In what culture did Dunhuang decline?

Marine culture. With the prologue of the era of great navigation, western maritime trade rose rapidly. At the same time, the land trade between Asia and Europe with the "Silk Road" as the main channel is declining. The decline of Dunhuang is not only the result of the closed door of Ming Dynasty, but also the inevitable replacement of land trade by maritime trade.

Background of the times:

1, Jiajing three years (A.D. 1524) was a watershed year in Dunhuang history. This year, the Ming government ordered the closure of Jiayuguan, giving up its jurisdiction over the area west of Jiayuguan, and the original administrative agencies and military and civilian personnel were withdrawn to the customs. ? Jiajingguan Jiayuguan has been 94 years since Zheng He's last voyage to the West.

In the west of the world, the era of great navigation is beginning. With the support of Queen Isabella of Spain, Columbus made four voyages to the Western Ocean and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach America, which was called "Discovering the New World" (1492).

15 1 1 year, Spanish balboa saw the Pacific Ocean at the top of the Panamanian isthmus and became the "first European to discover the Pacific Ocean". 10 years later, Portuguese Magellan led his team to complete the first round-the-world voyage in human history (1519-1521year).

3. From a broader perspective, Dunhuang's decline from prosperity is not only the rise and fall of one city and one place, but also marks the "great divergence" of the world economic history and civilization history between the East and the West. When the West walked out of the gloom of the Middle Ages and began to move towards a magnificent era of great navigation, China at the eastern end of Eurasia was still at the peak of imperial power.

4, but in fact, the closed-door attitude lit the fuse of prosperity and decline. While Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, the United States and other western powers opened their doors to the wider world, the great empire in the east of the world closed its doors to the world.

5. In addition to closing the country to the outside world, the Ming government and the early Qing Dynasty also implemented a strict sea ban policy in the eastern and southern coastal areas, and it was not until the Qing government unified Taiwan Province Province that it began to ease. After Jiayuguan was closed in the Ming Dynasty, Dunhuang was first occupied by Tubo in the western regions. It was not until the fifty-seventh year of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 17 18) that Xinjiang was pacified.

6. After the establishment of Shazhousuo in Dunhuang in the first year of Yongzheng (A.D. 1723), the central government resumed its jurisdiction and governance over Dunhuang. In the third year of Yongzheng (A.D. 1725), the Qing government ordered the change of Shazhousuo to Shazhouwei, and large-scale immigrants from fifty-six counties in Gansu successively reclaimed land from Dunhuang to rebuild Shazhoucheng.

7. Until the discovery of Buddhist scriptures in Mogao Grottoes in 1900, Dunhuang was just an unknown ordinary town on the Gobi Desert in northwest China. ?

Ordering the closure of Jiayuguan is not a trivial matter for Dunhuang, nor is it a trivial matter for the Ming Empire. It reflects that the cost of the Ming government's governance of Hexi area has exceeded the income within its jurisdiction. Since then, the central government's control over local areas and national governance capacity have begun to weaken.

In this way, the curtain of the dividing line between East and West in world history was opened. On the one hand, it is open, exploring and going global; On the other side is closed, arrogant and obsessed with shortcomings. On the one hand, he was in high spirits, from discovering the new continent to opening up colonies, developing intercontinental maritime trade, until the later Antarctic expedition, from the Renaissance to the religious reform, and then to the industrial revolution, realizing the expansion of the space world and the ideological world;