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 first emperor of the Ming: Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398)

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 Central Asia, Mongolia, South East Asia, and the Indian Ocean (reigns of the Hongwu and Yongle emperors, sea expeditions conducted by Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433)).

 The third emperor of the Ming: Zhu Di (Yongle)

Map of the coastal ports visited by the expeditions of admiral Zheng He

Chart comparing Columbus' Santa Maria with a Treasure Ship of Admiral Zhng He's fleet

The Seven expeditions (1405-1433) were not the first sea expedtions Chinese sailers went on. Since the 11th century there had been extensive maritime trade under the Song. Quanzhou became the largest port in the world. The construction of large ships was further developed under the Yuan Dynasty when the Mongols invaded Java. Emperor Hongwu of the Ming planned sea expeditions. As a preparation he ordered millions of trees to be planted. 50 million trees were planted in the year in 1391 alone a large part of these trees was destined for future ship building projects.

The expeditions were arranged according to the following schedule:

1. 1405-1407 to Calicut

2. 1407-1409 to Calicut

3. 1409-1411 to Ceylon (Sri Lanka)

4. 1413-1415 to Hormuz (Persia)

5. 1417-1419 I. one part of the fleet travelled to Hormuz; II. the second part travelled to Sumatra and from there to Aden (returned 1420)

6. 1421-1422 I. one part of the fleet travelled to Sumatra; II. the second part sailed to Malindi (East African coast)

7. 1431-1433 I. one part sailed to Hormuz; on the return trip of this part of the fleet Zheng He died; II. the second part sailed to Calicut and from there to Jeddah.

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.

Tithings’, ‘hundreds’, and their heads were supervised by six tax captains selected by the local administration.

 

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 Grand Canal was restored in the beginning of the Ming (1403-1420). This restoration was a pre-condition for the move of the capital from Nanjing to Beijing and for the supply of the new capital with commodities.

47.004 full-time laborers were in charge of maintaining the Grand Canal in functioning condition. They had to clear the canal of silt, check the dykes, reinforce the dykes whenever necessary and keep the locks in working condition.

 

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 ‘Atlantic were pulled by the Chinese moon’.