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The
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) Having restored Chinese rule to China,
the first Ming emperor tried to model his rule after that of the Han,
but the Ming fell far short of the Han's accomplishments. The land under
Ming domination was less than under either the Han or the Tang. The Ming
dominion changed little after the first two decades. It was confined mostly
to what is known as China proper, south of the Great Wall and east of
Xinjiang and Tibet.
In culture, as well, the Ming lacked the Han's creativity and brilliance.
Coming after almost a century of foreign domination, the Ming was a period
of restoration and reorganization rather than a time of new discovery.
In a sense, the Ming followed a typical dynastic cycle: initial rehabilitation
of the economy and restoration of efficient government, followed by a
time of stability and then a gradual decline and fall.
The emperor Hong Wu modeled his government on the Tang system, restoring
the doctrine and practices of Confucianism and continuing the trend toward
concentration of power in the imperial government, especially in the hands
of the emperor himself. He tried to conduct state affairs single handedly,
but the workload proved overwhelming. To assist him, he gathered around
him several loyal middle-level officials, thus creating an extra-governmental
organization; the Grand Secretariat. The central bureaucracy was restored
and filled by officials selected by the examination system. That system
was further formalized by the introduction of a special essay style called
the eight-legged essay, to be used in writing the examination. In addition,
the subject matter of the examinations was restricted to the Five Classics,
said to have been compiled, edited, or written by Confucius, and the Four
Books, published by Zhu Xi.
In the field of provincial government, the emperor Hung-wu continued the
Yuan practice of limiting the power of provincial governors and subjecting
them directly to the central government. The empire was divided into 15
provinces. The first capital at Nanjing was in the economic heartland
of China, but in 1421 the emperor Yongle, who took the throne after a
civil war, moved the capital to Peking, where he began a massive construction
project. The imperial palace, which is also known as the Forbidden City,
was built at this time. The Ming produced two unique contributions: the
maritime expeditions of the early 15th century and the philosophy of Wang
Yang-ming. Between 1405 and 1433, seven major maritime expeditions were
launched under the leadership of a Muslim eunuch, Cheng Ho. Each expedition
was provided with several seagoing vessels, which were 400 feet (122 meters)
high, weighed 700 tons (635 metric tons), had multiple decks and 50 or
60 cabins, and carried several hundred people. During these expeditions,
the Chinese sailed the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and
the Persian Gulf. They traveled as far west as eastern Africa and as far
south as Java and Sumatra. But these missions ended just as suddenly as
they had begun. In philosophy, Wang Yangming developed a system of thought
that ran counter to the orthodox teaching of Zhu Xi. While Zhu Xi believed
in learning based on reason and the "investigation of things,"
Wang Yang-ming believed in the "learning of the mind," an intuitive
process.
During the second half of the Ming Dynasty, European expansion began.
Early in the 16th century Portuguese traders arrived and leased the island
of Macao as their trading post. In 1582 Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit
missionary, arrived in Macao. Because of his knowledge of science, mathematics,
and astronomy and his willingness to learn the Chinese language and adapt
to Chinese life, he was accepted by the Chinese and became the first foreigner
allowed to live in Peking permanently. Jesuits followed him and served
the Ming emperors as mapmakers, calendar reformers, and astronomers.
Unlike earlier brief contacts with the West or the later Western incursions
into China, the 16th-century Sino-Western relationship was culturally
oriented and mutually respectful. Both the Chinese and the Jesuits tried
to find common ground in their thoughts. The Jesuits' activities produced
300,000 converts in 200 years, not a great number among a population of
more than 100 million. Among them, however, were noted scholars such as
Hsu Kuang-ch'i and Li Chih-tsao, who translated many of the works that
Jesuits brought to China. The Jesuits wrote over 300 Chinese works. In
the last century of its existence, the Ming Dynasty faced numerous internal
and external problems. The internal problem was tied to official corruption
and taxation. Because the Ming bureaucracy was relatively small, tax collection
was entrusted to locally powerful people who evaded paying taxes by passing
the burden on to the poor. A succession of weak and inattentive emperors
encouraged the spread of corruption and the greed of eunuchs. In the 1620s
a struggle between the inner group of eunuchs and the outer circle of
scholar-officials led to the execution of about 700 scholars. Externally,
the security of the Ming Empire was threatened from all directions. The
Mongols returned and seized Peking in 1550, and their control of Turkestan
and Tibet was recognized by the Ming in a peace treaty of 1570. Pirates
preyed on the east coast, and Japanese pirates penetrated as far inland
as Hangzhou and Nanjing. In the 1590s the Ming had to send expeditionary
forces to rescue Korea from invading Japanese soldiers under ToyotomiHideyoshi.
The Ming drove back the Japanese forces, but not without depleting the
treasury and weakening their defensive network against neighboring Manchuria
to the northeast.
In Manchuria the Manchus (Pinyin: Manzhous) had organized a Chinese-style
state and strengthened their forces under a unique form of military organization
called the banner system. However, it was not the Manchus who overthrew
the Ming but a Chinese rebel, Li Zicheng, who became a leader among the
bandits who had become desperate because of a famine in the northwest
in 1628. By 1642 Li had become master of north China and in 1644 he captured
Peking.
There he found that the last Ming emperor had hanged himself, ending the
"Brilliant" dynasty. Li, however, was not destined to rule.
The rule was to pass once again into the hands of a people from beyond
the Great Wall, the Manchus. They were invited into China by the Ming
general Wu Sanguei to eliminate the rebels. After driving the rebels from
the capital, the Manchus stayed and established a new dynasty, the Qing.
