Ancient China: The Early Modern Period: The Ming & Early Qing

Historical & Political Introduction

In January 1368 Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne.
This was 9 months before the flight of the Manchu court.
He adopted the reign name of Hong and called the dynasty Ming ("brightness')
His reign was to last until 1398.
He was succeeded by his grandson
In 1403 the throne was usurped by Hongwu's fourth son, the Yongle emperor.

The reigns of Hongwu & Yongle proved examples of effective rule.
That was in the early stages of the dynastic cycle.
After Yongle's death, the dynasty began a long decline.
It was briefly interrupted by a period of division in the second half of the 16th century.
This culminated with the collapse in 1644 due to peasant rebellion & Manchu invasion.

The Manchu invaders adopted the dynastic title of the Qing
They built upon the experiences of previous dynasties of conquest.
This was a highly successful form of Sino-Manchu rule.
Under three able emperors:
a) Kangxi (r. 1662-1722)
b) Yongshen (r. 1723-35)
c) Qianlong (r. 1736-95)
The Chinese empire reached its greatest extent
The Chinese culture achieved its greatest sophistication.
In the late Ming period and increasingly under the Qing, foreign contacts proliferated.
By the end of the 18th century the dynasty was showing some evidence of decline.

The Establishment of the Ming

Zhu Yuanzhang was born in 1328 near Fengyang in modern Anhui.
This was an area soon to be affected by
a) the change of course of the Yellow River
b) the silting up of the Grand Canal
c) the depredations of the pirates.
The area was also under the influence of the Maitreya cult of the White Lotus sect.
This cult anticipated the coming of the future Buddha and the establishment of a "pure land."
From about 1340 the White Lotus cult adherents turned to collective violence.
They became known as the Red Turbans.
Zhu Yuanzhang was caught up in the disorder.
After the death of his parents in the famine of 1344, he. became destitute.
for a time he took refuge in a Buddhist temple, then became a beggar, then a soldier.

Zhu Yuanzhang & the Red Turbans

In 1351 Toghto forced thousands of men to work on re-routing the Yellow river.
They also had to dredge the Grand Canal
His coercive measures provoked the outbreak of the Red turban rebellion.
Within a year the Red Turbans had swept through the Yangzi valley.
They had confined the government forces to Nanjing and other major cities of the region.
In 1352 Zhu Yuanzhang joined a Red Turban band led by Guo Zixing, near Fengyang.
Within a year he had recruited 24 men from his native area.
He also had married Guy Zixing's adopted daughter.
Over the next two years the forces of Toghto suppressed much of the rebellion activity.
In January 1355 he was dismissed and the rebel movement revived.
Hal Liner the leader of the northern Red Turban declared himself emperor.
By the end of. the decade the Yuan dynasty had totally lost control of the Yangzi valley.
The area was being contested by several regional leaders.

From this struggle Zhu Yuanzhang was to emerge the victor.
His success may be explained in part by his military skills and making tactical alliances.
He gained a reputation for his willingness to take advice from Confucian scholars
He also showed benevolence towards the common people.
By 1355 he had established a base camp & built up a personal army.
The following year he captures Nanjing
He began changing from leader of a populous sectarian revolt to a leader of a political movement aspiring to traditional legitimacy.
Each time his forces captured a town he adopted a new civil administration.
They were staffed by scholar officials, some had previously served the Yuan.
He engaged officials to supervise the repair of the river defences.
He also promoted the revival of agriculture.
He broke his link with the Red Turban ideology & with northern Red Turban Dynasty.
This dynasty came to an end in 1367 when Hal Liner died from drowning.
He also showed his eagerness to acquire the qualities associated with a Chinese emperor.
In January1368, he declared the founding of the Ming Dynasty.
He assumed the title of Hongwu.

Hongwu/Taizu

He conquered China to end the Yuan Dynasty.
He claimed the Mandate of Heaven to establish the Ming Dynasty.

Military Expeditions

A military expedition was sent to the north where it forced the flight of the Mongol court.
They captured Dadu, which was renamed Beiping ("the north is pacified")
The most serious threat was posed by Koko Temur
In the 1360s he had established himself as an independent military leader around Taiyuan.
In 1372 a large force chased Koko Temur into Mongolia and inflicted a heavy defeat on him.
It was only after his death in 1375 that theMongol threat declined.
An expedition had been sent to recover Sichuan
It had been seized by the southern branch of the Red Turbans.
In 1377 the Korean state of Koguryo was persuaded to abandon its loyalty to the Yuan rulers.
It had recognize the Ming.
In 1379 it was brought to obedience by force.
In the early years Hongwu continued nearly all the features of government introduced by the Mongols.
He retained much of their military structure.
The army was an occupational caste commanded by an hereditary officer clan.
From 1364 these forces were organized according to the weiso system.
This meant into guards, numbering 5000 men and battalions numbering 1000 men.
it was too costly to maintain as a charge to the state.
Honmgwu continued the Yuan practice of making the armies self-sufficient.
He did this through the extension of the military colony.
The commanders of these forces were the survivors of Hongwu's original band of 24 men.
They also included those who had joined him earlier in his campaign.
They were rewarded with noble titles and were ranked higher than military & civil officers.
the same principles were applied to the early Ming system of government.

Government Structure

The Yuan central government was made up of
a) a Secretariat-Chancellory headed by two chancellors,
b) the two chancellors conducted all routine administrative business
c) a powerful independent Bureau of Military Affairs
d) a Censorate, which was concerned with the surveillance of the government.
This structure had been adopted by Hongwu during his rise to power.
It was retained through the first decade of his reign.
The moderation & caution which had marked the early years came to, an abrupt end in 1380.
This was when Hu Weiyong the chancellor on the left was accused of conspiracy
He was executed as a result of this.
His real fault was having challenged the authority of the emperor.
He did this by building up a power base in the civil bureaucracy.
Hu Weiyong's death was followed by a purge costing the lives of 30,000 of his supporters.
It led to important changes in government
The office of the chancellor was abolished.
The emperor demanded that it never be restored by his successors
The Secretariat-Chancellor was dismantled.
The authority of the military commission was fragmented
hongwu became his own chief minister.

Educational Reforms

During the remaining years of his reign hongwu ruled as a conscientious autocrat.
He kept a punishing schedule of audiences.
He concerned himself with many details of government
He took particular interest in education
He ordered the establishment of schools in every prefecture, sub-prefecture, and district.
The staff and students were supported with public funds.
This is the beginning of an empire-wide state supported educational system.
In 1382 Hongwu revived the examinations.
It now became the main avenue for entry in the civil service.

Examination & the Bureaucracy

In 1394, he discovered that not a single northerner had passed the jinshi examination
He then amended the pass list & initiated a quota system.
This reserved a proportion of examination passes to certain groups.
The jinshi ("presented scholar") numbered 871 for the entire reign of Hongwu.
Yet only a small proportion of the civil bureaucracy comprised of about 15, 000 officials.
Many jinshi attained positions of influence.
It provided an important counterbalance to those who owed their appointments to hereditary merit.
Hongwu always claimed to be concerned with the welfare of his people.

Land & Tax Reforms

He promoted resettlement schemes
He gave some encouragement to textile productions & trade.
His most enduring legacy derived from the policies relating to taxes.
He was the first emperor of a dynasty without heavy financial commitments
So, he was in a strong position to reform the tax system.
He took steps to equalize the land-tax burden
He also maintained a punitive level of taxation on ten prefectures in the south of the Yangzi.
this is where the opposition to his rise to power had been strongest.
His ambition was to apply complete control over the entire land & tax system.

In 1370 he ordered that each household should be issued with registration certificates.
This would record details of the family, including its status and occupation.
In 1381 these records were consolidated in the Yellow Books or registers
Hongwu is also credited with having commissioned a monumental survey.
The returns being edited into land registers called "fish-scale books"
The project was neither new nor applied nationally.
Hongwu's priority in tax matters was control.
This was demonstrated in two other measures.
rural communities were organized into the lijia system
Groups of 110 households were grouped as li
They were responsible for the payment of taxes & the discharging of labour services.
Overlapping this arrangement was the tax-captain system.
Wealthy families were made responsible for the collection of grain taxes in their area.
Hongwu died in 1389 and was buried on the slopes of a mountain near Nanjing.

The Reign of Jianwen (r. 1399-1402)

Hongwu was succeeded by his grandson, who reigned as the Jianwen emperor.
Janwen was deposed by his uncle, Hongwu's 4th son, the Prince of Yan.
The Prince of Yan would be known as the Yongle emperor.
Jianwen was better educated than his grandfather
He accepted the advice of Confucian tutors to rescind measures of Hongwu's reign.
He also attempted traduce the autonomy of tr hereditary princedoms.
This prompted the rebellion of the Prince of Yan
He commanded th northern frontier army.
This concluded with the reported death of Jianwen in a fire in the imperial palace.

The Reign of Yongle (1403-24)

Yongle moved quickly to consolidate his position.
He did this by restoring features of government as practiced by Hongwu.
He did make some changes, one being the creation of a new Grand Secretariat.
It would replace the Secretariat-Chancellery which his father had abolished in 1380.
Yongle also transferred the capital from Nanjing to Beijing.
This would permit closer control over the military forces in the north.

To restore the food supply required the restoration and extension of the Grand Canal.
This was completed in 1415; it began in 1406.
Yongle's rule was his pursuit of ambitious foreign policy which was similar to that of Khubilai.

Frontier Expeditions

At the beginning the most significant threat came from the Mongol ruler Tamerlane.
Having conquered the Central Asian empire, in 1404 Tamerlane set out to invade China.
He died on his way the following year.
On China's north-east frontier the Urianghad and Jurchen tribes were disunited.
Yongle persuaded them to accept Chinese overlordship.
In the West , in what is now Mongolia , the Tartar and Oirat still presented a danger.
Between 1440 & 1424 Yongle led an expedition against them and died on the last one.
This expeditions were somewhat successful but very costly
They also failed to eliminate the Mongol threat.
In the south, Yongle's forces eliminated surviving pockets of Yuan & tribal resistance.
He then moved against Annam.
Since the Tang, they had been independent & were sending tribute to China.
In 1406, the Annamese throne was usurped.

this provided a pretext for sending in a Chinese army..

The Chinese were eventually forced to withdraw, after Yongle's death.
The was due to patriotic resistance by the Annamese.

Political Aspects: The Middle Years of the Ming

The death of Yongle brought an end to the expansionist stage of Ming dynasty.
The rest of the period was spent in pursuing defensive policies by the Ming emperors.
The political character of the Ming is usually referred to as "Ming absolutism."
The reference is to the unchecked growth of imperial power from the late 14th century.
This tendency was apparent under the Song and it advanced further under the Mongols.
Under Hongwu, it assumed its highest form.
Hongwu had abolished the post of chief minister in 1380.
It placed him in total control of the central government.
Hongwu had also overseen the production of revised Ming legal code.

Ming Absolutism

This absolutist framework was supported by a system of surveillance.
It was supported by harsh punishment.
Hongwu had taken this severe line on official corruption.
He believed that the laxity of the Yuan administration contributed to the dynasty's fall.
Hongwu maintained an elaborate surveillance operation.
It operated through the use of spies, secret agents, and the Embroidered Guards.
The Embroidered Guards carried out major purges of his reign.
Also associated with absolutism was the assumption of a political role by the court eunuchs.
Eunuchs had exceptional access to the emperor.
They were able to exert considerable influence on him.

The Eunuchs During the Ming Dynasty

The eunuchs' role was particularly important if the emperor was enthroned when he was a minor.
Eight of the eleven emperors who succeeded the throne between 1435 & 1644 were minors.
Hongwu had created a tablet with an inscription of warning.
It said, "Eunuchs are forbidden to interfere with government affairs. Those who attempt to do so will be subjected to capital punishment."
He sent some of them to tributary states as his envoy and to provinces as tax-auditors.
Yongle entrusted eunuchs such as Zheng He with the command of major ventures.
Yongle also removed the eunuchs from bureaucratic control.
He appointed them to head the Eastern Depot, the headquarters of the secret police.
The Xuande emperor (r. 1426-35) rescinded the ban on eunuchs being educated.
He established a palace eunuch school.
Thereafter eunuchs gained a key position as the emperor's personal secretaries.
They were able to control the flow of information and so bypassing the secretariat.
Emperors trusted the eunuchs because they were entirely dependent on imperial favour.
In return, eunuchs exploited their privileged positions at the expenses of the bureaucracy.
The consequence was the emergence of eunuch dictators.

Eunuch Dictators

The first such eunuch dictator was Wang Zhen.
The next example is Liu Jin, chief of the imperial staff for the Zhengde emperor
Zhengde had come to the throne as a minor in in 1506.
Liu Jin was corrupt and oppressive.
His enemies accused him of plotting to kill the emperor for which crime he was executed.
The last & most infamous off the eunuch dictators was Wei zhongxian.
He achieved total ascendancy over the Tiaqi emperor (r. 1621-7)
The em[peror agave him lots of gifts & privileges.
All the eunuch dictators subverted the controls over the abuse of power.
They did
a) by gaining the emperor's confidence
b) by using spies & the secret police to investigate as a reign of terror.

Economic Aspects of the Early Ming

The population during the Ming period rose from 65 million to about 150 million.
The average of land cultivated increased from less than 400 million mou to about 500 mou.
A standard mou was about 6000 square feet or one-seventh of an acre
The reasons for this were
a) major advances in agricultural technology
b) diffusion of improved planting materials
c) early ripening rice introduced from Vietnam in the 11th century.
d) plants from the New World (sweet potato, peanuts, maize) reached China in late Ming.
This enabled the food supply to match population growth.

Environmental Disasters

The decades of the 1430s & 1440s were marked by
a) devastating succession of droughts
b) floods
c) pestilence
d) epidemics
This caused severe loss of life
It made possible that female infanticide was widely practiced.
The majority of the population lived in the countryside & depended on agriculture for a living.

Urbanization & the Economy

During the Ming [period cities and towns grew & some industries flourished.
Cities like Jingdezhen was the porcelain centre
Hangzhou was the great city of silk production.
In there Songjiang prefecture in the Yangzi delta many towns specialized in cotton textiles.
The growth of industry and of urbanization brought social problems
But it did not precipitate an industrial revolution (like in Europe, much later)

The Problem of Currency

The Ming Dynasty rarely attempted to intervene in the operation of the economy
Its policies relating to taxation & currency are of some relevance.
Under the Yuan, paper currency had wide circulation.
In the late Yuan period the reckless issue of paper notes led to inflation & a silver shortage.
The Mongols understood that a paper currency should be convertible.
They understood that paper currency should be backed by silver reserves
hongwu was oblivious to thinned.
He issued large quantities of non-convertible paper currency.
By 1425 paper notes were worth only one fortieth of their face value.
By the end of the 15th century paper currency had ceased to have any commercial value.
The result was that the monetary system was restricted to copper & unminted silver.
The main sources of the Ming government revenue was the land tax
This included labour services & the salt monopoly.

Taxation Measures

Hongwu's tax reforms guaranteed revenue would be inadequate for future state uses.
From 1526 onwards the Ming government treasury was in deficit.
To increase revenue a wide variety of supplementary taxes were levied.
The land taxes were as complex as personal income tax in the 20th century USA.
This prompted the Ming government to put forth a series of measures.
This was to simplify the tax system and improve its collection.
this was called the Single-Whip reform - therefore single entry system
The reforms were never carried out in their totality.
The same payment of tax continued.
Labour services were still required in some areas.
The land tax became more complicated.

The Social Aspects of the Early Ming

It was during the Ming that the group referred to as the gentry emerged fully.
the term is used to translate the Chinese expression shenshi - officials & scholars.
Its use implies that entry into the group was achieved by success in the examination system.
Also it was by purchase of rank.
The group existed to provide a reservoir of talent to support the bureaucracy.
The group owed its emergence to the economic and social changes of the Ming period.
It also owed its emergence to the formal process of examinations.

The Rise of the Gentry

The commercialization of the economy and its rise stimulated the formation of wealthy gentry.
They controlled land & credit.
They may be identified with the tax captains of the early Ming period.
It created a large group of families prosperous enough to educate their sons.
Also it made it possible for their sons to participate in the activities of the gentry society.
The gentry were rural elites with a wide range & flexible repertoire of strategies at their disposal.
These strategies included
a) land-owning
b) education
c) degree-holding
This was an upward social mobility in a major society not seen prior to the industrial revolution.

The Late Ming Period

For a century they pursued defensive & conciliatory policies towards the steppe tribes
The Jailing emperor (r. 1522-66) had to deal with the rise of a new Mongol confederation
This was under the Altan Khan
He had raided Chinese territories to get supplies for his campaigns against the Oirats.
In 1550 Mongol forces besieged Beijing and looted the outer suburbs.
These raids continued until 1571 when Altan Khan accepted a peace treaty.
China's military weakness had been exposed
Her northern borders continued to be threatened by the Mongols until the end of the 16th century.
This was when a new threat from there Jurchen or Manchus had appeared.
The same defensive strategies characterized the Ming maritime affairs.

The Arrival of Europeans & the Rise of Maritime Piracy

In 1514 the first Portuguese reached China.
In 1517 Tome Pires, the Portuguese ambassador arrived at Guangzhou.
He was permitted to travel to Beijing, although he was not received in audience.
In the 1550s, the Portuguese were allowed to establish a trading station at Aomen (Macao)
They were ordered to remain apart from the China population.
Now Japanese traders & pirates had appeared along the south-east coast of China.
They had broken the restrictions on foreign trade
There were large scale attacks by the Japanese pirates.(wokou)
They were able to expose the inadequacy of the coastal defence.
In the 1550s raiding parties established bases on the coast of Zhejiang.
This threatened the whole region.
In 1554 Songjiang was attacked and its magistrate was put to death.
It had been the centre of the cotton industry.
When the ban on China's foreign trade was rescinded in 1567 peace was restored.

Matteo Ricci

Ten years later Alessandro Valignano arrived in Macao
He had obtained permission for the Jesuits to establish a mission on Chinese soil
In 1598, his successor Matteo Ricci reached Beijing.

The Weakening of the Ming

Failure to sustain frontier policies showed the weakness of the Ming Dynasty.
It did not indicate the cause of the fall of the dynasty.
This is usually explained in a variety of ways.
a) beginning with the process of the dynastic cycle.
b) the emphasis on the inadequacy of the emperors
c) the machinations of ministers & eunuchs.
the Jailing Emperor (r. 1522-66) withdrew from the active supervision of the government.
He did this for long periods of time.
He became obsessed with Daoism and the search for the elixirs of immortality.
This eventually led to his death by poisoning.

Later Emperors

From 1549 to 1562, the most powerful official was Yan Song.
The Wanli emperor's reign (1573-1620) had the support of Zhang Juzheng.
He was committed to raising government efficiency and improving the financial administration.
After his death in 1582, the government fell into the hands of the eunuchs.
The reign of Tianqi emperor (r. 1621-7) saw rte rise of the eunuch Wei Zhongxian.
The reign of Chongzhen emperor (1628-45) saw the service of untrusty officials.

Donglin Academy

In 1577 Zhang Juzheng, Wanli's grand secretary was criticized by the Confucianists.
It was because he did not observe the period of mourning after his father's death.
The same year he ordered a personnel evaluation.
This resulted in the discharge of a number of officials
This was an activity to be repeated by his successors.
Discharged officials joined academies, the most notable being the Donglin Academy.
It was founded in 1604, which was based near Wuxi in the Yangzi delta.
the Donglin movement had a regional basis.
It represented the interests of the land-owning class resentful of Ming absolutism.
Donglin sympathizers were kept out of government until Wanli's death in 1620.

The Rise of Alienation

In the early years of Tianqi's rule, officials with Donglin connections briefly dominated the court.
They were forced to retire when the eunuch dictator Wei ZXhongxian gained power
Until the dynasty fell, factionalism from the Donglin movement weakened the government.
Officials & scholars were alienated.
This made them susceptible to changing their allegiance when the dynasty collapsed.

Causes of the Fall of the Ming Dynasty: Climate Change

The decline and fall of the Ming Dynasty has been linked to climate change.
In the late Ming period (1626 and 1640) China experienced unusually severe weather.
This was marked by high temperature, drought, & floods.
The population which had been growing steadily, stagnated or went into a decline.

Causes of the Fall of the Ming Dynasty: World Wide Economic Depression

By the early 17th century, the economy was supported by a vast inflow of silver.
This was paid for Chinese exports.
A European trade depression took place in the 1620s.
It interrupted the trade with the Philippines and Japan in the 1640s.
This reduced the inflow of silver
It damaged the silk industry
It drove up the price of grain.

Ancient China

Sunday, November 28, 2021

The Early Modern Period: The Ming & Early Qing

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