China, one of the pretenders to the throne was actually converted—­but it was politically too late.  The missionaries had, moreover, mistaken ideas as to the nature of Chinese religion; we know today that a universal adoption of Christianity in China would have been impossible even if an emperor had personally adopted that foreign faith:  there were emperors who had been interested in Buddhism or in Taoism, but that had been their private affair and had never prevented them, as heads of the state, from promoting the religious system which politically was the most expedient—­that is to say, usually Confucianism.  What we have said here in regard to the Christian mission at the Ming court is applicable also to the missionaries at the court of the first Manchu emperors, in the seventeenth century.  Early in the eighteenth century missionary activity was prohibited—­not for religious but for political reasons, and only under the pressure of the Capitulations in the nineteenth century were the missionaries enabled to resume their labours.

14 External and internal perils

Towards the end of the reign of Wan-li, about 1620, the danger that threatened the empire became more and more evident.  The Manchus complained, no doubt with justice, of excesses on the part of Chinese officials; the friction constantly increased, and the Manchus began to attack the Chinese cities in Manchuria.  In 1616, after his first considerable successes, their leader Nurhachu assumed the imperial title; the name of the dynasty was Tai Ch’ing (interpreted as “The great clarity”, but probably a transliteration of a Manchurian word meaning “hero").  In 1618, the year in which the Thirty Years War started in Europe, the Manchus conquered the greater part of Manchuria, and in 1621 their capital was Liaoyang, then the largest town in Manchuria.

But the Manchu menace was far from being the only one.  On the south-east coast a pirate made himself independent; later, with his family, he dominated Formosa and fought many battles with the Europeans there (European sources call him Coxinga).  In western China there came a great popular rising, in which some of the natives joined, and which spread through a large part of the southern provinces.  This rising was particularly sanguinary, and when it was ultimately crushed by the Manchus the province of Szechwan, formerly so populous, was almost depopulated, so that it had later to be resettled.  And in the province of Shantung in the east there came another great rising, also very sanguinary, that of the secret society of the “White Lotus”.  We have already pointed out that these risings of secret societies were always a sign of intolerable conditions among the peasantry.  This was now the case once more.  All the elements of danger which we mentioned at the outset of this chapter began during this period, between 1610 and 1640, to develop to the full.