A lot of what we discussed this week was branding, in a sense. It has always been important for rulers and other diplomatic figures to be aware of how they present themselves to the world in order to achieve their goals. For the Hongwu Emperor, it was important to brand his Ming Dynasty after the Tang, in order to portray a sense of proto-nationalism and a romanticization of Chinese history. Matteo Ricci and the other Jesuits realized that to bring Christianity into China, they would need to take on the aesthetic of Confucianism to make their foreign religion palatable. And Hong Taiji re-branded his people as the Manchu in order to distance his dynasty from the fall of the Jurchen Jin.
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