field. The following remarks should, therefore, be
taken as very tentative and preliminary, and they are, naturally,
fragmentary.

[Illustration: (Chart) POPULATION GROWTH OF CHINA]

[Illustration: 14 Aborigines of South China, of the 'Black Miao' tribe,
at a festival. China-ink drawing of the eighteenth century. _Collection
of the Museum fuer Voelkerkunde, Berlin. No. ID_ 8756, 68.]

[Illustration: 15 Pavilion on the 'Coal Hill' at Peking, in which the
last Ming emperor committed suicide. _Photo Eberhard_.]

The decline of the Manchu dynasty began at a time when the European
trade was still insignificant, and not as late as after 1842, when China
had had to submit to the foreign Capitulations. These cannot have been
the true cause of the decline. Above all, the decline was not so
noticeable in the state of the Exchequer as in a general impoverishment
of China. The number of really wealthy persons among the gentry
diminished, but the middle class, that is to say the people who had
education but little or no money and property, grew steadily in number.

One of the deeper reasons for the decline of the Manchu dynasty seems to
lie in the enormous increase in the population. Here are a few Chinese
statistics:

_Year_ _Population_

1578 (before the Manchus) 10,621,463 families or 60,692,856 individuals
1662 19,203,233 families 100,000,000 individuals *
1710 23,311,236 families 116,000,000 individuals *
1729 25,480,498 families 127,000,000 individuals *
1741 143,411,559 individuals
1754 184,504,493 individuals
1778 242,965,618 individuals
1796 275,662,414 individuals
1814 374,601,132 individuals
1850 414,493,899 individuals
(1953) (601,938,035 individuals)
* Approximately

It may be objected that these figures are incorrect and exaggerated.
Undoubtedly they contain errors. But the first figure (for 1578) of some
sixty millions is in close agreement with all other figures of early
times; the figure for 1850 seems high, but cannot be far wrong, for even
after the great T'ai P'