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, Chinese art, and Chinese 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.

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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 Campaigns

Many 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.

B

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 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.