Editing Renaissance (section)

==Meanwhile in the East==
In the Middle East, we've got the final death of Eastern Rome and the meteoric rise of the Ottoman Empire, undoubtedly the most iconic empire of the period. The Ottomans established the first modern professional army, including the famed Janissary corps, and thoroughly butt-fucked the Balkans for centuries to come. For a time they were the terror of Europe, a bushy-bearded, turban-wearing Muslim foe against whom Christendom would need to unite in order to survive, while on the high seas, their allies on the Barbary Coast terrorized coastal towns from Italy to Iceland. In that era, their only true rivals were the pesky Habsburgs of the Holy Roman Empire. A major feather in the Ottoman Empire's cap was invading, besieging and taking over the city of Constantinople from the Byzantine Empire, which was later renamed Istanbul. The sultans of Turkey ruled luxuriously from their grand palace in Istanbul, surrounded by their [[Slaanesh|massive harems of concubines]] and armies of viziers. However, by the tail end of this period, the Ottoman era of rapid expansion would come to an end as the Ottoman state transitioned into a more sedentary imperial polity. Just like the Romans, the cracks started appearing when the brilliant golden age ruler (the Five Good Emperors for Rome and Suleiman for the Ottomans) was replaced by his incompetent drunken tyrant son (Commodus and Selim II).

In East Asia, the Ming Dynasty had reached the apogee of its power, having sent massive fleets of treasure ships to the west between 1405 and 1433 in a show of power that ultimately came to nothing as the Ming emperors decided that building a giant overseas empire wasn't for them. It would soon fall into decline as economic problems, troubles at the Mongolian border, the Japanese invasion of Korea, and natural disasters eroded the imperial court's ability to keep things together. The breakdown of order near the end of the sixteenth century led to a growing power vacuum that would be exploited by a confederation of Jurchens under the banner of the Aisin Gioro clan, soon to be known as the Manchu. After spending decades building up their strength, the newly-proclaimed Qing Dynasty got their opportunity when a massive peasant revolt captured Beijing, leading to the suicide of the last Ming Emperor in 1644. With the help of a turncoat Ming general, the Qing swept into power and fully consolidated themselves as the imperial sovereigns of what we now know as China. Not wanting to associate with those they still considered barbarian, the Joseon Dynasty of Korea promptly shut its doors for the next couple hundred of years.

<s>One thing worth noting is that after the Ming (and later Qing) secured their power, they decided that the Middle Kingdom was too good for everyone else and isolated themselves from the rest of the world (apart from demanding tribute from nearby countries, a time-honored Chinese tradition). At the time, they could genuinely claim that they were the most advanced society on the planet, but this closing off to foreign ideas would have major consequences in the following centuries. It also caused a butterfly effect on European trade; the only way to acquire Chinese goods was to pay for it in gold and silver (though eventually trading in European firearms technology). In turn, this fueled European colonial ambitions in the New world, and eventually imploding the Spanish and Chinese economies once the silver supply dried up.</s> Contrary to most popular perceptions of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Chinese were in regular contact with the outside world throughout this period, up until the nineteenth century when the doors were blown wide open by the Opium Wars. The aforementioned fleets of ships testify to both their capacity and willingness to reach new shores. The court let in Jesuits, whose knowledge of astronomy, painting, and other European arts were well appreciated, at least until the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor. In 1689, the Qing concluded the Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia, more or less establishing the border between both polities for over a century, and also highlighting the fact that the Middle Kingdom didn't simply lord themselves over other peoples.

At the same time however, the Ming also feared invasion by barbarians. Recall the experience of being ruled by the Mongols, which the mandarins detested because the Mongols were foreigners who employed other foreigners to govern their lands. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Ming were in trouble, because of all of the aforementioned problems which challenged the rule of the court; their response was to start circling the wagons, which included the cessation of all maritime trade, which was infested with piracy anyhow. Having taken advantage of those factors to overthrow the Ming, the Qing were very keen to make sure that the same didn't happen to them, particularly as the Manchu were seen as not entirely native to the Middle Kingdom, whatever that meant for the time. As the court became more and more aware of the Jesuits' intentions to convert the population of the empire to Catholicism (which would have required acknowledging the authority of the Pope as superior to the Emperor) and noticing how Europeans were setting up fortified outposts throughout Asia, they decided that it was not in their interests to allow a bunch of heavily armed foreign proselytizers to roam freely. Thus, by the eighteenth century, the Qing began to lay down rules that restricted European presence on the mainland. 

Furthermore, unlike Europeans, the Chinese had no real reason to actually go on those voyages of discovery, in large part because they were at the heart of an existing trade network. They produced many of the things which had compelled Europeans to travel abroad in the first place, namely silk, porcelain, and tea. They also did not have a compulsion to seek out spices because they were practically made in their backyard. Because of the Qing's enormous population, they had an abundant labour force for both agricultural production as well as the manufacture of goods. There were also geographical factors to consider: China had plenty of frontier that could be opened up for siphoning off excess population. There was very little reason to bother braving the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean when pretty much all trade took place in Asia. They continued however, to trade with Europeans because of their need for silver to fuel their economy: having seen how the issuing of paper money by the Ming led to runaway inflation, the Qing insisted on a bimetallic standard using copper for everyday transactions and silver for trade and taxation. This would eventually lead to problems later on as the supply of currency simply could not match population growth and indeed, began to decline as supplies dried up, but we won't go too deeply into those problems here.

A little further east, the Renaissance encompasses the part of Japanese history most people care about: the Sengoku Jidai. This is the part where they cut each other to pieces with swords and shoot holes in each other with guns (as opposed to the other parts where they cut each other to pieces with swords, or the one part where they do both to others). Japan comes into contact with the wider world outside of Asia as the Portuguese landed on their shores, bringing Jesus and guns with them. The late Sengoku would be strongly influenced by the latter, as Japanese warlords seeking an advantage over their rivals adopted firearms into their armies, which contributed to the rise of massed armies of ashigaru conscripts under Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga was well on the way to uniting Japan under one leader for the first time in forever until his loyal retainer Akechi Mitsuhide turned on him for unclear reasons. Nobunaga's lieutenant Toyotomi Hideyoshi finished the job and decided to invade Korea, which failed for a number of reasons: the rough geography of the peninsula, strong resistance on land and sea by the Koreans, the legendary Admiral Yi-Sun Shi completely trashing the Japanese navy twice (the second at the cost of his own life, losing no ships and barely anyone in both battles) and Ming reinforcements (the Chinese admiral is said to have gone over to Yi's ship after the last battle at Noryang Point to thank him for saving his life then beat his chest with grief upon realizing he had died) meant that the invasion stalled and was eventually abandoned.

When Toyotomi died in 1598, his son Hideyori's regents fought each other for control. The winner was Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was declared shogun in 1603. Ieyasu abdicated in 1605 and passed the role to his son Hidetada, but retained de facto political power. When his army killed Hideyori in the 1615 Siege of Osaka, there were no challengers to Tokugawa rule. To prevent future rebellions among the baronial daimyo, Tokugawa forced them to maintain a second residence in the shogunate capital of Edo, where they would have to spend about half of every year, both to keep an eye on them as well as to siphon away resources that could be used for a revolt; likewise, to tame potentially unruly veterans now that the fighting was over, he made most of the fighting men into samurai, who then gradually transformed into a caste of scholar bureaucrats and enforcers. Ieyasu's 1614 Christian Expulsion Edict forced out all foreign missionaries and traders except for a small Dutch trading post at Nagasaki, likely to ward off European colonial interests in Japan. After Ieyasu's grandson upheld the ban, the Bakumatsu period began.