SHANXI PROVINCE
A Tidbit of Information
Ming Dynasty
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Ming Dynasty
I. INTRODUCTION
Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, the last native Chinese dynasty in the history of China. Spanning almost three centuries between the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty and the rise of the Manchu Qing dynasty, the Ming reunited what is now called China proper after almost 400 years of foreign incursion and occupation. The Ming contributed greatly to Chinese literature, art, and philosophy. It is noted for its sea explorations, even though, when the effort was not followed up, the results failed to register any permanent value. It is best known for its strong and complex central government, which unified and controlled the empire. Ironically, it was this same complexity that prevented the Ming government from being able to adapt to changes in society and eventually led to its decline.
II. POLITICAL HISTORY AND SOCIETY
The founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), also known by his reign name as the Hongwu (Hung-wu) Emperor, came from a poor peasant family. During the last decades of the Yuan dynasty under the Mongols, poor government and the inability of the ruling circles to provide famine relief to the population had caused a host of rebel leaders to declare themselves independent. Zhu was one of these and eventually subdued all the others, expelled the Mongol rulers, and founded the Ming dynasty, establishing his capital at Nanjing (Nanking).
From the beginning, Zhu showed great organizational ability. Under his design the state assumed absolute control over all aspects of society, with the emperor as the supreme head of state. The office of the prime minister was abolished for the duration of the dynasty. Between 1376 and 1393, to further solidify his power, the emperor staged four waves of political purges that claimed an estimated 100,000 lives, among them ministers, generals, local gentry, and clan leaders.
The countryside under Zhu Yuanzhang's rule was dominated by numerous small farming families and a few medium-sized landowners. Large estates were extremely rare. In 1397 the Hubu (Ministry of Revenue) reported that across the empire there were 14,341 households owning land of 700 mu (about 120 acres) or more, and a list of these larger holdings was used to enforce proper taxation.
The population was registered in sections (lijia) of ten households each, and charged with group responsibility. These collective units provided numerous public services, which helped to keep land taxes low. The group members rotated among tasks, performing the work of scribes, jailers, warehouse receiving-men, and so on, all unpaid by the government. They supplied office stationery and furniture to the various levels of the government on demand. They organized themselves into delivery teams to haul supplies across the empire. As far as the state was concerned, there was no difference between imperial revenue and local revenue. In many respects the Ming resembled a huge conglomeration of village communities rather than a nation.
The army was maintained by giving the traditional hereditary military families public land to set up juntun (military colonies). Self-supporting in principle, these units were primarily defensive under Zhu Yuanzhang. In fact, he had become content to rule solely over the territory that is now interior China and had no desire to expand the empire. To that end, he permanently forbade his descendants from sending expeditions to many nations, including Korea, Japan, and Annam (northern Vietnam). The Ming subjects were forbidden to take to the sea. The military hierarchy remained relatively insignificant and had much less prestige than the bureaucracy: Ming generals were usually at the beck and call of the civil officials commissioned to direct them.
The Ming bureaucracy was virtually a self-governing body. It had more than 20,000 positions, running from ministers down to county magistrates, district police chiefs, and Confucian instructors-in-residence. With few exceptions, the personnel were recruited through open examinations. The bureaucracy also policed itself and carried out its own personnel management, all according to long-established procedures. The Neige Daxueshi (Grand Secretaries), earlier employed by emperors to draft imperial edicts and tutor heirs to the throne, gradually took on the role of policy makers, making up to some extent for the lack of a prime minister. The Censorate, a group that oversaw the administration and reported abuses such as fraud and extortion within the government, also wielded substantial power.
The unitary structure of the Ming government did not permit an independent judicial system. The penal code was the only formal body of law, and, typical of Chinese dynastic governments in general, it was not revised throughout the entire Ming period. On the other hand, numerous government regulations and administrative procedures existed. As long as the Ming officials could enforce them, there was no possibility of a challenge to their legality. Ming Chinese believed that the moral law sponsored by the state was identifiable with natural law, and therefore beyond question.
The traditional four social classes of scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants (in descending order) had little real meaning during this period. The main social division during the Ming dynasty existed between the educated elite and the unlettered masses. This barrier, however, was not insurmountable. The lack of primogeniture (passing possessions from father to the eldest son), the custom of accepting the children born of a concubine as equal to the children of the principal wife, and the social mobility generated by the civil service examinations all made individual changes of fortune not only possible but also frequent.
The Ming's great contribution to China was its stability. Prosperity was registered in population growth rather than in a higher standard of living. At the founding of the dynasty, the population was reported to be close to 60 million, and modern scholars speculate that toward the end of the dynasty it might have approached 150 million. New crops imported from the Americas in the 16th century, including maize, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and tobacco, contributed to the population growth.
III. EXPANSIONISM AND ISOLATIONISM
A. The Mongolian CampaignsMany of Zhu's more isolationist policies were undone by his son Zhu Di (Chu Ti), the Yongle (Yung-lo) Emperor. Not content with the existing boundaries of his domain, this expansionist emperor not only invaded Annam but also annexed it as a Chinese province. Between 1410 and 1424 he personally led five separate campaigns against the Mongols in the north. After considerable success in the early campaigns, Zhu Di moved the Ming capital to the northern city of Beijing (Peking) in 1421, so that he could oversee more closely the newly acquired northern territory. He kept up the attacks until his death of illness in the field in 1424. Despite Zhu Di's success in expanding Chinese territory, probably his most important act was dispatching eunuch admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) on expeditions to the south seas.
IV. THE MARITIME EXPEDITIONS
Zheng He led seven maritime expeditions from 1405 to 1433, the last being authorized by Zhu Di's grandson Zhu Zhanji, the fifth Ming emperor. Each mission lasted on average about 20 months. Though the number of ships varied between campaigns, over 300 ships were involved in the first mission, and overall thousands of ships were constructed for the missions. The largest of the ships were 134 m (440 ft) long and 57 m (186 ft) wide. Typical of all the expeditions, the first mission carried 27,800 men. The armadas navigated through the Malacca Strait, entered the Indian Ocean, and sailed to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Although the Ming emperors were interested in exploration, their chief purposes were to spread Chinese influence and induce the countries visited to pay valuable tributes to the Ming court. Zheng He returned with curios and artifacts from the discovered lands, including animals such as giraffes, ostriches, and zebras, some of which had never been seen before in China.
Gradually, however, interest in geographical knowledge and foreign artifacts began to be outweighed by the sheer cost of the expeditions. The timing made the expeditions even more burdensome, since the shipbuilding program was carried on while the Ming armies were fighting on the northern and southern fronts. Furthermore, these expeditions occurred at the same time as the construction of the new capital and the Great Wall and improvements to the Grand Canal linking Beijing with the Huang He and the Yangtze River. While executing all these projects, Emperor Zhu Di did nothing to reform the Ming's decentralized administrative structure. As a result, the complicated task of extracting materials and labor from the village-oriented economy proved difficult. When the government was not able to obtain the money required through taxation, it issued paper currency.
Since Zhu Di's expansionist policies had overtaxed the Ming governmental resources, fiscal crises developed and his successors had to retrench to save the dynasty. Annam was abandoned. The paper currency gradually fell into disuse. After 1433 no more maritime expeditions were attempted. The military expansion of the Ming ended in 1449, when Zhu Qizhen (Chu Ch'i-chen), the sixth emperor, was captured by the Oirot Mongols during an inspection tour of the northern frontier. Although he was returned unharmed, the empire never recovered its military dominance of the region.
V. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
From that point on, the Ming dynasty became closed and introspective. The emperors withdrew more and more from active government. While in theory the absolute power of the throne remained, in practice it was severely limited by two factors: the dynasty's earlier loss of its military supremacy in the region and the rigidity of its fiscal organization.
The government's financial management involved a permanent budget, which was fixed down to the smallest detail. Therefore, it resulted in a system in which every item of income had to be spent before it could be accounted for. Because the nation's funds were spread throughout so many government agencies, the actual consolidation of wealth by the government was severely restricted. While this practice in some ways contributed to the empire's stability by making its resources so fragmented that they were virtually safe from capture, it also constricted the economy and consequently impeded the flow of capital. In addition, the government was unable to take advantage of the inflow of wealth in the form of silver from Japan and the Philippines in the 16th century. The precious metal in circulation was unminted, and therefore outside of governmental control. Although the state gradually began to collect taxes in silver, rather than in grain, cloth, or copper currency, it never developed any overall policy regarding the influx of silver, and the government's economic situation improved little.
VI. ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The development of technology in China had peaked during the Song (Sung) dynasty (960-1279), and the Ming added little to their earlier accomplishments. However, during the Ming period porcelain manufacture at Jingdezhen (Ching-te-chen) gained wide recognition. The kilns there were able to turn out enough high-quality pieces to supply all of China. Famous styles include yellow imperial bowls, red monochrome vases, and highly decorated enameled ceramics painted in traditional patterns. In addition, the traditional blue-and-white pieces that inspired Dutch delftware had their origins in the Ming period. To this day connoisseurs value certain marks on Ming porcelain that indicate the patronage of a particular emperor. During the Ming period, cotton weaving flourished in the Yangtze River delta, while silk manufacturing also became prominent in the same region.
The foremost philosopher in Ming times was Wang Yangming (Wang Yang-ming), whose teachings can be summarized with the motto “under the Heaven nothing exists but in the mind.” He advocated an extreme type of subjectivism, as even though he did not say so, his teachings carried a message that everyone should be his own master, and should not care about the thoughts of others. Wang was denounced by his contemporaries in China, who felt that his philosophy encouraged people to be their own masters instead of obeying the laws of the state. They believed that his philosophy had much to do with splitting the empire during the late Ming period. However, in the 20th century Wang was admired by numerous Japanese army and naval officers who wanted to act first and think of the consequences later.
In formal literature the achievements of this period generally reflected the life and times of the Ming elite. While the Ming did not match the accomplishments of their predecessors of the Tang (T'ang) and Song dynasties in poetry, they excelled in prose writing. Several of the most popular Chinese novels appeared in this period. They include Sanguozhi yanyi (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Xiyouji (The Journey to the West), Jinpingmei (The Gold Vase Plum or The Golden Lotus), and Shuihuzhuan (The Water Margin).
VII. DECLINE AND FALL OF THE MING
In the 16th century the Mongols made annual incursions on the northern frontier, and Japanese pirates (wokou) also plundered China's southeast coast. Toward the end of the century, the Grand Secretary and Imperial Tutor Zhang Juzheng (Chang Chu-cheng) tried to revitalize the dynasty's obsolete government institutions. He put capable officials in responsible positions. He tightened the frontier defenses. He reviewed the tax registers and expense accounts of various regions and districts. He cracked down hard on corruption, both on the national and local levels. He ordered a national land survey and intended to use the data as the basis for a major reform of the taxation system. During his decade in office he also accumulated at the capital a surplus of ten million ounces of silver. Implementing the reform program proved difficult, however, because many officials supplemented their meager salaries by taking bribes in order to make ends meet, and few could live up to the rigorous standard of honesty that Zhang's austere program required. Even the grand secretary himself made exceptions to it. Nor was his personnel management completely free of favoritism. In his lifetime, he was more feared than loved. Even the youthful sovereign, Zhu Yijun (Chu I-chun), the Wanli (Wan-li) Emperor, cowered in front of his awesome tutor.
Unfortunately, Zhang Juzheng did not live to complete his work. Soon after his death in 1582 his enemies had no difficulty in convincing the emperor to declare that Zhang had betrayed imperial trust. His reforms were discontinued and the data from his land survey nullified. Zhang Juzheng's posthumous disgrace conveniently opened the door for infighting between factions at court. In addition, Zhu Yijun's handling of the succession issue, in which he defied all dynastic tradition by trying to have his third son named heir apparent over his first, also caused controversy within the court. When the censors objected, the emperor was enraged and suspended his audience with them altogether. Numerous petitions to the throne went unanswered, and many vacant official positions were not filled.
In 1619 the Ming army was soundly defeated in Manchuria by Nurhaci, the leader of a tribe of Tungusic origin which eventually founded the Qing dynasty. The Wanli Emperor died a year later. In 1628 peasant rebellions broke out in the northwest. For the remainder of the dynasty, the Ming armies had to fight a long, two-front war. Finally, on April 25, 1644, the rebel leader Li Zicheng (Li Tzu-ch'eng) entered Beijing. Zhu Youjian (Chu Yu-chien), the Chongzhen (Ch'ung-chen) Emperor, had hanged himself the day before. This date is recognized as the end of the Ming. Immediately afterward, a frontier general invited Nurhaci's tribe into China. They put down Li's rebellion, but in the meanwhile proclaimed one of Nurhaci's grandsons the ruler of China. Resistance by Ming loyalists in the south was scattered and ineffective.
In tracing the causes of the dynasty's downfall, historians have cited the simultaneous occurrence of a military threat posed by Nurhaci on the frontier, insurgents at home, dissension in the capital, the demoralizing effect of Wanli essentially turning his back on both the kingdom and the government, and overtaxation to pay for the mounting military expenditures. However, the fundamental factor was the Ming government's administration, which attempted to impose a high degree of centralization over an immense territory. As a result, it was often forced to accept the least-developed elements as the overall standard. The Ming policies of self-restraint and mutual deference had kept the various interests—private and public, regional and national—in a delicate balance. But because of the difficulties in administering such a large region, the Ming never had an in-depth grasp of public affairs, and its management always lacked precision. Above all, the Ming administration was complex and could not easily adapt to the changes brought about by population growth, social mobility, the use of silver, and the gradual shift in wealth from central China to the trade-rich regions on the southeastern coast that had started during the Song dynasty and had been gaining momentum. Because the Ming were so committed to homogeneity and uniformity, they could only implement reform by replacing the entire administrative structure. However, given China's insulated position, the basic structural design was still workable for the succeeding Qing dynasty.
VIII. THE DYNASTY IN RETROSPECT
In retrospect, China during the Ming dynasty was blessed by a lull in activity in the areas surrounding it. The age of great conquerors such as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane had passed, while the growing sea power of the European nations had yet to make its effect felt in Asian waters. Armed conflict between the Chinese and Western sea captains did occur, but it was limited to local skirmishes. In 1557 the Portuguese obtained a right to residence in Macau. They paid an annual rent, but an informal arrangement with a local Chinese official was enough. In the 16th century outside challenges were not forceful enough to cause the dynasty to abandon its isolationist stance; the Chinese could afford to be self-absorbed and introspective.
However, the dynasty, collecting taxes from individual peasant households, never developed a financial base comparable to those of the modern Western nations. Because the government could not adapt to change, it responded by tightening its political control, which only overworked the governmental machinery and caused it to collapse.
Despite a general stagnation during the 276 years of Ming rule, large interprovincial migrations took place, and the country became more uniform. When the Manchus took over in 1644, they found that they needed to change little in terms of basic governmental structure. The introspective heritage of the Ming dynasty therefore remained a vital factor for the Chinese to reckon with in their struggles in the 20th century.
Contributed By: Ray Huang, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Retired Professor of History, State University of New York. Author of 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline and other books.
"Ming Dynasty". Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (5 July. 2001)
© 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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