Zhu Yuanzhang claimed the Mandate of Heaven in 1368 and established the Ming

Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty ruled their empire for almost 300 years, prospered from
freer private trade and industry and with trade with Europeans, and then it fell due to
internal rebellions and the attack of the Manchus.

The Beginning of the Ming Dynasty

During the final 40 years of the Yuan Dynasty era (1279–1368), there were famines,
drought, flooding on the Yellow River, a bubonic plague pandemic, and other natural
disasters. Perhaps tens of millions of people died, and these disasters were seen as signs
that the Yuan Dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven.

This ancient political doctrine encouraged people to rebel. Starting in the 1350s, there
were almost 20 years of rebellions. The Yuan troops tried to quell the rebellions, but
they grew in size, and rebel armies started holding cities and large tracts of territory.

These armies became large and powerful. A powerful army south of the Yangtze River
was led by Zhu Yuanzhang.

Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398)

Mausoleum of Zhu Yuanzhang in Nanjing

Zhu Yuanzhang grew up as a poor peasant. He was born in 1328. Perhaps typical of a
poor peasant at the end of the Yuan era, he saw a lot of death, starvation, and fighting.

It is said that he was the youngest of seven or eight brothers. Due to poverty, several of
his older brothers were given away. In 1344, when he was 16, the Yellow River flooded
and flooded his home. Then his family died of disease.
He took shelter in a Buddhist monastery that also ran out of money, and he was forced
to leave and beg for food. But he returned to the monastery when he was 24, and he
learned to read and write there. But the Mongol army destroyed the monastery as
part of their campaign against rebellion.

Zhu Yuanzhang joined a rebel group. Then they joined a large Red Turban army that
had Zoroastrian and Buddhistbeliefs, and he became their leader before he was 30.

Zoroastrianism was a Western religion that had spread through Central Asia before Islam
spread. Zoroastrians believe in a supreme deity.

What he believed personally at that time or when he was older isn't clear. He was thought
to be a defender of Confucianism. But he also built mosques and wrote eulogies about
Muhammad.

He relied on the support of Muslims. Zoroastrians tend to syncretize religions, so maybe

he had a mixture of religious beliefs.

Zhu Yuanzhang's Successful Wars

In 1358, Zhu's army conquered the important city of Nanjing. Nanjing was an
important city that was strategically located, and his occupation allowed him to control
part of the Yangtze River and the region south of it. He made Nanjing his capital.

Over the next 10 years, he defeated powerful rival armies. He attacked the Yuan
Empire capital of Dadu (Beijing) and gained control of Beijing in 1368.

Zhu Yuanzhang adopted "Hongwu" as his title. His name means "Vast Magnificent
Military." The Yuan dynasty court fled northwards.

Nanjing Tours: Nanjing was Zhu's capital. Most of the historical sites related to him are
in Nanjing.

Zhu Yuanzhang and the Mandate of Heaven

Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1368. By naming
himself to be the Emperor, according to the traditional thinking, a powerful ruler was
announcing that he had the "Mandate of Heaven" to rule — essentially that Heaven picked
him to be the ruler.
The Mandate of Heaven is an ancient political idea. It was thought that heaven's
displeasure with a dynasty was marked by large-scale natural disasters.

It is interesting that the empires of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing all started and ended the
same way. Each dynasty was established by powerful and long-lived rulers.

But at the end of the dynasties, unusually severe periods of natural calamities along
with wars and internal rebellions weakened the ruling courts. The rebels claimed that the
dynasty had lost the mandate of heaven, and they were thus encouraged to attack the
dynasty, and they brought down they dynasty.

The Policies of the Hongwu Emperor (1368–1398)

During his 30 year reign, Zhu Yuanzhang instituted major policy initiatives. Some of
his policies became permanent Ming policies, and he reversed some of his own policies
when he was old.

Hongwu's Policies Towards Eunuchs

He wanted to make sure that eunuchs had no ruling power, because he thought they
were dangerous. Eunuchs had involved themselves in internal politics in earlier dynasties,
and they were a lot of trouble. So he forbade them from having power in the court, and
insisted that they be illiterate.

However, later in the Ming era, eunuchs regained power and became like a parallel
administration along with the Confucian officials.

The Hongwu Emperor staffed his bureaucracy with officials who passed the Neo-
Confucian Imperial Examinations.

These officials were dependent on the court for their position, and so they might prove
to be more loyal. They were generally very intelligent and well educated.

Pro the Peasants

The Confucian viewpoint was that merchants were parasitic in the empire. The Hongwu
Emperor wanted agriculture to be the source of the empire's wealth instead of
industry and trade as in the Song Empire.
Hongwu grew up as a peasant, and maybe he championed their plight since he knew first
hand that they were often reduced to slavery and starvation by the rich and the
officials.

He wanted peasants to live in self-supporting agricultural communities. So he forced

many to migrate to settle other places.

He instituted public work projects, and he tried to distribute land to peasants. During
the middle part of his reign, Hongwu made an edict that those who brought fallow land
under cultivation could keep it as their property without being taxed. This policy helped
the peasants.

By the end of his reign, cultivated land increased substantially. The peasants
prospered because they sold their produce to the growing cities. During his reign, the
population increased quickly.

Anti the Merchant Class

He tried to weaken the merchant class and to force them to pay high taxes, and he
even relocated a large number of them.

However, decades after his reign the opposite happened. The merchant class
prospered along with industry and trade. Chinese manufactured goods such as
porcelain and silk were sold for high prices around the world.

Hongwu's Monetary Policy

Like the Yuan Dynasty clan, the Hongwu Emperor also issued paper currency. Paper
currency became the main currency in the Yuan Empire after his death.

However, due to inflation, by 1425 paper currency was worth only a few percent of the
printed value. So silver and bronze coins became the main currency of the empire.

Hongwu's Tactics of Repression

After he became the Emperor, he became fearful of rebellions and mutiny. It is said
that he made it a capital offense for any of his court (his clan and high officials) to criticize
him.

The dictum proved true: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." There
were massacres, and people feared to speak against him. He, lower officials and his secret
police killed tens of thousands of officials and their families. He tortured many people and
even killed many concubines, perhaps hundreds or thousands.

It is said that in 1380, a thunderbolt hit his palace, and he stopped the killings and
massacres for some time because he was afraid that Heaven would punish him.

Perhaps these repressive tactics were successful in a fashion. He maintained his power
and consolidated control, and he stayed alive until old age. He reigned for thirty years.
While he was dying in 1398, he had his physicians and concubines put to death.

Tour: You can tour the mausoleum where he was buried near Nanjing. It is called
the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum.

Middle of the Ming Era (1398–1557)

As did the later rulers of the Yuan Dynasty, the empire's later rulers reversed the
policies of Emperor Hongwu.

Change of Capital and Dynastic Lineage

As did the later rulers of the Yuan Dynasty, the empire's later rulers reversed the
policies of Emperor

Hongwu.
About the year 1400, there was an insurrection against Hongwu's dynastic line and
a change of the capital to Beijing.

According to Hongwu's will, Hongwu's grandson Zhu Yunwen became the ruler when
Hongwu died in 1398. He only ruled for four years because his uncle led
an insurrection against him. His uncle was named Zhu Di.

Zhu Di burned down the palace built by Hongwu in Nanjing, and he made himself the
emperor in 1402. He moved the capital to Beijing and reversed many of Hongwu's
policies. He is called Emperor Yongle.

The Ming army destroyed the Yuan Dynasty's palace in Beijing when they first captured
the city. Construction of a new capital city there for Emperor Yongle lasted from 1407
to 1420.

It is said that the court used hundreds of thousands of workers to build it. The
famous Forbidden City was built as the palace for Zhu Di.
In order to provide quick transportation to his capital city, he rebuilt the Grand
Canal from 1411–1415. This increased commerce in the north. More than a hundred
thousand people worked on this project as well.

Emperor Yongle died in 1424, and he was buried in a large mausoleum called Chang Ling,
northwest of his Beijing capital. .

Change of Trade and Eunuchs Policies

Emperor Hongwu had imposed restrictions on foreign trade and on the merchant class,
and he disfavored eunuchs. In contrast, Emperor Yongle built a big fleet, and he made
Zheng He, (1371–1433) who was a Muslim eunuch, the leader of it.

He also reversed Hongwu's policy of barring eunuchs from power. The fleet was sent on
expeditions to gather tribute and to go to the West to trade.

The fleet sailed as far as Arabia. Zheng He and his Muslim sailors made the Hajj at Mecca.
He may have also reached Africa. It is said that seven missions were sent out and that
2,000 ships were constructed for these missions. The first voyage from 1405 to 1407 is
said to have involved 317 vessels and a total of 26,800 men.

The End of the Trade and Tribute Missions

However, the Confucian bureaucrats, fearing the power of eunuchs in the
court, canceled these court-sponsored missionsafter Zheng He died in 1433.

Perhaps renewed Mongol attack was another reason for the change of policy since money
was needed for defense. In 1449, a Mongol leader named Esen Tayisi launched an
invasion of the Ming Empire. The Mongols captured the emperor. But the emperor's
brother became the emperor.

After the Mongols returned the emperor, there was a coup and the original emperor
retook his throne. Later, the Mongol leader Altan Khan (1507–1582) invaded again and
raided as far as the outskirts of Beijing.

The imperial trade and tribute missions were very expensive, and a huge amount of
money was needed to fight the wars with the Mongols and to reconstruct
the Great Wall for defense against them. Much of the Great Wall people can see now
was built during the Ming era after the 1449 capture of the emperor.
In 1479, a court official burned the court records of Zheng He's voyages. Perhaps he
wanted to rid the empire of interest in foreign countries or in traveling overseas. Because
of this, it isn't clear exactly where the fleets of Zheng He went to.

Some people claim that the ships went to the Americas. Perhaps to stop long-distance
voyages, laws were promulgated that limited the size of ships to keep them small.

Great Wall Tours: The Ming Dynasty rebuilt the Great Wall over a hundred year period
after 1449. The most popular day trips are to the Mutianyu and the Badaling sections.

Trade Policy and the Arrival of Europeans

About the year 1500, the dynasty had an isolationist policy towards trade. Private
foreign trade was outlawed, so a lot of illegal trading was carried out. The officially
sanctioned trading was only allowed in three ports. Japanese were allowed in one
designated port only once every ten years.

In the early 1500s, the Europeans arrived to trade. Rafael Perestrello, who was a
cousin of Christopher Columbus, arrived in Guangzhou in 1516 to trade.

Then a large Portuguese expedition came to Guangzhou in 1517, but the landing party
was put in jail. After this, there were naval battles that the Portuguese generally lost.

But in 1557, the Portuguese convinced the Ming court to agree to a treaty that
made Macau a legal trading port of the Portuguese.

Heavy Reliance on Foreign Trade

However, by the middle of the dynastic era, there was another reversal of trade policy.
Trade was again permitted and encouraged. Private merchants traded, and the trade
wasn't like the imperial trade missions of Emperor Yongle.

Through the private merchant trade, the merchant class became powerful and
rich although merchants were repressed earlier in the dynastic history. People had more
freedom to work as they wished.

A belief that was current among the bureaucrats and ruling court later in the dynastic era
was that the merchants knew the best about how to manage their resources. The
empire became more of a free market, and the merchant class that was considered to be
the bottom social tier at the beginning of the Ming Empire became prosperous and
powerful.
There was a blurring of social class lines because both merchant class and farmer
class clans prospered, became literate and cultured, and their members passed the
Imperial Examination and entered the government.

The Wealth Boom from Foreign Trade

The empire experienced prosperity about 70 years before the empire ended. In the late
1500s, the merchants prospered greatly from foreign trade. The fortunes of the empire
became heavily reliant on trade.

Though the Ming court stopped sending out fleets to the West, Western Europeans came
to them to trade and to teach Christianity. There was a high demand for manufactured
products such as porcelain and silk in the West and Japan.

The Portuguese, Spanish, and the Dutch vied for the commerce. The Europeans also
acted as middlemen in trade with Japan because the Japanese also highly valued Ming
products. Both the Japanese and the Spanish had silver mines, and they sent a very large
amount of silver for the products.

Silver became so plentiful that silver coins replaced copper coins and paper banknotes
as the common medium of exchange.

The Fall of the Ming Dynasty (1557–1644)

Like the Yuan Empire, the Ming Empire had strong leaders and was prosperous at the
beginning. But like the Yuan Empire, at the end there were rebellions and natural
disasters, a period of cold and dry climate, the economy was in shambles, people
believed that the Ming court had lost the Mandate of Heaven, and the ruling court was
ineffectual.

Natural Disasters, Wars and Rebellions

There were great disasters in the last decades that were seen as signs that the dynasty
lost the Mandate of Heaven, and people rebelled. The natural disasters, climatic
change, plagues and rebellions were eerily similar to those that happened at the end
of the Yuan Dynasty and earlier dynasties.

Earthquakes
One of the first big blows was an earthquake in Shaanxi in 1556 that is thought to be
the deadliest earthquake in history. It is thought that about 800,000 people died
then. It is estimated that it measured 8 on the Richter scale. The earthquake killed about
30 percent of the people in Xi'an.

During the early 1600s, there were an unusually large number of earthquakes also.
From 1621 to 1627 there were two earthquakes above 7 on the Richter scale.

Wars Against the Japanese

Then in the 1590s, a Japanese Shogun tried to conquer the region. Two Japanese
campaigns failed, but the war was very costly for the Ming court. It was thought that
the court paid 26,000,000 ounces of silver to pay for this war.

The Little Ice Age

In the first half of the 1600s, famines became common in northern China because
of unusually dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season. The change of
climate occurred throughout the world and is called the Little Ice Age.

Similar climactic conditions had brought disaster to the Yuan Empire about 300 years
earlier.

Strangely connected to the dry and cold climate, there were also large floods. These
were partly due to mismanagement of flood-control projects or their intentional
destruction. There were similar floods at the end of the Yuan era.

Plague
Finally, a great epidemic started in 1641. It isn't known how many died from the
plague, but it is said that 90% of the people in one area died from the plague.

The plague is reminiscent of the bubonic plague that struck the Yuan Empire in their
last decades.

Misrule
Though the first Ming Emperor banned eunuchs from having power, one of the last
emperors secluded himself and surrounded himself with court eunuchs. Wei Zhongxian
(1568–1627) who was a eunuch ruled in the emperor's stead. After he committed
suicide, other eunuchs continued to cause chaos and weakened the court.
The court also didn't have cohesion or the ability to develop good policies since eunuchs
took a lot of the power and terrorized people by torturing them.

Monetary Crisis
The court didn't have funds to help the people or stop the rebellions. Besides the natural
calamities and the rebellions that depleted the court's money, the empire faced a
monetary crisis.

The flow of foreign money was greatly diminished due to fighting between Spain
and the Dutch and English. The Spanish rulers tried to have the silver of the Americas
brought directly to Spain instead of being exported to the Ming Empire. This raised the
price of silver sharply.

Then in 1639, a Japanese Shogun limited foreign imports as part of his isolationist policy.
This further limited the empire's trade and contributed to the Ming Empire's monetary
crisis. The value of silver jumped markedly.

Because of the inflation of the price of silver and natural disasters, the farmers had
more difficulty to pay their taxes in silver as they were required to do. This damaged
Ming court revenues, and the farmers found that paying their taxes in silver as they were
required to do was a great burden.

There were great deficits, and soldiers deserted in large numbers because they were
not paid.

The Final Rebellions

People rebelled in various places. Many peasants were starving and unable to pay their
taxes, and they were no longer in fear of the Ming court. They began to form large
rebel bands.

The Ming troops were dispirited and perhaps underfed. A peasant soldier named Li
Zicheng (1606–1645) mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early
1630s after the government failed to ship supplies there. His rebel troops had a base of
power in Hubei.

In the 1640s, another ex-soldier named Zhang Xianzhong (1606–1647) created a rival
rebel base in Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
In 1644, Li Zicheng's troops were allowed into Beijing when someone opened the gates
for him to enter. The last Ming emperor hanged himself on a tree. But the rebel troops
didn't enjoy this victory.

The Victory of the Manchus (1644)

Facing the rebel army who held Beijing as well as a Manchu army across the border, a
Ming general who guarded the Great Wall named Wu Sangui (1612–1678) sided with the
Manchus and opened the gates of the Great Wall. In this way, the Manchus conquered
Beijing.

However, it took a while for them to conquer the rest of the empire because Nanjing,
Fujian, Guangzhou, and other places had Ming strongholds. Koxinga (Zheng
Chenggong) set up an anti-Qing base on the island of Taiwan.

The Shunzhi Emperor (1644–1661) was proclaimed the ruler of the Qing Empire in
1644.

The Ming Society and Culture

The Ming Empire seems to have remained much like the Yuan and Song Empires. Though
the empire was influenced by Westerners, there wasn't much innovation of
technology or religious or social change except that social divisions became blurred.

The court and the officials seemed to be embroiled in a morass of divisions and court
intrigues and in pursuing their own happiness. The rulers and eunuchs used their funds
for pleasures and luxuries.

The court officials and the population in general were slow to adopt Western science.
At the end of the dynasty, the court returned to isolationism.

The Introduction to Catholicism

There was a "Reformation" of Christianity in Europe, and a Counter-Reformation of
Catholics. A group of highly educated Catholics called Jesuits arose who sent missionaries
to Asia and they made a small impact on the Ming Empire.

In 1582, a Jesuit named Ricci landed in Macau. He and some of his fellow Jesuits highly
appreciated the philosophy and the culture of the Ming Empire to the point that they
deeply studied the teachings of Confucianism and Daoism. Ricci in particular impressed
the court by his Western education and knowledge of the Confucian Classics.

The Jesuits went to Beijing, and by 1605, there were a thousand converts. By 1615, there
were 10,000. Some of these converts were members of the Ming court.

The Jesuits and Franciscans and others taught about Europe and Western sciences, and
they also introduced the East and its philosophy and religion to the Europeans.

The Science of the Ming Dynasty

Overall, the Ming court officials used the weapons that they obtained from the West by
trade, but their science improved little. The main advances in scientific knowledge
during the Ming era were accomplished through the work of Jesuits in the imperial court
and the medical scholar named Li Shizhen.

Li Shizhen
Li Shizhen (1518–1593) was a medical scholar who was outside the court. He
independently wrote a comprehensive book on herbal and natural medicine that was an
important advance in traditional medical knowledge.

He worked alone with the help of his family and produced what is considered the
best natural medicine reference encyclopedia in pre-modern history. He was his
era's expert on traditional medicine and herbology.

He spent most of his life laboring to collect information on herbs, healing techniques,
herbal medicine prescriptions, and medicines derived from minerals and animals. He was
also a practicing doctor.

Because he was an official for a year in the Imperial Medical Institute in Beijing, he had
access to old and rare medical treatises. He also studied the medical books that were
current in his era.

He distilled all the information to write a very long encyclopedia of natural medicine called
the Bencao Gangmu (本草纲目, lit.: Herbal Essential Details). This long text is usually
called Materia Medica in English.

Jesuit Scientist Officials

 Some Jesuits were welcomed to be court officials after 1601. Some of the Jesuits in the
Ming court were very good scientists such as Johann Adam Schall and Mateo Ricci, and
they tried to introduce Western science to the rulers and officials.

They wrote texts about Euclidean geometry, astronomy, physics, and other subjects in
Chinese. They were a source of information about the rest of the world and recognized
as great scholars.

Ming Dynasty Sights and Tours

Most of the Ming Dynasty cultural sites are in Beijing and Nanjing. These two cities
served as the capitals of the dynasty. Beijing was the capital for the final 262 years.

Ming sites to enjoy in a Beijing tour:

 The Forbidden City was largely constructed by Emperor Yongleis one of the
outstanding sites you can tour.

 The Great Wall of China: Most of the existing sections of the wall were built during the
Ming Dynasty.

 The Temple of Heaven was where the emperor went every winter solstice to worship
Heaven and to solemnly pray for a good harvest.
 The Ming Tombs: The imperial cemetery covers an area of 120 square kilometers, and
there are 13 Ming Dynasty emperors buried there.

Our No. 1 Beijing Tour: Our 4-Day Essence of Beijing Tour covers the main highlights
of Ming Beijing, including the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Heaven.

Ming sites in Nanjing include:

 Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. It is the tomb of Zhu Yuan Zhang who founded of the dynasty.

 The Zhonghua Gate in Nanjing.

Ming Heritage in Guilin:

 The Mausoleum of the Ming Princes: These are the tombs of generations of Ming
officials who were dispatched by the court to govern the Guilin region
 Ming dynasty
CHINESE HISTORY
WRITTEN BY:
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
LAST UPDATED:

12-14-2015 See Article History

Alternative Title: Ming
RELATED TOPICS

 dynasty
 Tianqi
 Hongwu
 Yongle
 Zheng Chenggong
 List of cities in China
 Zhengtong
 China
 Zhu Yizun
 Chongzhen
Ming dynasty, Wade-Giles romanization Ming, Chinese dynasty that lasted
from 1368 to 1644 and provided an interval of native Chinese rule between
eras of Mongol and Manchu dominance, respectively. During the Ming
period, China exerted immense cultural and political influence on East Asia
and the Turks to the west, as well as on Vietnam and Myanmar to the south.

 Standing male figures, glazed ceramic, China, Ming dynasty, 1500s; in the Indianapolis Museum of
…

Photograph by Jenny O’Donnell. Indianapolis Museum of Art, gift of Keith Uhl Clary and Kwang Fei
Young, 1992.119 and 1992.120

HISTORY
The Ming dynasty, which succeeded the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (1206–1368),
was founded by Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu, who was of humble origins, later
assumed the reign title of Hongwu. The Ming became one of the most stable
but also one of the most autocratic of all Chinese dynasties.

The Hongwu emperor, hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk, 14th century; in the National Palace …

Courtesy of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

The basic governmental structure established by the Ming was continued by

the subsequent Qing (Manchu) dynasty and lasted until the imperial institution
was abolished in 1911/12. The civil service system was perfected during the
Ming and then became stratified; almost all the top Ming officials entered
the bureaucracy by passing a government examination. The Censorate
(Yushitai), an office designed to investigate official misconduct and corruption,
was made a separate organ of the government. Affairs in each province were
handled by three agencies, each reporting to separate bureaus in the central
government. The position of prime minister was abolished. Instead, the
emperor took over personal control of the government, ruling with the
assistance of the especially appointed Neige, or Grand Secretariat.

READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC

 China: The Ming dynasty

Basically, the Ming incorporated the Song dynasty’s policy of relying on the
literati in managing state affairs. However, from the Yongle emperor onward,
the emperors relied increasingly on trusted eunuchs to contain the literati.
Also introduced at that time was a system of punishment by flogging with a
stick in court, which was designed to humiliate civil officials—while also
making use of them to realize the emperor’s aim of maintaining practical
control of the state in his own hands. By decree of the emperor, a vast spying
service was organized under three special agencies.
SIMILAR TOPICS

 Yuan dynasty
 Han dynasty
 Song dynasty
 Xia dynasty
 Tang dynasty
 Qin dynasty
 Sui dynasty
 Jin dynasty
 Shang dynasty
 Qing dynasty
Struggles with peoples of various nationalities continued throughout the Ming
period. Clashes with Mongols were nearly incessant. During the first decades
of the dynasty, the Mongols were driven north to Outer Mongolia (present-
day Mongolia), but the Ming could not claim a decisive victory. From then
onward the Ming were generally able to maintain their northern border, though
 by the later stages of the dynasty it in effect only reached the line of the Great
Wall. On the northeast, the Juchen (Chinese: Nüzhen, or Ruzhen), who rose
in the northeast around the end of the 16th century, pressed the Ming army to
withdraw successively southward, and eventually the Ming made the east end
of the Great Wall their last line of defense. The Ming devoted considerable
resources toward maintaining and strengthening the wall, especially
near Beijing, the dynasty’s capital.


Portion of the Great Wall of China built during the Ming dynasty.
© Joanna Glab/Fotolia

In early Ming times, China’s domain extended considerably in the south as a

result of its successful invasion of northern Vietnam. But the brief occupation
of Vietnam was met with determined local guerrilla resistance, and the Ming
government quickly decided to restore the boundary to its original line. It never
again attempted to push southward. During the 15th century the government
had organized large tribute-collecting flotillas commanded by Zheng He to
extend China’s influence. Also during the Ming, Japan became more
aggressive. In the 15th century Japanese raiders teamed up with Chinese
pirates to make coastal raids in Chinese waters, which were of a relatively
small scale but were still highly disruptive to Chinese coastal cities. The Ming
 government eventually tried to stop Japan’s attempt to control Korea, which
became a long and costly campaign.
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The Ming government was gradually weakened by factionalism between civil

officials, interference by palace eunuchs, the burdens of a growing population,
and a succession of weak and inattentive emperors. In 1644 a rebel leader, Li
Zicheng, captured Beijing, and the local Ming military commander requested
aid from the Manchu tribal peoples who had been encroaching on China’s
northern borders. The Manchu drove out Li Zicheng and then remained,
establishing the Qing dynasty.

Phoenix crown of the empress dowager Xiaojing, 17th century, Ming dynasty, China.
Asian Art & Archaeology, Inc./Corbis

CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

 Exploring Korea and China: Fact or Fiction?

Despite the many foreign contacts made during the Ming period, cultural
developments were characterized by a generally conservative and inward-
looking attitude. Ming architecture is largely undistinguished with
the Forbidden City, a palace complex built in Beijing in the 15th century by the
Yongle emperor (and subsequently enlarged and rebuilt), its main
representative. The best Ming sculpture is found not in large statues but in
small ornamental carvings of jade, ivory, wood, and porcelain. Although a high
level of workmanship is manifest in Ming decorative arts such as cloisonné,
enamelware, bronze, lacquerwork, and furniture, the major achievements in
art were in painting and pottery.


The Hall of Eminent Favour at the Ming tombs complex, near Beijing.
© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

While there were two main traditions in painting in the Ming period, that of
“literati painting” (wenrenhua) of the Wu school and that of the “professional
academics” (huayuanpai) associated with the Zhe school, artists generally
 stressed independent creation, impressing their work with strong marks of
their personal styles.


A Tall Pine and Daoist Immortal, ink and colour on silk hanging scroll …
National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

There were many new developments in ceramics, along with the continuation
of established traditions. Three major types of decoration emerged:
monochromatic glazes, including celadon, red, green, and yellow; underglaze
copper red and cobalt blue; and overglaze, or enamel painting, sometimes
combined with underglaze blue. The latter, often called “blue and white,” was
imitated in Vietnam, Japan, and, from the 17th century, in Europe. Much of
this porcelain was produced in the huge factory at Jingdezhen in present-
 day Jiangsu province. One of the period’s most-influential wares was
the stoneware of Yixing in Jiangsu province, which was exported in the 17th
century to the West, where it was known as boccaro ware and imitated by
such factories as Meissen.


Vase, cloisonné enamel, Ming dynasty, c. 1500; in the British Museum, London. Height …
Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
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The Ming regime restored the former literary examinations for public office,
which pleased the literary world, dominated by Southerners. In their own
writing the Ming sought a return to classical prose and poetry styles and, as a
result, produced writings that were imitative and generally of little
consequence. Writers of vernacular literature, however, made real
contributions, especially in novels and drama. Chinese traditional drama
originating in the Song dynasty had been banned by the Mongols but survived
underground in the South, and in the Ming era it was restored. This
was chuanqi, a form of musical theatre with numerous scenes and
contemporary plots. What emerged was kunqu style, less bombastic in song
and accompaniment than other popular theatre. Under the Ming it enjoyed
great popularity, indeed outlasting the dynasty by a century or more. It was
adapted into a full-length opera form, which, although still performed today,
was gradually replaced in popularity by jingxi (Peking opera) during the Qing
dynasty.

What led to the decline and fall of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644
CE)?
5 Answers

Fugong Wu, lives in Texas

Written Dec 9, 2014

In no particular order, and most of these tie into each other:

1. Irresponsible emperors and political faction struggle. Most historians view the later reign
of Wanli Emperor (1563-1620) as the starting point of the Ming dynasty's decline. After Wanli's three
successful campaigns (1592 - 1600), he stopped doing his administrative duties, delegating power to
the eunuchs and leading to a power struggle between political factions of the ministers. Tianqi
Emperor emperor (1620-1627) made it worse - he delegated all power to the corrupt eunuch Wei
Zhongxian who got rid of many capable officials and gave government positions to his supporters,
who could be as corrupt as they want without consequence.

2. Corruption and failing economy. Very few government officials were not corrupt during this
period. A large portion of all taxes, military wages, even disaster relief funds from the central
government were pocketed by officials from all levels of government. The official currency was taels
of silver, but most peasants could only pay taxes in grain. Paper money wasn't valuable and people
hoarded silver in their homes. Since silver can't be printed, the economy's supply of silver decreased
over time. Towards the end, the court was bankrupt and military expenditures to keep the dynasty
afloat far outweighed total income.

3. Famine. During Chongzhen Emperor's reign (1627-1644), northwest China saw famine after
famine after famine. Peasants had no food, but corrupt officials pocketed disaster relief money and
didn't relieve any tax burden. The masses couldn't survive like this and rebelled against the
government.

4. Internal and external threats. The Manchus rallied under Nurhaci in Wanli's era and have
been threatening the Ming dynasty ever since. Under Hong Taiji, they set up the Qing dynasty and
became a bigger threat with cannon technology acquired from Ming defectors. Internally, peasant
rebels (caused by the famines) run rampant all over central and western China, resulting in severe
damage to the Ming heartland. There were fewer and fewer generals capable of dealing with these
threats. Some were murdered by Chongzhen (ie. Yuan Chonghuan), or forced to die in battle under
unwinnable conditions (Lu Xiangsheng, Sun Chuanting).

5. Undercompensated troops. During Wanli's era and before, soldiers were given a standard
wage and an additional 50 taels of silver for each enemy head they acquired in battle. This
contributed directly to the effectiveness of the army during Wanli's campaigns. Later on, the
administration went bankrupt and couldn't even make wage payments on time. As a result, soldiers
often fragged their officers to demand wages or looted civilian villages. Needless to say, most of these
troops had terrible morale. When peasant rebel leader Li Zicheng marched on Beijing, the
commanders of Datong and Xuanfu (two entire military districts!) surrendered to him without a
fight. This gave him a direct path to Beijing, which he conquered after only two days of siege,
resulting in Emperor Chongzhen committing suicide and the final nail in the coffin for the Ming
dynasty.

Li Zicheng, the guy who ended the Ming dynasty.

(Image from Baidu)
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD)

After proclaiming the Ming dynasty, the Hongwu emperor

Zhu Yuanzhang left his 4th son Zhu Di (1360 AD - 1424
AD) in control of Dadu (Beijing), in order to use it as a
military outpost that could ward off a possibly returning
Mongol army. The new Ming capital was established
at Nanjing (Chinese for southern capital) and thereby
closer to Zhu Yuanzhang's southern power base.

After further military campaigns, that successfully

consolidated his control over all of China, Zhu Yuanzhang
set about rebuilding a proper Confucian
institutionalbureaucracy within his lands, that was staffed
by the Chinese literati elite once again. However, Zhu
Yuanzhang never fully trusted the literati class, possibly
because of their improper selfish behaviour during the
plague outbreak in the late 1340's and early 1350's or
because of his own lack of a proper education. the Hongwu emperor, founder of the Ming
dynasty. By Filiepstellamans at
nl.wikipedia [Public domain], from
Wikimedia Commons

His mistrust of the literati expressed itself in his decision to immediately suspend the imperial
examinations (that he had reinstated himself) just after they were first held again in 1370 AD. Realizing
later that he needed the literati to effectively govern China, he reinstated the examination system in 1380
AD. The imperial examinations henceforth continued without further interruption until 1905.
Artwork by Qiu Ying ca. 1540 AD showing imperial examination takers gather around the wall where results
had been posted. public domain in the United States

Zhu Yuanzhang's suspicion of the literati also expressed

itself in repeated bloody purges, most notably in 1380 AD,
when he became suspicious of the loyalty of his chief
minister Hu Weiyong and had him, his family,
everyone who worked with him and their families executed,
altogether thousands of people! He subsequently
abolished the office of chief minister and took its
administrative and political functions into his own hands as
well, leaving him little time for rest and sleep.

painting of Hu Weiyong
drawing of Hu Weiyong's execution

After Zhu Yuanzhang's death in 1398 AD and according to

his wishes, his grandson Zhu Yunwen (1377 AD - 1402
AD) succeeded him on the throne. Zhu Yuanzhang's 4th
sonZhu Di understandably resented this decision, as he
was the oldest surviving son of him.

Zhu Yunwen was a well-educated young man, who had

grown up within the imperial palace, where many
Confucian officials had tutored him. That's why he had a
totally different approach of dealing with the literati. He
chose the reign title of Jianwen emperor for himself
(Jianwen - to nourish the cultural, literary), which signalled
that he planned to have a much more productive and
trusting working relationship with the literati officials.
Ming dynasty picture of the Jianwen
Emperor. By Someone in Ming dynasty
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Zhu Di saw this as a betrayal of the political ideals of his father Zhu Yuanzhang and began to plot to usurp
the imperial throne by himself. Between 1400 AD and 1402 AD, he undertook a series of political and
military actions, that culminated in his army's attack of the imperial capital Nanjing in 1402 AD, in which the
imperial palace was burnt down. The body of the Jianwen emperor was never found, which led to
speculation later on in history.
site of the former Ming dynasty palace in Nanjing. public domain in the United States

Through this attack, Zhu Di successfully usurped the imperial throne and proclaimed himself as the 2nd
Ming emperor, erasing the short reign of the Jianwen emperor from the official history books for some time.
However, many Confucian literati officials at first refused to recognize Zhu Di as the legitimate new emperor.
When the official Fang Xiaoru refused to acknowledge Zhu Di's legitimacy as emperor in an official edict,
he and many of his sympathizers were executed.
Portrait painting of Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor. the Confucian literati official Fang Xiaoru, who refused
By Anonymous court artist [Public domain], via to accept Zhu Di as the new emperor
Wikimedia Commons

Nevertheless, after the remaining literati officials had accepted the legitimacy of his ascent to power, Zhu
Di - who reigned under the title of Yongle emperor (yongle = eternal happiness or eternal joy or everlasting
happiness) - enjoyed a fairly positive working relationship with them, unlike his father before him, and didn't
resort to occasional bloody purges to keep them under control.

Most notably, he increased the political and administrative power of the Grand Secretariat. That was the
policy-formulating and document processing institution of the imperial government. As such, it was
responsible for edicts, proclamations, allocation of funds, incoming reports from province-based officials or
capital-based government ministries . . . Zhu Di henceforth employed its leading officials as his official
counsellors and advisors.

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In the year 1420 AD, the Yongle emperor Zhu Di moved the imperial capital and administrative center from
Nanjing (henceforth a subsidiary political center) to Beijing ("northerly capital" in Chinese), a move that had
taken a considerable amount of preparation time. Upon Zhu Di's initiative, around 100.000 families of
carpenters, stone masons, artisans etc. had moved north in 1407 AD in order to build a new great capital
a few kilometres south of the Mongol capital of Dadu. The result of these gargantuan building efforts -

Beijing's Forbidden City - is now Beijing's most visited tourist attraction with millions of visitors per
year.

Panoramic photo of Beijing's Forbidden City. Click on it for a larger view. By 刘灼盛 (Own work) [CC-BY-
SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

monument of admiral Zheng He. located in
the Stadthuys, Melaka, Malaysia. By
hassan saeed from Melaka, Malaysia
(Admiral Zheng He) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via
Wikimedia Commons
The Yongle emperor also demonstrated his power and the
wealth of China by sending the eunuch Zheng He (1371
AD - 1433 AD) as a commander of a grand maritime fleet
of hundreds of ships on 7 exploratory voyages all around
Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, the East coast of Africa
and the Persian Gulf. Before Zheng He, only Chinese
maritime traders had been active in these waters. These
voyages, that took place between 1405 AD and 1433 AD
(continuing even after the Yongle emperor's death in 1424
AD), projected China's power into the world and led to
greater diplomatic and trade relations between China and
the visited countries. After 1433 AD, the Chinese imperial
state readjusted its focus from maritime exploration back to
the traditional strategic concern of protecting its internal
borders (especially its inner - Asian frontier) from
potentially dangerous outside forces.

Map of the routes of Zheng He 1405 AD - 1433 AD. By Continentalis (This file was derived from:Mapa
mundial.jpg) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

After the Yongle emperor's death in 1424 AD, several young emperors succeeded him on the Ming throne,
who didn't contribute much leadership. The first of those was the Yongle emperor's son Zhu Gaochi (1378
AD - 1425 AD), who reigned for less than a year, then Zhu Zhanji (1399 AD - 1435 AD) from 1426 - 1435
before the only 8-year old boy Zhu Qizhen (1427 AD - 1464 AD) ascended the throne. Despite weak
leadership from the part of the emperor during the first part of the 15th century, the Ming dynasty finally
stabilized by the middle of the 15th century and entered a Golden Age of peace and prosperity through
great domestic economic expansion.

Ming dynasty painting of Zhu Ming dynasty painting of Zhu Ming dynasty painting of Zhu
Gaochi, the Hongxi emperor. By Zhanji alias Emperor Xuanzong. Qizhen alias Emperor
Ming Dynasty Imperial Painter By Palace Painter [Public Yingzong. By Palace Painter
[Public domain], via Wikimedia domain], via Wikimedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia
Commons Commons Commons

The institution of the Grand Secretariat had become a very powerful political force in China during the
period of weak leadership. Among its many Confucian officials, the three Grand Secretaries Yang Shiqi
(who was also a prominent literary authority), Yang Rong and Yang Pu - now known as "the Three Yangs"
- gained special distinction for their guidance of the affairs of China until the early 1440's.

Grand Secretary Yang Shiqi

Grand Secretary
Grand Secretary Yang Pu
Yang Rong

Whereas eunuchs had played a prominent role in the leadership of China during earlier dynasties, they
were now relegated to clerical functions regarding imperial communications. In fact, the first Ming emperor
Zhu Yuanzhang had even excluded eunuchs from any meddling in government affairs whatsoever. During
his reign, they were not allowed to work with official government documents and weren't even allowed to
be taught to read!
Zhu Yuanzhang's son Zhu Di had however used eunuchs as emissaries and secret agents, before usurping
the throne with his attack of Nanjing. Later, as an emperor, he had continued to use eunuchs as his personal
agents, perhaps because of his mistrust of the literati.

Ming Emperor Xuanzong with his imperial eunuchs. By unknown court artist (Palace Museum Beijing)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

During Zhu Di's reign, eunuchs got involved in the transmission and handling of official documents within
the imperial palace. A special academy inside the imperial palace trained them for this task. Meanwhile,
the Confucian literati officials continued with their traditional tasks of administering the country from the
outside of the inner palace and all around the country, maintaining the imperial examination system and
shaping the cultural discourse within the empire. The power balance between influential eunuchs within the
inner palace and the literati officials outside of it was fairly stable during this period of the Ming dynasty.

The Ming dynasty eunuchs gained more and more political power over time, especially within the secret
police and as special commissioners that were sent out by the emperor to oversee certain economic
activities. Outside the compounds of the imperial inner palace, eunuchs had to deal with the Confucian
prejudice that it is sinful to cripple one's body and cut off one's bloodline. The powerful eunuchs that could
afford it sought to gain some respect within society by patronizing Buddhism and the arts.
Economically, this period of the Ming dynasty was a great
age of economic development. That was facilitated to a
large degree by the network of postal roads that spanned
all across the Ming empire. The first Ming emperor Zhu
Yuanzhang had initiated the construction of these postal
roads. By the middle of the 15th century, there were postal
stations every few miles, where postal couriers could rest
overnight or simply just exchange their horses. The
perhaps greatest example for such a postal station is

the Yucheng Post in Gaoyou (north of Yangzhou) that

makes for an interesting visit.

inside the Yucheng Post in Gaoyou

In this way, it took a mere 5 weeks to reach the southern parts of the empire from Beijing. Postal couriers
transmitted official messages all across the empire, keeping the emperor and government officials
everywhere well-informed of all the latest developments across the country.
Map of the Ming dynasty state. By Arab Hafez at English Wikipedia. Later version(s) were uploaded by
Beao, Historiographer at English Wikipedia. (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This network of postal roads was also used by merchants and other travellers. Everyone who used these
roads benefited from the fact that guards were posted along these routes and that the army was garrisoned
nearby. In this way, it was safe for merchants who carried valuable trade goods or wealthy travellers to
travel along these roads. Since private travellers and merchants weren't allowed to stay at the official postal
stations, their needs for lodging and food were met by private hostels, taverns and inns that began to spring
up along these routes.
Ming court artist painting showing the Ming emperor Jiajing on his state barge. By Unknown Ming court
artist [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Even though they couldn't stay at the official postal stations, private merchants were however allowed to
use the imperial transport barges (if they weren't fully loaded already) for the shipment of their commercial
goods along the Grand Canal, which had been built to ship grain from southeastern China to Beijing (where
not enough grain could be grown to feed its large population). Since the earlier mentioned process of
regional economic specialization had continued and even intensified (Jiangnan region specialized in cotton
and silk production, certain areas in Zhejiang and Hunan became tea growing regions, Jingdezhen in
northern Jiangxi produced porcelain at its imperial kilns etc.), there were more and more products that were
traded all over China and even internationally. Not only commercial goods were transported along the
imperial postal roads, but also large amounts of food, since the highly specialized economic centres had
become food importing regions.

It was not only the improved logistics that had led to this
expansion of trade, but also the increased money flows
within China and internationally along with the emergence
of prototypes of commercial banks. Paper money was used
again during the Ming dynasty, bills of trade were used
between merchants and other kinds of private commercial
paper, but it was especially the inflow of large amounts of
silver (acquired in the tally trade from Japan's proliferating
silver mines and from trading with the Spanish, who had
established a trading post in Manila on the Philippines in
the 1570's) that kept the Chinese domestic economy
awash in cash and minimized the importance of barter.

A Ming Dynasty banknote. See page for

author [Public domain], via Wikimedia
Commons
This monetization of the Chinese economy along with an increased international demand for Chinese goods
further fired up the growth of the Chinese economy.

Even though the growth of international trade was beneficial for China, the imperial government tried to
keep it under tight control. Worried about coastal security, the first Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang had
issued a maritime interdict in an effort to control the proliferating coastal trade. Occasionally, international
trade was even completely banned. At these times, it was pirates - the chronic scourge of the southeastern
Chinese coast in the 15th and 16th century - who stepped into the void and filled the demand for Chinese
and international goods.

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The significant accumulation of wealth along with higher agricultural yields (through technological
improvements) during the Golden Age of the Ming greatly improved the standards of living of many if not
most Chinese people and resultedin a substantial growth of the Chinese population from about 155 million
people in 1380 AD to about 230 million around the year 1500 AD. By the late middle of the 17th century,
the Chinese population had reached about 270 million people!

However, even this Golden Age of the Ming was not without its problems. Security issues along its northern
frontier (recurring Mongol raids) and southeastern coast (pirate raids) led to factional division and political
debates within the imperial court. In 1449 AD, recurring Mongol raids along the Great Wall near the imperial
capital of Beijing motivated the emperor Zhu Qizhen upon the advice of his eunuch counsellor Wang
Zhen (the Grand Secretariat had by then lost some of its influence after the period of "the three Yangs") to
launch a punitive military expedition against the Mongols, which he led by himself. That turned out to be
disastrous, when the Mongols attacked the imperial entourage and captured the emperor himself. He was
later released for a large ransom payment.

Ming cavalry shown in a scroll painting. See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Mongol raids across the Great Wall recurred in the late 1540's and early 1550's, by which time pirate raids
along the southeast coast (particularly in the wealthy Jiangnan area, which was easily accessible from the
sea because of its location at the mouth of the Yangtze River) had become a serious security issue as well.
The Ming managed to handle this threat through a combination of military force and a relaxation of trade
policies along the coast (which turned many pirates into legal traders). Henceforth, maritime trade (both
within China and internationally) increased substantially during the 2nd half of the 16th century through the
easier legal access to ports along the Chinese coast, which coincided nicely with the arrival of the Spanish
in these waters.
A Chinese junk ship during the Ming dynasty. See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Near the end of the 16th century, other problems began to

plague the Ming dynasty during the reign of the Wanli
emperor Zhu Yijun (1563 AD - 1620 AD), who reigned from
1572 AD until 1620 AD. His advisor Zhang Juzheng (the
chief Grand Secretary of the Ming state at that time) had
initiated a series of well - intentioned reforms with the
objective of strengthening the power of the central Ming
state.

One part of these reforms - named the "Single Whip

Reforms" - changed the revenue taxation system. Until
then, taxes had customarily been "paid in kind" , usually in
grain (in the fall after the harvest season) or cloth (after the
winter weaving in spring).
Portrait of the Wanli emperor Zhu Yijun. By
Ming Dynasty Imperial Painter [Public
domain], via Wikimedia Commons
 Zhang Juzheng's reforms changed the payment of taxes to
a cash transaction in silver. Instead of paying different
kinds of taxes in different ways (some taxes in grain, others
in cloth etc.), taxable individuals had to now pay all their
taxes in silver , which they obtained through the sale of
their products. This new system worked well in the
wealthier regions, that had benefited from substantial
economic growth (like the Jiangnan region and other
coastal regions) and where silver was in abundant
circulation (through trade with the Spanish and from the
Japanese silver mines). In those regions, it made both the
collection and payment of taxes much more efficient and a
large part of these taxation revenues filled up the imperial
treasury. In other areas, where economic growth lacked
behind and far less silver was in circulation, these Single
Whip reforms had a negative effect on economic
development and began to be resented by the less wealthy
population.
Portrait of the Ming dynasty Grand
Secretary Zhang Juzheng. By 蒼穹之丘 at
zh.wikipedia [Public domain], from
Wikimedia Commons

The people there had to sell their products for copper coins
(since there was not enough silver in circulation there),
which was then converted at a disadvantageous exchange
rate to silver. So the tax payers there paid effectively more
taxes, than they would have if they could have continued
to pay their taxes in grain or cloth or even copper.

The 2nd part of the reforms that were initiated by Zhang

Juzheng regarded the ownership of land. By that time, the
imperialrecords of land ownership were largely outdated.
In fact, the last comprehensive survey regarding land
ownership within the Chinese empire had taken place in
1393 AD! Ming dynasty silver bullion found in a tomb.
By 风之清扬 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-
3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

Zhang Juzheng tried to rectify this situation by launching a new land ownership survey. Officials were sent
out all over the empire to survey land and look through existing records in order to find out how much land
of which quality everyone owned. This information would then be used for determining the proper tax
burden.
Ming dynasty land register offically compiled for taxes. By 猫猫的日记本 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via
Wikimedia Commons

Understandably, this land survey was not popular among the wealthy landowners (who often belonged to
the literati class). Not wanting to pay more taxes, they tried everything within their power to undermine and
resist these efforts. Zhang Juzheng's unpopular land survey is a good example for the conflict of interest
that the literati faced. On the one hand, they were usually employed as government officials, who were paid
to serve the interests of the imperial state. On the other hand, they were often land owners themselves. So,
fulfilling their duties as government officials would have been in direct opposition to their own private
interests as wealthy landowners. The anger of large groups among the literati regarding this land survey
directed itself against Zhang Juzheng personally and led to his downfall in the early 1580's.

or buy at our store or buy at our store

 Even though the taxation reform and land survey posed
some serious practical problems, the basic operations of
the Ming state still continued to run smoothly. However,
from the end of the 16th century onwards, there were
further philosophical and political problems that
incapacitated the Ming state from functioning effectively,
especially in its ability to adapt to changing circumstances
and newly arising problems. The government official and
philosopher Wang Yangming (1472 AD - 1529 AD) -
sometimes referred to as the last great Confucian
philosopher in imperial times - had greatly influenced the
philosophical and political discourse within China by
highlighting certain ideas of Neo-Confucianism.
the Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang
Yangming. public domain in the United
States

According to Wang Yangming's thinking, everyone had within them an "innate knowledge of the good".
Whereas previously, adherents to the Confucian ideology had looked up to the literati elite as a source for
moral and practical leadership, Wang Yangming's ideology encouraged everyone to look into his/her own
personal conscience to find moral guidance. Not only that, his radical individualist philosophy stressed the
importance of taking concrete practical action upon finding out what was morally good and bad.

Wang Yangming's philosophy found widespread acceptance among the literati and common people alike
at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. It led to the creation of popular movements
among merchants, artisans, peasants etc., who felt encouraged to act upon their own moral insights and
sometimes openly defied the power of local officials.
the calligraphy section of the 4 hanging scrolls by an anonymous Ming dynasty artist entitled "The Eighteen
Scholars". By Anonymous [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The educated literati elites and officials were also deeply influenced in their intellectual debates by Wang
Yangming's ideas and these discussions carried over into the political realm. It became nearly impossible
to find a common middle ground in those political debates, since everyone was convinced of the moral
purity and righteousness of their own position (thinking along the lines of: "since I have an innate knowledge
of the good and my opinion is x, so your opinion y must be bad/evil") and saw the opinion of the other side
as evil. Accordingly, political decision-making was greatly impeded.

Lady Zheng, the Wanli emperor's favourite

concubine. Zhu Changxun, son of the Wanli emperor and
his concubine Lady Zheng.

At those times of factional conflict among the literati

officials, the emperor could have provided the necessary
leadership. At the same time however, the Wanli
emperor Zhu Yijun withdrew from the regular
administration of his empire due to a squabble with his
officials regarding his reign of succession. Even
though Empress Dowager Xiaojing had given him his first
son Zhu Changluo in 1582 AD, Zhu Yijun nevertheless
wanted to replace her as empress with his new favourite
concubine Lady Zheng. Furthermore, he wanted to make
his 3rd son Zhu Changxun (Lady Zheng's son) his
legitimate heir, a demand his Confucian officials refused to
comply with on moral grounds. In this way, the possible The Official Imperial Portrait of Ming
political leadership of the imperial court at these times of Dynasty Empress Dowager Xiaojing. By
crisis was not available either. Imperial Painter (Own work (My book))
[Public domain], via Wikimedia
Commons. public domain in the United
States

At the beginning of the 17th century, a new political force appeared on the scene under the guise of an
academy, since outright political organizations were banned. Previously, members of the literati class had
used literary societies, poetry groups and gardening clubs as places where political ideas were exchanged
and political actions coordinated as well.
memorial arch at the site of the former Donglin academy in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. By Synyan (Own work)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Donglin Academy (donglin = eastern forest) in the Jiangnan area became the center for a political
movement among young literati with a set of shared values. Its members helped each other to succeed
within the imperial examination system and bureaucracy and openly criticised the power holding Confucian
imperial officials as morally corrupt. The ultimate goal of the Donglin partisans was to replace the existing
government officials and henceforth provide the moral and practical leadership of the empire themselves.

Ming Emperor Chongzhen. See

Zhu Youxiao, the Tianqi page for author [Public
Zhu Changluo, the Taichang Emperor. By 明朝画师 (国立故 domain], via Wikimedia
Commons
Emperor. By Ming Dynasty 宫博物院) [Public domain], via
Palace Painter [Public
Wikimedia Commons
domain], via Wikimedia
Commons
These aspirations were shattered after the Wanli emperor died in 1620 AD. He was succeeded by Zhu
Changluo, his original heir and first son, who however died about a month later after starting his reign. Zhu
Changluo's eldest son Zhu Youxiao then took over the reigns of the empire and initiated a series of
purges in the 1620's in which many Donglin partisans and sympathizers were executed. Zhu Youxiao was
followed on the Ming throne in 1627 AD by another weak leader (the Chongzhen emperor). During this
period of weak leadership from the side of the emperor, some powerful eunuchs stepped into the void and
seized some leading positions within the imperial government.

Meanwhile, the unsolved problems in society and the economy deteriorated further and further.
Economically, the gap in development and wealth between the rich coastal regions and poor interior
continued to grow. Particularly in the poor Northwest of China, the livelihood of farmers was severely
affected in a negative way by the stubborn insistence of the imperial government to pay all taxes in silver.
There, more and more people were unable to pay their taxes and had some of their assets seized or even
lost their land completely. Many of these dispossessed joined bandit and/or rebel groups.

A mounted archer of the Ming Dynasty army. See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Conflicts in the richer economically developed areas were more subtle and concerned the burgeoning class
of wealthy merchants. Unhappy with the fact that they were excluded from the imperial examinations and
any other meaningful participation in public affairs, they began to instigate for change and openly competed
with the traditional literati elite as patrons of art, builders of great libraries, charitable donors and even with
their consumerist/extravagant lifestyle, that was characterized by the building of opulent residences and
their choice of ostentatious garments (that were traditionally worn by the literati class).
Ming dynasty garments of the wealthy class. By hanfulove [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

As the Ming state became increasingly paralysed through political infighting, a new power arose in the
Northeast of China beyond the Great Wall. The Manchus, future conquerors of China by the middle of the
17th century, were an amalgamation of different tribes and ethnic groups that had been brought together
by their founder Nurhaci (1559 AD - 1626 AD).

The ethnic Jurchen Nurhaci had succeeded through a

Nurhaci, who founded the Later Jin
dynasty (a predecessor of the Qing
dynasty). By Annonymous Qing Dynasty
Court Painter (Palace Museum, Beijing （
故宫博物院）) [Public domain or Public
domain], via Wikimedia Commons
combination of military conquests and political diplomacy
to forge a strong bond between the Jurchen people and
other tribal groups, who lived in their vicinity in the
Northeast of China. This newly forged group of different
peoples began to call itself (and to be called) the Manchus
in the first quarter of the 17th century.
In this period, the Manchus worked on the development of
their own sense of identity and internal organisation, which
included the adoption of a writing system, that was based
upon the writing system of the Mongols. It was used to
create a written "History of the Manchu People", in which
all the old legends and myths of their ancestors were
immortalized. Many Manchus adopted Buddhism as their
religion and the development of cultural relationships with
neighbouring peoples, particularly with the Mongols,
helped them to consolidate their power in their inhabited
territories.

Beginning with the proclamation of a revived Jin dynasty - the Later Jin dynasty - in the year 1626 AD, the
Manchus began to signal their ambition of becoming the new rulers of the Chinese empire. The decision to
copy Beijing's layout and design for their capital Mukden (nowadays Shenyang in Liaoning Province) was
a further signal for their imperial ambitions. The former imperial palace of the Manchus in Shenyang

(a.k.a. Mukden Palace) is now a UNESCO World Heritage Siteand a popular tourist attraction.

Shenyang Imperial Palace's rooftops. By Krastek (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

In 1635 AD, the Manchu language (that is based upon the Jurchen language) became the official language
at their court in Mukden. One year later in 1636 AD, the official name of their dynasty was changed from Jin
(jin = gold), which was also the surname of the most influential Manchu family at that time, to Qing (qing =
pure). By presenting themselves as the pure element within society, they furthersignalled their intention to
sweep aside the (by then) decadent Ming dynasty on their way to a morally purified China.

or buy at our store or buy at our store

By the end of the 1630's and during the early 1640's, the Manchus increased their military campaigns
against the Ming and their successful siege in 1641 AD of the Ming garrison at Jinzhou, outside the Great
Wall, was a first major victory, also due to the fact that several Ming generals defected to their side
afterwards. In early 1644 AD, the Manchus effectively controlled the entire Northeast, including the Chinese
settlements in Southern Manchuria (north of the Great Wall), right down to the Great Wall that still separated
them from the agricultural heartland of the Ming empire.

Meanwhile, the Ming empire had continued to weaken from

within. Even though the factional conflicts at court of the
1620's (that had cost many lives) had come to an end in
1627 AD, when the Chongzhen emperor ascended the
throne and broke the stranglehold on power of the
powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian, the Ming never regained
their former vigour. The subsequent reforms by the
emperor weretoo little too late to reverse the downward
spiral of the Ming empire. Besides the political
uncertainties, the empire suffered from growing financial
problems due to the decline in tax revenue.

the eunuch official Wei Zhongxian.

The flow of silver into China had begun to decrease substantially (particularly from Japan, where export
controls were put in place). The Ming rulers stubbornly insisted upon the payment of taxes in silver, of which
there was less and less in circulation.
As previously mentioned, large numbers of farmers defaulted on their tax payments (particularly in the
poorer Northwest and Southwest) and lost their assets and land. The growing landless farming population
in these areas swelled the ranks of rebel and bandit forces, which increased their raids of small towns,
government granaries and treasuries. The soldiers that were sent there by the Ming government to quell
the unrest ended up joining the bandit and rebel forces in large numbers as well, since they often didn't get
paid by the government either.

Li Zicheng (1606 AD - 1645 AD) emerged as the main

leader of these rebel movements in the Northwest of China
at the end of the 1630's and the beginning of the 1640's.
The rebel army that he assembled and led didn't pursue
any political or religious goals, but simply sought to improve
the livelihoods of its constituents (mostly poor and
disowned farmers) and they saw the overthrow of the Ming
dynasty as the best way to ensure that. In the early 1640's,
Li Zicheng led his army north from battle to battle through
Northern Shaanxi. In the spring of 1644 AD, his rebel army
marched towards the imperial capital of Beijing from the
Northwest, which they then attacked and seized in April of
the same year.

drawing of the rebel leader Li Zicheng.

Possibly out of hopelessness and despair on the day after that attack, the Chongzhen emperor walked up

the artificial hill (now a tourist attraction as part of the public Jingshan Park ) just north of the Forbidden
City. There, he then cut his finger and wrote the two Chinese characters that signified "son of heaven" in
blood on a piece of silk before hanging himself from a tree. That episode effectively ended the Ming dynasty,
even though Ming loyalists managed to hold out for another 40 years in certain areas!
the supposed tree in the Jingshan Park north of the Forbidden City from which the Chongzhen emperor
hanged himself. By Мухранов А.Н. (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

After bringing Beijing under his control, Li Zicheng proclaimed the new short-lived Shun dynasty with
himself as the new emperor. He then tried to build his new government by calling on former Ming officials
(who hadn't fled Beijing) to present themselves at his new court. However, most court officials and imperial
princes had already fled south to their secondary political center of Nanjing.
the Ming and Qing dynasty general Wu Sangui. Portrait of Chen Yuanyuan (1624 AD – 1681
By Author in Qing Dynasty (Palace Museu AD), Wu Sangui's concubine. See page for
Archieve) [Public domain], via Wikimedia author [Public domain or Public domain], via
Commons public domain in the United States Wikimedia Commons

Upon hearing of Li Zicheng's conquest of Beijing and the

death of the Ming emperor, a Ming general at the far
eastern end of the Great Wall made a fateful decision. Wu
Sangui (1612 AD - 1678 AD) was the able Ming general
who was in charge of the important fortress near the
eastern end of the Great Wall
at Shanhaiguan (Shanhaiguan = pass between mountains
and the sea). Repeatedly, his forces had prevented the
Manchu forces from entering China through the
strategic Shanhai mountain pass. The Shanhaiguan site is

now a popular tourist attraction with a number of

visitable sights.
An old illustration of a map of
Shanhaiguan. public domain in the United
States

Worried about his mistress Chen Yuanyuan (who had fallen into the hands of Li Zicheng in Beijing) as well
as about an approaching contingent of Li Zicheng's army, he negotiated an agreement with the leaders of
the Manchus, that allowed them to bring their army through the Shanhai Pass into China.

the eastern end of the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan. By fuzheado (Flickr: IMG_6940) [CC-BY-2.0], via
Wikimedia Commons
The Manchu and Ming army proceeded to drive Li Zicheng's army out of Beijing. The Manchus then seized
Beijing for themselves and set about ruling their newly conquered lands under the name of the Qing
dynasty (1644 AD - 1911 AD). The leadership of the Qing dynasty was mostly in the hands of the regent
Dorgon at the time of the conquest of China, since the reigning Shunzhi emperor of the Qing was still only
a child. Wu Sangui continued to help defeat the remaining Ming loyalist forces and was later handsomely
rewarded by his Manchu allies with his own virtual kingdom in southern Yunnan.

Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing dynasty. By

the regent Dorgon a.k.a. Prince Rui of the Qing Emperor_Shunzhi.jpg: unknown court artist
dynasty. By Unknown. [Public domain], via derivative work: Bencherlite (This file was
Wikimedia Commons derived from:Emperor_Shunzhi.jpg) [Public
domain], via Wikimedia Commons

During the next 2 years from 1644 AD - 1646 AD, the

Manchus continued their military conquests in their efforts
to bring the rest of China under their control. In this
endeavour, they encountered heroic resistance in the
wealthy and culturally sophisticated Jiangnan
area (popular residence of the literati class) near the mouth
of the Yangtze River. Especially Yangzhou at the northern
side of the Yangtze River and along the Grand Canal - a
city famous for its luxurious lifestyle and resident painters
and poets - resisted the Manchu siege fiercely in 1645 AD.
After finally conquering Yangzhou, the Manchus took
bloody revenge by looting and killing any Chinese within
sight for the next 10 days.

A late Qing dynasty depiction of the

massacre of Yangzhou. By unknown
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
This massacre of Yangzhou signalled to the remaining cities under Ming control to better think twice before
refusing the Manchu offer of an amiable surrender. For the Chinese, it became a symbol for the barbarism
of the Manchu conquerors and the heroism of the Chinese resistance.

After fleeing Beijing, the remaining Ming court settled

in Nanjing. That event marks the beginning of the Southern
Ming dynasty which continued to resist the Qing invaders
for quite some time. The Southern Ming named a series of
princes as successive emperors, who all ended up being
captured and killed (or committed suicide). When the
Manchus arrived to besiege Nanjing, the court had to flee
again, this time to the far Southwest.

By the end of the 1640's, most resistance against Manchu

rule had been quashed. Zhu Youlang (a.k.a. the Prince of
Gui and the Yongli emperor of the Southern Ming dynasty),
the last legitimate claimant to the Ming throne, fled to the
area that is now Burma where he lived in exile until 1662
AD.

Zhu Youlang, the Prince of Gui alias the

Yongli emperor of the Southern Ming
dynasty.

By that time, the Manchu had the entire Southwest of China under their control as well and negotiated an
agreement with the Burmese rulers, that saw Zhu Youlang and his family turned over to the Manchu in
January 1662 AD. These Manchu forces were led by none other than Wu Sangui, who personally strangled
Zhu Youlang.

Without ever mounting a serious attempt to reestablish themselves on the mainland, the last remaining
Ming loyalists held out on the island of Taiwan (then partially occupied by the Dutch and Portuguese as
well as

various pirate groups) until 1683 AD, when they were finally suppressed as well.

ate Event
1367 Zhu Yuanzhang's army eliminates the military forces of the Yuan
Dynasty.

After a seven-year battle, Zhu Yuanzhang's army ends the rule of the Yuan
Dynasty. Several years earlier Zhu had taken his army into Jiqing,
established a military base there as part of his plan to control all of China.
1368 Zhu declares himself the emperor of China.

Zhu takes control of China as the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. He
makes Jin Ling, now known as Nanjing, the capital.

1368 Construction on the Great Wall of China begins.

Construction starts on the Great Wall of China. It is built to protect the

Chinese Empire and will take over 100 years to complete. It is 13,000 miles
long and can be seen from space.

1371 Maritime trade is banned in China.

In an attempt to cut down on piracy, maritime, or sea, trade is banned in

China. The only way that foreigners are allowed into China is if they are from
a country that is part of China's trade system called the imperial tributary
system. The ban ends in 1405.

1406 Construction begins on the Forbidden City.

Construction begins in Beijing on the imperial palace, known as the

Forbidden City. Over 1 million workers and 100,000 artisans work on the
palace, which has 9,999 rooms. Today, it is a museum.

1407 The fourth Chinese domination of Vietnam begins.

Ming armies invade Vietnam and the fourth period of Chinese rule over
Vietnam begins. Vietnam remains under Chinese rule until forces led by Le
Loi defeat the Ming army in 1428.

1408 The Yongle Canon is completed.

An enormous encyclopedia about China called the Yongle Canon is completed

after five years. It has 22,877 volumes, about 370 million words, and was
written entirely by hand. It is the largest encyclopedia in the world.

1415 Renovation of the Grand Canal is completed.

The 1,100 mile long Grand Canal is almost completely renovated. An

important waterway for trade, the canal climbs into the mountains of
Shandong and is admired throughout the world.

1420 Beijing is named the capital.

After construction on the Forbidden City is complete, Beijing becomes the

new capital of China. It has remained the nation's capital since then and with
over 20,000,000 residents is one of the most populated cities in the world.

1420 The Thirteen Tombs are built.

Tombs for the 13 emperors of the Ming Dynasty are built at Tianshou
Mountain, northwest of Beijing. The placement of the tombs, which covers
about 75 square miles, was carefully thought out and shows the Chinese
belief in the importance of the relationship between man and nature.
 September Emperor Zhengtong is captured and held for ransom.
1449
In the Battle of Tumu Fortress, Mongolia captures Emperor Zhengtong and
holds him for ransom. Even Mongolians were surprised that they were able
to capture the emperor and he was released four years later, with no ransom
paid.

1578 The Compendium of Materia Medica is completed.

After 30 years, Li Shizhen finishes the Compendium of Materia Medica. It is a

book detailing the use of over 18,000 different Chinese medicines and
11,000 formulas for treating disease.

1628 Li Zheng leads a peasant revolt against the Ming Dynasty.

Li Zheng rallies peasants with his promise to divide land equally and
eliminating grain taxes. He will lead a peasant army revolt against the Ming
Dynasty.

1642 The Ming Dynasty army floods Kaifeng.

In an effort to prevent Li Zicheng from taking over, the Ming Dynasty floods
Kaifeng with water from the Yellow River. Almost have of the 600,000
residents of Kaifeng are killed, making this the worst war act in history.

1644 Emperor Chongzhen commits suicide and the Ming Dynasty ends.

Li Zicheng's rebel forces march into Beijing and Emperor Chongzhen hangs
himself behind the Forbidden City. With the last Ming emperor gone, the
Ming Dynasty comes to an end and China is now briefly under the Shun
Dynasty.

Ming dynasty
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Ming (disambiguation) and Ming Dynasty (disambiguation).

Ming dynasty

明朝

1368–1644
 Ming China around 1580

Capital Nanjing (Yingtian prefecture)

(1368–1644)[a]
Beijing (Shuntian prefecture)
(1403–1644)[b][c]

Languages Official language:

Mandarin
Other Chinese languages
Other languages:
Turki (Modern Uyghur), Old Uyghur
language, Tibetan, Mongolian, Jurchen, others

Religion Heaven
worship, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Chinese
folk religion, Islam, Roman Catholicism

Government Absolute monarchy

Emperor (皇
帝)

• 1368–1398 Hongwu Emperor

• 1627–1644 Chongzhen Emperor

Senior
Grand
Secretary

• 1402–1407 Xie Jin

• 1644 Wei Zaode

History

• Established
in Nanjing 23 January 1368

• Beijing
designated
as capital 28 October 1420

• Fall of
Beijing 25 April 1644

• End of the
Southern
Ming 1683

Area

• 1415[1] 6,500,000 km² (2,509,664 sq mi)

Population

• 1393 est. 65,000,000

• 1403 est. 66,598,337¹

• 1500 est. 125,000,000²

• 1600 est. 160,000,000³

Currency Paper money (1368–1450)

Bimetallic:
copper cashes (文, wén) in strings of
 coin and paper
Silver taels (兩, liǎng) in sycees and by weight

Preceded by Succeeded by

Yuan dynasty Qing dynasty

Today part
[show]
of

Remnants of the Ming dynasty ruled southern China until 1662, and Taiwan until
1683 a dynastic period which is known as the Southern Ming.
¹The numbers are based on estimates made by CJ Peers in Late Imperial Chinese
Armies: 1520–1840
²According to A. G. Frank, ReOrient: global economy in the Asian Age, 1998, p.
109
³According to A. Maddison, The World Economy Volume 1: A Millennial
Perspective Volume 2, 2007, p. 238

Ming Dynasty

"Ming dynasty" in Chinese characters

Chinese 明朝

[show]Transcriptions

Great Ming

Chinese 大明

[show]Transcriptions

Empire of the Great Ming

 Traditional Chinese 大明帝國

Simplified Chinese 大明帝国

[show]Transcriptions

History of China

ANCIENT

Neolithic c. 8500 – c. 2070 BCE

Xia dynasty c. 2070 – c. 1600 BCE

Shang dynasty c. 1600 – c. 1046 BCE

Zhou dynasty c. 1046 – 256 BCE

Western Zhou

Eastern Zhou

Spring and Autumn

Warring States

IMPERIAL

Qin dynasty 221–206 BCE

Han dynasty 206 BCE – 220 CE

Western Han

Xin dynasty

Eastern Han

Three Kingdoms 220–280

Wei, Shu and Wu

 Jin dynasty 265–420

Western Jin

Eastern Jin Sixteen Kingdoms

Northern and Southern dynasties

420–589

Sui dynasty 581–618

Tang dynasty 618–907

(Second Zhou dynasty 690–705)

Five Dynasties and

Liao dynasty
Ten Kingdoms
907–960 907–1125

Song dynasty
960–1279

Northern Song Western Xia

Southern Song Jin

Yuan dynasty 1271–1368

Ming dynasty 1368–1644

Qing dynasty 1644–1911

MODERN

Republic of China 1912–1949

People's Republic Republic of

of China China (Taiwan)
1949–present 1949–present

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The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China—then known as the Empire of the Great
Ming—for 276 years (1368–1644) following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming,
 described by some as "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human
history,"[2] was the last imperial dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese. Although the primary
capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the Shun dynasty,
soon replaced by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty), regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively
called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683.
The Hongwu Emperor (ruled 1368–98) attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural
communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent
class of soldiers for his dynasty:[3] the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and
the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world.[4] He also took great care breaking the
power of the court eunuchs[5] and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China
and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang Ming Zu Xun, a set of published dynastic
instructions. This failed spectacularly when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attempted
to curtail his uncles' power, prompting the Jingnan Campaign, an uprising that placed the Prince of
Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a
secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, and restored the Grand
Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his
eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-
bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as
far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa.
The rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances; the capture of
the Zhengtong Emperor during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was
allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade and connected and
fortified the Great Wall of China into its modern form. Wide-ranging censuses of the entire empire
were conducted decennially, but the desire to avoid labor and taxes and the difficulty of storing and
reviewing the enormous archives at Nanjing hampered accurate figures.[3] Estimates for the late-
Ming population vary from 160 to 200 million,[6]but necessary revenues were squeezed out of smaller
and smaller numbers of farmers as more disappeared from the official records or "donated" their
lands to tax-exempt eunuchs or temples.[3] Haijin laws intended to protect the coasts
from "Japanese" pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves.
By the 16th century, however, the expansion of European trade—albeit restricted to islands
near Guangzhou like Macau—spread the Columbian Exchange of crops, plants, and animals into
China, introducing chili peppers to Sichuan cuisine and highly productive corn and potatoes, which
diminished famines and spurred population growth. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish,
and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced a massive influx
of Japanese and American silver. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy,
whose paper money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While
traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created,
the heterodoxy introduced by Wang Yangming permitted a more accommodating attitude. Zhang
Juzheng's initially successful reforms proved devastating when a slowdown in agriculture produced
by the Little Ice Age joined changes in Japanese and Spanish policy that quickly cut off the supply of
silver now necessary for farmers to be able to pay their taxes. Combined with crop failure, floods,
and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng, who was defeated by the
Manchu-led Eight Banner armies who founded the Qing dynasty.

Contents
[hide]

 1History
o 1.1Founding
 1.1.1Revolt and rebel rivalry
 1.1.2Reign of the Hongwu Emperor
  1.1.3South-Western frontier
 1.1.4Campaign in the North-East
 1.1.5Relations with Tibet
o 1.2Reign of the Yongle Emperor
 1.2.1Rise to power
 1.2.2New capital and foreign engagement
o 1.3Tumu Crisis and the Ming Mongols
o 1.4Decline and fall of the Ming dynasty
 1.4.1Reign of the Wanli Emperor
 1.4.2Role of eunuchs
 1.4.3Economic breakdown and natural disasters
 1.4.4Rise of the Manchu
 1.4.5Rebellion, invasion, collapse
 2Government
o 2.1Province, prefecture, subprefecture, county
o 2.2Institutions and bureaus
 2.2.1Institutional trends
 2.2.2Grand Secretariat and Six Ministries
 2.2.3Bureaus and offices for the imperial household
o 2.3Personnel
 2.3.1Scholar-officials
 2.3.2Lesser functionaries
 2.3.3Eunuchs, princes, and generals
 3Society and culture
o 3.1Literature and arts
o 3.2Religion
o 3.3Philosophy
 3.3.1Wang Yangming's Confucianism
 3.3.2Conservative reaction
o 3.4Urban and rural life
 4Science and technology
 5Population
 6See also
 7Notes
 8References
o 8.1Citations
o 8.2Works cited
 9Further reading
 10External links

History
Main articles: History of the Ming dynasty and List of emperors of the Ming dynasty

Founding
Revolt and rebel rivalry
The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty.
Explanations for the demise of the Yuan include institutionalized ethnic discrimination against Han
Chinese that stirred resentment and rebellion, overtaxation of areas hard-hit by inflation, and
massive flooding of the Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation
projects.[7] 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.[7] 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; he soon gained a
reputation after marrying the foster daughter of a rebel commander.[8] In 1356, Zhu's rebel force
captured the city of Nanjing,[9] 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 archrival 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.[10] The last Yuan emperor fled
north to the upper capital Shangdu, and Zhu declared the founding of the Ming dynasty after razing
the Yuan palaces in Dadu to the ground;[10] the city was renamed Beiping in the same year.[11] Zhu
Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or "Vastly Martial", as his era name.
Reign of the Hongwu Emperor

Portrait of the Hongwu Emperor (ruled in 1368–98)

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.[10] 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.[12] Hongwu
organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of
the Tang dynasty (618–907).
In 1380 Hongwu had the Chancellor Hu Weiyong 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.[13][14] With a growing
suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established the Jinyiwei, a network of secret
police drawn from his own palace guard. Some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges
during his rule.[13][15]
The Hongwu emperor issued many edicts forbidding Mongol practices and proclaiming his intention
to purify China of barbarian influence. However, he also sought to use the Yuan legacy to legitimize
his authority in China and other areas ruled by the Yuan. He adopted many Yuan military practices,
recruited Mongol soldiers, and continued to request Korean concubines and eunuchs.[16]
South-Western frontier
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.[17] Hui Muslim troops also settled in Changde, Hunan after
serving the Ming in campaigns against other aboriginal tribes.[18] 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.[19] 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 (see Miao Rebellions (Ming dynasty)). 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.[20]
Campaign in the North-East
Main article: Manchuria under Ming rule
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 seen today is
a product of the Ming dynasty.

After the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty by the Ming dynasty in 1368, Manchuria remained
under control of the Mongols of the Northern Yuan dynasty based in Mongolia. Naghachu, a former
Yuan official and a Uriankhai general of the Northern Yuan dynasty, won hegemony over the Mongol
tribes in Manchuria (Liaoyang province of the former Yuan dynasty). He grew strong in the
northeast, with forces large enough (numbering hundreds of thousands) to threaten invasion of the
newly founded Ming dynasty in order to restore the Mongols to power in China. The Ming decided to
defeat him instead of waiting for the Mongols to attack. In 1387 the Ming sent a military campaign to
attack Naghachu,[21] which concluded with the surrender of Naghachu and Ming conquest of
Manchuria.
The early Ming court could not, and did not, aspire to the control imposed upon the Jurchens in
Manchuria by the Mongols, yet it created a norm of organization that would ultimately serve as the
principal vehicle for the relations with peoples along the northeast frontiers. By the end of the
Hongwu reign, the essentials of a policy toward the Jurchens had taken shape. Most of the
inhabitants of Manchuria, except for the wild Jurchens, were at peace with China. The Ming had
created many guards (衛, wei) in Manchuria, but the creation of a guard did not necessarily imply
political control. In 1409, the Ming dynasty under Yongle Emperor established the Nurgan Regional
Military Commission on the banks of the Amur River, and Yishiha, a eunuch of Haixi
Jurchen derivation, was ordered to lead an expedition to the mouth of the Amur to pacify the Wild
Jurchens. After the death of Yongle Emperor, the Nurgan Regional Military Commission was
abolished in 1435, and the Ming court ceased to have substantial activities there, although the
guards continued to exist in Manchuria. By the late Ming period, Ming political presence in
Manchuria had waned considerably.
Relations with Tibet
Main article: Sino-Tibetan relations during the Ming dynasty

A 17th-century Tibetan thangka of Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra; the Ming dynasty court gathered various
tribute items that were native products of Tibet (such as thangkas),[22] and in return granted gifts to Tibetan
tribute-bearers.[23]
The Mingshi – the official history of the Ming dynasty compiled 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 Tibetan Buddhist sects.[24] 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.[25]
Modern scholars debate whether the Ming dynasty had sovereignty over Tibet. Some believe it was
a relationship of loose suzerainty that was largely cut off when the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67)
persecuted Buddhism in favor of Daoism at court.[25][26] Others argue that the significant religious
nature of the relationship with Tibetan lamas is underrepresented in modern scholarship.[27][28] Others
note the Ming need for Central Asian horses and the need to maintain the tea-horse trade.[29][30][31][32]
The Ming sporadically sent armed forays into Tibet during the 14th century, which the Tibetans
successfully resisted.[33][34] Several scholars point out that unlike the preceding Mongols, the Ming
dynasty did not garrison permanent troops in Tibet.[35][36] The Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620)
attempted to reestablish Sino-Tibetan relations in the wake of a Mongol-Tibetan alliance initiated in
1578, an alliance which affected the foreign policy of the subsequent Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–
1912) in their support for the Dalai Lama of the Yellow Hat sect.[25][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 the conquest of Tibet by Güshi Khan (1582–
1655) in 1642,[25][40][41]establishing the Khoshut Khanate.
Reign of the Yongle Emperor
Main article: Yongle Emperor
Rise to power

Portrait of the Yongle Emperor (ruled in 1402–24)

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.[42] After Jianwen arrested many of Zhu Di's
associates, Zhu Di plotted 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.[43]
New capital and foreign engagement
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.[44] 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.[45]

The Ming Tombs located 50 km (31 mi) north of Beijing; the site was chosen by Yongle.

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 since the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE)
and engaged in private overseas trade, but these missions were unprecedented in grandeur and
scale. To service seven different tributary voyages, the Nanjing shipyards constructed two thousand
vessels from 1403 to 1419, including treasure ships measuring 112 m (370 ft) to 134 m (440 ft) in
length and 45 m (150 ft) to 54 m (180 ft) in width.[46]
Yongle also used woodblock printing to spread Chinese culture, and used the
military (especially cavalry) to expand China's borders. This included the brief occupation of
Vietnam, from the initial invasion in 1406 until the Ming withdrawal in 1427 as a result of
protracted guerrilla warfare led by the subsequent founder of the Vietnamese Lê dynasty.[47]
Tumu Crisis and the Ming Mongols
Main articles: Tumu Crisis and Rebellion of Cao Qin
A Bengali envoys presented a tribute giraffe in the name of King Saif Al-Din Hamzah Shah of Bengal (r. 1410–
12) to the Yongle Emperor of Ming China (r. 1402–24).

The Oirat leader Esen Tayisi launched an invasion into Ming China in July 1449. The chief
eunuch Wang Zhen encouraged the Zhengtong Emperor (r. 1435–49) to lead a force personally to
face the Oirats after a recent Ming defeat; the emperor left the capital and put his half-brother Zhu
Qiyu in charge of affairs as temporary regent. On 8 September, Esen routed Zhengtong's army, and
Zhengtong was captured—an event known as the Tumu Crisis.[48] The Oirats held the Zhengtong
Emperor for ransom. However, this scheme was foiled once the emperor's younger brother assumed
the throne under the era name Jingtai (r. 1449–57); the Oirats were also repelled once the Jingtai
Emperor's confidant and defense minister Yu Qian (1398–1457) gained control of the Ming armed
forces. Holding the Zhengtong Emperor in captivity was a useless bargaining chip for the Oirats as
long as another sat on his throne, so they released him back into Ming China.[48] The former emperor
was placed under house arrest in the palace until the coup against the Jingtai Emperor in 1457
known as the "Wresting the Gate Incident".[49] The former emperor retook the throne under the new
era name Tianshun (r. 1457–64).
Tianshun proved to be a troubled time and Mongol forces within the Ming military structure continued
to be problematic. On 7 August 1461, the Chinese general Cao Qin and his Ming troops of Mongol
descent staged a coup against the Tianshun Emperor out of fear of being next on his purge-list of
those who aided him in the Wresting the Gate Incident.[50] Cao's rebel force managed to set fire to
the western and eastern gates of the Imperial City (doused by rain during the battle) and killed
several leading ministers before his forces were finally cornered and he was forced to commit
suicide.[51]
While the Yongle Emperor had staged five major offensives north of the Great Wall against the
Mongols and the Oirats, the constant threat of Oirat incursions prompted the Ming authorities to
fortify the Great Wall from the late 15th century to the 16th century; nevertheless, John Fairbank
notes that "it proved to be a futile military gesture but vividly expressed China's siege
mentality."[52] Yet the Great Wall was not meant to be a purely defensive fortification; its towers
functioned rather as a series of lit beacons and signalling stations to allow rapid warning to friendly
units of advancing enemy troops.[53]
Decline and fall of the Ming dynasty
Main article: Fall of the Ming dynasty
Reign of the Wanli Emperor

The Wanli Emperor (ruled in 1572–1620) in state ceremonial court dress

The financial drain of the Imjin War in Korea against the Japanese was one of the many problems—
fiscal or other—facing Ming China during the reign of the Wanli Emperor (1572–1620). In the
beginning of his reign, Wanli surrounded himself with able advisors and made a conscientious effort
to handle state affairs. His Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (1572–82) built up an effective network
of alliances with senior officials. However, there was no one after him skilled enough to maintain the
stability of these alliances;[54] officials soon banded together in opposing political factions. Over time
Wanli grew tired of court affairs and frequent political quarreling amongst his ministers, preferring to
stay behind the walls of the Forbidden City and out of his officials' sight.[55] Scholar-officials lost
prominence in administration as eunuchs became intermediaries between the aloof emperor and his
officials; any senior official who wanted to discuss state matters had to persuade powerful eunuchs
with a bribe simply to have his demands or message relayed to the emperor.[56]
Role of eunuchs

Tianqi-era teacups, from the Nantoyōsō Collection in Japan; the Tianqi Emperor was heavily influenced and
largely controlled by the eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627).

The Hongwu Emperor forbade eunuchs to learn how to read or engage in politics. Whether or not
these restrictions were carried out with absolute success in his reign, eunuchs during the Yongle
Emperor's reign and afterwards managed huge imperial workshops, commanded armies, and
participated in matters of appointment and promotion of officials. The eunuchs developed their own
bureaucracy that was organized parallel to but was not subject to the civil service
bureaucracy.[45] Although there were several dictatorial eunuchs throughout the Ming, such as Wang
Zhen, Wang Zhi, and Liu Jin, excessive tyrannical eunuch power did not become evident until the
1590s when the Wanli Emperor increased their rights over the civil bureaucracy and granted them
power to collect provincial taxes.[56][57][58]
The eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) dominated the court of the Tianqi Emperor (r. 1620–1627)
and had his political rivals tortured to death, mostly the vocal critics from the faction of the Donglin
Society. He ordered temples built in his honor throughout the Ming Empire, and built personal
palaces created with funds allocated for building the previous emperor's tombs. His friends and
family gained important positions without qualifications. Wei also published a historical work
lambasting and belittling his political opponents.[59] The instability at court came right as natural
calamity, pestilence, rebellion, and foreign invasion came to a peak. The Chongzhen Emperor (r.
1627–44) had Wei dismissed from court, which led to Wei's suicide shortly after.
Economic breakdown and natural disasters
Further information: Europeans in Medieval China

Spring morning in a Han palace, by Qiu Ying (1494–1552); excessive luxury and decadence marked the late
Ming period, spurred by the enormous state bullion of incoming silver and by private transactions involving
silver.

During the last years of the Wanli era and those of his two successors, an economic crisis
developed that was centered on a sudden widespread lack of the empire's chief medium of
exchange: silver. The Portuguese first established trade with China in 1516,[60] trading Japanese
silver for Chinese silk,[61] and after some initial hostilities gained consent from the Ming court in 1557
to settle Macau as their permanent trade base in China.[62] Their role in providing silver was gradually
surpassed by the Spanish,[63][64] while even the Dutch challenged them for control of this
trade.[65][66] Philip IV of Spain (reigned 1621–1665) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver
from New Spain and Peru across the Pacific through the Philippines towards China, in favor
of shipping American-mined silver through Spanish ports. In 1639 the new Tokugawa regime of
Japan shut down most of its foreign trade with European powers, cutting off another source of silver
coming into China. These events occurring at roughly the same time caused a dramatic spike in the
value of silver and made paying taxes nearly impossible for most provinces.[67] People began
hoarding precious silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper
to silver into a steep decline. In the 1630s a string of one thousand copper coins equaled an ounce
of silver; by 1640 that sum could fetch half an ounce; and, by 1643 only one-third of an ounce.[63] For
peasants this meant economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver while conducting local trade
and crop sales in copper.[68]
Famines became common in northern China in the early 17th century because of unusually dry and
cold weather that shortened the growing season—effects of a larger ecological event now known as
the Little Ice Age.[69] Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining
relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and inability of the government to properly
manage irrigation and flood-control projects caused widespread loss of life and normal civility.[69] The
central government, starved of resources, could do very little to mitigate the effects of these
calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic spread across China from Zhejiang to
Henan, killing an unknown but large number of people.[70] The deadliest earthquake of all time,
the Shaanxi earthquake of 1556, occurred during the Jiajing Emperor's reign, killing approximately
830,000 people.[71]
Rise of the Manchu

Shanhaiguan along the Great Wall, the gate where the Manchus were repeatedly repelled before being finally
let through by Wu Sangui in 1644.

A Jurchen tribal leader named Nurhaci (r. 1616–26), starting with just a small tribe, rapidly gained
control over all the Manchurian tribes. During the Japanese invasions of Joseon Korea in the 1590s,
he offered to lead his tribes in support of the Ming and Joseon army. This offer was declined, but he
was granted honorific Ming titles for his gesture. Recognizing the weakness of Ming authority north
of their border, he united all of the adjacent northern tribes and consolidated power in the region
surrounding his homeland as the Jurchen Jin dynasty had done previously.[72] In 1610, he broke
relations with the Ming court, and in 1618 demanded a tribute from them to redress "Seven
Grievances".
By 1636, Nurhaci's son Huang Taiji renamed his dynasty from the "Later Jin" to the "Great Qing"
at Mukden, which had fallen to Qing forces in 1621 and was made their capital in 1625.[73][74] Huang
Taiji also adopted the Chinese imperial title huangdi, declared the Chongde ("Revering Virtue") era,
and changed the ethnic name of his people from "Jurchen" to "Manchu".[74][75] In 1638 the Manchu
defeated and conquered Ming China's traditional ally Joseon with an army of 100,000 troops in
the Second Manchu invasion of Korea. Shortly after, the Koreans renounced their long-held loyalty
to the Ming dynasty.[75]
Rebellion, invasion, collapse
Main article: Qing conquest of the Ming
A peasant soldier named Li Zicheng mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early
1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies there.[69] In 1634 he was
captured by a Ming general and released only on the terms that he return to service.[76] The
agreement soon broke down when a local magistrate had thirty-six of his fellow rebels executed; Li's
troops retaliated by killing the officials and continued to lead a rebellion based in Rongyang,
central Henan province by 1635.[77] By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li—Zhang
Xianzhong (1606–47) —had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu, Sichuan, while Li's center of
power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan.[77]
In 1640, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in
fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. The Chinese
military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat the Manchu raiders from the north and huge
peasant revolts in the provinces, essentially fell apart. Unpaid and unfed, the army was defeated by
Li Zicheng— now self-styled as the Prince of Shun —and deserted the capital without much of a
fight. On 26 May 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng when the city gates were
treacherously opened from within. During the turmoil, the last Ming emperor hanged himself on a
tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City.[78]

Portrait of the Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–1644)

Seizing opportunity, the Eight Banners crossed the Great Wall after the Ming border general Wu
Sangui (1612–1678) opened the gates at Shanhai Pass. This occurred shortly after he learned about
the fate of the capital and an army of Li Zicheng marching towards him; weighing his options of
alliance, he decided to side with the Manchus.[79] The Eight Banners under the Manchu
Prince Dorgon (1612–50) and Wu Sangui approached Beijing after the army sent by Li was
destroyed at Shanhaiguan; the Prince of Shun's army fled the capital on the fourth of June. On 6
June, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor ruler of
China. After being forced out of Xi'an by the Qing, chased along the Han River to Wuchang, and
finally along the northern border of Jiangxi province, Li Zicheng died there in the summer of 1645,
thus ending the Shun dynasty. One report says his death was a suicide; another states that he was
beaten to death by peasants after he was caught stealing their food.[80]
Despite the loss of Beijing and the death of the emperor, the Ming were not yet totally destroyed.
Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Yunnan were all strongholds of Ming resistance. However,
there were several pretenders for the Ming throne, and their forces were divided. These scattered
Ming remnants in southern China after 1644 were collectively designated by 19th-century historians
as the Southern Ming.[81]Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662,
when the last southern Ming Emperor died, the Yongli Emperor, Zhu Youlang. The last Ming Princes
to hold out were the Prince of Ningjing Zhu Shugui and the son of Zhu Yihai, the Prince of Lu Zhu
Honghuan (朱弘桓) who stayed with Koxinga's Ming loyalists in the Kingdom of Tungning until 1683.
Zhu Shugui proclaimed that he acted in the name of the deceased Yongli Emperor.[82] The Qing
eventually sent the seventeen Ming princes still living in Taiwan back to mainland China where they
spent the rest of their lives.[83]
In 1725 the Qing Yongzheng Emperor bestowed the hereditary title of Marquis on a descendant of
the Ming dynasty Imperial family, Zhu Zhilian (朱之璉), who received a salary from the Qing
government and whose duty was to perform rituals at the Ming tombs, and was also inducted the
Chinese Plain White Banner in the Eight Banners. Later the Qianlong Emperor bestowed the
title Marquis of Extended Grace posthumously on Zhu Zhilian in 1750, and the title passed on
through twelve generations of Ming descendants until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912. The last
Marquis of Extended Grance was Zhu Yuxun (朱煜勳). In 1912, after the overthrow of the Qing
dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution, some advocated that a Han Chinese be installed as Emperor,
either the descendant of Confucius, who was the Duke Yansheng,[84][85][86][87][88] or the Ming dynasty
Imperial family descendant, the Marquis of Extended Grace.[89][90]

Government
Province, prefecture, subprefecture, county

Processional figurines from the Shanghai tomb of Pan Yongzheng, a Ming dynasty official who lived during the
16th century

The Ming emperors took over the provincial administration system of the Yuan dynasty, and the
thirteen Ming provinces are the precursors of the modern provinces. Throughout the Song dynasty,
the largest political division was the circuit (lu 路).[91] However, after the Jurchen invasion in 1127, the
Song court established four semi-autonomous regional command systems based on territorial and
military units, with a detached service secretariat that would become the provincial administrations of
the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.[92] Copied on the Yuan model, the Ming provincial bureaucracy
contained three commissions: one civil, one military, and one for surveillance. Below the level of
the province (sheng 省) were prefectures (fu 府) operating under a prefect (zhifu 知府), followed
by subprefectures (zhou 州) under a subprefect. The lowest unit was the county (xian 縣), overseen
by a magistrate. Besides the provinces, there were also two large areas that belonged to no
province, but were metropolitan areas (jing 亰) attached to Nanjing and Beijing.[93]
Institutions and bureaus
Institutional trends

The Forbidden City, the official imperial household of the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1420 until 1924, when
the Republic of China evicted Puyi from the Inner Court.

Departing from the main central administrative system generally known as the Three Departments
and Six Ministries system, which was instituted by various dynasties since late Han (202 BCE – 220
CE), the Ming administration had only one Department, the Secretariat, that controlled the Six
Ministries. Following the execution of the Chancellor Hu Weiyong in 1380, the Hongwu Emperor
abolished the Secretariat, the Censorate, and the Chief Military Commission and personally took
charge of the Six Ministries and the regional Five Military Commissions.[94][95] Thus a whole level of
administration was cut out and only partially rebuilt by subsequent rulers.[94] The Grand Secretariat,
at the beginning a secretarial institution that assisted the emperor with administrative paperwork,
was instituted, but without employing grand counselors, or chancellors.
The Hongwu Emperor sent his heir apparent to Shaanxi in 1391 to "tour and soothe" (xunfu) the
region; in 1421 the Yongle Emperor commissioned 26 officials to travel the empire and uphold
similar investigatory and patrimonial duties. By 1430 these xunfu assignments became
institutionalized as "grand coordinators". Hence, the Censorate was reinstalled and first staffed with
investigating censors, later with censors-in-chief. By 1453, the grand coordinators were granted the
title vice censor-in-chief or assistant censor-in-chief and were allowed direct access to the
emperor.[96] As in prior dynasties, the provincial administrations were monitored by a travelling
inspector from the Censorate. Censors had the power to impeach officials on an irregular basis,
unlike the senior officials who were to do so only in triennial evaluations of junior officials.[96][97]
Although decentralization of state power within the provinces occurred in the early Ming, the trend of
central government officials delegated to the provinces as virtual provincial governors began in the
1420s. By the late Ming dynasty, there were central government officials delegated to two or more
provinces as supreme commanders and viceroys, a system which reined in the power and influence
of the military by the civil establishment.[98]
Grand Secretariat and Six Ministries

A portrait of Jiang Shunfu, an official under the Hongzhi Emperor, now in the Nanjing Museum. The decoration
of two cranes on his chest is a "rank badge" that indicates he was a civil official of the first rank.

Governmental institutions in China conformed to a similar pattern for some two thousand years, but
each dynasty installed special offices and bureaus, reflecting its own particular interests. The Ming
administration utilized Grand Secretaries to assist the emperor, handling paperwork under the reign
of the Yongle Emperor and later appointed as top officials of agencies and Grand Preceptor, a top-
ranking, non-functional civil service post, under the Hongxi Emperor (ruled 1424–25).[99] The Grand
Secretariat drew its members from the Hanlin Academy and were considered part of the imperial
authority, not the ministerial one (hence being at odds with both the emperor and ministers at
times).[100] The Secretariat operated as a coordinating agency, whereas the Six Ministries –
Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Public Works – were direct administrative organs of
the state:[101]

1. The Ministry of Personnel was in charge of appointments, merit ratings, promotions, and
demotions of officials, as well as granting of honorific titles.[102]
2. The Ministry of Revenue was in charge of gathering census data, collecting taxes, and
handling state revenues, while there were two offices of currency that were subordinate to
it.[103]
3. The Ministry of Rites was in charge of state ceremonies, rituals, and sacrifices; it also
oversaw registers for Buddhist and Daoist priesthoods and even the reception of envoys
from tributary states.[104]
4. The Ministry of War was in charge of the appointments, promotions, and demotions of
military officers, the maintenance of military installations, equipment, and weapons, as well
as the courier system.[105]
5. The Ministry of Justice was in charge of judicial and penal processes, but had no supervisory
role over the Censorate or the Grand Court of Revision.[106]
 6. The Ministry of Works had charge of government construction projects, hiring of artisans and
laborers for temporary service, manufacturing government equipment, the maintenance of
roads and canals, standardization of weights and measures, and the gathering of resources
from the countryside.[106]
Bureaus and offices for the imperial household

Ming coinage, 14–17th century

The imperial household was staffed almost entirely by eunuchs and ladies with their own
bureaus.[107] Female servants were organized into the Bureau of Palace Attendance, Bureau of
Ceremonies, Bureau of Apparel, Bureau of Foodstuffs, Bureau of the Bedchamber, Bureau of
Handicrafts, and Office of Staff Surveillance.[107] Starting in the 1420s, eunuchs began taking over
these ladies' positions until only the Bureau of Apparel with its four subsidiary offices
remained.[107] Hongwu had his eunuchs organized into the Directorate of Palace Attendants, but as
eunuch power at court increased, so did their administrative offices, with eventual twelve
directorates, four offices, and eight bureaus.[107] The dynasty had a vast imperial household, staffed
with thousands of eunuchs, who were headed by the Directorate of Palace Attendants. The eunuchs
were divided into different directorates in charge of staff surveillance, ceremonial rites, food, utensils,
documents, stables, seals, apparel, and so on.[108] The offices were in charge of providing fuel,
music, paper, and baths.[108] The bureaus were in charge of weapons, silverwork, laundering,
headgear, bronzework, textile manufacture, wineries, and gardens.[108] At times, the most influential
eunuch in the Directorate of Ceremonial acted as a de facto dictator over the state.[109]
Although the imperial household was staffed mostly by eunuchs and palace ladies, there was a civil
service office called the Seal Office, which cooperated with eunuch agencies in maintaining imperial
seals, tallies, and stamps.[110] There were also civil service offices to oversee the affairs of imperial
princes.[111]
Personnel
Scholar-officials

Candidates who had taken the civil service examinations would crowd around the wall where the results were
posted; detail from a handscroll in ink and color on silk, by Qiu Ying (1494–1552).[112]

The Hongwu emperor from 1373 to 1384 staffed his bureaus with officials gathered through
recommendations only. After that the scholar-officials who populated the many ranks of bureaucracy
were recruited through a rigorous examination system that was initially established by the Sui
dynasty (581–618).[113][114][115] Theoretically the system of exams allowed anyone to join the ranks of
imperial officials (although it was frowned upon for merchants to join); in reality the time and funding
needed to support the study in preparation for the exam generally limited participants to those
already coming from the landholding class. However, the government did exact provincial quotas
while drafting officials.[116] This was an effort to curb monopolization of power by landholding gentry
who came from the most prosperous regions, where education was the most advanced.[117] The
expansion of the printing industry since Song times enhanced the spread of knowledge and number
of potential exam candidates throughout the provinces.[118] For young schoolchildren there were
printed multiplication tables and primers for elementary vocabulary; for adult examination candidates
there were mass-produced, inexpensive volumes of Confucian classics and successful examination
answers.[119]
As in earlier periods, the focus of the examination was classical Confucian texts,[113] while the bulk of
test material centered on the Four Books outlined by Zhu Xi in the 12th century.[120] Ming era
examinations were perhaps more difficult to pass since the 1487 requirement of completing the
"eight-legged essay", a departure from basing essays off progressing literary trends.[120][121] The
exams increased in difficulty as the student progressed from the local level, and appropriate titles
were accordingly awarded successful applicants. Officials were classified in nine hierarchic grades,
each grade divided into two degrees, with ranging salaries (nominally paid in piculs of rice)
according to their rank.[122] While provincial graduates who were appointed to office were immediately
assigned to low-ranking posts like the county graduates, those who passed the palace examination
were awarded a jinshi ('presented scholar') degree and assured a high-level position.[123][124] In 276
years of Ming rule and ninety palace examinations, the number of doctoral degrees granted by
passing the palace examinations was 24,874.[123] Ebrey states that "there were only two to four
thousand of these jinshi at any given time, on the order of one out of 10,000 adult males."[116] This
was in comparison to the 100,000 shengyuan ('government students'), the lowest tier of graduates,
by the 16th century.[116]
The maximum tenure in office was nine years, but every three years officials were graded on their
performance by senior officials.[125] If they were graded as superior then they were promoted, if
graded adequate then they retained their ranks, and if graded inadequate they were demoted one
rank. In extreme cases, officials would be dismissed or punished. Only capital officials of grade 4
and above were exempt from the scrutiny of recorded evaluation, although they were expected to
confess any of their faults.[97] There were over 4,000 school instructors in county and prefectural
schools who were subject to evaluations every nine years. The Chief Instructor on the prefectural
level was classified as equal to a second-grade county graduate.[126] The Supervisorate of Imperial
Instruction oversaw the education of the heir apparent to the throne; this office was headed by a
Grand Supervisor of Instruction, who was ranked as first class of grade three.[111]
Lesser functionaries

The Xuande Emperor playing chuiwan with his eunuchs, a game similar to golf, by an anonymous court painter
of the Xuande period (1425–35).

Scholar-officials who entered civil service through examinations acted as executive officials to a
much larger body of non-ranked personnel called lesser functionaries. They outnumbered officials by
four to one; Charles Hucker estimates that they were perhaps as many as 100,000 throughout the
empire. These lesser functionaries performed clerical and technical tasks for government agencies.
Yet they should not be confused with lowly lictors, runners, and bearers; lesser functionaries were
given periodic merit evaluations like officials and after nine years of service might be accepted into a
low civil service rank.[127] The one great advantage of the lesser functionaries over officials was that
officials were periodically rotated and assigned to different regional posts and had to rely on the
good service and cooperation of the local lesser functionaries.[128]
Eunuchs, princes, and generals

Detail of The Emperor's Approach showing the Wanli Emperor's royal carriage being pulled by elephants and
escorted by cavalry (full panoramic painting here)

Eunuchs gained unprecedented power over state affairs during the Ming dynasty. One of the most
effective means of control was the secret service stationed in what was called the Eastern Depot at
the beginning of the dynasty, later the Western Depot. This secret service was overseen by the
Directorate of Ceremonial, hence this state organ's often totalitarian affiliation.[108] Eunuchs had ranks
that were equivalent to civil service ranks, only theirs had four grades instead of nine.[129]
Descendants of the first Ming emperor were made princes and given (typically nominal) military
commands, annual stipends, and large estates. The title used was "king" (王, wáng) but – unlike the
princes in the Han and Jin dynasties – these estates were not feudatories, the princes did not serve
any administrative function, and they partook in military affairs only during the reigns of the first two
emperors.[130] The rebellion of the Prince of Yan was justified in part as upholding the rights of the
princes, but once the Yongle Emperor was enthroned, he continued his nephew's policy of disarming
his brothers and moved their fiefs away from the militarized northern border. Although princes
served no organ of state administration, the princes, consorts of the imperial princesses, and
ennobled relatives did staff the Imperial Clan Court, which supervised the imperial genealogy.[111]
Like scholar-officials, military generals were ranked in a hierarchic grading system and were given
merit evaluations every five years (as opposed to three years for officials).[131] However, military
officers had less prestige than officials. This was due to their hereditary service (instead of solely
merit-based) and Confucian values that dictated those who chose the profession of violence (wu)
over the cultured pursuits of knowledge (wen).[131][132] Although seen as less prestigious, military
officers were not excluded from taking civil service examinations, and after 1478 the military even
held their own examinations to test military skills.[133] In addition to taking over the established
bureaucratic structure from the Yuan period, the Ming emperors established the new post of the
travelling military inspector. In the early half of the dynasty, men of noble lineage dominated the
higher ranks of military office; this trend was reversed during the latter half of the dynasty as men
from more humble origins eventually displaced them.[134]
Society and culture
Literature and arts
Further information: Ming dynasty painting and Ming poetry

Lofty Mount Lu, by Shen Zhou, 1467.

Literature, painting, poetry, music, and Chinese opera of various types flourished during the Ming
dynasty, especially in the economically prosperous lower Yangzi valley.
Although short fiction had been popular as far back as the Tang dynasty (618–907),[135] and the
works of contemporaneous authors such as Xu Guangqi, Xu Xiake, and Song Yingxing were often
technical and encyclopedic, the most striking literary development was the vernacular novel. While
the gentry elite were educated enough to fully comprehend the language of Classical Chinese, those
with rudimentary education – such as women in educated families, merchants, and shop clerks –
became a large potential audience for literature and performing arts that employed Vernacular
Chinese.[136] Literati scholars edited or developed major Chinese novels into mature form in this
period, such as Water Margin and Journey to the West. Jin Ping Mei, published in 1610, although
incorporating earlier material, marks the trend toward independent composition and concern with
psychology.[137] In the later years of the dynasty, Feng Menglong and Ling Mengchu innovated with
vernacular short fiction. Theater scripts were equally imaginative. The most famous, The Peony
Pavilion, was written by Tang Xianzu (1550–1616), with its first performance at the Pavilion of Prince
Teng in 1598.
Informal essay and travel writing was another highlight. Xu Xiake (1587–1641), a travel
literature author, published his Travel Diaries in 404,000 written characters, with information on
everything from local geography to mineralogy.[138][139] The first reference to the publishing of private
newspapers in Beijing was in 1582; by 1638 the Beijing Gazette switched from using woodblock
print to movable type printing.[140] The new literary field of the moral guide to business ethics was
developed during the late Ming period, for the readership of the merchant class.[141]

Poetry of Min Ding, 17th century

In contrast to Xu Xiake, who focused on technical aspects in his travel literature, the Chinese poet
and official Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) used travel literature to express his desires for individualism
as well as autonomy from and frustration with Confucian court politics.[142] Yuan desired to free
himself from the ethical compromises that were inseparable from the career of a scholar-official. This
anti-official sentiment in Yuan's travel literature and poetry was actually following in the tradition of
the Song dynasty poet and official Su Shi (1037–1101).[143] Yuan Hongdao and his two brothers,
Yuan Zongdao (1560–1600) and Yuan Zhongdao (1570–1623), were the founders of the Gong'an
School of letters.[144] This highly individualistic school of poetry and prose was criticized by the
Confucian establishment for its association with intense sensual lyricism, which was also apparent in
Ming vernacular novels such as the Jin Ping Mei.[144] Yet even gentry and scholar-officials were
affected by the new popular romantic literature, seeking courtesans as soulmates to reenact the
heroic love stories that arranged marriages often could not provide or accommodate.[145]
Painting of flowers, a butterfly, and rock sculpture by Chen Hongshou (1598–1652); small leaf album paintings
like this one first became popular in the Song dynasty.

Famous painters included Ni Zan and Dong Qichang, as well as the Four Masters of the Ming
dynasty, Shen Zhou, Tang Yin, Wen Zhengming, and Qiu Ying. They drew upon the techniques,
styles, and complexity in painting achieved by their Song and Yuan predecessors, but added
techniques and styles. Well-known Ming artists could make a living simply by painting due to the
high prices they demanded for their artworks and the great demand by the highly cultured
community to collect precious works of art. The artist Qiu Ying was once paid 2.8 kg (100 oz) of
silver to paint a long handscroll for the eightieth birthday celebration of the mother of a wealthy
patron. Renowned artists often gathered an entourage of followers, some who were amateurs who
painted while pursuing an official career and others who were full-time painters.[146]

Ming dynasty Xuande mark and period (1426–35) imperial blue and white vase. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York.

The period was also renowned for ceramics and porcelains.The major production centers for
porcelain were the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province and Dehua in Fujian province.
The Dehua porcelain factories catered to European tastes by creating Chinese export porcelain by
the 16th century. Individual potters also became known, such as He Chaozong, who became
famous in the early 17th century for his style of white porcelain sculpture. In The Ceramic Trade in
Asia, Chuimei Ho estimates that about 16% of late Ming era Chinese ceramic exports were sent to
Europe, while the rest were destined for Japan and South East Asia.[147]
Carved designs in lacquerware and designs glazed onto porcelain wares displayed intricate scenes
similar in complexity to those in painting. These items could be found in the homes of the wealthy,
alongside embroidered silks and wares in jade, ivory, and cloisonné. The houses of the rich were
also furnished with rosewood furniture and feathery latticework. The writing materials in a scholar's
private study, including elaborately carved brush holders made of stone or wood, were designed and
arranged ritually to give an aesthetic appeal.[148]
Connoisseurship in the late Ming period centered on these items of refined artistic taste, which
provided work for art dealers and even underground scammers who themselves made imitations
and false attributions.[148] The Jesuit Matteo Ricci while staying in Nanjing wrote that Chinese scam
artists were ingenious at making forgeries and huge profits.[149] However, there were guides to help
the wary new connoisseur; Liu Tong (died 1637) wrote a book printed in 1635 that told his readers
how to spot fake and authentic pieces of art.[150] He revealed that a Xuande era (1426–1435)
bronzework could be authenticated by judging its sheen; porcelain wares from the Yongle era
(1402–1424) could be judged authentic by their thickness.[151]
Religion
See also: Islam during the Ming dynasty, Jesuit China missions, and Chinese Rites Controversy
Chinese glazed stoneware statue of a Daoist deity, from the Ming dynasty, 16th century.

The dominant religious beliefs during the Ming dynasty were the various forms of Chinese folk
religion and the Three Teachings – Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The Yuan-
supported Tibetan lamas fell from favor, and the early Ming emperors particularly favored Taoism,
granting its practitioners many positions in the state's ritual offices.[152] The Hongwu Emperor
curtailed the cosmopolitan culture of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and the prolific Prince of Ning Zhu
Quan even composed one encyclopedia attacking Buddhism as a foreign "mourning cult",
deleterious to the state, and another encyclopedia that subsequently joined the Taoist canon.[152]
Islam was also well-established throughout China, with a history said to have begun with Sa'd ibn
Abi Waqqas during the Tang dynasty and strong official support during the Yuan. Although the
Ming sharply curtailed this support, there were still several prominent Muslim figures early on,
including the Hongwu Emperor's generals Chang Yuqun, Lan Yu, Ding Dexing, and Mu Ying,[153] as
well as the Yongle Emperor's powerful eunuch Zheng He.

Bodhisattva Manjusri in Blanc-de-Chine, by He Chaozong, 17th century; Song Yingxing devoted an entire
section of his book to the ceramics industry in the making of porcelain items like this.[154]

The advent of the Ming was initially devastating to Christianity: in his first year, the Hongwu
Emperor declared the eighty-year-old Franciscan missions among the Yuan heterodox and
illegal.[155] The centuries-old Nestorian church also disappeared. During the later Ming a new wave of
Christian missionaries arrived – particularly Jesuits – who employed new western science and
technology in their arguments for conversion. They were educated in Chinese language and culture
at St. Paul's College on Macau after its founding in 1579. The most influential was Matteo Ricci,
whose "Map of the Myriad Countries of the World" upended traditional geography throughout East
Asia, and whose work with the convert Xu Guangqi led to the first Chinese translation
of Euclid's Elements in 1607. The discovery of a Nestorian stele at Xi'an in 1625 also permitted
Christianity to be treated as an old and established faith, rather than as a new and dangerous cult.
However, there were strong disagreements about the extent to which converts could continue to
perform rituals to the emperor, Confucius, or their ancestors: Ricci had been very accommodating
and an attempt by his successors to backtrack from this policy led to the Nanjing Incident of 1616,
which exiled four Jesuits to Macau and forced the others out of public life for six years.[156] A series of
spectacular failures by the Chinese astronomers – including missing an eclipse easily computed by
Xu Guangqi and Sabatino de Ursis – and a return by the Jesuits to presenting themselves as
educated scholars in the Confucian mold[157] restored their fortunes. However, by the end of the Ming
the Dominicans had begun the Chinese Rites controversy in Rome that would eventually lead to a
full ban of Christianity under the Qing dynasty.
During his mission, Ricci was also contacted in Beijing by one of the approximately 5,000 Kaifeng
Jews and introduced them and their long history in China to Europe.[158] However, the 1642
flood caused by Kaifeng's Ming governor devastated the community, which lost five of its twelve
families, its synagogue, and most of its Torah.[159]
Philosophy
Wang Yangming's Confucianism

Wang Yangming (1472–1529), considered the most influential Confucian thinker since Zhu Xi

During the Ming dynasty, the Neo-Confucian doctrines of the Song scholar Zhu Xi were embraced
by the court and the Chinese literati at large, although the direct line of his school was destroyed by
the Yongle Emperor's extermination of the ten degrees of kinship of Fang Xiaoru in 1402.
The Ming scholar most influential upon subsequent generations, however, was Wang
Yangming (1472–1529), whose teachings were attacked in his own time for their similarity to Chan
Buddhism.[160] Building upon Zhu Xi's concept of the "extension of knowledge" (理學 or 格物致知),
gaining understanding through careful and rational investigation of things and events, Wang argued
that universal concepts would appear in the minds of anyone.[161] Therefore, he claimed that anyone
– no matter their pedigree or education – could become as wise as Confucius and Mencius had
been and that their writings were not sources of truth but merely guides that might have flaws when
carefully examined.[162] A peasant with a great deal of experience and intelligence would then be
wiser than an official who had memorized the Classics but not experienced the real world.[162]
Conservative reaction

A Ming dynasty print drawing of Confucius on his way to the Zhou dynasty capital of Luoyang.

Other scholar-bureaucrats were wary of Wang's heterodoxy, the increasing number of his disciples
while he was still in office, and his overall socially rebellious message. To curb his influence, he was
often sent out to deal with military affairs and rebellions far away from the capital. Yet his ideas
penetrated mainstream Chinese thought and spurred new interest in Taoism and
Buddhism.[160] Furthermore, people began to question the validity of the social hierarchy and the idea
that the scholar should be above the farmer. Wang Yangming's disciple and salt-mine worker Wang
Gen gave lectures to commoners about pursuing education to improve their lives, while his follower
He Xinyin (何心隱) challenged the elevation and emphasis of the family in Chinese society.[160] His
contemporary Li Zhi even taught that women were the intellectual equals of men and should be
given a better education; both Li and He eventually died in prison, jailed on charges of spreading
"dangerous ideas".[163] Yet these "dangerous ideas" of educating women had long been embraced by
some mothers[164] and by courtesans who were as literate and skillful in calligraphy, painting, and
poetry as their male guests.[165]
The liberal views of Wang Yangming were opposed by the Censorate and by the Donglin Academy,
re-established in 1604. These conservatives wanted a revival of orthodox Confucian ethics.
Conservatives such as Gu Xiancheng (1550–1612) argued against Wang's idea of innate moral
knowledge, stating that this was simply a legitimization for unscrupulous behavior such as greedy
pursuits and personal gain. These two strands of Confucian thought, hardened by Chinese scholars'
notions of obligation towards their mentors, developed into pervasive factionalism among the
ministers of state, who used any opportunity to impeach members of the other faction from court.[166]
Urban and rural life
A Ming dynasty red lacquer box with intricate carving of people in the countryside, surrounded by a floral border
design.

Wang Gen was able to give philosophical lectures to many commoners from different regions
because – following the trend already apparent in the Song dynasty – communities in Ming society
were becoming less isolated as the distance between market towns was shrinking. Schools, descent
groups, religious associations, and other local voluntary organizations were increasing in number
and allowing more contact between educated men and local villagers.[167] Jonathan Spence writes
that the distinction between what was town and country was blurred in Ming China, since suburban
areas with farms were located just outside and in some cases within the walls of a city. Not only was
the blurring of town and country evident, but also of socioeconomic class in the traditional four
occupations (Chinese: 士農工商), since artisans sometimes worked on farms in peak periods, and
farmers often traveled into the city to find work during times of dearth.[168]

Emperor Minghuang's Journey to Sichuan, a Ming dynasty painting after Qiu Ying (1494–1552).

A variety of occupations could be chosen or inherited from a father's line of work. This would include
– but was not limited to – coffinmakers, ironworkers and blacksmiths, tailors, cooks and noodle-
makers, retail merchants, tavern, teahouse, or winehouse managers, shoemakers, seal cutters,
pawnshop owners, brothel heads, and merchant bankers engaging in a proto-banking system
involving notes of exchange.[63][169] Virtually every town had a brothel where female and male
prostitutes could be had.[170] Male catamites fetched a higher price than female concubines
since pederasty with a teenage boy was seen as a mark of elite status, regardless of sodomy being
repugnant to sexual norms.[171] Public bathing became much more common than in earlier
periods.[172] Urban shops and retailers sold a variety of goods such as special paper money to burn at
ancestral sacrifices, specialized luxury goods, headgear, fine cloth, teas, and others.[169] Smaller
communities and townships too poor or scattered to support shops and artisans obtained their goods
from periodic market fairs and traveling peddlers. A small township also provided a place for simple
schooling, news and gossip, matchmaking, religious festivals, traveling theater groups, tax
collection, and bases of famine relief distribution.[168]
Farming villagers in the north spent their days harvesting crops like wheat and millet, while farmers
south of the Huai River engaged in intensive rice cultivation and had lakes and ponds where ducks
and fish could be raised. The cultivation of mulberry trees for silkworms and tea bushes could be
found mostly south of the Yangzi River; even further south sugarcane and citrus were grown as
basic crops.[168] Some people in the mountainous southwest made a living by selling lumber from
hard bamboo. Besides cutting down trees to sell wood, the poor also made a living by turning wood
into charcoal, and by burning oyster shells to make lime and fired pots, and weaving mats and
baskets.[173] In the north traveling by horse and carriage was most common, while in the south the
myriad of rivers, canals, and lakes provided cheap and easy water transport. Although the south had
the characteristic of the wealthy landlord and tenant farmers, there were on average many more
owner-cultivators north of the Huai River due to harsher climate, living not far above subsistence
level.[174]

Science and technology

Further information: History of science and technology in China, List of Chinese inventions, and List
of Chinese discoveries

The puddling process of smelting iron ore to make pig iron and then wrought iron, with the right illustration
displaying men working a blast furnace, from the Tiangong Kaiwu encyclopedia, 1637.

Map of the known world by Zheng He: India at the top, Ceylon at the upper right and East Africa along the
bottom. Sailing directions and distances are marked using zhenlu (Chinese: 針路) or compass route.

Compared to the flourishing of science and technology in the Song dynasty, the Ming dynasty
perhaps saw fewer advancements in science and technology compared to the pace of discovery in
the Western world. In fact, key advances in Chinese science in the late Ming were spurred by
contact with Europe. In 1626 Johann Adam Schall von Bell wrote the first Chinese treatise on
the telescope, the Yuanjingshuo (Far Seeing Optic Glass); in 1634 the Chongzhen
Emperor acquired the telescope of the late Johann Schreck (1576–1630).[175] The heliocentric model
of the solar system was rejected by the Catholic missionaries in China, but Johannes
Kepler and Galileo Galilei's ideas slowly trickled into China starting with the Polish Jesuit Michael
Boym (1612–59) in 1627, Adam Schall von Bell's treatise in 1640, and finally Joseph Edkins, Alex
Wylie, and John Fryer in the 19th century.[176] Catholic Jesuits in China would
promote Copernican theory at court, yet at the same time embrace the Ptolemaic system in their
writing; it was not until 1865 that Catholic missionaries in China sponsored the heliocentric model as
their Protestant peers did.[177] Although Shen Kuo (1031–95) and Guo Shoujing (1231–1316) had laid
the basis for trigonometry in China, another important work in Chinese trigonometry would not be
published again until 1607 with the efforts of Xu Guangqi and Matteo Ricci.[178] Ironically, some
inventions which had their origins in ancient China were reintroduced to China from Europe during
the late Ming; for example, the field mill.[179]
The Chinese calendar was in need of reform since it inadequately measured the solar year at 365 ¼
days, giving an error of 10 min and 14 sec a year or roughly a full day every 128 years.[180] Although
the Ming had adopted Guo Shoujing's Shoushi calendar of 1281, which was just as accurate as
the Gregorian Calendar, the Ming Directorate of Astronomy failed to periodically readjust it; this was
perhaps due to their lack of expertise since their offices had become hereditary in the Ming and the
Statutes of the Ming prohibited private involvement in astronomy.[181] A sixth-generation descendant
of the Hongxi Emperor, the "Prince" Zhu Zaiyu (1536–611), submitted a proposal to fix the calendar
in 1595, but the ultra-conservative astronomical commission rejected it.[180][181] This was the same Zhu
Zaiyu who discovered the system of tuning known as equal temperament, a discovery made
simultaneously by Simon Stevin (1548–1620) in Europe.[182] In addition to publishing his works on
music, he was able to publish his findings on the calendar in 1597.[181] A year earlier, the memorial of
Xing Yunlu suggesting a calendar improvement was rejected by the Supervisor of the Astronomical
Bureau due to the law banning private practice of astronomy; Xing would later serve with Xu
Guangqi in reforming the calendar (Chinese: 崇禎暦書) in 1629 according to Western standards.[181]

A 24-point compass chart employed by Zheng He during his explorations.

When the Ming founder Hongwu came upon the mechanical devices housed in the Yuan dynasty's
palace at Khanbaliq— such as fountains with balls dancing on their jets, self-operating tiger
automata, dragon-headed devices that spouted mists of perfume, and mechanical clocks in the
tradition of Yi Xing (683–727) and Su Song (1020–101)—he associated all of them with the
decadence of Mongol rule and had them destroyed.[183] This was described in full length by the
Divisional Director of the Ministry of Works, Xiao Xun, who also carefully preserved details on the
architecture and layout of the Yuan dynasty palace.[183] Later, European Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci
and Nicolas Trigault would briefly mention indigenous Chinese clockworks that featured drive
wheels.[184] However, both Ricci and Trigault were quick to point out that 16th-century European
clockworks were far more advanced than the common time keeping devices in China, which they
listed as water clocks, incense clocks, and "other instruments ... with wheels rotated by sand as if by
water" (Chinese: 沙漏).[185] Chinese records— namely the Yuan Shi (Chinese: 元史)—describe the
'five-wheeled sand clock', a mechanism pioneered by Zhan Xiyuan (fl. 1360–80) which featured the
scoop wheel of Su Song's earlier astronomical clock and a stationary dial face over which a pointer
circulated, similar to European models of the time.[186]This sand-driven wheel clock was improved
upon by Zhou Shuxue (fl. 1530–58) who added a fourth large gear wheel, changed gear ratios, and
widened the orifice for collecting sand grains since he criticized the earlier model for clogging up too
often.[187]

Portrait of Matteo Ricci by Yu Wenhui, Latinized as Emmanuel Pereira, dated the year of Ricci's death, 1610

The Chinese were intrigued with European technology, but so were visiting Europeans of Chinese
technology. In 1584, Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) featured in his atlas Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum the peculiar Chinese innovation of mounting masts and sails onto carriages, just
like Chinese ships.[188] Gonzales de Mendoza also mentioned this a year later— noting even the
designs of them on Chinese silken robes —while Gerardus Mercator (1512–94) featured them in his
atlas, John Milton (1608–74) in one of his famous poems, and Andreas Everardus van Braam
Houckgeest (1739–801) in the writings of his travel diary in China.[189]
The encyclopedist Song Yingxing (1587–1666) documented a wide array of technologies,
metallurgic and industrial processes in his Tiangong Kaiwu (Chinese: 天工開物) encyclopedia of
1637. This includes mechanical and hydraulic powered devices for agriculture and
irrigation,[190]nautical technology such as vessel types and snorkeling gear for pearl
divers,[191][192][193] the annual processes of sericulture and weaving with the loom,[194] metallurgic
processes such as the crucible technique and quenching,[195] manufacturing processes such as for
roasting iron pyrite in converting sulphide to oxide in sulfur used in gunpowder compositions—
 illustrating how ore was piled up with coal briquettes in an earthen furnace with a still-head that sent
over sulfur as vapor that would solidify and crystallize[196] —and the use of gunpowder weapons such
as a naval mine ignited by use of a rip-cord and steel flint wheel.[197]
A cannon from the Huolongjing, compiled by Jiao Yu and Liu Bowen before the latter's death in 1375.

Focusing on agriculture in his Nongzheng Quanshu, the agronomist Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) took
an interest in irrigation, fertilizers, famine relief, economic and textile crops, and empirical
observation of the elements that gave insight into early understandings of chemistry.[198]
There were many advances and new designs in gunpowder weapons during the beginning of the
dynasty, but by the mid to late Ming the Chinese began to frequently employ European-style artillery
and firearms.[199] The Huolongjing, compiled by Jiao Yu and Liu Bowen sometime before the latter's
death on 16 May 1375 (with a preface added by Jiao in 1412),[200] featured many types of cutting-
edge gunpowder weaponry for the time. This includes hollow, gunpowder-filled exploding
cannonballs,[201] land mines that used a complex trigger mechanism of falling weights, pins, and a
steel wheellock to ignite the train of fuses,[202] naval mines,[203] fin-mounted winged rockets
for aerodynamic control,[204] multistage rockets propelled by booster rockets before igniting a swarm
of smaller rockets issuing forth from the end of the missile (shaped like a dragon's head),[205]and hand
cannons that had up to ten barrels.[206]
Li Shizhen (1518–93)— one of the most renowned pharmacologists and physicians in Chinese
history —belonged to the late Ming period. His Bencao Gangmu is a medical text with 1,892 entries,
each entry with its own name called a gang. The mu in the title refers to the synonyms of each
name.[207] Inoculation, although it can be traced to earlier Chinese folk medicine, was detailed in
Chinese texts by the sixteenth century. Throughout the Ming dynasty, around fifty texts were
published on the treatment of smallpox.[208] In regards to oral hygiene, the ancient Egyptians had a
primitive toothbrush of a twig frayed at the end, but the Chinese were the first to invent the
modern bristle toothbrush in 1498, although it used stiff pig hair.[209]

Population
Appreciating Plums, by Chen Hongshou (1598–1652) showing a lady holding an oval fan while enjoying the
beauty of the plum.

Sinologist historians debate the population figures for each era in the Ming dynasty. The
historian Timothy Brook notes that the Ming government census figures are dubious since fiscal
obligations prompted many families to underreport the number of people in their households and
many county officials to underreport the number of households in their jurisdiction.[210] Children were
often underreported, especially female children, as shown by skewed population statistics
throughout the Ming.[211] Even adult women were underreported;[212] for example, the Daming
Prefecture in North Zhili reported a population of 378 167 males and 226 982 females in
1502.[213] The government attempted to revise the census figures using estimates of the expected
average number of people in each household, but this did not solve the widespread problem of tax
registration.[214] Some part of the gender imbalance may be attributed to the practice of
female infanticide. The practice is well documented in China, going back over two thousand years,
and it was described as "rampant" and "practiced by almost every family" by contemporary
authors.[215] However, the dramatically skewed sex ratios, which many counties reported exceeding
2:1 by 1586, can't likely be explained by infanticide alone.[212]

The Xuande Emperor (r. 1425–35); he stated in 1428 that his populace was dwindling due to palace
construction and military adventures. But the population was rising under him, a fact noted by Zhou Chen—
 governor of South Zhili —in his 1432 report to the throne about widespread itinerant commerce.[216]
The number of people counted in the census of 1381 was 59 873 305; however, this number
dropped significantly when the government found that some 3 million people were missing from the
tax census of 1391.[217] Even though underreporting figures was made a capital crime in 1381, the
need for survival pushed many to abandon the tax registration and wander from their region, where
Hongwu had attempted to impose rigid immobility on the populace. The government tried to mitigate
this by creating their own conservative estimate of 60 545 812 people in 1393.[216] In his Studies on
the Population of China, Ho Ping-ti suggests revising the 1393 census to 65 million people, noting
that large areas of North China and frontier areas were not counted in that census.[218] Brook states
that the population figures gathered in the official censuses after 1393 ranged between 51 and 62
million, while the population was in fact increasing.[216] Even the Hongzhi Emperor (r. 1487–505)
remarked that the daily increase in subjects coincided with the daily dwindling amount of registered
civilians and soldiers.[173] William Atwell states that around 1400 the population of China was perhaps
90 million people, citing Heijdra and Mote.[219]
Historians are now turning to local gazetteers of Ming China for clues that would show consistent
growth in population.[211] Using the gazetteers, Brook estimates that the overall population under
the Chenghua Emperor (r. 1464–1487) was roughly 75 million,[214] despite mid-Ming census figures
hovering around 62 million.[173] While prefectures across the empire in the mid-Ming period were
reporting either a drop in or stagnant population size, local gazetteers reported massive amounts of
incoming vagrant workers with not enough good cultivated land for them to till, so that many would
become drifters, conmen, or wood-cutters that contributed to
deforestation.[220] The Hongzhi and Zhengde emperors lessened the penalties against those who had
fled their home region, while the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) finally had officials register migrants
wherever they had moved or fled in order to bring in more revenues.[213]
Even with the Jiajing reforms to document migrant workers and merchants, by the late Ming era the
government census still did not accurately reflect the enormous growth in population. Gazetteers
across the empire noted this and made their own estimations of the overall population in the Ming,
some guessing that it had doubled, tripled, or even grown fivefold since 1368.[221] Fairbank estimates
that the population was perhaps 160 million in the late Ming dynasty,[222] while Brook estimates 175
million,[221] and Ebrey states perhaps as large as 200 million.[223] However, a great epidemic that
entered China through the northwest in 1641 ravaged the densely populated areas along the Grand
Canal; a gazetteer in northern Zhejiang noted more than half the population fell ill that year and that
90% of the local populace in one area was dead by 1642.[224]

Ming Dynasty
Previous (Minerva)

Next (Minimalism)
The Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368 - 1398}

The Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644. It was the last
ethnic Han-led dynasty in China, supplanting the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty before falling to the
Manchu-led Qing Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty ruled over the Empire of the Great Ming (Dà
Míng Guó), as China was then known. Although the Ming capital, Beijing, fell in 1644, remnants
of the Ming throne and power (now collectively called the Southern Ming) survived until 1662.
The Civil Service and a strong centralized government developed during this period. Commerce,
trade and also naval exploration flourished with ships possibly reaching the Americas in 1421,
before Christopher Columbus set sail. Towards the end of the Ming rule, the first European
colony, Macao, was founded (1557).
Ming rule saw the construction of a vast navy, including four-masted ships of 1,500 tons
displacement, and a standing army of 1,000,000 troops. Over 100,000 tons of iron per year were
produced in North China (roughly 1 kg per inhabitant), and many books were printed using
movable type. There were strong feelings amongst the Han ethnic group against the rule by non-
Han ethnic groups during the subsequent Qing Dynasty, and the restoration of the Ming dynasty
was used as a rallying cry up until the modern era. Towards the end of the dynasty, the Emperors
increasingly retired from public life and power devolved to influential officials, and also to
their eunuchs.

Contents
[hide]
  1 Origins of the Ming Dynasty
 2 Government
 3 Exploration to Isolation
 4 Ming Military Conquests
 5 Agricultural Revolution
 6 Commerce Revolution
 7 The Ming Code
 8 Scrapping The Prime Minister Post
 9 Decline of the Ming
 10 Building the Great Wall
 11 The Network of Secret Agents
 12 Fall of the Ming Dynasty
 13 Notes
 14 References
 15 External Links
 16 Credits
Strife among the ministers, which the eunuchs used to their advantage, and corruption in the
court all contributed to the demise of this long dynasty. Their successors would have to deal with
the increased influence of the European powers in China, and the subsequent loss of complete
autonomy. The earlier overseas explorations yielded to isolationism, as the idea that all outside
of China was barbarian took hold, (known as Sinocentrism). However, a China that ceased to
deal with outsiders was badly placed to deal with them, which led to her becoming a theatre for
European imperial ambition. While China was never conquered by any other power (except by
Japan during World War II) from the sixteenth century on, the European powers gained many
concessions and established several colonies which undermined the Emperor's own power.

Origins of the Ming Dynasty

The Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming Dynasty. Some
historians believe the Mongols' discrimination against Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty is
the primary cause for the end of that dynasty. The discrimination led to a peasant revolt that
pushed the Yuan dynasty back to the Mongolian steppes. However, historians such as Joseph
Walker dispute this theory. Other causes include paper currency over-circulation, which caused
inflation to go up tenfold during the reign of Yuan Emperor Shundi, along with the flooding of
the Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects. In Late Yuan times,
agriculture was in shambles. When hundreds of thousands of civilians were called upon to work
on the Yellow River, war broke out. A number of Han Chinese groups revolted, and eventually
the group led by Zhu Yuanzhang, assisted by an ancient and secret intellectual fraternity called
the Summer Palace people, established dominance. The rebellion succeeded and the Ming
Dynasty was established in Nanjing in 1368. Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu as his reign title. The
Ming dynasty emperors were members of the Zhu family.
Hongwu kept a powerful army organized on a military system known as the Wei-so system,
which was similar to the Fu-ping system of the Tang Dynasty. According to Ming Shih Gao, the
political intention of the founder of the Ming Dynasty in establishing the Wei-so system was to
maintain a strong army while avoiding bonds between commanding officers and soldiers.
Hongwu supported the creation of self-supporting agricultural communities. Neo-feudal land-
tenure developments of Late Song times were expropriated with the establishment of the Ming
Dynasty. Great land estates were confiscated by the government, fragmented and rented out;
private slavery was forbidden. Consequently, after the death of the Yongle Emperor, independent
peasant landholders predominated in Chinese agriculture.
It is notable that Hongwu did not trust Confucians. However, during the next few emperors, the
Confucian scholar gentry, marginalized under the Yuan for nearly a century, once again assumed
their predominant role in running the empire.

Government

This map shows Ming Dynasty China in 1580. The distribution of guard commanders reflects the dynasty's

concern with the north border, the Wokou threat on the eastern seaboard, and also the continuing instability in

the southwest.

The basic pattern of governmental institutions in China has been the same for two thousand
years, but every dynasty installed special offices and bureaus for certain purposes. The Ming
administration was also structured in this pattern: the Grand Secretariat neige; before:
zhongshusheng) was assisting the emperor, besides are the Six Ministries (Liubu) for Personnel
(libu), Revenue (hubu), Rites (libu), War (bingbu), Justice (xingbu), and Public Works (gongbu),
under the Department of State Affairs (shangshu sheng). The Censorate (duchayuan; before:
yushitai) surveiling the work of imperial officials was also an old institution with a new name.
The nominal -and often not employed- heads of government, like since the Han Dynasty, were
the Three Dukes (sangong: the Grand Mentor taifu, the Grand Preceptor taishi and the Grand
Guardian taibao) and the Three Minor Solitaries (sangu). The first emperor of Ming in his
persecution mania abolished the Secretariat, the Censorate and the Chief Military Commission
(dudufu) and personally took over the responsibility and administration of the respective ressorts,
the Six Ministries, the Five Military Commissions (wu junfu), and the censorate ressorts: a whole
administration level was cut out and only partially rebuilt by the following emperors. The Grand
Secretariat was reinstalled, but without employing Ground Counsellors ("chancellors"). The
ministries, headed by a minister (shangshu) and run by directors (langzhong) stayed under direct
control of the emperor until the end of Ming, the Censorate was reinstalled and first staffed with
investigating censors (jiancha yushi), later with censors-in-chief (du yushi).
Of special interest during the Ming Dynasty is the vast imperial household that was staffed with
thousands of eunuchs, headed by the Directorate of Palace Attendants (neishijian), and divided
into different directorates (jian) and Services (ju) that had to administer the staff, the rites, food,
documents, stables, seals, gardens, state-owned manufacturies and so on.[1] Famous for its
intrigues and acting as the eunuch's secret service was the so-called Western Depot (xichang).
Princes and descendants of the first Ming emperor were given nominal military commands and
large land estates, but without title (compare the Han and Jin Dynasties, when princes were
installed as kings). The Ming emperors took over the provincial administration system of the
Mongols, and the 13 Ming provinces (sheng) are the origin of the modern provinces. On the
provincial level, the central government structure was copied, and there existed three provincial
commissions: one civil, one military, and one for surveillance. Below province level were the
prefectures (fu) under a prefect (zhifu) and subprefectures (zhou) under a subprefect (zhizhou),
the lowest unit was the district (xian) under a magistrate (zhixian). Like during the former
dynasties, a traveling inspector or Grand Coordinator (xunfu) from the Censorate controlled the
work of the provincial administrations. New during the Ming Dynasty was the traveling military
inspector (zongdu). Official recruitment was exerted by an examination system that theoretically
allowed everyone to link the ranks of imperial officials if he had enough time, money and
strength to learn and to write an "eight-legged essay" (baguwen). Passing the provincial
examinations, scholars were titled Cultivated Talents (xiuca), passing the metropolitan
examination, they obtained the title jinshi "Graduate."

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 Lacquer 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.

The Chinese gained influence over Turkestan. The maritime Asian nations sent envoys with
tributes 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 of Zheng He's seven
naval expeditions, which traversed the Indian Ocean and the Southeast Asian archipelago. An
ambitious 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, to the Americas [2] 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 317 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.

This tripod planter from the Ming Dynasty is an example of Longquan celadon. It is housed in

the Smithsonian in Washington, DC

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 dominance of the Chinese Empire. 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-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 that this measure was taken
in response to piracy. But during the mid-1500s, trade started up again when silver replaced
paper money as currency. The value of silver skyrocketed relative to the rest of the world, and
both trade and inflation increased as China began to import silver.
Historians of the 1960s, such as John Fairbank III 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 at something new. Historians who held to this view argue that
in the fifteenth 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 marked by Ming Dynasty military conquests as they
sought to cement 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 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 ultimately weakened the Ming Dynasty.

Agricultural Revolution
Historians consider the Hongwu emperor to be a cruel but able ruler. From the start of his rule,
he took great care 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 confiscation or purchase of this land by unscrupulous
landlords, it was announced that the title to the land was not transferable. At approximately the
middle of Hongwu's reign, an edict was published declaring that those who cultivated wasteland
could 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, a record which no
other dynasty has reached.
One of the most important aspects of the development of farming was water conservancy. The
Hong Wu emperor paid special attention to the irrigation of farms all over the empire, and in
1394 a number of students from Kuo-tzu-chien were sent to all of the provinces to help develop
irrigation systems. It is recorded that 40,987 ponds and dikes were dug.
Having himself come from a peasant family, Hong Wu emperor knew very well how much
farmers suffered under the gentry and the wealthy. Many of the latter, using influence with
magistrates, not only encroached on the land of farmers, but also by bribed sub-officials to
transfer the burden of taxation to the small farmers they had wronged. To prevent such abuses
the Hongwu Emperor instituted 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.
Hongwu 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, adopted 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 percent of the soldiers stationed along the borders took up farming, while the rest were
employed as guards. In the interior of the country, only 20 percent were needed to guard the
cities and the remaining occupied themselves with farming. So, one million soldiers of the Ming
army were able to produces five million piculs of grain, which not only supported great numbers
of troops but also paid the salaries of the officers.

Commerce Revolution
Hong Wu's 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 merchants 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
necessities 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, who 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 widespread introduction of silver into China helped monetize the
economy (replacing barter with currency), further facilitating trade.

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 monarch had started to
draft a code of laws 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 the Tang code slaves were treated almost
like domestic animals. 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, an ideal that harkens back to the reign of Han
Dynasty emperor Guangwu in the first century C.E. 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 nineteenth century.

Scrapping The Prime Minister Post

Many argue that Hongwu emperor, wishing to concentrate absolute authority in his own hands,
abolished the office of prime minister and so removed the only insurance against incompetent
emperors. However the statement is misleading as a new post was created called "Senior Grand
secretary" which replaced the abolished prime minister post. Ray Huang, Professor from State
University College at New Paltz, New York, has argued that Grand-secretaries, outwardly
powerless, could exercise considerable positive influence from behind the throne. Because of
their prestige and the public trust which they enjoyed, they could act as intermediaries between
emperor and the ministerial officials and thus provide stabilizing force in the court.

Decline of the Ming

The Yongle Emperor, as a warrior, was able to maintain the foreign policy of his father.
However, Yongle's successors attached little importance to foreign affairs and this lead to
deterioration of the army. Annam regained its independence in 1427 and in the north the
Mongols quickly regained their strength. Starting around 1445, the Oirat 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 annihilated and the Emperor was captured. Later, under Jia-Jing Emperor, the capital itself
nearly fell into the hands of the Mongols, if not for the heroic efforts of the patriot Yu Qian. At
the same time the Wokou Japanese pirates were raging along the coast - a front so extensive that
it was scarcely within the power of the government to guard it. It was not until local militiary
were formed under Qi Jiguang that the Japanese raids ended. Next, the Japanese under the
leadership of Hideyoshi set out to conquer Korea and China through two campaigns known
collectively as the Imjin War. While the Chinese defeated the Japanese, the empire suffered
financially. By the 1610s, the Ming Dynasty had lost de facto control over northeast China. A
tribe descended from Jin dynasty rapidly extended its power as far south as Shanhai Pass, i.e.
directly opposite the Great Wall, and would have taken over China quickly if not for the brilliant
Ming commander, Yuan Chonghuan. Indeed, the Ming did produce capable commanders such as
Yuan Chonghuan, Qi Jiguang, and others; who were able to turn this unfavorable sitation into a
satisfactory one. The corruption within the court—largely the fault of the eunuchs—also
contributed to the decline of the Ming Dynasty.
The decline of Ming Empire become more obvious in the second half of the Ming period. Most
of the Ming Emperors lived in retirement and power often fell into the hands of influential
officials, and also sometimes into the hands of eunuchs. Furthering the decline was strife among
the ministers, which the eunuchs used to their advantage. Corruption in the court persisted to the
end of the dynasty.
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 the manner of Europe during the last
century of the Ming Dynasty. In the early twenty-first century, however, some of the premises of
the debate have come under attack. Economic historians such as Kenneth Pomeranz have argue
that China was technologically and economically equal to Europe until the 1750s 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 mercantilism, an
economic system in which wealth was considered finite and nations were set to compete for this
wealth with the assistance of imperial governments, was a driving force behind the rise of
modern Europe in the 1600s-1700s. Capitalism after all can be traced to 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,
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 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 sixteenth century Europeans
started to appear on the eastern shores and the Portuguese founded Macao, the first European
settlement in China. 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
Dynasty, 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. Like its predecessor the Eastern Han Dynasty, the eunuchs would
be remembered as the major factor that brings the dynasty to its knees.
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, and
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 supervised or approved all the decisions of the latter 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.

Building the Great Wall

Did you know?

The Great Wall of China was built primarily during the Ming Dynasty (1368 to
1644)
After the Ming army defeat at Battle of Tumu 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 giant
impregnable wall, inspired by walls built during the Warring States Period by the states Yan,
Zhao, and Qin and linked by Qin.
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 Huang He, the wall follows what is now the northern
border of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. Work on the wall largely superseded military
expeditions against the Mongols for the last 80 years of the Ming dynasty and continued up until
1644, when the dynasty collapsed.

The Network of Secret Agents

In the 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 Jinyi Wei, 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
innocent. The Jinyi Wei had spread a terror throughout their empire, but their powers were
decimated as the eunuchs' influence at the court increased. The eunuchs created three groups of
secret agents in their favor; the East Factory, the West Factory and the Inner Factory. All were
no less brutal than the Jinyi Wei and probably worse, since they were more of a tool for the
eunuchs to eradicate their political opponents than anything else.

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 under Nurhaci. Under the brilliant commander, Yuan Chonghuan,
the Ming were able to repeatedly fight off the Manchus, notably in 1626 at Ning-yuan and in
1628. Succeeding generals, however, proved unable to eliminate the Manchu threat. Earlier,
however, in Yuan's command he had securely fortified the Shanhai pass, thus blocking the
Manchus from crossing the pass to attack Liaodong Peninsula.
Unable to attack the heart of Ming directly, the Manchu instead bided their time, developing
their own artillery and gathering allies. They were able to enlist Ming government officials and
generals as their strategic advisors. A large part of the Ming Army home mutinied to the Manchu
banner. In 1633 they completed a conquest of Inner Mongolia, resulting in a large scale
recruitment of Mongol troops under the Manchu banner and the securing of an additional route
into the Ming heartland.
By 1636 the Manchu ruler Huang Taiji was confident enough to proclaim the Imperial Qing
Dynasty at Shenyang, which had fallen to the Manchu in 1621, taking the Imperial title Chongde.
The end of 1637 saw the defeat and conquest of Ming'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 short-lived 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 the Yongli emperor, Zhu Youlang. Despite the Ming defeat, smaller
loyalist movements continued till the proclamation of the Republic of China.

Preceded by: Ming Dynasty Succeeded by:

Yuan Dynasty 1368–1644 Qing Dynasty