Ming2
Summing up WINTER
With the founding of the Ming the period
of destruction related to the rebellions that ended the Mongol Yuan dynasty
gave way to a time of consolidation of the state visible in the reconstruction
of agriculture and administration.
The end of the Yuan saw a rapid inflation,
corruption of the Tibetan clergy who controlled the Chinese clergy and interfered
in political affairs, and rebellions of the exploited Chinese population against
Mongol and other foreign officials.
One of the rebellions attracted the poor
monk Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398) who later became
the head of a rebel army and successfully fought against the Mongols as well
as other contenders for power.
The Ming dynasty may be divided into four
larger periods:
I. 1368- 1450: The
age of economic reconstruction and installation of new institutions. Diplomatic
and military expansion were pursued in
II. 1450-1520: A
period of withdrawal and defense after the great expeditions. This period
in the eyes of orthodox Confucians was a time in which commerce disrupted
the cycle of agriculture and began to corrupt society. The polarization of
the wealthy and the poor began.
III. 1520-ca.1580:
A 2nd Chinese ‘renaissance’ among Chinese intellectuals during
the rules of emperors Zhengtong and Zhengde could not
avert the growing imbalance of agriculture and commerce. Agriculture, so the
orthodox Confucians, was neglected, commerce dominated
the economy. The purity of working the land gave way to the excesses related
to the influence of capital.
Consumption, not necessity, began to drive
production.
4. 1580-1644: a period of crises in commerce,
politics, and revolts among urban workers
Society in the initial century of the Ming
was characterized by a search for stability through reconstruction of the
agrarian social system (which had been abandoned as early as the Song when
a commercial revolution had propelled the economy) and at the same time created
physical and social immobility while the population more than doubled.
► Agriculture:
restoration and
reclamation of land
reforestation
transfer of immigrants
to new territories, land distribution
► Physical immobility:
Travel was discouraged. The maximum radius
of travel in which no route certificate was required was a distance of 58
km.
Transgression of this law was punished
(at times by capital punishment) at the time of return.
► Social immobility:
Occupations were hereditary. (This regulation
actually had first been introduced by the Mongols and belongs to those regulations
that the first Ming emperor, Hongwu, did not discard instantly.)
The society consisted of
• peasants
who had to settle in villages,
• artisans
who worked in state-service workshops,
• merchants
who were only allowed to perform trade in necessities,
• and soldiers
who were settled at the frontiers in large numbers.
• A small educated elite whose members
were more distrusted than trusted by emperor Hongwu, managed the administration of the empire.
► A rural idyll was propagated:
Families had a house to live in, land to
cultivate in the predictable rhythm of the annual cycle of agriculature, hills with trees for firewood, gardens to grow
vegetables. Taxes were appropriate. Life was secure due to the absence of
bandits and military attacks. Moral values were kept high through a functioning
marriage and family system.
► Registration for purposes of tax
collection:
Households were registered in official
charts. In order to recruit household members for duty in the labor service
system,
•
units of 10 households were combined to one ‘tithing’ (jia),
headed by a ‘tithing head’ whose position rotated annually;
•
units of ten tithings were combined to a
‘hundred’ (li), headed by a ‘hundred captain’; his position rotated on
a decade basis.
Mobility would have and in fact later
did distort the systematic registration of the population for tax purposes.
In the beginning of the Ming, physical
mobility was only supported and at times required for
► creating new settlements in
the border regions in order to control military activities of the neighboring
peoples or states and
► creating a new social fabric
in the cities especially in the metropolitan areas when households of
former opponents of contenders for power were sent into exile as settlers
of territories that were to be newly cultivated. The population was functionally
divided and distributed.
► Uniformity in official matters
Due to the loss/ transformation of state
ritual and etiquette during the Yuan Dynasty uniformity was required in costume
and in handling official matters.
Models for writing memorials were published.
These models enabled not only educated officials but also less educated commoners
to formulate their ideas and concerns in an officially accepted standardized
fashion.
Memorial could be handed in by commoners
who at least in one case transmitted to us impeached a magistrate.
Each memorial that was sent in had to be
duplicated. The original was sent directly to the emperor who wrote a statement
and sent memorial and statement to the Office of Supervising Secretaries.
The office was created in the Ming and solely in charge of handling memorials.
It received the duplicate and matched it with the original and the emperor’s
statement. Every memorial was recorded in the official Court Record. A handwritten
summary was published in the Beijing Gazette which also informed its readers
about promotions, demotions, military and diplomatic affairs, as well as news
from the provinces such as natural disasters etc.
When the Veritable Records (Shilu)
were composed at the end of a rulers’ reign, the Gazette was one of the sources
on which the Shilu
were based.
► Officially approved physical mobility
was supervised
by the Ministry of War which managed
the courier service,
the postal service,
and
the transport
service.
Courier stations were established every
35 to 45 km. They kept up to 450 horses and mules, and 50-60 sedan chairs
(which had been introduced as a means of transportation during the Yuan Dynasty)
and the necessary amount of carriers.
The
47.004 full-time laborers were in charge
of maintaining the
Means of transportation
horse, mule
sedanchair
wheelbarrow (max.
load: 120 kg)
4 wheel mule-cart (max. load: 3000 kg /375
km)
grain barge (average
max. load 30.000 kg) made of pine (exchange: every 5 years) or made of the
more durable fir wood (exchange: every 10 years)
Brook argues that the tension created by
the search for social stability caused the trend of economic growth. Regional
and national commercial networks were formed. Agriculture developed from a
producing the means for subsistence to a production of surplus which could
be traded. The production of commodities used the improvements in infrastructure
provided by the newly consolidated state for its tax goods. Mobility necessarily
increased.
On an international level the states roaming
the ‘