44 Emory Endeavors in History 2013 Wrath of the Khans: Ming Border Policy, 1368-1574 Ben Sinvany Abstract This paper addresses the inability of the Ming Dynasty to maintain military dominance on the steppe and the subsequent shift to a defensive policy of wall building. The Hongwu Emperor failure to conquer the steppe and eliminate the descendants of Khubilai Khan, allowed for the survival of the Yuan court and of the legacy of Chinggis Khan challenged the legitimacy of the Ming state and allowed for the consolidation of Mongolian power beyond the border of the Ming Empire. The Hongwu Emperor’s appointment of Mongols to control territories and lands along the northern border marked the furthest extent of the Ming Empire. Limited by economic restraints and inadequate infrastructure, the Ming were not able to exert their will upon the steppe. The Yongle Emperor retreated from specific fortified garrisons in the Ordos region because of those infrastructural and economic restraints, providing Mongolian leaders with the necessary bases to raid and invade China. Although the Ming and the Mongols were enemies, trade tied them together. Indeed, many Mongols lived within China serving the Ming government, forcing us to rethink the division between the Mongols and the Chinese and to reevaluate the role of the Great Wall as the marker of that division. --attempting to stop water from boiling without knowing enough to remove the firewood Zeng Xian 1546 ltan Khan led his army from the steppe to the gates of Beijing in 1550 demanding the opening of border markets for the trade and barter of AMongol livestock and Chinese goods. He was rebuffed by the Ming The Age of Gunpowder 45 court and answered by razing the suburbs surrounding the capital and countryside on his way back to the steppe. Again in 1574 Altan Khan returned to Beijing. Altan Khan’s Mongols were able to reach Beijing because they controlled the Ordos region to the northwest. The Mongols on the steppe to the north were the largest threat to the legitimacy of the Ming dynasty. Periodic raiding and invasions challenged the Ming state’s legitimacy from proclamation in 1368 to collapse in 1644. Ming response to the Mongolian threat to the north was a dynamic process that changed over the course of the dynasty. The process that led to Ming wall building began with Zhu Yuanzhang’s failure to conquer the steppe and destroy the descendants of the house of Kubilai Khan. When he founded the Ming dynasty remnants of the Yuan dynasty fled the Mongol capital to the steppe and re- established the Yuan court at Karakorum in outer Mongolia.110 The survival of the Yuan court and the legacy of Khubilai Khan, himself a descendant of Chinggis Khan, challenged the legitimacy of the Ming state and allowed for a space, beyond the border of the Ming empire, for a Mongolian power to form. The inability of the Ming to maintain military power on the steppe and the consolidation of Mongolian power around strong leaders set the tone for the relationship between Chinese empire and nomadic confederations, paving the road to the construction of walled fortifications, defining an arbitrary northern border that would later become known as the Great Wall. Wall building was by no means an inevitable outcome of border tensions, but as the Ming became more inward looking and were unable to project military power onto the steppe, like their Yuan predecessors had, supporters of defensive wall building gained the upper hand in the Ming court. By the 1540s wall building was entrenched as Ming security policy. Why were the Ming unable to maintain military dominance on the steppe and instead resorted to wall building? It was precisely the Hongwu emperor granting Mongolian tribes land and territory along the northern 110 René Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes; a History of Central Asia. / Translated from the French by Naomi Walford (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970), 502. 46 Emory Endeavors in History 2013 border demarcating a northern border along two lines, an outer line for staging offensives and an inner defensive line, that set the stage for what became the Great Wall. While the defining of the northern border wasn’t the direct cause of wall building, granting Mongolian territories along the northern border region and contractions of Ming fortified garrisons in the Ordos region gave Mongolian leaders the bases from which to raid and invade China. The direct threat of the Mongolian raiders and invaders fueled the court debate that ultimately decided upon wall building. When Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed the Ming dynasty in 1368 there was no Great Wall, and the Ming’s defense strategy depended on military might. However, by 1550, the Ming had been building walls for almost a century. Arthur Waldron’s comprehensive study of the Great Wall claims that the entrenchment of wall building by the Ming was the product of a series of debates that lasted the length of the dynasty of how to deal with the Mongolian threat to the north. His study divides the process of entrenchment into three phases: 1368-1449, 1449-1540s, 1540s-1644. The first phase was one of Chinese military aggression and numerous campaigns conducted on the steppe. The rise of the Oiryad Mongol leader Essen, his defeat of the Ming at Tu’mu in 1449 and the capture of emperor Wang Zhen marked the end of Ming military dominance on the steppe. For the following century Ming strategy shifted from offensive military campaigns toward wall building campaigns along the northern border. The first fortifications were built in 1474. Wall building became the focus of the Ming after 1540 and the defeat of Zeng Xian’s proposition to the Ming court to recover the Ordos from the Mongols. Julia Lovell’s book The Great Wall takes a much broader perspective of wall building throughout China’s history. Drawing on sources from as early as the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) she challenges the idea that walls were used as purely defensive measures and presents evidence that they were also used as an aggressive The Age of Gunpowder 47 form of Chinese imperialism.111 This claim builds on Owen Lattimore’s thesis that China’s walls were as much a product of expansion as they were an attempt to limit that expansion: Chinese statesmen lacked confidence in their ability to maintain a rigid border that they could maintain and continue to expand beyond. 112 But Lattimore’s thesis is founded on the premise that Chinese states were biased towards a rigid border. Lovell’s argument while presenting ideas of aggressive wall building as a tactic of expansion she, at the same time, is picking apart the misconception that the Great Wall ever meant a rigid northern border. Her book goes further to show, in agreement with many other scholars, that there was anything but a rigid border in fact China’s frontier regions throughout Chinese history were places of intense commerce. Jagchid and Symons argue that war and peace between the nomadic peoples beyond China’s borders and China was dependant on that commerce. When commerce was interrupted, or viewed as too much or in most cases as too little by either side, conflict broke out along the border. Their model relies heavily on A. M. Khazanov’s work on the lifestyles and nature of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples. Khazanov points out the dependency of nomadic peoples on a sedentary agricultural economy for many basic necessities. Following this model we begin to see Altan Khan’s invasions in 1550 and 1574, and earlier raids by Mongolian and nomadic tribes, as driven by necessity for trade. When Altan Khan arrived in Beijing and did not seek to conquer, but demanded trading rights the Mongols acknowledged their dependence on the Chinese for trade. His invasion in 1550 yielded limited results, but in 1571 he changed tactics. In a letter presented to the Ming court, Altan Khan requested trading rights in language that stresses the inferiority of the author: We, your vassals, have suffered an increase of population and a 111 Julia Lovell, The Great Wall : China Against the World : 1000 BC-AD 2000 (London: Atlantic, 2006). 111 Ibid. 44. 112 Owen Lattimore, “Origins of the Great Wall of China: A Frontier Concept in Theory and Practice,” Geographical Review 27, No. 4 (Oct., 1937), 530. 48 Emory Endeavors in History 2013 shortage of clothing…and none of the borders were markets permitted to open. There was no way to satisfy our needs for clothing. Our furs and felts wear poorly in the summer heat, but it has been impossible to get even a piece of cloth….We petition that the Imperial Decree should be sent to those border officials, ordering them to establish markets, and permit the barbarians [Mongols] and the Chinese to carry out our trade once a year…Thus both Chinese and Barbarians may enjoy a peaceful life. [I, your] vassal, with my brothers, nephews, sons, and grandsons will be grateful from generation to generation, and never rebel again. If there be any transgression, let Heaven punish us.113 Altan Khan’s letter in 1571 is reminiscent of his grandfather’s demands and the earlier Oriyad leader Essen’s demands for trade. But this letter was not a list of demands, rather it was a petition, referring to the Mongolians themselves as barbarians. Recognizing Chinese superiority in an effort to attain trading rights for very basic needs. “The insistence of the southern Mongol princes of the sixteenth century on having tribute and trade relations with China—with a threat of invasion as an alternative—shows how strongly the Mongols needed and wanted Chinese products.”114 In 1550 brute force had not worked, but in 1574 trade relations were normalized and there were peaceful relations between the Mongols and the Ming until the fall of the Ming and the rise of the Qing.