Ming dynasty

Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644. It was the last ethnic Han dynasty in China, supplanting the Mongol Yuan Dynasty before falling to the Manchu Qing Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty (Chinese: 明朝; pinyin: míng cháo) was also called The Great Ming Empire (Chinese: 大明帝國 Pinyin: Dà Míng Dì Guó). Though the Ming capital, Beijing, fell in 1644, remnants of the Ming throne and power (now collectively called the Southern Ming) survived until 1662.

This dynasty began as a time of renewed cultural blossoming, with Chinese merchants exploring all of the Indian Ocean and Chinese art (especially the porcelain industry) reaching unprecedented heights. Under Ming rule, a vast navy and army was built, with four masted ships displacing 1,500 tons and a standing army of one million troops. Over 100,000 tons of iron per year were produced in North China(rougly 1 kg per inhabitant), and many books were printed using movable type. Early Ming China was the most powerfull nation on Earth at the time. There were strong feelings against the rule of "the foreigners" among the populace during the following Qing Dynasty and the restoration of the Ming dynasty was used as a rallying cry up until the modern era.

Origins

The Mongol Yuan Dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming Dynasty. During the rule, the Mongols' discrimination against the Han Chinese is often considered the primary cause for the end of Yuan rule in China. This finally led to a peasant revolt that pushed the Yuan dynasty back to the Mongolian steppes. Other causes include collusion with Tibetan lamas in depriving Chinese of their lands, paper currency over-circulation, which caused inflation to go up ten-fold during Yuan Emperor Shundi's reign, and the flooding of the Yellow River as a result of Mongols' abandonment of irrigation projects. In Late Yuan times, Chinese agriculture was in shambles. When hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians were called upon to work on the Yellow River, the prospect of rebellion ripened, and war broke out. The revolt, led by Zhu Yuanzhang, established the Ming Dynasty in 1368. The Ming dynasty emperors would eventually be members of the Zhu family.

After many years of fighting, the rebel group led by Zhu Yuanzhang, secretly assisted by an ancient, highly secret intellectual fraternity called the Summer Place people, became the most powerful of the various Han Chinese groups. The future Hongwu emperor, Zhu declared the foundation of the Ming Dynasty in 1368, establishing his capital at Nanjing and adopting "Hongwu" as his reign title.

Hong Wu Kept a powerful army organized on a military system known as the Wei-so system, which was similar to Fu-ping system of Tang dynasty. According to Ming Shih gao, political intention of the founder of Ming dynasty in establishing wei-so system was to maintain a strong army while avoiding bonds between commanding officers and the soldiers.

With a Confucian aversion to trade, Hongwu also supported the creation of self-supporting agricultural communities. Neo-feudal land-tenure developments of late Song and Yuan times were expropriated with the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Great land estates were confiscated by the government, fragmented, and rented out; and private slavery was forbidden. Consequently, after the death of Yongle Emperor, independent peasant landholders predominated in Chinese agriculture.

Under Hongwu, the Mongol bureaucrats who had dominated the government for nearly a century under the Yuan dynasty were replaced by the Han Chinese. The traditional Confucian examination system that selected state bureaucrats or civil servants on the basis of merit and knowledge of literature and philosophy was revamped. Candidates for posts in the civil service or the officer corps of the 80,000-man army, once again, had to pass the traditional competitive examinations in the Classics. The Confucian scholar gentry, marginalized under the Yuan for nearly a century, once again assumed its predominant role in the Chinese state of mind.

Exploration to isolation

This is the only surviving example in the world of a major piece of lacquer furniture from the "Orchard Factory" (the Imperial Laquer Workshop) set up in Beijing during the early Ming Dynasty. Decorated in dragons and phoenixes it was made to stand in an imperial palace. Made sometime during the Xuande reign period (1426-1435) of the Ming Dynasty. Currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
( **See the closeup for more detail** )

Between 1405 and 1433, Ming emperors sent seven maritime expeditions probing down into the South Seas and across the Indian Ocean. The era's xenophobia and intellectual introspection, characteristic of the era's increasingly popular new school of neo-Confucianism, thus did not lead to the physical isolation of China. Contacts with the outside world, particularly with Japan, and foreign trade increased considerably. Yongle Emperor, fourth son of Hongwu, strenuously tried to extend China's influence beyond her borders by encouraging other rulers to send ambassadors to China to present tribute. The Chinese armies reconquered Annam and blocked Mongol expansionism, while the Chinese fleet sailed the China seas and the Indian Ocean, cruising as far as the east coast of Africa. The Chinese gained a certain influence over Turkestan. The maritime Asian nations sent envoys with tribute for the Chinese emperor. Internally, the Grand Canal was expanded to its farthest limits and proved to be a stimulus to domestic trade.

The most extraordinary venture, however, during this stage was the dispatch Zheng He's seven naval expeditions, which traversed the Indian Ocean and the Southeast Asian archipelago. An ambitious Muslim eunuch of Hui descent, a quintessential outsider in the establishment of Confucian scholar elites, Zheng He led seven expeditions from 1405 to 1433 with six of them under the auspices of Yongle. He traversed perhaps as far as the Cape of Good Hope and, according to the controversial 1421 theory, the Americas. Zheng's appointment in 1403 to lead a sea-faring task force was a triumph the commercial lobbies seeking to stimulate conventional trade, not mercantilism.

The interests of the commercial lobbies and those of the religious lobbies were also linked. Both were offensive to the neo-Confucian sensibilities of the scholarly elite: Religious lobbies encouraged commercialism and exploration, which benefited commercial interests, in order to divert state funds from the anti-clerical efforts of the Confucian scholar gentry. The first expedition in 1405 consisted of 62 ships and 28,000 men--then the largest naval expedition in history. Zheng He's multi-decked ships carried up to 500 troops but also cargoes of export goods, mainly silks and porcelains, and brought back foreign luxuries such as spices and tropical woods.

The economic motive for these huge ventures may have been important, and many of the ships had large private cabins for merchants. But the chief aim was probably political, to enroll further states as tributaries and mark the reemergence of the Chinese Empire following nearly a century of barbarian rule. The political character of Zheng He's voyages indicates the primacy of the political elites. Despite their formidable and unprecedented strength, Zheng He's voyages, unlike European voyages of exploration later in the fifteenth century, were not intended to extend Chinese sovereignty overseas. Indicative of the competition among elites, these excursions had also become politically controversial. Zheng He's voyages had been supported by his fellow low eunuchs at court and strongly opposed by the Confucian scholar officials. Their antagonism was in fact so great that they tried to suppress any mention of the naval expeditions in the official imperial record. A compromise interpretation realizes that the Mongol raids tilted the balance in the favor of the Confucian elites.

By the end of the fifteenth century, imperial subjects were forbidden from either building oceangoing ships or leaving the country. Some historians speculate this measure was taken in response to piracy. But during the mid-1500s, trade started up again with the "silverization" of China. China was like a bottomless sink. Silver replaced paper money and the value of silver skyrocketed relative to the rest of the world. Eventually with the laws of supply and demand, silver wasn't needed and there was a huge price inflation not just in China, but all over the world.

Historians of the 1960s, such as John Fairbank and Joseph Levinson have argued that this renovation turned into stagnation, and that science and philosophy were caught in a tight net of traditions smothering any attempt to venture something new. Historians who held to this view argue that in the 15th century, by imperial decree the great navy was decommissioned; construction of seagoing ships was forbidden; the iron industry gradually declined.

Ming military conquests

The beginning of the Ming dynasty was one of Ming military conquests as they sought to perpetuate their hold on power.

Early in his reign the first Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang provided instructions as injunctions to later generations. These instructions included the advice that those countries to the north were dangerous and posed a threat to the Ming polity and those to the south did not.Furthermore he stated that those to the south, not constituting a threat, were not to be subject to attack. Yet, either because of, or despite of, this, it was the polities to the south which were to suffer the greatest effects of Ming expansion over the following century.This prolonged entanglement in the South with no long lasting tangible benefits was ultimately to weaken the Ming.

Algriculture Revolution

Historian considers Hongwu emperor as one the greatest Emperor of china.From the first, great care was taken by Hung Wu emperor to distribute land to small farmers. It seems to have been his policy to favor the poor, whom he tried to help to support themselves and their families. For instance, in 1370 an order was given that some land in Hunan and Anhui should be distributed to young farmers who had reached manhood: to preclude the absorption of this land by unscrupulous landlords it was announced that the title to it is not transferable. About the middle of his reign an edicts was published to effect those who brought waste land under cultivation might keep it as their property and would never be taxed. The response of the people was enthusiastic. In 1393, the cultivated land rose to 8,804,623 ching and 68 mou and no dynasties can achieve that success.

One of the most important causes of the development of farming was water conservancy. The Hong Wu emperor paid special attention to the irrigation of farms all over the empire. Thus in 1394, a number of students from Kuo-tzu-chien was sent to all pronvinces to help developing irrigation and 40,987 ponds and dikes were dug in various of places.

Having himself come from a peasants family, Hong Wu emperor knew too well how much the farmers had to suffer from gentry and the wealthy. Many of the latter, relying their influence with the magistrates, not only encroached without scruple on the land of farmers, but even contived, by bribing sub-officials, to transfer the burden of taxation to the small farmers they had wronged. To prevent such abuses the Hong Wu Emperor institued two very important systems, "Yellow Records" and "Fish Scale Records", which served to guarantee both the government's income from land taxes and the people's enjoyment of their property.

Hong Wu Kept a powerful army organized on a military system known as the wei-so system. The wei-so system in the early Ming period was a great success because of the tun-tien system. At one-time the soldiers numbered over a million and Hong Wu emperor, well aware of the difficulties of supplying such a number of men, adopting this method of military settlements. In time, of peace each soldier was given forty to fifty mou of land. Those who could afford it supplied their own equipment; otherwise it was supplied by the government. Thus the empire was assured strong forces without burdening the people for its support. The Ming Shih states that 70% of the soldiers stationed along the borders took up farming, while the rest employed as guard. In the interior of the country, only 20% were needed to guard the cities and the remaining occupied themselves with farming. So, one million of Ming army were able to produces five million piculs of grain, which not only to support great numbers of troops but also pay the salaries of the officers.

Commerce Revolution

Hong Wu prejudice against the merchant class did not diminish the numbers of traders. On the contrary, commerce was on much greater scale than in previous centuries and continued to increase, as the growing industries needed the cooperation of the merchants. Poor soil in some provinces and over-population were key forces that led many to enter the trade markets. A book called "Tu pien hsin shu" gives a detailed description about the activities of mechants at that time. In the end, the Hong Wu policy of banning trade only acted to hinder the government from taxing private traders. Hong Wu did continue to conduct limited trade with merchants for neccesities such as salts. For example, the government entered into contracts with the merchants for the transport of grain to the borders. In payments, the government issued salt tickets to the merchants, whom could then sell them to the people. These deals were highly profitable for the merchants.

Private trade continued in secret because the coast was impossible to patrol and police adequately, and because local officials and scholar-gentry families in the coastal provinces actually colluded with merchants to build ships and trade. The smuggling was mainly with Japan and Southeast Asia, and it picked up after silver lodes were discovered in Japan in the early 1500s. Since silver was the main form of money in China, lots of people were willing to take the risk of sailing to Japan or Southeast Asia to sell products for Japanese silver, or to invite Japanese traders to come to the Chinese coast and trade in secret ports. The Ming court's attempt to stop this 'piracy' was the source of the wokou wars of the 1550s and 1560s. After private trade with Southeast Asia was legalized again in 1567, there was no more black market. Trade with Japan was still banned, but merchants could simply get Japanese silver in Southeast Asia. Also, Spanish Peruvian silver was entering the market in huge quantities, and there was no restriction on trading for it in Manila.

The Ming Code

The legal code drawn up in the time of Hong Wu emperor was considered one of the great achievements of the era. The Ming shih mentions that early as 1364, the monach had started to draft a code of laws. This code was known as Ta-Ming Lu. Hong Wu emperor took great care over the whole project and in his instruction to the ministers told them that the code of laws should be comprehensive and intelligible, so as not to leave any loophole for sub-officials to misinterpret the law by playing on the words. The code of Ming dynasty was a great improvement on that of Tang dynasty as regards to treatment of slaves. Under Tang code slaves treated as a species of domestic animal. If they were killed by a free citizen the law imposed no sanction on the killer. Under the Ming dynasty, however, this was not so. The law assumed the protection of slaves as well as free citizens. The Ming code also laid great emphasis on family relations. Ta-Ming Lu was based on Confucian ideas and remained one of the factors dominating the law of China until the end of the nineteeth century.

Decline of the Ming

Long wars with the Mongols, incursions by the Japanese into Korea, and wokou harassment of Chinese coastal cities by the Japanese weaken the Ming Empire. Historians debate the relatively slower "progression" of European-style mercantilism and industrialization in China since the Ming. This question is particularly poignant, considering the parallels between the commercialization of the Ming economy, the so-called age of "incipient capitalism" in China, and the rise of commercial capitalism in the West. Historians have thus been trying to understand why China did not "progress" in a similar pattern since the last century of the Ming dynasty. In the early 21st century, however, some of the premises of the debate have come under attack. Economic historians such as Kenneth Pomeranz have begun to argue that China was technologically and economically equal to Europe until the 1750's and that the divergence was due to global conditions such as access to natural resources from the new world.

Much of the debate nonetheless centers on contrast in political and economic systems between East and West. Given the causal premise that economic transformations induce social changes, which in turn have political consequences, one can understand why the rise of capitalism, an economic system in which capital is put to work to produce more capital, was somewhat of a driving force behind the rise of modern Europe. Capitalism after all can be traced in several distinct stages in Western history. Commercial capitalism was the first stage, and was associated with historical trends evident in Ming China, such as geographical discoveries, colonization, scientific innovation, and the increase in overseas trade. But in Europe, governments often protected and encouraged the burgeoning capitalist class, predominantly consisting of merchants, through governmental controls, subsidies, and monopolies, such as British East India Company. The absolutist states of the era often saw the growing potential to excise bourgeois profits to support their expanding, centralizing nation-states.

This question is even more of an anomaly considering that during the last century of the Ming dynasty a genuine money economy emerged along with relatively large-scale mercantile and industrial enterprises under private as well as state ownership, such as the great textile centers of the southeast. In some respects, this question is at the center of debates pertaining to the relative decline of China in comparison with the modern West at least until the Communist revolution. Chinese Marxist historians, especially during the 1970s identified the Ming age one of "incipient capitalism," a description that seems quite reasonable, but one that does not quite explain the official downgrading of trade and increased state regulation of commerce during the Ming era. Marxian historians thus postulate that European-style mercantilism and industrialization might have evolved had it not been for the Manchu conquest and expanding European imperialism, especially after the Opium Wars.

Post-modernist scholarship on China, however argues that this view is simplistic and at worst, flat out wrong. The ban on ocean going ships, it is pointed out, was intended to curb piracy and was lifted in the Mid-Ming at the strong urging of the bureaucracy who pointed out the harmful effects it was having on coastal economies. These historians, who include Jonathan Spence, Kenneth Pomeranz, and Joanna Waley-Cohen deny that China "turned inward" at all and point out that this view of the Ming Dynasty is inconsistent with the growing volume of trade and commerce that was occurring between China and southeast Asia. When the Portuguese reached India, they found a booming trade network which they then followed to China. In the 16th century Europeans started to appear on the eastern shores and founded Macao, the first European settlement in China.

Other historians usually link the "premature" development of European-style mercantilism and industrialization to the decline of the Ming dynasty.

The role of state support is the focus of much of this debate on the official downgrading of commerce. During the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Hongwu laid the foundations for a state uninterested in commerce and more interested in extracting revenues from the agricultural sector.The Ming economic system emphasized agriculture, unlike that of the Sung dynasty, which had preceded the Mongols and relied on traders and merchant for revenues. The laws against the merchants and the restrictions under which the craftsmen worked, remained essentially as they had been under the Sung, but now the remaining foreign merchants of Mongol time also fell under these new laws, and their influence quickly dwindled.

Although Hongwu's rule saw the introduction of paper currency, capitalist development would be stifled from the beginning or at least limited from reaching its true potential. Not understanding inflation, Hongwu gave out so much paper money as rewards that by 1425 the state was forced to reintroduce copper coins given that the currency was worth 1/70 of its original value.

State control (but not necessarily support) of the Chinese economy and for that matter, of society in all its aspects, remained the dominant characteristic of Chinese life in Ming times as earlier. Concentrating power would also have disastrous implications if the emperor were incompetent or uninterested in government. The key issue in this decline was the Ming political innovation of concentrating all power in the hands of the emperor. Western historians also argue that the quality of the emperors declined and this was exacerbated by the centralization of authority.

As mentioned, since the era of Hongwu the emperor's role this became even more autocratic, although Hongwu necessarily continued to use what he called the Grand Secretaries to assist with the immense paperwork of the bureaucracy, which included memorials (petitions and recommendations to the throne), imperial edicts in reply, reports of various kinds, and tax records.

Hongwu, unlike his successors, noted the destructive role of court eunuchs under the Song, drastically reducing their numbers, forbidding them to handle documents, insisting that they remained illiterate, and liquidating those who commented on state affairs. Despite Hongwu's strong aversion to the eunuchs, encapsulated by a tablet in his palace stipulating: "Eunuchs must have nothing to do with the administration," his successors revived their informal role in the governing process.

Yongle was also very active and very competent as an administrator, but an array of bad precedents was established. First, although Hongwu maintained some Mongol practices, such as corporal punishment, to the consternation of the scholar elite and their insistence on rule by virtue, Yongle exceeded these bounds, executing the families of his political opponents, murdering thousands arbitrarily. Third, Yongle's cabinet or Grand Secretariat, would become a sort of rigidifying instrument of consolidation that became an instrument of decline. Earlier, however, more competent emperors time supervised or approved all the decisions of this council. Hongwu himself was generally regarded as a strong emperor who ushered in an energy of imperial power and effectiveness that lasted far beyond his reign, but the centralization of authority would prove detrimental under less competent rulers.

Military Decline and the Building the the Great Wall

Starting around 1445, the Oirad Horde became a military threat under their new leader Esen Taiji. The Zhengtong Emperor personally led a punitive campaign against the Horde but the mission turned into a disaster as the Chinese army was anihilated and the Emperor was captured. The Ming government back in the capital quickly installed his younger brother as the new Jingtai Emperor. After this defeat and later raids by the Mongols under a new leader, Altan Khan, the Ming adopted a new strategy for dealing with the northern horsemen: a big wall.

Almost 100 years earlier (1368) the Ming had started building a new, technically advanced fortification which today is called the Great Wall of China. Created at great expense the wall followed the new borders of the Ming Empire. Acknowledging the control which the Mongols established in the Ordos, south of the Yellow River, the wall follows what is now the northern border of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. Work on the wall largely superceeded military expeditions against the Mongols for the last 80 years of the Ming dynasty and continued up until the end (1644).

The Ming also had to deal with a brief period of Japanese military operations onto mainland Asia. Japanese pirates made frequent attacks on Shanghai from 1550 till the 1560s. Then the Japanese under their new military leader Hideyoshi lanched an invasion of Korea starting in 1592. The Ming put forth considerable military forces to help their Korean vassel-kings of the Joseon Dynasty repell this invasion. The Japanese attack finally came to an end with the death of Hideyoshi in 1598.

The Network of Secret Agents

In Ming dynasty, networks of secret agents flourished throughout the military. Due to the humble background of Zhu Yuanzhang before he became emperor, he harbored a special hatred against corrupt officials and had great awareness of revolts. He created the Kumyiwei, to offer himself further protection and act as secret police throughout the empire. Although there are a few successes in their history, they were more known for their brutality in handling crime than as an actually successful police force. In fact, many of the people they caught were actually innocents. The Kumyiwei had spread a terror throughout their empire, but their powers were decimated as the eunuchs' influence at the court increased. The eunuchs created two groups of secret agents in their favour; the East Factory and the West Factory. Both were no less brutal as the Kumyiwei and probably worser, since they were more of a tool for the eunuchs to eradicate their political opponents than any other things.

Fall of the Ming Dynasty

The fall of the Ming Dynasty was a protracted affair, its roots beginning as early as 1600 with the emergence of the Manchu state under Nurhaci. With superior artillery the Ming were able to repeatedly fight off the Manchu invaders, notably in 1623 and in 1628. However they were never able to capitalise on their victories and from 1629 onwards the Ming were wearied by a combination of internal strife and constant harassment of Northern China by the Manchu; who had turned to raiding tactics so as to avoid facing the Ming armies in open battle.

Unable to attack the heart of Ming China directly, the Manchu instead bided their time, developing their own artillery and gathering allies. In 1633 they completed a conquest of Inner Mongolia, resulting in a large scale recruitment of Mongol troops into the Manchu banners, and an additional route into the Ming heartland.

By 1636 the Manchu ruler Abahai was confident enough to proclaim the Imperial Qing Dynasty at Shenyang, which had fallen to the Manchu by treachery in 1621, taking the Imperial title Chongde. The end of 1637 saw the defeat and conquest of China's traditional ally Korea by a 100,000 strong Manchu army, and the Korean renunciation of the Ming dynasty.

On May 26, 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng. Seizing their chance, the Manchus crossed the Great Wall after Ming border general Wu Sangui opened the gates at Shanhai Pass, and quickly overthrew Li's shortlived Shun Dynasty. Despite the loss of Beijing (whose weakness as an Imperial capital had been foreseen by Zhu Yuanzhang) and the death of the Emperor, Ming power was by no means destroyed. Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi and Yunnan could all have been and were in fact strongholds of Ming resistance. However, the loss of central authority saw multiple pretenders for the Ming throne, unable to work together. Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662, when the last real hopes of a Ming revival died with Zhu Youlang.

(See also the relevant sections in the Qing Dynasty article)