Ming dynasty

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

The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644. It came after the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty fell. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the largest ethnic group in China. In 1644, the capital, Beijing, was taken by a rebellion led by Li Zicheng. He started a short-lived Shun dynasty. Some rump regimes ruled by members of the Ming imperial family continued for a while. Together they are called the Southern Ming, and they lasted until 1662.

The dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), wanted to build a society of farming villages that could support themselves. He wanted a strict, unchanging system. He also needed a large group of permanent soldiers, so the army grew to more than one million troops. The dockyards of the navy in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also worked to reduce the power of the court eunuchs and other powerful families. He gave many of his sons lands across China, enfeoffing them. He tried to guide them with the Huang-Ming Zuxun, a set of published rules for the dynasty. This plan failed when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, tried to reduce his uncle's power. This led to the Jingnan campaign, an uprising. It placed the Prince of Yan on the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402.

The Yongle Emperor made Yan a second capital and renamed it Beijing. He built the Forbidden City. He also restored the Grand Canal and the importance of the imperial examinations for government jobs. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and used them to balance the power of the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One eunuch, Zheng He, led seven large voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean. His ships reached as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa. The Hongwu and Yongle emperors also expanded the empire's rule into Inner Asia.

Later emperors and new groups at court reduced these large efforts. In 1449, the Emperor Yingzong of Ming was captured during the Tumu Crisis, which ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair. Forced labor built the Liaodong palisade. It also joined and strengthened the Great Wall into its modern form. The population was very large, with many millions of people. Taxes became harder to collect as more people were missing from official records. Laws called Haijin were meant to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates. Instead, they turned many people into smugglers and pirates themselves.

In the 16th century, expansion of European trade brought the Columbian exchange of crops, plants, and animals into China. Trade was still limited to islands near Guangzhou, such as Macau. New crops such as chili peppers, which entered Sichuan cuisine, helped people. Productive maize and potatoes helped reduce hunger and encouraged population growth. Growing Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created demand for Chinese goods. It also brought a large amount of South American silver into the country. Paper money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted, so it was replaced by silver. Later, the reforms of Zhang Juzheng first worked well. However, a slowdown in farming caused by the Little Ice Age hurt the empire. The dynasty collapsed in 1644, when Li Zicheng's rebel forces entered Beijing. Crop failures, floods, and an epidemic had made life very hard. The Shun dynasty was defeated soon after by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies of the Qing dynasty. They were helped by the Ming general Wu Sangui, who switched sides.

History

Main article: History of the Ming dynasty

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Ming dynasty.

The Ming dynasty began in 1368, after the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty fell. The Yuan had treated the Han people unfairly, so many people rebelled. Zhu Yuanzhang, a poor farmer who had become a Buddhist monk, joined a rebel group and rose to power. He won against his rivals, took the throne, and became the Hongwu Emperor. He rebuilt the country, wrote new laws, and built a wall around Nanjing. Later, the Yongle Emperor moved the capital to Beijing. He also sent large fleets led by Zheng He on trading and friendship trips to other lands. The Ming also grew into the southwest and the northeast. They built the Forbidden City as the emperor's home.

Later Ming rulers faced many problems. Court officials argued with one another, and eunuchs gained great power. Silver became hard to get, which caused money troubles. Food shortages, natural disasters, and sickness spread across the land. In the 1600s, the Manchus rose to power in the north and started their own dynasty, the Qing. In 1644, the rebel leader Li Zicheng took Beijing, and the Ming dynasty came to an end. Some members of the Ming royal family kept resisting in southern China. These groups became known as the Southern Ming, and they were finally defeated by 1662.

Government

Main article: Government of the Ming dynasty

See also: List of emperors of the Ming dynasty

The Ming emperors used the provincial system of the Yuan dynasty. Their thirteen provinces came before today's provinces. Historians Edwin O. Reischauer, John K. Fairbank and Albert M. Craig said the Ming was "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history." During the Song dynasty, the largest division was the circuit. After the Jurchen invasion in 1127, new regional command systems were created. Each province was divided into prefectures, then subprefectures. The smallest unit was the county, which was led by a magistrate. The Ming also changed the central system called the Three Departments and Six Ministries, which many dynasties had used since the late Han. In 1380, the Hongwu Emperor removed the Secretariat, the Censorate, and the Chief Military Commission. Later rulers only partly rebuilt them. The Grand Secretariat began as a group that helped the emperor with paperwork. Later, grand coordinators were set up to watch over the provinces.

Officials were chosen through an examination system that was first created by the Sui dynasty. In practice, the tests mostly favored people from the landholding class. Printing helped more people get books to study. The exams focused on the Four Books, written by Zhu Xi. From 1487, candidates had to write an "eight-legged essay". The Ministry of Personnel, Ministry of Revenue, Ministry of Rites, Ministry of War, Ministry of Justice, and Ministry of Public Works each handled a main area of government. Grand Secretaries helped the emperor, and some came from the Hanlin Academy. Eunuchs gained great power at court and ran much of the imperial household. Princes were given military commands and estates, but these estates were not feudatories. The rebellion of the Prince of Yan showed how this could cause problems. The Imperial Clan Court kept the records of the imperial family.

Society and culture

Main article: Culture of the Ming dynasty

See also: Islam during the Ming dynasty

Literature, painting, poetry, music, and Chinese opera of many kinds grew strong during the Ming dynasty, especially in the wealthy lower Yangzi valley. One big change was the vernacular novel. It was written in everyday language, so merchants, shop clerks, and women in educated families could read it. Writers shaped major Chinese novels into their final form, such as Water Margin and Journey to the West. The most famous theater script, The Peony Pavilion, was written by Tang Xianzu. Xu Xiake, a travel literature writer, published his Travel Diaries. The book described many things, from local land features to mineralogy. Famous painters included Ni Zan, Dong Qichang, and the Four Masters of the Ming dynasty. The period was also known for blue and white porcelain made at the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen. People followed many kinds of Chinese folk religion. Most also followed the Three Teachings: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Islam was also well established in China. Zheng He, a powerful court official, was one of its most well-known Muslims in the early Ming period. In the later Ming, Christian missionaries arrived, especially Jesuits. They shared new western science and technology. The most influential was Matteo Ricci. His work with Xu Guangqi led to the first Chinese translation of Euclid's Elements in 1607. The philosopher Wang Yangming taught that anyone could become as wise as Confucius and Mencius. He also taught that experience mattered as much as book learning.

Ming society was changing in other ways too. Towns and villages were becoming less separated from one another. Jonathan Spence writes that the line between town and country was blurred. Farmers in the north grew crops such as wheat and millet. Farmers south of the Huai River grew rice. In the early Ming, the sumptuary laws were the strictest in Chinese history. They limited what ordinary people could wear, such as fine silk and bright red clothing. These laws were no longer enforced from the mid-Ming period onwards.

Science and technology

Further information: Architecture of the Ming dynasty, History of science and technology in China, List of Chinese inventions, and List of Chinese discoveries

After the Song dynasty made great progress in science and technology, the Ming perhaps made fewer advances than the Western world. Important advances in late Ming China came from contact with Europe. In 1626, Johann Adam Schall von Bell wrote the first Chinese book about the telescope. In 1634, the Chongzhen Emperor got a telescope from Johann Schreck. Ideas from Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei slowly reached China. By the 16th century, the Chinese calendar needed reform, but Ming astronomers did not update it often. A member of the imperial family, Zhu Zaiyu, proposed a fix in 1595, but it was turned down. He also discovered a tuning system called equal temperament, at about the same time as Simon Stevin in Europe.

When the Hongwu Emperor found the mechanical devices in the Yuan palace, he linked them with the excess of Mongol rule and had them destroyed. Chinese records describe a "five-wheeled sand clock" that was improved over time. Later, European Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci noted that European clocks of the 16th century were much more advanced than the common timekeeping devices in China. The encyclopedist Song Yingxing wrote about many technologies in his Tiangong Kaiwu of 1637. The agronomist Xu Guangqi wrote about farming, irrigation, and early ideas about chemistry. In the middle and late Ming, the Chinese began to use European-style cannons and firearms. The Huolongjing described many advanced gunpowder weapons. The famous doctor Li Shizhen wrote the medical book Bencao Gangmu. In 1498, the Chinese invented the modern bristle toothbrush, though it used stiff pig hair.

Population

Sinologist historians argue about how many people lived in each period of the Ming dynasty. The historian Timothy Brook says the government's census numbers are not fully reliable. Many families reported fewer people to pay less tax, and many officials reported fewer households. Children were often left out of the counts, and so were many women. In the 1381 census, 59,873,305 people were counted. However, about 3 million people were missing from the tax records of 1391, because many people had moved away from their home regions to find food and work. Ping-ti Ho suggests that the 1393 census should be corrected to 65 million people.

Historians now look at local gazetteers to find signs of population growth. Brook estimates that the total population under the Chenghua Emperor (r. 1464–1487) was about 75 million, even though official counts were around 62 million. The Hongzhi Emperor (r. 1487–1505) noticed that the number of registered people was falling while the number of his subjects was growing. Late in the Ming era, estimates of the population ranged from 160 million to 200 million. However, a large epidemic began in Shanxi in 1633. It spread through the crowded areas along the Grand Canal, and by 1642 one local area reported that most of its people had died.