The only lesson that mankind has learned from history is that mankind has not learned any lesson from history
The Qing Dynasty was the second unified dynasty established by ethnic minorities in Chinese history, and the fusion and conflict between the nomadic cultures of the northern nomads and the Han cultures of the Central Plains was inevitable. How to correctly and effectively handle the manchu and Han cultural conflicts and manage hundreds of millions of Han nationalities. In the former Yuan Dynasty, although the Territory of China under the rule of the Mongols was the largest in history, it was easy for a people on horseback to conquer the world by force, but it was far from enough to manage a country well. Before Mongolia entered the Central Plains, it did not know much about the economic and cultural policies of the Central Plains, and the nomadic economy was opposed to the small-scale peasant economy, and whoever lost won.
Lessons from the Yuan Dynasty
Coupled with the fact that the Yuan Dynasty had a relatively serious discriminatory mentality towards the Han people, the people were initially divided into three, six, nine and so on. The Mongols were the first class, the Semu people were the second class, the Han people were ranked third class, and the last class was the Southern people, that is, the ethnic groups in the former Southern Song Dynasty conquered by the Yuan Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasty, the imperial examination system was also abolished for eighty years, which was undoubtedly a fatal blow to all Han Literati. Later, although the Yuan Dynasty imperial examination was restored, the content of the examination was different from the previous generation, the Confucian scriptures were greatly weakened, and a large number of Han people learned Mongolian, learned to ride and shoot in order to obtain meritorious names, and gradually became Mongolized.
But even so, when you arrive at the exam room, you will find that things are far from simple. The examination is divided into left and right lists, the right list is the top two people, the requirements are relatively simple, and the left list is the last two people, the requirements are very strict. The proportion of Han Chinese admissions is also very small. Han Chinese living in the Yuan Dynasty said it was too difficult for me. The Yuan Dynasty was too short, and the change of emperors in the middle period was very frequent, resulting in internal instability, and the rulers in the later period were forced to levy and tyranny, and the national oppression was serious, which triggered a peasant uprising.
The Hanization policy of the Qing Dynasty
With the lessons of the Yuan Dynasty, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty did the opposite, and to a large extent adopted a Sinicization policy under the premise of maintaining the priority of the Manchu nobility. In fact, there was already a phenomenon of Sinicization before Manchuria entered the customs, but it was still in the premise of being beneficial to oneself. The second emperor Kangxi after the Qing army entered the customs, vigorously promoted the Han culture represented by Confucianism, as the heir to the throne, the education of the princes is very important, in addition to the necessary riding and shooting kung fu in the early Qing Dynasty, the most important thing is the study of traditional culture.
The Crown Prince had to learn Manchu, Han, and Mongolian languages and scripts at the same time. The Confucian classics of the Four Books and Five Classics are also mandatory, and poetry and song all need to be dabbled, so many emperors of the Qing Dynasty were very fond of Confucian culture. Just look at how many poems Qianlong wrote in his lifetime, you know. In terms of handling ethnic relations, the Qing Dynasty is also far more intelligent than the Yuan Dynasty.
For different regions, the Central Plains, which were dominated by han chinese, basically continued the policy of Ming Dynasty rule, and vigorously promoted the examination system, which won the support of literati and intellectuals for the Qing Dynasty. From the Chenghua years of the Ming Dynasty, the scope of the imperial examination was only allowed to be within the scope of the Four Books and Five Classics, and the style was strictly limited to the eight strands of literature, and the rulers of the Ming Dynasty used this to imprison the minds of intellectuals, and the Qing Dynasty not only inherited this tradition but also carried forward it, seriously restricting the students' thinking and talents, and easily cultivating a group of pedantic and unrealistic mediocre talents.
The national policy of the Outer Manchurian and Inner Han
Confucian culture can be a good way to stabilize the unification of the central government, especially for the absolute monarchy system is very beneficial, in this case, the Qing Dynasty actually implemented a policy of outer Manchuria and inner Han, with the deepening of the degree of Sinicization, perhaps from the beginning, the Qing Dynasty just wanted to use Confucian culture to carry out foreign rule, unexpectedly, slowly but was Sinicized. Originally, Manchu and Chinese were the official scripts of the Qing Dynasty, and all administrative documents, including testaments, were written in both Chinese and Manchu. By the middle of the Qianlong Dynasty, the Manchus were almost native Chinese speakers, and Manchu gradually became a purely written script used only for official historical records.
By the 19th century, Manchu in official documents had been largely replaced by Han, and the Manchu nobles of the late Qing Dynasty who could speak Manchu fluently and could write Manchu were simply genius-like figures. In fact, the Qing Dynasty has always opened Manchu and Manchu classes, but in the later period, Chinese was more widely used even among manchu nobles, so there were fewer people willing to learn, and even fewer people could speak and write. Just like the widespread popularity of Mandarin, the living space of dialects has also been squeezed, and many children can only understand and cannot speak.
The last emperor of the late Qing Dynasty, Puyi, could not speak Manchu, and for the emperor, Manchu was a compulsory subject, but Puyi had not yet begun to learn, and the Manchu teacher died. By now, the Manchu language has almost disappeared, all ethnic languages are part of China's precious wealth, and the state has begun to protect minority languages in recent years, although the effect is slow, I believe that one day those ancient languages will be rejuvenated.