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The Ming Dynasty (Chinese: 明朝; pinyin: Míng Cháo), or Empire of the Great Ming (traditional Chinese: 大明國; simplified Chinese: 大明国; pinyin: Dà Míng Guó), was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Hans (the main Chinese ethnic group), before falling to the rebellion led in part by Li Zicheng and soon after replaced by the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty. Although the Ming capital Beijing fell in 1644, remnants of the Ming throne and power (collectively called the Southern Ming) survived until 1662.
Ming rule saw the construction of a vast navy and a standing army of 1,000,000 troops.Ebrey (2006), 271. Although private maritime trade and official tribute missions from China had taken place in previous dynasties, the tributary fleet under the Muslim eunuch admiral Zheng He in the 15th century surpassed all others in sheer size. There were enormous projects of construction, including the restoration of the Grand Canal and the Great Wall and the establishment of the Forbidden City in Beijing during the first quarter of the 15th century. Estimates for the population in the late Ming era vary from 160 to 200 million.For the lower population estimate, see (Fairbank & Goldman 2006:128), for the higher estimate see (Ebrey 1999:197).
Emperor Hongwu (r. 1368–1398) attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities in a rigid, immobile system that would have no need to engage with the commercial life and trade of urban centers. His rebuilding of China\'s agricultural base and strengthening of communication routes through the militarized courier system had the unintended effect of creating a vast agricultural surplus that could be sold at burgeoning markets located along courier routes. Rural culture and commerce became influenced by urban trends. The upper echelons of society embodied in the scholarly gentry class were also affected by this new consumption-based culture. In a departure from tradition, merchant families began to produce examination candidates to become scholar-officials and adopted cultural traits and practices typical of the gentry class. Parallel to this trend involving social class and commercial consumption were changes in social and political philosophy, bureaucracy and governmental institution, and even arts and literature.
By the 16th century the Ming economy was stimulated by maritime trade with the Portuguese and Spanish empires. China became involved in a new global trade of goods, plants, animals, and food crops known as the Columbian Exchange. Trade with European powers and the Japanese brought in massive amounts of silver, which then replaced copper and paper banknotes as the common medium of exchange in China. During the last decades of the Ming the flow of silver into China was greatly diminished, thereby undermining state revenues and indeed the entire Ming economy. This damage to the economy was compounded by the effects on agriculture of the incipient Little Ice Age, natural calamities, crop failure, and sudden epidemics. The ensuing breakdown of authority and people\'s livelihoods allowed rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng to challenge Ming authority.
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The Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) ruled before the establishment of the Ming Dynasty. Alongside institutionalized ethnic discrimination against Han Chinese that stirred resentment and rebellion, other explanations for the Yuan\'s demise included overtaxing areas hard-hit by crop failure, inflation, and massive flooding of the Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects. Consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River.Gascoigne, 150.
A cannon from the Huolongjing, compiled by Jiao Yu and Liu Ji before the latter\'s death in 1375.
A number of Han Chinese groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351. The Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus, a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang was a penniless peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352, but soon gained a reputation after marrying the foster daughter of a rebel commander.Ebrey (1999), 190–191. In 1356 Zhu\'s rebel force captured the city of Nanjing,Gascoigne 151. which he would later establish as the capital of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang cemented his power in the south by eliminating his arch rival and rebel leader Chen Youliang in the Battle of Lake Poyang in 1363. After the dynastic head of the Red Turbans suspiciously died in 1367 while hosted as a guest of Zhu, the latter made his imperial ambitions known by sending an army toward the Yuan capital in 1368.Ebrey (1999), 191. The last Yuan emperor fled north into Mongolia and Zhu declared the founding of the Ming Dynasty after razing the Yuan palaces of Khanbaliq (Beijing) to the ground.
Instead of the traditional way of naming a dynasty after the first ruler\'s home district, Hongwu\'s choice of \'Ming\' or \'Brilliant\' for his dynasty followed a Mongol precedent of an uplifting title. Zhu Yuanzhang also took Hongwu, or \'Vastly Martial\' as his reign title. Although the White Lotus had fomented his rise to power, Hongwu later denied that he had ever been a member of their organization and suppressed the religious movement after he became emperor.Wakeman, 207.
Portrait of the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368 - 1398)
Hongwu immediately set to rebuilding state infrastructure. He built a 48 km (30 mile) long wall around Nanjing, as well as new palaces and government halls. The Ming Shi states that as early as 1364 Zhu Yuanzhang had begun drafting a new Confucian law code known as the Daming Lu, which was completed by 1397 and repeated certain clauses found in the old Tang Code of 653.Andrew & Rapp, 25. Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of the Tang Dynasty (618–907). The goal was to have soldiers become self-reliant farmers in order to sustain themselves while not fighting or training.Fairbank, 129. The system of the self-sufficient agricultural soldier, however, was largely a farce; infrequent rations and awards were not enough to sustain the troops, and many deserted their ranks if they weren\'t located in the heavily-supplied frontier.
Although a Confucian, Hongwu had a deep distrust for the scholar-officials of the gentry class and was not afraid to have them beaten in court for offenses.Ebrey (1999), 191–192. He halted the civil service examinations in 1373 after complaining that the 120 scholar-officials who obtained a jinshi degree were incompetent ministers.Ebrey (1999), 192.Hucker, 13. After the examinations were reinstated in 1384, he had the chief examiner executed after it was discovered that he allowed only candidates from the south to be granted jinshi degrees.
In 1380 Hongwu had the Chancellor Hu Weiyong executed upon suspicion of a conspiracy plot to overthrow him; after that Hongwu abolished the Chinese Chancellery and assumed this role as chief executive and emperor.Ebrey (1999), 192–193.Fairbank, 130. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established the Jinyi Wei, a network of secret police drawn from his own palace guard. They were partly responsible for the loss of 100,000 lives in several purges over three decades of his rule.Fairbank, 129–130.
The old south gate of Dali, Yunnan, which was established as a Chinese-style city in 1382 shortly after the Ming conquest of the region.
In 1381, the Ming Dynasty annexed the areas of the southwest that had once been part of the Kingdom of Dali. By the end of the 14th century, some 200,000 military colonists settled some 2,000,000 mu (350,000 acres) of land in what is now Yunnan and Guizhou.Ebrey (1999), 195. Roughly half a million more Chinese settlers came in later periods; these migrations caused a major shift in the ethnic make-up of the region, since more than half of the roughly 3,000,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty were non-Han peoples. In this region, the Ming government adopted a policy of dual administration. Areas with majority ethnic Chinese were governed according to Ming laws and policies; areas where native tribal groups dominated had their own set of laws while tribal chiefs promised to maintain order and send tribute to the Ming court in return for needed goods. From 1464 to 1466 the Miao and Yao people revolted against what they saw as oppressive government rule; in response, the Ming government sent an army of 30,000 troops (including 1,000 Mongols) to join the 160,000 local troops of Guangxi and crushed the rebellion.Ebrey (1999), 197. After the scholar and philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529) suppressed another rebellion in the region, he advocated joint administration of Chinese and local ethnic groups in order to bring about sinification in the local peoples\' culture.
According to historian Timothy Brook, the Hongwu Emperor attempted to immobilize society by creating rigid, state-regulated boundaries between villages and larger townships, discouraging trade and travel in society not permitted by the government.Brook, 19. Hongwu attempted to instill austere values by imposing uniform dress codes, standard methods of speech, and standard style of writing classical prose that did not flaunt the skills of the highly educated.Brook, 30–32. His suspicion for the educated elite matched his disdain for the commercial elites, imposing inordinately high taxes upon the hotbed of powerful merchant families in the region of Suzhou in Jiangsu. He also forcibly moved thousands of wealthy families from the southeast and resettled them around Nanjing in the Jiangnan region, forbidding them to move once they were settled.Brook, 28–29. To keep track of the merchants\' activities, Hongwu forced them to register all of their goods once a month.Brook, 65–67. One of his main goals as ruler was to permanently curb the influence of merchants and landlords, yet several of his policies would eventually encourage them to amass more wealth.
Hongwu\'s oppressive system of massive relocation and the desire to escape his harsh taxes encouraged many to become itinerant retailers, peddlers, or migrant workers finding tenant landowners who would rent them space to farm and labor on.Brook, 27–28, 94–95. By the mid Ming era, emperors had abandoned Hongwu\'s relocation scheme and instead trusted local officials to document migrant workers in order to bring in more revenue.Brook, 97. An elite of wealthy landlords and merchants reigning over land tenants, wage laborers, domestic servants, and migrant workers was hardly the vision of Hongwu\'s: strict adherence to the hierarchic status system of the four occupations.Brook, 85, 146, 154.
A porcelain vase from the Jiajing reign period (1521–1567); Chinese culture became a consumptionary-based culture by the late Ming. Social elites were expected to know the difference between shoddy crafts and fine wares, and even which type of plants were to be appeciated as rare and exotic enough for one\'s garden.Brook, 136–137.
Hongwu revived the agricultural sector to create self-sufficient communities that would not rely on commerce, which he assumed would remain only in urban areas.Brook, 69. Yet the surplus created from this revival encouraged rural farmers to make profits by first selling their goods at thoroughfares; by the mid Ming era they began selling their goods in regional urban markets.Brook, 65–66, 112–113. As the countryside and urban areas became more connected through commerce, households in rural areas began taking on traditionally urban speciacializations, such as production of silk and cotton textiles.Brook, 113–117. By the late Ming there was a growing concern amongst conservative Confucians that the metaphorical delicate fabric holding together the communal social order was being undermined by country rustics accepting every manner of urban life and decadence.Brook, 124–125.
The rural farmer was not the only social group affected by growing commercialization of Chinese society; it also heavily influenced the landholding gentry that traditionally produced scholar-officials for civil service. The scholar-officials were traditionally held as frugal individuals who deterred themselves from arrogance in the wealth garnered from a prestigious career; they were known even to walk from their country homes into the city where they were employed.Brook, 144–145. By the time of the Zhengde Emperor (1505–1521), officials chose to be hauled around in luxurious sedan chairs and began purchasing lavish homes in affluent urban neighborhoods instead of living in the countryside. By the late Ming era, gaining wealth became the prime indicator of social prestige, even more so than gaining a scholarly degree.Brook, 128, 144.
Cishou Temple Pagoda, built in 1576; the Chinese believed that building pagodas on certain sites according to geomantic principles brought about auspicious events;Brook, 7. merchant-funding for such projects was needed by the late Ming period.
In the first half of the Ming era, scholar-officials would rarely mention the contribution of merchants in society while writing their local gazetteer;Brook, 73. officials were certainly capable of funding their own public works projects, a symbol of their virtuous political leadership.Brook, 6–7, 90–91. However, by the second half of the Ming era it became common for officials to solicit money from merchants in order to fund their various projects, such as building bridges or establishing new schools of Confucian learning for the betterment of the gentry.Brook, 90–93. From that point on the gazetteers began mentioning merchants and often in high esteem, since the wealth produced by their economic activity produced resources for the state as well as increased production of books needed for the education of the gentry.Brook, 90–93, 129–130, 151. Merchants began taking on the highly-cultured, connoisseur\'s attitude and cultivated traits of the gentry class, blurring the lines between merchant and gentry and paving the way for merchant families to produce scholar-officials.Brook, 128–129, 134–138. The roots of this social transformation and class indistinction could be found in the Song Dynasty (960–1279),Gernet, 60–61, 68–69. but it became much more pronounced in the Ming. Writings of family instructions for lineage groups in the late Ming period display the fact that one no longer inherited his position in the categorization of the four occupations (in descending order): gentry, farmers, artisans, and merchants.Brook, 161.
Hongwu believed that only government couriers and lowly retail merchants should have the right to travel far outside their home town. Despite his efforts to impose this view, his building of an efficient communication network for his military and official personnel strengthened and fomented the rise of a potential commercial network running parallel to the courier network.Brook, 10, 49–51, 56. The shipwrecked Korean Ch\'oe Pu (1454–1504) remarked in 1488 how the locals along the eastern coasts of China did not know the exact distances between certain places, which was virtually exclusive knowledge of the Ministry of War and courier agents.Brook, 40–43. This was in stark contrast to the late Ming period, when merchants not only traveled further distances to convey their goods, but also bribed courier officials to use their routes and even had printed geographical guides of commercial routes that imitated the couriers\' maps.Brook, 10, 118–119.
The only surviving piece of furniture from the "Orchard Factory" (the Imperial Lacquer Workshop) set up in Beijing in the early Ming Dynasty. Decorated in dragons and phoenixes, it was made during the Xuande era (1426–1435). The imperial workshops in the Ming era were overseen by a eunuch bureau. (See closeup for detail)
The scholar-officials\' dependence upon the economic activities of the merchants became more than a trend when it was semi-institutionalized by the state in the mid Ming era. Qiu Jun (1420–1495), a scholar-official from Hainan, argued that the state should only mitigate market affairs during times of pending crisis and that merchants were the best gauge in determining the strength of a nation\'s riches in resources.Brook, 102. The government followed this guideline by the mid Ming era when it allowed merchants to take over the state monopoly of salt production. This was a gradual process where the state supplied northern frontier armies with enough grain by granting merchants licenses to trade in salt in return for their shipping services.Brook, 108. The state realized that merchants could buy salt licenses with silver and in turn boost state revenues to the point where buying grain was not an issue. The governments of both Hongwu and Zhengtong (r. 1435–1449) attempted to cut the flow of silver into the economy in favor of paper currency, yet mining the precious metal simply became a lucrative illegal pursuit practiced by many.Brook, 68–69, 81–83. Hongwu was unaware of economic inflation even as he continued to hand out multitudes of banknotes as awards; by 1425, paper currency was worth only 0.025% to 0.014% its original value in the 14th century.Fairbank, 134. The value of standard copper coinage dropped significantly as well due to counterfeit minting; by the 16th century, new maritime trade contacts with Europe provided massive amounts of imported silver, which increasingly became the common medium of exchange.Fairbank, 134–135. As far back as 1436, the southern grain tax had been partially commuted to payments in silver.Brook, xx. In 1581 the Single Whip Reform installed by Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (1525–1582) finally assessed taxes on the amount of land paid entirely in silver.Brook, xxi, 89.
Portrait of the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424).
Hongwu\'s grandson Zhu Yunwen assumed the throne as the Jianwen Emperor (1398–1402) after Hongwu\'s death in 1398. In a prelude to a three-year-long civil war beginning in 1399,Robinson (2000), 527. Jianwen became engaged in a political showdown with his uncle Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan. Jianwen was aware of the ambitions of his princely uncles, establishing measures to limit their authority. The militant Zhu Di, given charge over the area encompassing Beijing to watch the Mongols on the frontier, was the most feared of these princes. After Jianwen arrested many of Zhu Di\'s associates, Zhu Di plotted a rebellion. Under the guise of rescuing the young Jianwen from corrupting officials, Zhu Di personally led forces in the revolt; the palace in Nanjing was burned to the ground, along with Zhu Di\'s nephew Jianwen, his wife, mother, and courtiers. Zhu Di assumed the throne as the Yongle Emperor (1402–1424); his reign is universally viewed by scholars as a "second founding" of the Ming Dynasty since he reversed many of his father\'s policies.Atwell (2002), 84.
Yongle demoted Nanjing as a secondary capital and in 1403 announced the new capital of China was to be at his power base in Beijing. Construction of a new city there lasted from 1407 to 1420, employing hundreds of thousands of workers daily. At the center was the political node of the Imperial City, and at the center of this was the Forbidden City, the palatial residence of the emperor and his family. By 1553, the Outer City was added to the south, which brought the overall size of Beijing to 4 by 4½ miles.Ebrey (1999), 194.
The Ming Dynasty Tombs located 50 km (31 miles) north of Beijing; the site was chosen by Yongle.
After laying dormant and dilapidated for decades, the Grand Canal was restored under Yongle from 1411–1415. The impetus for restoring the canal was to solve the perennial problem of shipping grain north to Beijing. Shipping the annual 4,000,000 shi (one shi is equal to 107 liters) was made difficult with an inefficient system of shipping grain through the East China Sea or by several different inland canals that necessitated the transferring of grain onto several different barge types in the process, including shallow and deep water barges.Brook, 46–47. Yongle commissioned some 165,000 workers to dredge the canal bed in western Shandong and built a series of fifteen canal locks.Brook, 47. The reopening of the Grand Canal had implications for Nanjing as well, as it was surpassed by the well-positioned city of Suzhou as the paramount commercial center of China.Brook, 74–75.
Although Yongle ordered episodes of bloody purges like his father—including the execution of Fang Xiaoru who refused to draft the proclamation of his succession—Yongle had a different attitude about the scholar-officials.Ebrey (2006), 272. He had a selection of texts compiled from the Cheng-Zhu school of Confucianism—or Neo-Confucianism—in order to assist those who studied for the civil service examinations. Yongle commissioned two thousand scholars to create a 50-million word (22,938-chapter) long encyclopedia—the Yongle Encyclopedia—from seven thousand books. This surpassed all previous encyclopedias in scope and size, including the 11th century compilation of the Four Great Books of Song. Yet the scholar-officials weren\'t the only political group that Yongle had to cooperate with and appease. Historian Michael Chang points out that Yongle was an "emperor on horseback" who often traversed between two capitals like in the Mongol Yuan tradition and constantly led expeditions into Mongolia.Chang (2007), 66–67. This was opposed by the Confucian establishment while it served to bolster the importance of eunuchs and military officers whose power depended upon the emperor\'s favor.
A giraffe brought from Africa in the twelfth year of Yongle (1414); the Chinese associated the giraffe with the mythical qilin.
Beginning in 1405, the Yongle Emperor entrusted his favored eunuch commander Zheng He (1371–1433) as the naval admiral for a gigantic new fleet of ships designated for international tributary missions. The Chinese had sent diplomatic missions over land and west since the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) and had been engaged in private overseas trade leading all the way to East Africa for centuries—culminating in the Song and Yuan dynasties—but no government-sponsored tributary mission of this grandeur and size had ever been assembled before. To service seven different tributary missions abroad, the Nanjing shipyards constructed two thousand vessels from 1403 to 1419, which included the large treasure ships that measured 112 m (370 ft) to 134 m (440 ft) in length and 45 m (150 ft) to 54 m (180 ft) in width.Fairbank, 137. The first voyage from 1405 to 1407 contained 317 vessels with a staff of 70 eunuchs, 180 medical personnel, 5 astrologers, and 300 military officers commanding a total estimated force of 26,800 men.Fairbank, 137–138.
The enormous tributary missions were discontinued after the death of Zheng He, yet his death was only one of many culminating factors which brought the missions to an end. Yongle had conquered Vietnam in 1407, but Ming troops were pushed out in 1428 with significant costs to the Ming treasury; in 1431 the new Lê Dynasty of Vietnam was recognized as an independent tribute state.Fairbank, 138. There was also the threat and revival of Mongol power on the northern steppe which drew court attention away from other matters; to face this threat, a massive amount of funds were used to build the Great Wall after 1474.Fairbank, 139. Yongle\'s moving of the capital from Nanjing to Beijing was largely in response to the court\'s need of keeping a closer eye on the Mongol threat in the north.Robinson (1999), 80. Scholar-officials also associated the lavish expense of the fleets with eunuch power at court, and so halted funding for these ventures as a means to curtail further eunuch influence.Fairbank, 138–139.
The Oirat Mongol leader Esen Tayisi launched an invasion into Ming China in July of 1449. The chief eunuch Wang Zhen encouraged Emperor Zhengtong (r. 1435–1449) to personally lead a force to face the Mongols after a recent Ming defeat; marching off with 50,000 troops, Zhengtong left the capital and put his half-brother Zhu Qiyu in charge of affairs as temporary regent. In the battle that ensued on September 8, his force of 50,000 troops were decimated by Esen\'s army and Zhengtong was captured and held in captivity by the Mongols—an event known as the Tumu Crisis.Ebrey (2006), 273. After Zhengtong\'s capture, Esen\'s forces plundered their way across the countryside and all the way to the suburbs of Beijing.Robinson (2000), 533–534. Following this was another plundering of the Beijing suburbs in November of that year by local bandits and Ming Dynasty soldiers of Mongol descent who dressed as invading Mongols.Robinson (2000), 534. Many Han Chinese also took to brigandage soon after the Tumu incident.Yingzong Shilu, 184.17b, 185.5b.Robinson (1999), 85, footnote 18.
The Great Wall of China; although the rammed earth walls of the ancient Warring States were combined into a unified wall under the Qin and Han dynasties, the vast majority of the brick and stone Great Wall as it is seen today is a product of the Ming Dynasty.
The Mongols held the Zhengtong Emperor for ransom. However, this scheme was foiled once Zhengtong\'s younger brother assumed the throne as the Jingtai Emperor (r. 1449–1457); the Mongols were also repelled once Jingtai\'s confidant and defense minister Yu Qian (1398–1457) gained control of the Ming armed forces. Holding Zhengtong in captivity was a useless bargaining chip for the Mongols as long as another sat on his throne, so they released him back into Ming China. Zhengtong was placed under house arrest in the palace until the coup against Jingtai in 1457 known as the "Wresting the Gate Incident".Robinson (1999), 83. Zhengtong retook the throne as the Tianshun Emperor (r. 1457–1464).
Tianshun\'s reign was a troubled one and Mongol forces within the Ming military structure continued to be problematic. On August 7, 1461, the Chinese general Cao Qin and his Ming troops of Mongol descent staged a coup against Tianshun out of fear of being next on his purge-list of those who aided Jingtai\'s succession.Robinson (1999), 84–85. Mongols serving the Ming military also became increasingly circumspect as the Chinese began to heavily distrust their Mongol subjects after the Tumu Crisis.Robinson (1999), 96–97. Cao\'s rebel force managed to set fire to the western and eastern gates of the Imperial City (doused by rain during the battle) and killed several leading ministers before his forces were finally cornered and he was forced to commit suicide.Robinson (1999), 79, 103–108.Robinson (1999), 108.
The Mongol threat to China was at its greatest level in the 15th century, although periodic raiding continued throughout the dynasty. Like in the Tumu Crisis, the Mongol leader Altan Khan (r. 1470–1582) invaded China and raided as far as the outskirts of Beijing.Robinson (1999), 81.Laird, 141. Interestingly enough, the Ming employed troops of Mongol descent to fight back Altan Khan\'s invasion, as well as Mongol military officers against Cao Qin\'s abortive coup.Robinson (1999), 83, 101. The Mongol incursions prompted the Ming authorities to construct the Great Wall from the late 15th century to the 16th century; John Fairbank notes that "it proved to be a futile military gesture but vividly expressed China\'s siege mentality." Yet the Great Wall was not meant to be a purely defensive fortification; its towers functioned rather as a series of lit beacons and signalling stations to allow rapid warning to friendly units of advancing enemy troops.Ebrey (1999), 208.
16th century Japanese pirate raids.
In 1479, the vice president of the Ministry of War burned the court records documenting Zheng He\'s voyages; it was one of many events signalling China\'s shift to an inward foreign policy.Fairbank, 138. Shipbuilding laws were implemented that restricted vessels to a small size; the concurrent decline of the Ming navy allowed the growth of piracy along China\'s coasts. Japanese pirates—or wokou—began staging raids on Chinese ships and coastal communities, although much of the piracy was carried out by native Chinese.
Instead of mounting a counterattack, Ming authorities chose to shut down coastal facilities and starve the pirates out; all foreign trade was to be conducted by the state under the guise of formal tribute missions. These policies were known as the hai jin laws, which enacted a strict ban on private maritime activity until the laws\' formal abolishment in 1567. In this period government-managed overseas trade with Japan was carried out exclusively at the seaport of Ningbo, trade with the Philippines exclusively at Fuzhou, and trade with Indonesia exclusively at Guangzhou. Even then the Japanese were only allowed into port once every ten years and were allowed to bring a maximum of three hundred men on two ships; these laws encouraged many Chinese merchants to engage in widespread illegal trade and smuggling.
The low point in relations between Ming China and Japan occurred during the rule of the great Japanese warlord Hideyoshi, who in 1592 announced he was going to conquer China. In two campaigns that are known collectively as the Imjin War, the Japanese fought with the Korean and Ming armies. Both sides won victories in the war but with Hideyoshi\'s death in 1598, the Japanese gave up their last Korean bases and returned to Japan. Despite this and the great leadership of Koreans such as the admiral Yi Sun-sin, the Ming generals took credit for the victory. However, the victory came at an enormous cost to the Ming government\'s treasury: some 26,000,000 ounces of silver.Ebrey (1999), 214.
Although Jorge Álvares was the first to land on Lintin Island in the Pearl River Delta in May of 1513, it was Rafael Perestrello—a cousin of the famed Christopher Columbus—who became the first European explorer to land on the southern coast of mainland China and trade in Guangzhou in 1516, commanding a Portuguese vessel with a crew from a Malaysian junk that had sailed from Malacca.Pfoundes, 89.Nowell, 8. The Portuguese sent a large subsequent expedition in 1517 to enter port at Guangzhou and open formal trade relations with Chinese authorities.Brook, 124. During this expedition the Portuguese attempted to send an inland delegation in the name of Manuel I of Portugal to the court of the Ming emperor Zhengde; instead the diplomatic mission languished in a Chinese jail and died there. After the death of Zhengde in April 1521, the conservative faction at court that was against expanding commercial relations ordered that the Portuguese conquest of Malacca—a loyal vassal to the Ming—was grounds enough to reject the Portuguese embassy.Mote et al., 339. Simão de Andrade, brother to ambassador Fernão Pires de Andrade, had also stirred Chinese speculation that the Portuguese were kidnapping Chinese children to eat them; Simão had purchased kidnapped children as slaves who were later found in Diu, India.Mote et al., 337–338. In 1521, Ming Dynasty naval forces fought and repulsed Portuguese ships at Tuen Mun, where some of the first breech-loading culverins were introduced to China.Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 369. Despite initial hostilities, by 1549 the Portuguese were sending annual trade missions to Shangchuan Island. In 1557 the Portuguese managed to convince the Ming court to agree on a legal port treaty that would establish Macau as an official Portuguese trade colony on the coasts of the South China Sea.
From China the major exports were silk and porcelain. The Dutch East India Company alone handled the trade of 6 million porcelain items from China to Europe between the years 1602 to 1682.Brook, 206. Antonio de Morga (1559–1636), a Spanish official in Manila, listed an extensive inventory of goods that were traded by Ming China at the turn of the 17th century, noting there were "rarities which, did I refer to them all, I would never finish, nor have sufficient paper for it".Brook, 205–206. After noting the variety of silk goods traded to Europeans, Ebrey writes of the considerable size of commercial transactions:
In one case a galleon to the Spanish territories in the New World carried over 50,000 pairs of silk stockings. In return China imported mostly silver from Peruvian and Mexican mines, transported via Manila. Chinese merchants were active in these trading ventures, and many emigrated to such places as th Philippines and Borneo to take advantage of the new commercial opportunities.Ebrey (1999), 211.
Map of East Asia by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci in 1602; Ricci (1552–1610) was the first European allowed into the Forbidden City, taught the Chinese how to construct and play the spinet, translated Chinese texts into Latin and vice versa, and worked closely with his Chinese associate Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) on mathematical work.
After the Chinese had banned direct trade by Chinese merchants with Japan, the Portuguese filled this commercial vacuum as intermediaries between China and Japan.Spence, 19–20. The Portuguese bought Chinese silk and sold it to the Japanese in return for Japanese-mined silver; since silver was more highly valued in China, the Portuguese could then use Japanese silver to buy even larger stocks of Chinese silk. However, by 1573—after the Spanish established a trading base in Manila—the Portuguese intermediary trade was trumped by the prime source of incoming silver to China from the Spanish Americas.Spence, 20.Brook, 205.
Although the bulk of imports to China were silver, the Chinese also purchased New World crops from the Spanish Empire. This included sweet potatoes, maize, and peanuts, foods that could be cultivated in lands where traditional Chinese staple crops—wheat, millet, and rice—couldn\'t grow, hence facilitating a rise in the population of China.Crosby, 198–201. In the Song Dynasty (960–1279), rice had become the major staple crop of the poor;Gernet, 136. after sweet potatoes were introduced to China around 1560, it gradually became the traditional food of the lower classes.Crosby, 200.
The financial drain of the Imjin War in Korea against the Japanese was one of the many problems—fiscal or other—facing Ming China during the reign of the Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620). In the beginning of his reign, Wanli surrounded himself with able advisors and made a conscientious effort to handle state affairs. His Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (in office from 1572 to 1582) built up an effective network of alliances with senior officials.Hucker, 31. However, there was no one after him skilled enough to maintain the stability of these alliances; officials soon banded together in opposing political factions. Over time Wanli grew tired of court affairs and frequent political quarreling amongst his ministers, preferring to stay behind the walls of the Forbidden City and out of his officials\' sight.Spence, 16.
A larger-than-life Wanli Emperor enjoying a lavish boat ride on a river with a large entourage of guards and courtiers.
Officials aggravated Wanli about which of his sons should succeed to the throne; he also grew equally disgusted with senior advisors constantly bickering about how to manage the state. There were rising factions at court and across the intellectual sphere of China stemming from the philosophical debate for or against the teaching of Wang Yangming (1472–1529), the latter of whom rejected some of the orthodox views of Neo-Confucianism.Ebrey (2006), 281–283.Ebrey (1999), 203–206, 213. Annoyed by all of this, Wanli began neglecting his duties, remaining absent from court audiences to discuss politics, lost interest in studying the Confucian Classics, refused to read petitions and other state papers, and stopped filling the recurrent vacancies of vital upper level administrative posts. Scholar-officials lost prominence in administration as eunuchs became intermediaries between the aloof emperor and his officials; any senior official who wanted to discuss state matters had to persuade powerful eunuchs with a bribe simply to have his demands or message relayed to the emperor.Spence, 17.
It was said that Hongwu forbade eunuchs to learn how to read or engage in politics. Whether or not these restrictions were carried out with absolute success in his reign, eunuchs in the Yongle reign period and after managed huge imperial workshops, commanded armies, and participated in matters of appointment and promotion of officials. The eunuchs developed their own bureaucracy that was organized parallel to but was not subject to the civil service bureaucracy. Although there were several dictatorial eunuchs throughout the Ming, such as Wang Zhen, Wang Zhi, and Liu Jin, excessive tyrannical eunuch power did not become evident until the 1590s when Wanli increased their rights over the civil bureaucracy and granted them power to collect provincial taxes.Ebrey (1999), 194–195.Spence, 17.Hucker, 11.
The eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) dominated the court of the Tianqi Emperor (r. 1620–1627) and had his political rivals tortured to death, mostly the vocal critics from the faction of the "Donglin Society".Spence, 17–18. He ordered temples built in his honor throughout the Ming Empire, and built personal palaces created with funds allocated for building the previous emperor\'s tombs. His friends and family gained important positions without qualifications. Wei also published a historical work lambasting and belitting his political opponents. The instability at court came right as natural calamity, pestilence, rebellion, and foreign invasion came to a peak. Although the Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–1644) had Wei dismissed from court—which led to Wei\'s suicide shortly after—the problem with court eunuchs persisted until the dynasty\'s collapse less than two decades later.
Spring morning in a Han palace, by Qiu Ying (1494–1552); excessive luxury and decadence were hallmarks of the late Ming period, spurred by the enormous state bullion of incoming silver and private transactions involving silver.
During the last years of Wanli\'s reign and those of his two successors, an economic crisis developed that was centered around a sudden widespread lack of the empire\'s chief medium of exchange: silver. The Protestant powers of the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of England staged frequent raids and acts of piracy against the Catholic-based empires of Spain and Portugal in order to weaken their global economic power.Spence, 19. Meanwhile, Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621–1665) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific towards China, in favor of shipping American-mined silver directly from Spain to Manila. In 1639, the new Tokugawa regime of Japan shut down most of its foreign trade with European powers, causing a halt of yet another source of silver coming into China. However, the greatest stunt to the flow of silver came from the Americas, while Japanese silver still came into China in limited amounts.Brook, 208. Some scholars even assert that the price of silver rose in the 17th century due to a falling demand for goods, not declining silver stocks.Brook, 289.
These events occurring at roughly the same time caused a dramatic spike in the value of silver and made paying taxes nearly impossible for most provinces. People began hoarding precious silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper to silver into a steep decline. In the 1630s, a string of one thousand copper coins was worth an ounce of silver; by 1640 this was reduced to the value of half an ounce; by 1643 it was worth roughly one-third of an ounce. For peasants this was an economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver while conducting local trade and selling their crops with copper coins.Spence, 20–21.
In this early half of the 17th century, famines became common in northern China because of unusual dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season; these were effects of a larger ecological event now known as the Little Ice Age.Spence, 21. Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and inability of the government to properly manage irrigation and flood-control projects caused widespread loss of life and normal civility. The central government was starved of resources and could do very little to mitigate the effects of these calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic spread across China from Zhejiang to Henan, killing a large but unknown number of people.Spence, 22–24.
Shanhaiguan along the Great Wall, the gate where the Manchus were repeatedly repelled before being finally let through by Wu Sangui in 1644.
A remarkable tribal leader named Nurhaci (r. 1616–1626), starting with just a small tribe, rapidly gained control over all the Manchurian tribes. During the Imjin War he offered to lead his tribes in support of the Ming army. This offer was declined, but he was granted honorific Ming titles for his gesture.Spence, 27. Recognizing the weakness in the Ming authority north of their border, he took control over all of the other unrelated tribes surrounding his homeland. In 1610 he broke relations with the Ming court; in 1618 he demanded the Ming pay tribute to him to redress the seven grievances which he documented and sent to the Ming court. This was, in a very real sense, a declaration of war as the Ming were not about to pay money to the Manchu.
Under the brilliant commander Yuan Chonghuan (1584–1630), the Ming were able to repeatedly fight off the Manchus, notably in 1626 at the Battle of Ningyuan and in 1628. Under Yuan\'s command the Ming had securely fortified the Shanhai pass, thus blocking the Manchus from crossing the pass to attack the Liaodong Peninsula. Using European firearms acquired from his cook, he was able to stave off Nurhaci\'s advances along the Liao River. Although he was named field marshal of all the northeastern forces in 1628, he was executed in 1630 on trumped-up charges of colluding with the Manchus as they staged their raids.Spence, 24–25. Succeeding generals proved unable to eliminate the Manchu threat.
Unable to attack the heart of Ming directly, the Manchu instead bided their time, developing their own artillery and gathering allies. They were able to enlist Ming government officials and generals as their strategic advisors. A large part of the Ming Army deserted to the Manchu banner. In 1632, they had conquered much of Inner Mongolia, resulting in a large scale recruitment of Mongol troops under the Manchu banner and the securing of an additional route into the Ming heartland.
By 1636, the Manchu ruler Huang Taiji renamed his dynasty from the "Latter Jin" to "Qing" at Shenyang, which had fallen to the Manchu in 1621 and was made their capital in 1625.Spence, 24.Spence, 28.Chang (2007), 92. Huang Taiji also adopted the Chinese imperial title huangdi instead of khan, took the Imperial title Chongde ("Revering Virtue"), and changed the ethnic name of his people from Jurchen to Manchu.Spence, 31. In 1638 the Manchu defeated and conquered Ming China\'s traditional ally Korea with an army of 100,000 troops. Shortly after the Koreans renounced their long-held loyalty to the Ming Dynasty.
The Shunzhi Emperor (1644–1661), proclaimed the ruler of China on October 8, 1644.
A peasant soldier named Li Zicheng (1606–1644) mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the government failed to ship much-needed supplies there. In 1634 he was captured by a Ming general and released only on the terms that he return to service.Spence, 21–22. The agreement soon broke down when a local magistrate had thirty-six of his fellow rebels executed; Li\'s troops retaliated by killing the officials and continued to lead a rebellion based in Rongyang, central Henan province by 1635.Spence, 22. By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li—Zhang Xianzhong (1606–1647)—had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu, Sichuan, while Li\'s center of power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan.
In 1640, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. The Chinese military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat the Manchu raiders from the north and huge peasant revolts in the provinces, essentially fell apart. Unpaid and unfed, the army was defeated by Li Zicheng—now self-styled as the Prince of Shun—and deserted the capital without much of a fight. Li\'s forces were allowed into the city when the gates were treacherously opened from within. On May 26, 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng; during the turmoil, the last Ming emperor hung himself on a tree in the imperial garden right outside the Forbidden City.Spence, 25.
Seizing opportunity, the Manchus crossed the Great Wall after the Ming border general Wu Sangui (1612–1678) opened the gates at Shanhai Pass. This occurred shortly after he learned about the fate of the capital and an army of Li Zicheng marching towards him; weighing his options of alliance, he decided to side with the Manchus.Spence, 32–33. The Manchu army under the Manchu Prince Dorgon (1612–1650) and Wu Sangui approached Beijing after the army sent by Li was destroyed at Shanhaiguan; the Prince of Shun\'s army fled the capital on the fourth of June.Spence, 33. On June 6 the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor ruler of China. After being forced out of Xi\'an by the Manchus, chased along the Han River to Wuchang, and finally along the northern border of Jiangxi province, Li Zicheng died there in the summer of 1645, thus ending the Shun Dynasty. One report says his death was a suicide; another states that he was beaten to death by peasants after he was caught stealing their food. Zhang Xianzhong was killed in January of 1647 by Manchu troops after he fled Chengdu and employed scorched earth policy.Spence, 34–35.
Scattered Ming remnants still existed after 1644, including those of Koxinga. Despite the loss of Beijing and the death of the emperor, Ming power was by no means totally destroyed. Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Yunnan were all strongholds of Ming resistance. However, there were several pretenders for the Ming throne, and their forces were divided. Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662, when the last real hopes of a Ming revival died with the Yongli emperor, Zhu Youlang. Despite the Ming defeat, smaller loyalist movements continued until the proclamation of the Republic of China.
The Ming emperors took over the provincial administration system of the Yuan Dynasty, and the thirteen Ming provinces are the precursors of the modern provinces. Thus, at the provincial level, the Yuan central government structure was copied; the bureaucracy contained three provincial commissions: one civil, one military, and one for surveillance. Below the level of the province (sheng) were prefectures (fu) operating under a prefect, followed by subprefectures (zhou) under a subprefect.Hucker, 5. Finally, the lowest unit was the county (xian) overseen by a magistrate. Besides the provinces, there were also two large areas that belonged to no province, but were metropolitan areas (jing) attached to Nanjing and Beijing.
The Forbidden City, the official imperial household of the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1420 until 1924, when the Republic of China evicted Puyi from the Inner Court.
Departing from the main central administrative system generally known as the Three Departments and Six Ministries system, which was instituted by various dynasties since late Han, the Ming administration had only one Department, the Secretariat, that controlled the Six Ministries. Following the execution of the Chancellor Hu Weiyong in 1380, emperor Hongwu abolished the Secretariat, the Censorate, and the Chief Military Commission and personally took charge of the Six Ministries and the regional Five Military Commissions.Hucker, 28.Chang (2007), 15, footnote 42. Thus a whole level of administration was cut out and only partially rebuilt by subsequent rulers. The Grand Secretariat, at the beginning a secretarial institution that assisted the emperor with administrative paperwork, was instituted, but without employing grand counselors, or chancellors. The ministries, headed by a minister and run by directors remained under direct control of the emperor until the end of the Ming.
The Hongwu Emperor sent his heir apparent to Shaanxi in 1391 to "tour and soothe" (xunfu) the region; in 1421 the Yongle Emperor commissioned 26 officials to travel the empire and uphold similar investigatory and patrimonial duties.Chang (2007), 16. By 1430 these xunfu assignments became institutionalized. Hence, the Censorate was reinstalled and first staffed with investigating censors, later with censors-in-chief. By 1453, the "grand coordinators"—or "touring pacifiers" as Michael Chang notes—were granted the title vice censor-in-chief or assistant censor-in-chief and were allowed direct access to the emperor. As in prior dynasties, the provincial administrations were monitored by a travelling inspector from the Censorate. Censors had the power to impeach officials on an irregular basis, unlike the senior officials who were to do so only in triennial evaluations of junior officials.
Although decentralization of state power within the provinces occurred in the early Ming, the trend of central government officials delegated to the provinces as virtual provincial governors began in the 1420s.Hucker, 23. By the late Ming Dynasty, there were central government officials delegated to two or more provinces as supreme commanders and viceroys, a system which reigned in the power and influence of the military by the civil establishment.
A portrait of the official Jiang Shunfu (1453–1504), now in the Nanjing Museum. The decoration of two cranes on his chest are a "rank badge" that indicate he was a civil official of the first rank.
Governmental institutions in China conformed to a similar pattern for some two thousand years, but each dynasty installed special offices and bureaus, reflecting its own particular interests. The Ming administration had the Grand Secretaries assisting the emperor, with paperwork handled by them under Yongle\'s reign and finally appointed as top officials of agencies and Grand Preceptor, a top-ranking, non-functional civil service post, under the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–1425).Hucker, 29–30. The Grand Secretariat drew its members from the Hanlin Academy and were considered part of the imperial authority, not the ministerial one (hence being at odds with both the emperor and ministers at times).Hucker, 30. The Secretariat was a coordinating agency, whereas the Six Ministries—which were Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Public Works—were direct administrative organs of the state.Hucker, 31–32. The Ministry of Personnel was in charge of appointments, merit ratings, promotions, and demotions of officials, as well as granting of honorific titles.Hucker, 32. The Ministry of Revenue was in charge of gathering census data, collecting taxes, and handling state revenues, while there were two offices of currency that were subordinate to it.Hucker, 33. The Ministry of Rites was in charge of state ceremonies, rituals, and sacrifices; it also oversaw registers for Buddhist and Daoist priesthoods and even the reception of envoys from tributary states.Hucker, 33–35. The Ministry of War was in charge of the appointments, promotions, and demotions of military officers, the maintenance of military installations, equipment, and weapons, as well as the courier system.Hucker, 35. The Ministry of Justice was in charge of judicial and penal processes, but had no supervisory role over the Censorate or the Grand Court of Revision.Hucker, 36. The Ministry of Works was in charge of government construction projects, hiring of artisans and laborers for temporary service, manufacturing government equipment, the maintenance of roads and canals, standardization of weights and measures, and the gathering of resources from the countryside.
The Ming Imperial Court, by an unknown artist, c. 1580 AD.
The imperial household was staffed almost entirely by eunuchs and ladies with their own bureaus.Hucker, 24. Female servants were organized into the Bureau of Palace Attendance, Bureau of Ceremonies, Bureau of Apparel, Bureau of Foodstuffs, Bureau of the Bedchamber, Bureau of Handicrafts, and Office of Staff Surveillance. Starting in the 1420s, eunuchs began taking over these ladies\' positions until only the Bureau of Apparel with its four subsidiary offices remained. Hongwu had his eunuchs organized into the Directorate of Palace Attendants, but as eunuch power at court increased, so did their administrative offices, with eve
