Sleepless Travels Reloaded

The Forbidden City was used as a palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties. So what were the Ming like?

First a bit about the start of the Ming Dynasty (arguably one of strongest dynasties - and in my opinion the best). The Ming ruled China from 1368 to 1644. The preceding dynasty was the Mongol Yuan dynasty (ie Kubhlai Khan) and the subsequent dynasty was the Qing (Manchurians).

I’m a bit of a Ming fangirl. Sure they may not have achieved the brilliant cultural or artistic heights as the Song or Tang, but they were practical.

From the wiki:

The founder was Zhu Yuanzhang (i.e Hongwu Emperor, aka Gao Taizu). He is said to be a from Anhui Province in the south of China and worked as a cowhand in his youth until he joined a Buddhist monastery. He learned to read at the monastery, but his studies were interrupted when the monastery ran out of money. He left the monastery and spent a period of time as a beggar. Later he joined a gang of rebels, where because of his natural talent for leadership he soon found himself in command. He later came into contact with well-educated Confucian scholars and gentry, from whom he received an education in state affairs.

etc etc was very charismatic, gathered a lot of talented followers, won a lot of battles…

In 1368, he proclaimed himself the Ming emperor in Nanjing and adopted “Hongwu” as the title of his reign. He used the motto ‘Exiling the Mongols and Restoring Hua (华)’ as a call to rouse the Han Chinese into supporting him, and after capturing Dadu, China was unified again under the Ming.

Zhu Yuanzhang’s humble beginnings were used to the benefit of the people of China; and was not a handicap to him becoming a good emperor. He was willing to learn statecraft from talented educated people. Some reasons why I’m such a Hongwu admirer:

• Reinstituted Confucian examination system which selected which selected state bureaucrats or civil servants on the basis of merit and knowedge. The Confucian scholar gentry, marginalized under the Yuan for nearly a century, once again assumed their predominant role in the Chinese state.
• Public policies favouring the poor.
  • Public works projects such as the construction of irrigation systems and dikes were undertaken in an attempt to help poor farmers.
  • Demands on peasantry for forced labour was reduced.
  • He distributed land to small farmers. In 1370 during a land distribution in Hunan and Anhui, title to the land was also decreed to be non-transferable in order to preclude the reabsorption of the land by unscrupulous landlords. During the middle part of his reign an edict was published to the effect that those who brought fallow land under cultivation could keep it as their property without it ever being taxed. The people responded enthusiastically to this policy, and in 1393 cultivated land rose to 8,804,623 ching and 68 mou, a greater achievement than any other Chinese dynasty.
• Policies against corruption. Having come from a peasant family, Hongwu knew only too well how much the farmers suffered from the gentry and the wealthy through “influencing” and bribery of officials. To prevent such abuses Hongwu instituted two very important systems: “Yellow Records” and “Fish Scale Records”. These systems served to guarantee both the government’s income from land taxes and the people’s enjoyment of their property. (However arguable how effective they were in light of other social trends).
• Awesome military policies. Implementation of Wei-So and Tun-Tien systems.
  • A problem in the past was when armies were too attached/devoted/loyal to commanders - could be turned into private armies to be used in coups. Battalions and commanders were now randomly put together. After the conflict was over the two parties were sent back to their respective districts.
  • Another problem is that large standing armies take up lots of resources while not really doing anything useful during peacetimes. This was solved by allowing soldiers to farm the land around their posts when not needed only retaining a smaller percentage of the army for guard duties etc. The farmer-soldiers could earn their keep as well as keep busy, and the tax burden on the general populace was lessened.
• Consolidation of control - decreased numbers of and role of eunachs and never consented to imperial relatives (ie relatives of Empress) becoming court officials.
• Laws - the Great Ming Code is actually rather good. The emperor devoted great personal care to the whole project, and in his instruction to the ministers told them that the code of laws should be comprehensive and intelligible, so as not to leave any loopholes for lower officials to misinterpret the law through twisting its language. I did a comparative law paper on it in the past and its treatment of humanitarian issues certaintly reflects the emperor’s humble upbringings.

Granted, it wasn’t all a bed of roses. However by and large Hongwu’s pro-agrarian state was a positive one for the common people. The population increased by 50% (which is rather good considering large amounts of said population would have been killed off during Yuan dynasty and during the changeover of dynasties too) due to increased food supplies and living standards improved.

Hongwu had 24 sons and died after a reign of 30 years.