Facts and Details

MING DYNASTY (1368-1644)

Ming Emperor The Ming dynasty, the last native Chinese dynasty in China, ruled for nearly 300 years. Chinese science and technological inventiveness declined during this period and Jesuit scholars introduced Western science. Painting and ceramic production however thrived and the merchant class rose in status and power.

“Ming” means brightness, The name was chosen by the first Ming Emperor as a contrast to the dark period in which the dynasty came to power. During much of the Ming dynasty, China and India together accounted for more than half of the world's gross national product.

Contemporary sources on the Ming period are rare. Of the several million documents on the period once kept in the central government archives all but around 10,000 were destroyed in fighting at the end of the dynasty. By contrast 14 million original government documents remain from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Ming Come to Power

A rebellion against the Mongols was launched by Zhu Yuanzhang (Hung Wu), a "self-made man of great talents" and the son of a farm laborer who lost his entire family in an epidemic when he was only seventeen. After spending several years in a Buddhist monastery Zhu launched what became a thirteen year revolt against the Mongols as the head of a Chinese peasant insurgency, called the Red Turbans, made up of Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists and Manichaeists.

Mongols cracked down ruthlessly on the Chinese but failed to suppress the Chinese custom of exchanging little round full moon cakes during the coming of the full moon. Like fortune cookies, the cakes carried paper messages. The clever rebels used the innocent-looking cakes to give instructions to the Chinese population to rise up and massacre the Mongols at the time of the full moon in August 1368.

The end of Yuan dynasty came in 1368 when the rebels surrounded Beijing. The last Yuan emperor, Toghon Temür Khan, didn't even attempt to defend his khanate. Instead he fled with his empress and concubines—first to Shangdu (Xanadu), then to Karakoram, the original Mongol capital, where he was killed when Zhu Yuanzhang became the leader of the Ming Dynasty.

Power of Ming Emperors

The Ming emperors usurped unprecedented personal power as the Confucian bureaucracy began to suffer from inertia. They increased their authority by granting themselves the power to dismiss any prime minister who opposed them.

"The Ming," wrote military historian Jack Keegan, "in effect militarized China and created a hereditary military class; it was under the Ming that China embarked on it only sustained effort of overseas expansion, and its largest effort to control the steppe by direct offensive action; five great expeditions were mounted north of the Great Wall, which was also then rebuilt in the form we see it today." [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]

The Ming were not very skilled at dealing with the Central Asian tribes that challenged them. They eschewed both diplomacy and war but were too weak too drive them out and too proud to make deals. The Ming built walls and mocked the Central Asia horsemen, demanding that they be referred to as yi (“barbarians”) and insisting that yi always be written in the smallest possible letters.

See Great Wall of China, Early History

Ming Eunuchs

Court eunuchs reached the height of their political power under the Ming Emperor Wanhi , who employed over 10,000 eunuchs in the imperial court and had 70,000 to 100,000 of them in official positions throughout the country. While the emperor was preoccupied with his beautiful concubines powerful eunuchs embezzled huge fortunes. In the 1620s an eunuch named Wei Zhinganxian for all intents and purposes ran China.

During the Ming dynasty, the Forbidden City contained a special eunuch clinic where candidates had their genitals removed while sitting on a special chair with a hole in it. Candidates that didn't survive were carried away with their penis and testicles in a pouch for reunification in the afterlife.

Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang

Zhu Yuanzhang (ruled 1368-1398), the man who led the rebellion that toppled the Mongols, created the Ming Dynasty and became its first emperor at the age of 40. He established the Chinese capital in the southern city of Nanking. During his 30-year rule China was reunified once again under a Chinese leader and traditional Chinese rites, music, costumes and ritual vessels were revived. .

Emperor Zhu had a violent side. A bit insecure about his lowly origins and his upbringing with Buddhist monks, he once ordered the execution of two Buddhists after they sent him a congratulatory message that used the word "birth" (sheng) which the Emperor construed as a pun on "monk" (seng). On another occasion, he ordered the execution of 15,000 people in Nanking when he suspected a rebellion over his policies might be brewing.

Emperor Zhu was also not very fond of the scholar-bureaucrat class. On many occasions he ordered high officials to be stripped and beaten to death by court eunuchs while their colleagues, dressed in their full ceremonial robes, looked on in horror. Once Zhu had 10,000 scholars and their families put death during a purge of his administration.

Yongle Emperor

The Yongle Emperor (ruled 1403-1424) seized power from Zhu Yuanzhang's son with the help of a powerful group of court eunuchs. One of China's greatest emperors, he sent a great 300-ship armada to the Indian Ocean and Africa, restored the capital to Beijing, built the Forbidden City with a million workers, and invaded Mongolia and Vietnam. He was also a devout follower of Tibetan-Buddhism and forged a strong relationship with Tibet.

The Yongle emperor came to power by staging a rebellion in 1402 and deposing his nephew. He was helped by the eunuch Zheng He, today known as China's greatest explorer. Yongle means “Eternal Happiness.”

The Yongle emperor did everything in a big way. When he made his relatively frequent trips between the old capital of Nanjing and the new capital in Beijing his entourage was accompanied by 10,000 cavalry soldiers and 40,000 foot soldiers. The encyclopedia he commissioned, the Yongle Dadian, contained 11,099 volumes and was kept in the Hall of Literary Glory in the Forbidden City. Listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest publication and largest encyclopedia ever, it contained 22,937 chapters produced by 2,000 Chinese scholar between 1403 and 1408.

The Yongle emperor had a brutal side. One of his first acts after seizing power was torturing to death all those who opposed him. He was said to be particularly found of the death-by-a-thousand-cuts method of execution in which victims were bled to death very slowly and once declared that anyone was found with banned works "should be killed, together with their entire families." One victim, the great Confucian scholar Fang Xiaoru, was cut to pieces in a public square and 900 people associated with him were killed because he refused to express loyalty to the emperor.

Yongle Emperor, the Forbidden City and Other Projects

Yongle Encyclopedia In 1409 Yongle, moved the capital of the Chinese Empire from Nanking to back Beijing in his effort to dominate the Mongol empire, the same way the Mongol's dominated Chinese empire.

Yongle oversaw the construction of the "Violet-Purple Forbidden City"(the Forbidden City). Thousands of craftsmen, hundreds of thousands of laborers and building material from all over China were utilized in the project. Some scholars estimate that over two million laborers and craftspeople took part in the project. The basic outline of the palace was built between 1406 and 1420 under the Emperor Yongle. The majority of the five halls and 17 palaces that stand today were built after 1700.

The Yangshan Stone Tablet is a massive 31,000-ton monument created by Yongle to honor the founder of the Ming Dynasty. The size of skyscraper, it is located in an imperial quarry set among hills and canyons 15 miles from Nanjing. The idea was to create the world's largest monument in three parts: a base, steale and cap, that together would have stood 25 stories high. Thousands of workers spent years carving the stone from the mountain at great expense but ultimately the project was abandoned because no one could figure out a way to move the stones (even today it can’t be done).

The Yongle emperor also vastly expanded the Grand Canal and the Great Wall and built hundreds of temples and palaces. His grand projects however drained the treasury and bled the country dry.

Yongle Emperor and Exploration

See Chinese Exploration

Indulgent Ming Emperors

While the eunuchs ran China, the emperors indulged themselves in their individual passions. One emperor was so into carpentry, for example, that he was overjoyed when an earthquake destroyed much of his palace and he had an opportunity to use his skills.

Some Ming emperors had more than 9,000 maids of honors at their disposal as well as countless servants and concubines. The emperor's women remained on the court payroll even after they passed their primes and the emperors were no longer interested in them. When imperial funds ran low, the court collected taxes and tributes instead of cutting back on expenses.

Vast amounts of resources were spent building tombs for the Ming emperors north of Beijing. The second largest tomb, built for Emperor Wan Li (1573-1620) took half a million workers over six years to build. Before he died the emperor held a huge party in the necropolis. The tomb for Emperor Young Lee ( took 18 years to build. Sixteen concubines were reportedly buried alive inside with the dead emperor. See Ming Tombs, Places.

During the reign of Zhu Houzhao, Chinese were not allowed to raise or eat pigs because “Zhu” is a homophone for “pig.” Xuande, the fifth Ming ruler, reportedly killed three Mongols with his own bow.

Matteo Ricci's Account of the Ming Court

Ming seals The 16th century Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci, who spent a lot of time in the Ming court, wrote:"Just as this people is grossly subject to superstition, so, too they have very little regard for the truth, acting always with great circumspection, and very cautious about trusting anyone. Subject to this same fear,the king of modern times abandoned the custom of going out in public. Even formerly, when they did leave the royal enclosure, they would never dare to do so without a thousand preliminary precautions."

"On such occasions," Ricci continued, "the whole court was placed under military guard. Secret servicemen were placed along the route over which the King was to travel and on all roads leading into it. He was not only hidden from view, but the public never knew in which of the palanquins in the cortege he was actually riding. One would think he was making a journey through enemy country rather than among multitudes of his own subjects."

Arts During the Ming Dynasty

During the Ming Dynasty scholarly painting continued to prevail and ink wash painting of the Imperial Painting Academy and Southern Song court was briefly popular. Paintings were often filled with human figures, whose size was an indication of their rank.

During the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties two approaches to scholarly painting were developed: the first in which artists copied and studied ancient themes and subjects, and the second in which artists abandoned models and expressed their own creativity through inventive means. The individualist expressive form predominated in the mid Qing dynasty. Research on ancient inscriptions influenced painting in the late Qing period. Hanging scroll portraits of emperors and other nobleman contained Tibetan and Islamic influences.

Ming Porcelain

Ming Dynasty ceramics were known for the boldness of their form and decoration and the varieties of design. Craftsmen made both huge and highly decorated vessels and small, delicate, white ones. Many of the wonderful decorations and glazes—peach bloom, moonlight blue, cracked ice, and ox blood glazes; and rice grain, rose pink and black decorations—were inspired by nature.

In 1402, the Ming Emperor Jianwen ordered the establishment of an imperial porcelain factory in Jingdezhen. It's sole function was to produce porcelain for court use in state and religious ceremonies and for tableware and gifts.

Between 1350 and 1750 Jiangdezhen was the production center for nearly all of the world's porcelain. Jiangdezhen was located near abundant supplies of kaolin, the clay used in porcelain making, and fuel needed to fire up kilns. It also had access to China's coast, which was used for transporting finished products to places in China and around the world. So much porcelain was made that Jingdezhen now sits on a foundation of shards from discarded pottery that over is four meters deep in places.

Ming Porcelain Exports

From the beginning production at the Ming porcelain factories in Jingdezhen were oriented towards the export market. The factories produced coffee cups and beer mugs centuries before these drinks became popular in China. They also produced plates with Arabic and Persian motifs and place setting emblazoned with European coats of arms.

The porcelain trade was so lucrative that the porcelain making processes were closely guarded secrets and Jingdezhen was officially off limits to visitors to keep spies from uncovering these secrets. Over three million pieces were exported to Europe between 1604 and 1657 alone. This was around that the same time that the word "china" began being used in England to describe porcelains because the two were so closely associated with each other.

Pere d’Entrecolles, a Jesuit missionary from France, secretly entered Jingdezhen and described porcelain making in the city in letters that made their way to Europe in the early 1700s. He described a city with a million people and 3,000 kilns that were fired up day and night and filled the night sky with an orange glow. He learned the process but confused the clays.

Around he same time that d’Entrecolles was describing porcelain-making in Jingdezhen, Germans working independently in their homeland discovered the secret to making porcelain Large scale porcelain production began in the West in 1710 in Meissen, Germany.

Chinese porcelain dominated the world until European manufacturers such as those in Messen, Germany and Wedgewood, England began producing products of equal quality but at a cheaper price. After that the Chinese porcelain industry collapsed as many industries have done today when underpriced by cheap Chinese imports.

Decline and Fall of the Ming Dynasty

The Ming court was very corrupt. Some court eunuchs and civil servants made small fortunes by setting fires and getting kickbacks from the contractors who repaired the damage. Others embezzled money that was intended to buy food for the court elephants.

In its final years the Ming Dynasty was weakened by corruption, power-hungry eunuchs and political trouble on its borders. The decline was accelerated after a costly war against Japan over Korea. The Ming dynasty finally collapsed as a result of a peasant rebellion launched in the Shaanxi province after a devastating famine there and an invasion of Manchus from the north. The last Ming emperor killed himself by hanging himself from a tree in the northern edge of the Forbidden rather that being captured.

After Manchu invasion from the north, the great 16th century historian Zhang Dai wrote that Beijing was overrun with “unemployed soldiers and clerks, laid off couriers, miners, landless laborers driven from the desiccated farms, refugees from the Manchu-dominated areas north of the Great Wall, Muslim and other traders who had lost their money as the Silk Road trade faltered.”

The Ming dynasty was overthrown by the Manchus in 1644. The impact of this one historian said "was comparable to that experienced by the Christian world after the loss of the Holy Land to the Muslim world."

Image Sources: 1) Ming Emporer, China Page website ; 2) Map, St. Martins edu ; 3) Ming founder, Brooklyn College; 4) Yongle, wikipedia; 5) Encyclopedia, wikipedia; 6) Ming tomb. Bucklin archives http://www.bucklinchinaarchive.com/ ; 7) Vase, Brooklyn College.

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

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© 2008 Jeffrey Hays