulberry shed its leaves

  They lay yellow on the ground

  Since I went away with you

  For three years I have shared your poverty

  Promoting the cultivation of mulberry trees and the production of silk was state policy at least by the time Xun Zi posed his riddle; his contemporary Mencius wrote that hemp or silk textiles, grain, and personal service were the three primary forms of taxation during that period. The amount of silk rendered to the emperor was extraordinary. By the fourteenth century, imperial records indicate, more than 650 tons of silk fibers were paid to the government as household taxes in a single year, a figure that does not even count silk in the form of textiles.

  The Chinese developed a form of mulberry that was produced by grafting a large-leaved variety onto a wilder variety with a robust root and trunk. The result was a large bush with dense foliage that that could be conveniently picked. China’s advanced silk textile technologies, and the sheer volume of silk that it produced, were an inducement to international trade from early times. Starting in earnest roughly around Xun Zi’s era, such trade was predominantly along the east-west route known as the Silk Road, a name given by a nineteenth-century German scholar to a collection of trade routes extending from the eastern Mediterranean through present Afghanistan and into China, with connections to India and elsewhere. The Silk Road was not a road but rather a series of trading posts and caravan watering holes. Few traders traveled the entire route; instead, each trading post passed goods on along to the next, like racers in a relay passing a baton. Because of difficulties involved in trade along the Silk Road — its northern and southern branches encircled the world’s second-largest desert, the Taklamakan — goods that traveled long distances were likely to be of light weight and high value. During the route’s heyday, precious metals, coins, glass, and semiprecious stones traveled to China, while silk textiles, lacquered bowls, and other luxury goods traveled from China to the west.

  The most significant import along the Silk Road into China would turn out to be Buddhism, which was brought to China from India. Silk scroll paintings discovered in the Dunhuang caves in 1907 depict the seventh-century pilgrim Xuanzang returning to China with sacred Buddhist texts, and being welcomed by officials wearing silk robes. Religious texts were often written on silk: versions of the Daode Jing and Yi Jing dating from the second century BCE, written on silk and still largely legible, were discovered at Mawangdui in 1973.

  Having developed the world’s most advanced silk technology, China naturally sought to maintain a monopoly by prohibiting its spread to other cultures. But it proved difficult to control mulberry seeds and minuscule moth eggs, and the technology soon passed to Korea and Japan. Silkworms were said to have been carried to Central Asia by a woman who hid moth eggs in her headband; eastern Christian monks supposedly brought eggs to Turkey hidden in their long walking staffs. India was also producing silk quite early, but may have developed the capability independently; it used a different silk-producing moth. Mulberries and silkworms were not suitable to all climates, but eventually some sort of silk production spread to many locations around the world. In Europe the Lake Como region became a prime silk center. By the seventeenth century silk was even being produced at Mexico City (despite the enormous lengths that were taken to bring it in from Asia on the galleons). James I introduced silk-growing to England’s American colonies as an alternative to the tobacco he despised. But China continued to produce silk of the highest quality.

  By the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Chinese silk production had become highly industrialized. Refinement of mulberry trees had continued, and they could now be planted closer together than ever before; farmers had to devote a percentage of their land to mulberry production or pay a punitive tax. Ming inventors had also created a “complete silk-reeling” frame that integrated many of the phases of silk production in one device. This machine was said to dramatically increase a laborer’s output of silk; at least it regularized silk production and made the finished product more uniform. A silk weavers’ strike in Suzhou in 1601 was one indication of the degree to which silk production had become industrialized. The weavers, protesting a proposed tax on looms, brought production to a halt for three days.

  Much silk was now produced in imperial workshops in Beijing and the old capital of Nanjing and nearby Suzhou. In one year the Wanli emperor ordered 180,000 bolts of silk from his workshops. The silks were sometimes lavish productions that made extensive use of gold thread. (They also relied more heavily on strong color for their effects than in the past, and these bold colors are one way that Ming silks can often be recognized.) Because many garments, bed covers, and hangings were made for Western markets, European-influenced motifs were sometimes incorporated. Production of carpets, which had not been a major tradition in China previously, was also stepped up, often incorporating West Asian designs and colors.

  The best silks, however, were made for the personal use of the emperor and his family. The Wanli Emperor’s elaborate tomb, excavated in the mid-twentieth century, was found to contain great quantities of silk. A silk throne cover in the Amy S. Clague Collection of Chinese Textiles incorporates not only dyed polychrome silk yarns but gold threads
and peacock feather filaments. A lady’s court vest in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco is embroidered with gold threads on silk gauze and padded with silk floss. Both textiles incorporate the motif of dragons chasing flaming pearls. This motif was associated with the emperor and expressed the idea that his dominion encompassed the entire universe. The pearl lives at the bottom of the ocean and the flames represent it ascending to the heavens. The dragon flies through the skies but he descends to the bottom of the ocean for the pearl. The motif announces the emperor’s vast, all-encompassing power.

  Complete Silk-Reeling Frame, 1637.

  Reconstruction of the Complete Treadle-Operated Silk-Reeling Frame, 19th century.

  These images depict the Ming dynasty silk-reeling machine that facilitated industrialized silk production. The complicated device combined several operations in one machine and standardized production.

  The images are taken from Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China (vol. V:9), which contains, characteristically for Needham, an exhaustive account of Chinese silk production.

  Zhu Yijun, the Wanli emperor, came to the throne at the age of nine in 1572 after the death of his father, the Longqing emperor, when he was only thirty-five. Just as English aristocracy could be referred to by their family name or their title — King James’s favorite George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, might be called either Villiers or Buckingham, for example — so Chinese emperors had a variety of names. During the Ming dynasty they were commonly known by their reign, or era, names, which were chosen by the emperors themselves. Because the emperor was no ordinary person, it was considered disrespectful to refer to him by his birth name — even for his own mother, who would call him “emperor,” or sometimes “son.” Most contemporaneous documents referring to the emperor employ his reign name, and as a result these are the names emperors are usually known by even today. The name “Wanli” means “10,000 calendars,” and the Wanli emperor had, as his choice of name forecast, a long reign — his forty-eight years of rule were the most of any emperor of the 276-year Ming dynasty.

  Imperial Coat Overvest, 1595. Ming dynasty, reign of the Wanli emperor. Silk satin embroidered in canvas stich and satin stich, and overembroidered in silver and gold couching, length 109 cm. Asian Art Museum, Museum purchase, City Arts Trust Fund, 1990.214.

  Sumptuous silk garments like this woman’s court overvest were produced for the Chinese emperor and his court. This example is embroidered with gold threads on silk gauze and padded with silk floss. The large cloud-clutching dragons chasing flaming pearls, the imperial red color, and the lucky swastikas and characters suggesting the expression “ten thousand longevities” indicate that this was a garment for the empress, and an inscription confirms that it was made for the Empress Dowager Li, the mother of the Wanli emperor, on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday. She was likely the only woman in China powerful enough at the time to wear this vest.

  Ogival Throne Cover with Decoration of a Dragon Coiled about a Flaming Pearl amidst Scrolling Clouds (detail), 1600–1644. Ming dynasty. Silk kesi tapestry; silk, gold, and peacock feathers, 94 (max. width) × 84 cm. Collection of Phoenix Art Museum, Gift of Amy S. Clague. Photo by Ken Howie.

  The image of a dragon coiled around a flaming pearl amid clouds suggests that this textile belonged to the emperor himself; these symbols conveyed his wide-ranging supremacy. The textile was originally used in a robe and at some point it was repurposed as a throne cover. The bright, complex colors — in addition to more traditional colors there are several shades of blue, as well as browns, khakis, lavendars, and pinks — combined with gold thread and peacock feather filaments date this opulent piece to the late Ming.

  With the benefit of hindsight Chinese writers have traditionally blamed the Wanli emperor for the decline of the Ming dynasty and its fall to the Manchurians who would rule from 1644 until the Republican Revolution of 1911. He was depicted as selfish, lazy, and irresponsible. Ann Paludan’s characterization, in The Imperial Ming Tombs, of the Wanli emperor as “a thoroughly degenerate and bloated creature who dissipated his strength in rich living and lost not only the will-power but also the interest to govern” echoes this point of view. In recent years, however, scholars have sought to adjust and qualify this picture. A new portrayal views the emperor as an intelligent and, at least initially, well-intentioned ruler who was stymied by the ossified Ming bureaucracy. These revisionist scholars note that our image of the Wanli emperor is largely based on the writings of civil scholars who became his enemies. In his 2010 book The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Timothy Brook corrects the correction: “It would be ludicrous to cast the emperor as the tragic victim of his own autocracy,” he writes. “It might be better to think of the politics of the Ming court as a matter of bargains, not tragic flaws…. The heroes in this drama — the phoenixes rising into the air — are not the emperors, in fact, but the scholars.” However we apportion the blame, it is hard to view the Wanli emperor’s reign as on balance a successful one.

  Ming rulers, like those of the dynasties that preceded them, were thought to govern by the mandate of heaven. That mandate, once granted, could also be withdrawn (this notion caused Chinese scholars to be critical of rulers who reigned at the end of dynasties, for why would the mandate of heaven be transferred elsewhere if not through some failing of the emperor?). The best means of retaining the favor of heaven was for the emperor to maintain himself as a person of scrupulous integrity, in order to avoid any offenses that might cause the mandate to be withdrawn. For this reason, the Wanli emperor, who assumed the throne as a child of nine, was raised in an environment where his every gesture was scrutinized and judged, and the scrutiny would continue throughout his life. “What is embarrassing about working through the records of the Ming dynasty,” Ray Huang, one of the most interesting writers in English on the late Ming, has confessed, “is that the trifling detours are endless. Sometimes the account of a whole decade consists of nothing but fribbles.” The child monarch was not allowed many normal childhood diversions. Every day he was made to study literature and practice calligraphy (at which he excelled from a young age).

  “Polonaise” Carpet, early 17th century. Safavid Iran, probably Isfahan or Kashan. Cotton (warp and weft), silk (weft and pile), metal wrapped thread; asymmetrically knotted pile, brocaded, 177 × 406 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 1950 (50.190.1). Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.

  Polonaise carpets are remarkable for their rich silk pile, here highlighted with gold- and silver-colored brocading. It was once assumed that carpets of this type were made in Poland on account of the coats of arms that are sometimes interwoven into the pattern. It is now known that they were made in Safavid Persia, often for use as diplomatic gifts. There was a vigorous trade between Muslim West Asia and Christian Europe throughout the Renaissance and early modern period.

  European visitors to Persia often referred to Polonaise carpets as “carpets of silk and gold.” The gold effect was actually created by wrapping strips of silver around yellow silk; the silver provided a rich metallic effect, but the gold color came from the silk. Such carpets did not wear well, and this example from the Metropolitan Museum is in unusually good condition.

  The emperor’s tutor was a man named Zhang Juzheng, a powerful figure in the Ming government. Zhang rigorously enforced the dreary discipline and relative austerity (for a Chinese emperor) of his pupil’s childhood. The child emperor looked up to his tutor as the embodiment of knowledge and wisdom. But after Zhang died the emperor discovered that his tutor had, unknown to him, been living in a lavish and decadent style all the while he had been exercising discipline on his pupil. This revelation turned the emperor cynical, and he too began to hoard the luxuries of the world. He grew so grotesquely obese that he required assistance even to stand up. His behavior alarmed the civil officials, who foresaw the mandate of heaven slipping away; they commented openly on every detail of
what they saw as failings in the emperor’s personal life. His slightest gesture was subject to criticism. It was an unbearable situation. The emperor withdrew into the seclusion of his inner palace, where he fatalistically dealt with mountains of paperwork that were brought to him every day and rarely emerged into the company of his courtiers. Analysis of his remains in 1958 suggested that he was a heavy user of opium.

  Though the emperor’s life might not have been a happy one — he was a victim of the role prescribed for him, bound by endless ceremonial duties and obligations — it was luxurious. The luxuries of the court depended on concerted labor throughout the empire. In the year 1600 kilns in Jiangxi province produced 230,000 porcelain items for the court, from rice bowls and tea cups to ritual objects for offerings. Distant provinces sent tens of thousands of hardwood trees for construction in the imperial city. China scholar David M. Robinson offers a sample of ingredients used in the imperial kitchen during one month: “ground squirrels from beyond the Great Wall, Manchurian pine nuts, Shangxi apples, Jiangxi sugar, Zhangzhou oranges … Mount Wutai mushrooms, Jiangnan black mushrooms, Beijing potatoes, Nanjing ‘hawk-beak’ bamboo sprouts from Mount Wudang … and Lu’an tea.” The emperor paid special attention to the presentation of these delicacies, which were served up in treasures of porcelain, jade, metalwork, enamel, horn, gold, silver, and precious stones. Sumptuous silks surrounded the emperor at all times, and a special bureaucracy was set up to handle the textile needs of the imperial family.