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| History | |
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Main article: History of the Ming Dynasty
For a more comprehensive list, see List of emperors of the Ming Dynasty.
Tags:Dynasty, | |
| Revolt and rebel rivalry | |
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A cannon from the Huolongjing, compiled by Jiao Yu and Liu Ji before the latter's death in 1375.
The Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) 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 inflation, and massive flooding of the Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects.[5] 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.[5]
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.[6] In 1356, Zhu's rebel force captured the city of Nanjing,[7] which he would later establish as the capital of the Ming Dynasty.
With the Yuan Dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus the right to establish a new dynasty. In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his arch rival and leader of the rebel Han faction Chen Youliang in the Battle of Lake Poyang, arguably the largest naval battle in history. Known for its ambitious use of fire ships, Zhu's force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650,000-strong. The victory destroyed the last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley and cementing his power in the south. After the dynastic head of the Red Turbans suspiciously died in 1367 while a guest of Zhu, there was no one left who was remotely capable of contesting his march to the throne, and he made his imperial ambitions known by sending an army toward the Yuan capital Dadu (present-day Beijing) in 1368.[8] The last Yuan emperor fled north to Shangdu and Zhu declared the founding of the Ming Dynasty after razing the Yuan palaces in Dadu to the ground;[8] the city was renamed Beiping in the same year.[9] Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or 'Vastly Martial,' as his reign title.
Tags:Nanjing,Beijing,Chinese,Wu,Mongol,Yuan Dynasty,Han Chinese,Cannon,Huolongjing,Jiao Yu,Liu Ji,Inflation,Yellow River,Red Turbans,White Lotus,Buddhist,Zhu Yuanzhang,Establish A New Dynasty,Chen Youliang,Battle Of Lake Poyang,Largest Naval Battle In History,Fire Ships,Yangtze River Valley,Dadu,Shangdu,Yuan, | |
| Reign of the Hongwu Emperor | |
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Hongwu made an immediate effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built a 48 km (30 mi) long wall around Nanjing, as well as new palaces and government halls.[8] The History of Ming states that as early as 1364 Zhu Yuanzhang had begun drafting a new Confucian law code, the Da Ming Lü, which was completed by 1397 and repeated certain clauses found in the old Tang Code of 653.[10] Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of the Tang Dynasty (618–907).
Portrait of the Hongwu Emperor (ruled in 1368–98)
In 1380 Hongwu had the Chancellor Hu Weiyong (胡惟庸) executed upon suspicion of a conspiracy plot to overthrow him; after that Hongwu abolished the Chancellery and assumed this role as chief executive and emperor, a precedent mostly followed throughout the Ming period.[11][12] 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.[11][13] For details of the many Ming policies laid down by the Hongwu Emperor, see History of the Ming Dynasty and Hongwu Emperor.
Tags:Wei,Wall Around Nanjing,History Of Ming,Confucian,Tang Code,Tang Dynasty,Hongwu Emperor,Hu Weiyong,Chancellery,Jinyi Wei,Secret Police, | |
| South-Western frontier | |
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Main article: Ming conquest of Yunnan
The old south gate of the ancient city of Dali, Yunnan
In Qinghai, the Salar Muslims voluntarily came under Ming rule, their clan leaders capitulating around 1370. Uyghur troops under Uyghur general Hala Bashi suppressed the Miao Rebellions of the 1370s and settled in Changde, Hunan.[14] Hui Muslim troops also settled in Changde, Hunan after serving the Ming in campaigns against other aboriginal tribes.[15] In 1381, the Ming Dynasty annexed the areas of the southwest that had once been part of the Kingdom of Dali following the successful effort by Hui Muslim Ming armies to defeat Yuan-loyalist Mongol and Hui Muslim troops holding out in Yunnan province. The Hui troops under General Mu Ying, who was appointed Governor of Yunnan, were resettled in the region as part of a colonization effort.[16] 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. 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 formerly more than half of the population were non-Han peoples. Resentment over such massive changes in population and the resulting government presence and policies sparked more Miao and Yao revolts in 1464 to 1466, which were crushed by an army of 30,000 Ming troops (including 1,000 Mongols) joining the 160,000 local Guangxi. After the scholar and philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529) suppressed another rebellion in the region, he advocated single, unitary administration of Chinese and indigenous ethnic groups in order to bring about sinification of the local peoples.[17]
Tags:Muslim,Ming Conquest Of Yunnan,Dali, Yunnan,Qinghai,Salar,Uyghur,Kingdom Of Dali, | |
| Relations with Tibet | |
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Main article: Tibet during the Ming Dynasty
A 17th century Tibetan thangka of Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra; the Ming Dynasty court gathered various tribute items which were native products of Tibet (such as thangkas),[18] and in return granted gifts to Tibetan tribute-bearers.[19]
The Mingshi— the official history of the Ming Dynasty compiled later by the Qing Dynasty in 1739 —states that the Ming established itinerant commanderies overseeing Tibetan administration while also renewing titles of ex-Yuan Dynasty officials from Tibet and conferring new princely titles on leaders of Tibet's Buddhist sects.[20] However, Turrell V. Wylie states that censorship in the Mingshi in favor of bolstering the Ming emperor's prestige and reputation at all costs obfuscates the nuanced history of Sino-Tibetan relations during the Ming era.[21]
Modern scholars still debate on whether or not the Ming Dynasty really had sovereignty over Tibet at all, as some believe it was a relationship of loose suzerainty which was largely cut off when the Jiajing Emperor (ruled in 1521–67) persecuted Buddhism in favor of Daoism at court [21][22][23] and some scholars argue that the significant religious nature of the relationship of the Ming court with Tibetan lamas is underrepresented in modern scholarship.[24][25] Others underscore the commercial aspect of the relationship, noting the Ming Dynasty's insufficient amount of horses and the need to maintain the tea-horse trade with Tibet.[26][27][28][29][30]
The Ming initiated sporadic armed intervention in Tibet during the 14th century, while at times the Tibetans also used successful armed resistance against Ming forays.[31][32] Patricia Ebrey, Thomas Laird, Wang Jiawei, and Nyima Gyaincain all point out that the Ming Dynasty did not garrison permanent troops in Tibet,[33][34][35] unlike the former Mongol Yuan Dynasty.[33] The Wanli Emperor (ruled in 1572–1620) made attempts to reestablish Sino-Tibetan relations in the wake of a Mongol-Tibetan alliance initiated in 1578, the latter of which affected the foreign policy of the subsequent Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) of China in their support for the Dalai Lama of the Yellow Hat sect.[21][36][37][38][39] By the late 16th century, the Mongols proved to be successful armed protectors of the Yellow Hat Dalai Lama after their increasing presence in the Amdo region, culminating in Güshi Khan's (1582–1655) conquest of Tibet in 1642.[21][40][41][42]
Tags:Buddhism,China,Manchu,Qing Dynasty, | |
| Rise to power | |
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The Hongwu Emperor specified his grandson Zhu Yunwen as his successor, and he assumed the throne as the Jianwen Emperor (1398–1402) after Hongwu's death in 1398. The most powerful of Hongwu's sons, Zhu Di, then the militarily mighty disagreed with this, and soon a political showdown erupted between him and his nephew Jianwen.[43] After Jianwen arrested many of Zhu Di's associates, Zhu Di plotted a rebellion, a rebellion that sparked a three-year civil war. Under the pretext 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 Jianwen himself, 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.[44]
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| New capital and foreign engagement | |
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Yongle demoted Nanjing to 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.[45] 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.[46]
The Ming Dynasty Tombs located 50 km (31 mi) north of Beijing; the site was chosen by Yongle.
Yongle also used Zheng He's treasure fleet to expand China's tributary trade system farther afield than ever before, used woodblock printing to spread Chinese culture, and used the military (especially cavalry) to expand China's borders north into Manchuria and south into Vietnam.
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| Treasure fleet | |
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A giraffe brought from the Ajuuraan Empire in the Horn of Africa, during the 12th 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 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.[47]
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| Tumu Crisis and the Ming Mongols | |
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Main articles: Tumu Crisis and Rebellion of Cao Qin
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 Oirat Mongol leader Esen Tayisi launched an invasion into Ming China in July Tags:Great Wall, | |
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