WI:China goes Isolationist in the Ming Dynasty

What if China goes Isolationist after the Yuan is toppled as in Banning barbarians and other foreigners in entering the Chinese territories and trading will be limited to a few places and China does not conquer Yunnan, what will happen to China and what will happen to the Spice Trade and the Silk Road?
 
That's what happened in OTL and even they couldn't keep things up for long once the crap ton of silver showed up at their doorstep.
 
That's what happened in OTL and even they couldn't keep things up for long once the crap ton of silver showed up at their doorstep.
No, it didn't. There was the closure of the coast to trade, but never any rule that would have banned all people from coming in or out of China by land. That would have been impossible to enforce.
 
No, it didn't. There was the closure of the coast to trade, but never any rule that would have banned all people from coming in or out of China by land. That would have been impossible to enforce.

That's what I said of meant to say but movie distraction had me leave it out. 1493 by Mann really goes into a wonderful detail. It especially sheds a lot of light on how important Manila was to the Spanish.
 
That's what I said of meant to say but movie distraction had me leave it out. 1493 by Mann really goes into a wonderful detail. It especially sheds a lot of light on how important Manila was to the Spanish.
I think the Europeans would find the Chinese goods rarer than OTL causing a less demand for Chinese goods if the Ming became isolationist at an early time, perhaps the Europeans would try to find a land to grow the Spices instead, perhaps in Cape Verde or Brazil.
 
I would expect such a process to be wildly difficult to enforce. On the coasts, smuggling would become a massive business, perhaps funding the activities of massive pirate fleets which would become impossible to remove. Westerners will also begin to run their own smuggling operations, perhaps even going so far as to militarily capture an island or something in order to trade with China.

But the biggest problem with the ban would be Mongol tribes. Some measure of trade was needed with the Mongols (generally a horses-for-manufactured goods trade), and with drastically lower levels of trade the Mongols would begin harassing the Ming Empire in even greater force than they did historically.
 
It did create a massive insurrection in Fujian which from records seemed to have successfully managed to defeat every attempt by the Ming to re conquer the region for decades.
 
I would expect such a process to be wildly difficult to enforce. On the coasts, smuggling would become a massive business, perhaps funding the activities of massive pirate fleets which would become impossible to remove. Westerners will also begin to run their own smuggling operations, perhaps even going so far as to militarily capture an island or something in order to trade with China.

But the biggest problem with the ban would be Mongol tribes. Some measure of trade was needed with the Mongols (generally a horses-for-manufactured goods trade), and with drastically lower levels of trade the Mongols would begin harassing the Ming Empire in even greater force than they did historically.


The Spanish did control Luzon aka Selurong for that purpose, I think if the Bruneian rulers there weren't foolish to sell it to the Spanish ,the Tondo Dynasty survived ,Luzon had another strong principality with a higher population or the Population was hostile to the Spanish the Spanish would not get anything there, the Spanish would try to get Taiwan in that scenario but it might end up being annexed by Japan.
 
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