Jottings from the Granite Studio

Danwei has a great post on why the Ming (1368-1644) is so hot these days. (And they’re not talking about the hobbled Yao, either.) Joel Martinson asks, “Has the Qing been mined to exhaustion as a source for popular culture, or have people simply grown tired of historical teledramas featuring costumed characters wearing queues?”

One of the books mentioned in the Danwei post is the Ray Huang classic, 1587: A Year of No Significance. It has its flaws (not the least of which is the translation of the Ming court diaries used in the English title) and the anti-CCP subtext is hard to ignore. (Huang belongs to that school of historians that views history as an effective tool with which to whip contemporary governments into shape. Sima Qian is somewhere smiling.) All that said, it is one of the most accessible books on Chinese history for the non-historian, well-written and full of information about a fascinating period: the end of the Ming. The division of the book into biographical sketches (another homage to the historians of China’s past) also makes it a great book on a plane or train.

I feel the Ming gets overlooked a little bit by historians in the US. There is a professor (of the Song it should be noted) at my university whose lectures each year include the line, “The Ming built on the accomplishments of the Song without adding very much, it was like the Song, but bigger…sorry, Jeremiah.”

I think there is much that is different and new in the Ming, though perhaps it could be called a difference of degree. Politically, for example, there is the increasing distance between the ruler and his ministers, the most tangible and tricky manifestation of which was Zhu Yuanzhang’s (the founder of the Ming, r. 1368-1398) abolition of the office of the Grand Secretariat. In effect, the emperor became head of state and government. Other institutions and official positions emerged to fill this gap, but the founding emperor’s lasting legacy (with some residual influence from the Mongol rulers of the Yuan as well) meant that the Ming emperors, in theory, held a lot of power and executive authority. It was great if you had a conscientious and serious emperor, but the Ming didn’t have a lot of those. Ming precedent stipulated that the first (surviving–key caveat) son of an emperor be made the heir-apparent. (By way of comparison: the Qing emperors got a chance to “audition” a few sons first before picking an heir.)

Why is this a problem? Think what might have happened to the Corleones if they had been forced to make Fredo the Don.

This was all particularly acute since Ming emperors tended to die young and crazy because of a fondness for elixirs of immortality made out of…wait for it….mercury. They also managed to lose an emperor to the Mongols for about 20 years and there was of course Wan Li (r. 1572-1620), the longest ruling Ming emperor, who refused to attend to matters of state for the last 20 years of his reign, leaving the Empire to rot in the hands of eunuchs, factionalism, and official malfeasance. Those officials, such as Hai Rui, who stood for good government, often found themselves caught in a riptide of corruption.

In spite of all this, Ming rule lasted nearly three centuries. It was the third Ming emperor, Zhu Di (who was actually the son of the first emperor…despite the rules, succession could still be messy) who sent Zheng He out to pay the world a visit. It was also Zhu Di who moved the capital and laid the foundations for today’s Beijing (including the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven) on the ruins of the Yuan capital, Dadu. Needless to say, Zhu Di is something of a highwater mark for Ming imperial industriousness.

Even without the strongest collection of imperial talent, throughout the Ming empire cities grew and became wealthier, society became increasingly mobile and more complex. Fashion and connoisseurship helped to separate the old scholar-elite from the nouveau riche as old status boundaries blurred. Some of the most beautiful works of art and craftsmanship ever created, and some of the most provocative and stirring literature ever written, in China or anywhere for that matter, comes out of the Ming. Economically, sophisticated financial and economic institutions managed the capital of new enterprises, merchant houses, and ancestral holdings. Key regions began to specialize economically, in the great porcelain center of Jingdezhen techniques of mass production churned out exquisite wares for the royal court as well as more ordinary pieces for mass consumption. While it is true that the economic and social conditions of the Ming had their foundations in the earlier Medieval Economic Revolution, it can also be said that the economic surge was aided by Ming economic policies (or lack thereof), imperial disdain for taxing commerce had the unintended consequence of freeing up capital for reinvestment.

Contrary to popular belief and the myths surrounding the end of the Zheng He expeditions, the Ming was not an age of isolation. Trade flourished between different parts of the Ming Empire (an area, lest we forget, the size of Europe and almost as linguistically, agriculturally, and culturally diverse), and while the Mongols effectively limited the routes through Central Asia, all along China’s southeast coast, merchants and traders did a brisk business with Southeast Asia and beyond. Silver, much of it from newly opened mines in the Americas, poured in with both positive and negative economic effects for local economies.

Admittedly, I am a historian of the Qing and my interest in the Ming usually begins with the fateful decision of Wu Sangui to invite the Manchu regent Dorgon (if nothing else about Chinese history, you have to love the names) to assist in a peacekeeping mission. There is quite a bit of backstory here (and Chinese “unofficial histories”–yeshi 野史–have even more) but the short form is that the Chinese bandit Li Zicheng sacked the Ming capital in 1644. The Chongzhen Emperor, the last Ming emperor to rule from Beijing, rang a bell summoning his ministers. When none answered his call, the despondent monarch slipped out the back door into what is today Jingshan Park and hung himself from a tree. Li’s armies then sacked the city, pillaging and looting, before marching out towards the last remaining Ming force in North China, that under the control of Wu Sangui. General Wu, who was also charged with holding a key strategic point dividing Ming and Manchu, now faced enemies on both sides. In the end, he threw in his lot with the Manchus. (Li’s armies were notoriously rapacious and Wu may have felt that a little “law-and-order Manchu-style” might do the trick. Li also apparently had taken Wu’s favorite concubine as his own and held Wu’s father hostage–so this was now personal for Wu.) The Manchus, not believing their good fortune, eagerly agreed. The Manchu banner troops routed the bandit armies of Li and his allies and Dorgon succeeded in pacifying the Ming capital. However, in the tradition of ‘invited peacekeepers’ the world over, the Manchus found they liked Beijing and decided to make themselves comfortable–for the next 267 years.

The general’s dilemma is the inspiration for the worst joke I tell in my lectures (but yet strangely insist on using every time). I just can’t discuss this topic without singing a few bars of:

“Bandits to the left of me, Manchus to the right, Here I am….stuck in the middle with Wu.”

Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your fuwuyuan’r.
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Picture, top right: Wanli Emperor