4. External Pressures on the late Ming, Early Qing:
Mongols and Manchus: This was an issue because the pressure of the Mongols and the invasion by the Manchus led to the end of the Ming Empire. The late Ming Empire was under pressure in the North from the Manchus and the Mongols. In the late 1500s, large numbers of Mongols were unified by their devotion to the Dalai Lama. A military leader named Galdan restored Mongolia as a military power around 1600. The Manchus were an agricultural group that controlled the region of Korea. When the Chinese wanted to invade Japan from 1592 to 1598, the Ming had to seek assistance from Manchu troops, but then the Manchus could not be restrained. Because rebel leader Li Zicheng possessed Beijing and the emperor
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Lords were encouraged to treat their peasants well because there were laws that allowed peasants to change masters during a two-week period each year. However, long periods of warfare led to peasants fleeing to the Cossacks or across the Urals, and come sold themselves into slavery so they wouldn’t starve. The law changed, so serfs could not change masters and had to be returned to their masters if they ran away. So, the serfs were treated very badly. This was a problem because the relying on serfdom, led to Russia not modernizing as quickly as the other states, and they did not invest money in new agricultural or military technology. Also, there was no urban working/middle class, which was crucial for states’ developments at this …show more content…
These internal disagreements and fights contributed to the downfall of the empire.
6. External Weaknesses of the Russian Empire:
Little trade: The Russian Empire was surrounded by powerful states, so they had no access to European trade. The Crimean Turks to the south were powerful enough to sack Moscow in 1571. The Ottoman Empire controlled access to the Black Sea, the Safavid Empire dominated the trade of Southern Central Asia. The kingdoms of Sweden and Poland-Lithuania to the west blocked Russia from access to the Baltic Sea. Russia had only one seaport, Arkhangelsk, which was not a warm water seaport. So, Russia missed out on trading with European, which hurt their economy and meant they were behind in technology in the following years.
The Ottomans and Poland: Russia had a war with the Ottomans, although Russia finally wom, it was long am costly for the military. Russia also won the war against Poland, but that was 23 years long, from 1722 to 1795, so it also drained the state’s money and military