THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES MICHIGAN PAPERS IN CHINESE STUDIES NO. 34 THE MING DYNASTY ITS ORIGINS AND EVOLVING INSTITUTIONS by Charles O. Hucker Ann Arbor Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan 1978 Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Copyright © 1978 by Charles O. Hucker Published by Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hucker, Charles O. The Ming dynasty, its origins and evolving institutions. (Michigan papers in Chinese studies; no. 34) Includes bibliographical references. 1. China—History—Ming dynasty, 1368-1644. I. Title. II. Series. DS753.H829 951f.O26 78-17354 ISBN 0-89264-034-0 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-89264-034-8 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-472-03812-1 (paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12758-0 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-472-90153-1 (open access) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ CONTENTS Preface vii I. Introduction 1 n. The Transition from Yuan to Ming 3 Deterioration of Mongol Control 3 Rebellions of the 1350s and 1360s 8 The Rise of Chu Yuan-chang 15 Expulsion of the Mongols 23 III. Organizing the New Dynasty 26 Continuing Military Operations 28 Creation of the Ming Government 33 T!ai-tsufs Administrative Policies 44 Personnel 45 Domestic Administration 54 Foreign Relations and Defense 62 The Quality of Tfai-tsufs Reign 66 IV. Tfai-tsufs Legacy: The Mature Ming Autocracy 73 Dynastic Disruption and Restoration 74 Limited Decentralization of Authority 86 Eunuch Power and Its Abuses 92 Imperial Power: Its Limits and Effects 96 Notes 101 PREFACE This long essay was written in 1970 to fit into an outline of what was then planned to be Volume IV of The Cambridge History of China, edited by Professors Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank. Unfor- tunately, publication of all portions of the history has been long post- poned, and it appears that the Ming volume (or volumes) may not be available for several more years. Moreover, plans have been so altered that my contribution is not likely to fit the new Ming outline without substantial rearrangement and revision. I am nevertheless persuaded that the original effort has sufficient validity and integrity to deserve independent preservation. It is therefore issued belatedly in this series. The Center for Chinese Studies and I are grateful to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for allowing it to be so issued without relinquishing their proprietary rights. Guidelines for contributors to the Cambridge History account for some characteristics of the presentation. It is offered in the form of an essay rather than a research monograph; it is not technical in style, and it is annotated only minimally. It strives for factual accuracy and clarity without unreasonable oversimplification, but it does not shrink from distinctively personal interpretations and judgments. I am surprised and gratified that the passage of seven years, in which the volume of scholarly work on Ming China has grown enor- mously, has not significantly altered my 1970 interpretations and judg- ments . For useful criticisms of the original draft I am deeply indebted to many colleagues in the Ming studies field, most notably Professors F. W. Mote, John Dardess, Lo Jung-pang, L. Carrington Goodrich, and Ray Huang. I have perhaps not benefitted fully from all their sug- gestions, but I have attempted to rectify all factual errors that they have called to my attention. Otherwise, the essay is presented sub- stantially in its 1970 form. For whatever errors may remain, and for all matters of organization and interpretation, I accept full responsi- bility. vii Vlll Rather than attempt to update what was always meager annotation, I offer the Notes in their original form. I cannot fail to point out, how- ever, that almost every section of this work can now be examined from a biographical point of view in the monumental Dictionary of Ming Biog- raphy, edited by L. Carrington Goodrich (2 volumes; New York: Columbia University Press, 1976). Also, some of the unpublished manuscripts cited in the Notes are now available, in some cases revised, in published form: for example, Romeyn Taylor's Basic Annals of Ming Tfai-tsu (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1975) and Edward L. Farmer's Early Ming Government: The Evolution of Dual Capitals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976). Charles O. Hucker Ann Arbor, Michigan August 1977 I. Introduction In the latter half of the fourteenth century, when at the opposite end of the Eurasian continent the stage was not yet set for the emer- gence of modern nation-states, the Chinese drove out their Mongol overlords, inaugurated a new native dynasty called Ming (1368-1644), and reasserted mastery of their national destiny. It was a dramatic era of change, the full significance of which can only be perceived retrospectively. The conquest by the Mongols and their century-long military occu- pation had been an unprecedented shock for the Chinese, despite their long experience of fighting off or, alternatively, accommodating north- ern invaders. Never before had all Chinese been subjugated by aliens, and never before had leadership roles in China been so thoroughly pre- empted by outsiders as was the case with the Mongols and their non- Chinese hangers-on. The natural leaders of China's traditional society, the educated landowners, had been partly killed off in the conquest. Survivors and would-be successors had been either drawn into collab- oration with the conquerors for profit or from confused conceptions of loyalty, or driven into apolitical eremitism and dilettantism. In either case, their potentiality as leaders of rebellion withered. The conse- quence was that China's recovery, when it came, was equally unprece- dented, in that it was led, as it were by default, by men of the lowest social classes devoid of roots in the traditional high culture. This cir- cumstance lent to the recovery process much of its drama and signifi- cance. It is noteworthy that China's recovery was also sudden and decisive and that it brought into being a new-style state system that would endure into the twentieth century and shape the style of China's eventual efforts to cope with modernization in the dynamically evolving Western mode. Small-scale popular uprisings had been endemic throughout the Mongols' Yuan dynasty (1260-1368), but these were phenomena that were common in all periods of China's imperial history, part of the danger-filled and violence-prone normalcy that characterized the traditional Chinese society and polity. It was not until 1351 that the Mongols1 confident grip on China began to slip ominously. Then, disin- tegration of the empire came swiftly. By 1358 rebels controlled the whole Yangtze River, from modern Szechwan province in the west to the sea in the east, as well as the whole east coast from Shantung prov- ince in the north to Fukien province in the south; and North China rebels had even raided and burned the Mongols1 summer capital, Shang-tu in modern Chahar province (the fabled Xanadu), far beyond the Great Wall. For another decade rebels in central China struggled among themselves for supremacy while the Yuan government at modern Peking stood by distractedly. When issues were resolved in the south and a consolidated revolutionary movement turned its forces northward in 1368, Mongol resistance collapsed almost totally and the last, Yuan emperor fled in confusion to the steppes. The Mongol domain in China vanished, so to speak, in one swoop. The decisiveness of the Chinese victory over the northern nomads was not wholly appreciated by the founders of the Ming dynasty. Mop- up military operations within and outside China proper persisted for sixty years; and both the later Ming emperors and their Ch!ing dynasty (1644-1912) successors repeatedly contended with potential or real Mongol threats on the northern and western frontiers, down into the eighteenth century. Indeed, it was new non-Chinese overlords from the north who replaced the Ming dynasty in 1644, but the Manchu found- ers of the Chfing dynasty were not nomadic enemies of the Chinese way of life. They had profited from a long and unresisting discipleship in Chinese culture and statecraft before they came to power in China, and they proposed no alternative to the tradition. Rather, they adopted and exalted traditional Chinese civilization with zeal—perhaps unfortunately so, since they ultimately became its rigid defenders when new times demanded changes. It is therefore clear from today's perspective that the Chinese way of life after 1368 was not seriously challengeable by the northerners who had shadowed all its previous history, and the tension between farmer and nomad was no longer a major theme in Chinese history. One major historical tension of Chinese life that did rise into prom- inence with the establishment of the Ming dynasty was the tension be- tween more absolutist and less absolutist modes of rulership. No one would seriously suggest that the Chinese have ever experienced even quasi-democratic rule. From Han into Tfang times, however, the per- sistence of a semifeudal aristocratic class provided many checks on imperial power, so that the ruler, while more than a primus inter pares, was not unchallengeably supreme. From Tfang into Sung times this old aristocracy gradually gave way to a prestigious civil service meritocracy, which at times managed to impose institutionalized restraints on the imperial power. Then the Mongols thrust their own variety of aristocratic feudalism on China. When a commoner fought his way to the throne as the first Ming emperor, a host of complex influences came into play: his own strong personality, the remnants of Yuan institutions that confronted him during his rise, what he learned of the pre-Yuan tradition, and modifications made by his immediate successors.