The Ming Dynasty, Porcelain, Builders and Travellers

The Ming: Many associate this term with their pottery, which is the distinctive cobalt blue and white porcelain that influenced its style worldwide. This led to ceramics and tea sets being referred to as ‘China’ or ‘fine China.’ However, Ming is more than that: it is a dynasty. Known as the ‘Great Ming,’ they ruled China from 1368-1644 and oversaw the building of some of China’s most iconic monuments. Although overshadowed by the rich Tang, cultured Han, or even the decedent Qing who succeeded it, the Ming was a dynasty with many unique features and even is responsible for the building of the famed parts of the Great Wall, a monument synonymous with China today.

The Ming was founded by the Hongwu Emperor (1368–1398) in the dying years of the Yuan, the Mongol-led dynasty founded by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan (Chingis Khan). Famine, corruption, and natural disasters characterised this era. Hongwu (personal name as Zhu Yuanzhang) was of humble birth, and like Liu Bang (256 – June 195 BCE), founder of the Han dynasty (220 BCE-225 CE), Hongwu was born a peasant.  Early on in his life, he became a Buddhist monk to survive after his family died in a famine, though he was forced to leave the monastery and wander for several years when it ran out of funds. The monastery was eventually looted by a corrupt local army sent to suppress the local Red Turban Rebellion.

The Red Turbans

The Red Turbans were founded by the White Lotus sect, a religious group turned secret society. Red Turban groups sprung up in both the north and south of China. Hongwu joined in 1352 in response to the Yuan army’s sacking of his temple. Originally, Hongwu fought for the revived Song dynasty, though he did proclaim Nanjing as his capital in 1356. After the death of the Song Emperor in 1367, the Great Ming was proclaimed in 1368. The events are dramatised in Shelley Parker-Chan’s novels She Who Became the Sun (2021) and He Who Drowned the World (2023). These adaptations feature a gender-swapped Hongwu and examine the history from an LGBTQ+ point of view. These novels brought this era of Chinese history to a new audience in a bloody fashion.

The Emperors and Government

After Hongwu, there were several subsequent emperors, notably the Yongle Emperor (1402–1424), the Wanli Emperor (1572–1620), and the Chongzhen Emperor (1627–1644). The Ming emperors took over the provincial administration system of the Yuan dynasty, and the thirteen Ming provinces were the precursors of the modern provinces. The Ming was administered by six ministries: Personnel; Revenue; Rites; War; Justice, and Public Works. These were coordinated by the Grand Secretariat. The two main powers of the Ming government were the Scholar Bureaucrats (recruited through rigorous examination) and Eunuchs. The fight for control over the later Ming government would come to characterise the dynasty’s decline.

Zhang He

Zhang He (1371-1435) was an explorer, mariner, admiral, and eunuch under the Yongle Emperor. He gained the favour of the Emperor while he was still a prince when he helped to overthrow the Jianwen Emperor (1377-1402) and became commander of Nanjing; at this point whilst it was still of huge importance, it was only a secondary capital. Despite climbing to the top of the imperial anthill, Zhang He is more known for something else: his voyages.

Zhang He gathered a huge fleet of 317 ships and 218,000 crewmen and, in 1405, travelled around the Indian Ocean visiting Brunei, Java, Siam (Thailand), Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia. He presented gifts of gold, silk, and porcelain, and received ivory, elephants, and giraffes. The routes taken were not new, however, having been explored as far back as the Han dynasty. What was new was the size of the travel ships, with the ships being larger than Nelson’s HMS Victory. However, this size is disputed by historian Edward L. Dreyer, who claims the Luo Maodeng novel (Sanbao Taijian Xia Xiyang Ji Tongsu Yanyi), from which this information is known, is unsuitable as historical evidence, due to its fantastical twist.

Author Gavin Menzies also claims that Zhang He discovered America and started the Renaissance. However, this has been widely criticised as pseudo-historical. A critique by historian/author Robert Finley states that:

 “The reasoning is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous… Examination of the book’s central claims reveals they are uniform without substance.”

During the Hongxi emperor’s reign, the voyages stopped in response to an overextension of resources redirecting funds for military expenditures and rebuilding the Great Wall. However, in 1431, the Xuande emperor, Yongle’s grandson, approved a seventh and final voyage. During this voyage, 62-year-old Zhang He died and was buried at sea. Upon his death, the Confucian courtiers began a campaign to systematically destroy all of the records of Zheng He’s voyages, and the Emperor was wholly preoccupied with defending China’s northern borders from Mongolian incursions.

Tumu Crisis

The Tumu Crisis was a conflict in 1449 in which the Northern Yuan rump state held sway over Mongolia and parts of northern China up until the seventeenth century. A rump state is any politico-geographic entity (a state) that is the remnant of a previous, larger one that has been broken up. Esen Taishi, a powerful noble, united the Mongol tribes and marched south past the Great Wall, first defeating a Ming army at Yanghe.  The 22-year-old Emperor Yingzhong (1427-1464), encouraged by  powerful eunuch Wang Zhen, advanced to face the Yuan forces with a large army numbering 500,000. In the ensuing battle, the hastily assembled and poorly prepared Ming were overpowered by the northern Yuan, resulting in the capture of the Emperor, and the deaths of many high-ranking Ming officials and troops.

However, Esen failed to capitalise on this victory, unable to capture Beijing with the defence minister, primarily using the tactic of luring Esen’s forces into the cities, and then shutting the gates and using firearms troops (Shenjiying) to massacre them. Esen also failed to secure a ransom for the Emperor, and he was released within 4 years; his brother, the Jingtai Emperor (1428-1457), had been made emperor. The major contribution the crisis had on China was the rejuvenation of buildings it caused.

Building

The crisis caused a renewed interest in defence and caused the Ming to build new sections of the Great Wall from Jiayu Pass down the Hexi Corridor (an important region of northern China). In Shanxi, the wall split into the outer and inner Great Walls. Although the wall had been built by previous dynasties such as the Qin and Han, it is the Ming section which is most iconic today, specifically the Badaling section close to Beijing and the Jinshanling section.

The Ming also constructed the Forbidden City, the district of Beijing which became synonymous with imperial power. Construction lasted 14 years and required more than a million workers and laid the foundation for another one of China’s most iconic monuments.

Embroidered Uniform Guard

The Jinyiwei were founded by Hongwu to serve as his personal bodyguards. Their function later grew to encompass something resembling secret police. The Jinyiwei wore a distinctive golden-yellow uniform, with a tablet worn on the torso, and carried a sword (Dao) known as the embroidered spring knife. They were extremely powerful, answering only to the emperor himself, and had the authority to overrule judicial proceedings in prosecutions with full autonomy in arresting, interrogating, and punishing anyone, including nobles and the emperor’s relatives.

A notable event involved Huiping Wang of Jinyiwei Guardsmen defying the Wanli Emporer and the expectations of the guard’s absolute imperial obedience. The incident involved the guards refusing to confiscate property from Yan Song (1480–1567) and Xu Jie (1503–1583). The guards are often depicted as corrupt henchmen and as a sign of the Ming’s systematic decay.

The Jinyiwei also worked with eunuchs from the Eastern Depot or Bureau, which was a separate secret service run by Eunuchs. Founded by the Yongle Emperor, it grew in power until 1644. It had its own security forces and prisons, and held great sway over the Ming administration. Both the Bureau and the Jinyiwei were disbanded in 1644 with the fall of the Great Ming.

Decline and Fall

The Decline of the Great Ming began during the reign of the Wanli Emperor, who, though surrounded by talented ministers and officials, could do little to deal with the factionalism among them. The eunuchs developed their bureaucratic structures separate from the official administration, and several powerful dictator-like eunuchs developed throughout the dynasty. These include Wang Zhen. This led to a cumbersome government machine rife with corruption.

Historian Timothy Brook in his book The Price of Collapse, along with several other historians, postulate that climate change may have had something to do with the collapse of the Ming. Droughts and cold weather caused inflation in grain prices. Breakdowns in trade with the European merchants finding other sources of silver also caused significant issues.

In the 1630s, there was a rise in peasant revolts, which could mobilise a great number of people. One such revolt was led by Li Zicheng (1606-1645), which amassed over 300,000 people; this rebellion, coupled with the invasion of Nurhaci’s Manchu (which can be read about here in a further exploration of the Qing dynasty), caused a collapse in the Ming military system. The army was defeated by Li Zicheng and many deserted. Finally, the Chongzeng Emperor hung himself in Beijing on the branches of the Zuihuai (guilty pagoda tree), bringing the Great Ming to an end.

Southern Ming

After the death of the emperor, Li Zicheng crowned himself the new emperor, though his reign would be short, lasting only one year before Nurhaci’s Manchu horsemen captured Beijing and founded the subsequent Qing dynasty.

However, the Ming were not finished. A series of rump states were formed by Ming loyalists, including the Nanjing court (1644–1645), the Fuzhou court (1645–1646), the Guangzhou court (1646–1647), the Nanning court (1646–1651), the Yunnan and Burma exile (1651-1661), and the Kingdom of Tungning (1661–1683). As one can see, most of these courts were short-lived and sequential, with the exception of the Kingdom of Tungning, which lasted over 20 years. The Kingdom was based in Southern Taiwan and was under the control of the House of Koxinga. It can be postulated that the reason for the Kingdom of Tungning’s longevity was due to it being based on an island far from the Qing’s base of power in northern China. This coupled with the newly established Qing’s fledgling power base led to it being difficult to conquer.

The Ming were in power for nearly 300 years, and left their mark not only on China, but also on the outside world.

Written by Leon Corneille-Cowell

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