of an individual despot against those of the gentry
as a class, and the middle class, which might have formed a
counterweight against them, was not yet politically ripe for the seizure
of the opportunity here offered to it. In Japan, however, Wang's
doctrine gained many followers, because it admirably served the
dictatorial state system which had developed in that country.
Incidentally, Chiang Kai-shek in those years in which he showed Fascist
tendencies, also got interested in Wang Yang-ming.

13 _Foreign relations in the sixteenth century_

The feeble emperor Wu Tsung died in 1521, after an ineffective reign,
without leaving an heir. The clique then in power at court looked among
the possible pretenders for the one who seemed least likely to do
anything, and their choice fell on the fifteen-year-old Shih Tsung, who
was made emperor. The forty-five years of his reign were filled in home
affairs with intrigues between the cliques at court, with growing
distress in the country, and with revolts on a larger and larger scale.
Abroad there were wars with Annam, increasing raids by the Japanese,
and, above all, long-continued fighting against the famous Mongol ruler
Yen-ta, from 1549 onward. At one time Yen-ta reached Peking and laid
siege to it. The emperor, who had no knowledge of affairs, and to whom
Yen-ta had been represented as a petty bandit, was utterly dismayed and
ready to do whatever Yen-ta asked; in the end he was dissuaded from
this, and an agreement was arrived at with Yen-ta for state-controlled
markets to be set up along the frontier, where the Mongols could
dispose of their goods against Chinese goods on very favourable terms.
After further difficulties lasting many years, a compromise was arrived
at: the Mongols were earning good profits from the markets, and in 1571
Yen-ta accepted a Chinese title. On the Chinese side, this Mongol trade,
which continued in rather different form in the Manchu epoch, led to the
formation of a local merchant class in the frontier province of Shansi,
with great experience in credit business; later the first Chinese
bankers came almost entirely from this quarter.

After a brief interregnum there came once more to the throne a
ten-year-old boy, the emperor Shen Tsung (reign name Wan-li; 1573-1619).
He, too, was entirely under the influence of various cliques, at first
that of his tutor, the scholar Chang Chue-chan. About the time of the
death, in 1582, of Yen-ta we hear for th