1368
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Contents: political eventsliterature marine resources agriculture nutrition food and drink population |
Denmark's Valdemar IV Atterdag meets with a crushing defeat at the hands of the coalition organized last year to oppose him (see 1363; Treaty of Stralsund, 1370).
England's Flanders-born prince Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, travels to France with a retinue of knights en route to Savoy, visits with Charles V at Paris beginning April 16, proceeds to Milan, and on June 5 marries Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo Visconti II, lord of Pavia, but he falls ill during the months of festivities that follow and dies at Alba Pompeia in Piedmont October 17 at age 29. Third son of Edward III and Queen Philippa, he was married at age 16 to the earl of Ulster's sole heiress, she died 5 years ago, and he is survived by his 13-year-old daughter Philippa, who marries the 15-year-old Edmund de Mortimer, 3rd earl of March (see 1388).
Venice elects Andrea Contarini doge. He will reign until 1382, fighting another war with Genoa (see 1378).
China's Ming dynasty is proclaimed January 20 and will rule until 1644. Its founder is the onetime Buddhist monk Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), now 40, who will reign until his death in 1398 as the emperor Hongwu (Hung-wu) (see 1355). The Yuan emperor Togon-temür flees to the steppe of Inner Asia, dismissing pleas that he remain to defend his inheritance (now 47, he will die in 1370). Hongwu's general Xu Da (Hsü Ta), now 36, drives the Mongols out of Beijing (Peking), which the Mongols have called Ta-tu, or Taidu, pursues them across the Gobi desert, and burns their capital, Karakorum, bringing to a conclusion the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty that began in 1271, although the Mongols will continue for a century to consider themselves the rightful rulers of China and vestiges of their brutal, authoritarian rule will survive through the new dynasty. Hongwu begins restoring the Great Wall of China and builds a city within a city at Nanjing (Nanking), which will be the Ming capital until 1420. The Ming dynasty will see a resurgence of Chinese nationalism, and although it will be marked by corrupt and incompetent administrators it will have no internal wars.
Poet-chronicler Jean Froissart accompanies Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, to Milan, where the duke is to marry the only daughter of Galeazzo Visconti (see 1367). The poets Petrarch and Geoffrey Chaucer may also be in the party. Froissart then returns to his native Valenciennes (see 1369).
Chinese in the Ming dynasty will have fish farms on which they will grow carp and other freshwater fish that they much prefer to saltwater fish and sell live in city markets.
Extremely cold winters and unreliable summer rains during much of the Ming period will inhibit China's agricultural development (see population, 1644).
Essential Knowledge for Eating and Drinking (Yn-shih hsü-chih) by onetime Chinese bureaucrat Chia Ming, 99, says, "The essential is to be most conscious about what one drinks and eats." The scion of a rich family in northern Chekiang Province, Chia has been asked by the emperor for the secret of his long life (he will live to 106); he stresses prevention in the absence of effective treatments.
Chinese in the Ming period will vary their basic diets of rice, wheat cakes, fish, pork, poultry, vegetables (notably cabbage, radishes, and turnips), oil (from amarinth seed, hempseed, perilla seed, rapeseed, and soybeans) and fruit with bear venison, wild boar, camel, deer venison, dogmeat, donkeymeat, fox, hare, horsemeat, mulemeat, tigermeat, wild goat, wolf, cormorant, magpie, owl, peacock, pheasant, quail, raven, squab, stork, swallow, mollusks, and shellfish of various kinds.
Chinese markets during the Ming dynasty will sell live chickens, ducks, and geese. Produce more than a day old will be sold at sharply reduced prices. The new dynasty will return the nation's diet and eating habits to their pre-Mongol status.
Chinese population density has increased during the Mongol (Yuan) period, resources have diminished, and there has been an exacerbation of the gulf between poverty and wealth. Populations will grow further during the 3-century period of the Ming dynasty.
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