A History of China (57 page)

Dissidents who were distressed at the disarray at court and in the country at large began to join together to (at the very least) express their dismay and ­dissatisfaction. The Donglin Academy was the most renowned such association; it used Confucian precepts to question the venality of court officials. Adherents of the Donglin maintained that reaffirmation of Confucian ethics and their implementation at court were more important than institutional changes or reforms. Having founded its academy in 1604, the Donglin partisans convened meetings and sessions designed to preserve Confucianism and to discuss and assess the role and moral cultivation of officials. Such meetings often resulted in sharp criticism of certain officials; this alienated those ­officials from the Donglin cause but did not substantially halt the steady decline of the court, which faced revenue shortfalls while ironically the elite (both at court and among officials, large landowners, and newly prosperous merchants) spent considerable sums to purchase luxuries. The Donglin’s moral suasion scarcely affected the course of government, and indeed the court, in its last year, initiated proceedings against its leaders. Excluded from authority and power, the Donglin, as well as other talented men of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, were unable to contribute to attempts to form a less corrupt and more stable reformist government. Lacking such capable ­officials, the court continued to decline.

The fiscal and personnel problems of the court aside, factors beyond its control contributed to the dynasty’s crises in its last two decades. An extraordinary cold spell afflicted China for much of the 1630s, no doubt reducing the food supply. Floods and droughts further worsened economic conditions ­during that decade. Silver, which had flooded into the empire’s coffers from trade with Europe and Japan, diminished: such commerce witnessed ups and downs and, on occasion, silver exports from the New World decreased during the early seventeenth century.

The machinations of the notorious eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) exacerbated these problems. His rise to power during this time came at the expense of the Donglin adherents. When officials either allied with or a ­member of the Donglin group wrote memorials to the emperor criticizing Wei for his extravagance and his usurpation of authority, he simply outmaneuvered and defeated them in bureaucratic infighting, executing several of them, imprisoning others, and murdering still others. With these opponents silenced, Wei could appoint his relatives and allies to positions at court and could acquire even more wealth and property. Internal discussions about unrest, disturbances, and threats posed by the newly risen and vibrant Manchu confederation northeast of China became increasingly chaotic, resulting in greater turbulence. Rebellions erupted in southwest and northwest China, enabling the Manchus to capitalize on this internal disarray to encroach on Chinese lands. Wei’s abuses created numerous enemies who bided their time to challenge the ­seemingly all-powerful eunuch. The accession of the next emperor in 1627 offered them their opportunity because the young ruler from the outset ­signaled his opposition to Wei. Within a few months of the new reign, Wei had learned that the emperor planned to have him executed. The eunuch averted this ignominious fate by committing suicide.

Wei’s death did not alleviate the dynasty’s precarious state. Chaotic ­economic conditions and a distressed population in various sections of the country precipitated unrest and violent outbreaks. Starting in the western provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi, rebellions spread eastward and toward the south in the 1630s. Li Zicheng (1606–1645?), the principal rebel in the northwest, had been a postal-station attendant with strong links with the local Muslim community. Organizing a band of army deserters, postal-station attendants, outlaws, and peasants, he challenged the Ming court and, after some initial mistakes and defeats, headed toward the capital with one victory after another. Much of the Ming army, bereft of supplies and corrupt and demoralized, either defected or was defeated. By April of 1644, Li’s forces reached the gates of Beijing. A few hours before the rebel troops entered the city, the last Ming emperor hanged himself. Finding scant treasure in the imperial coffers, Li’s forces extorted booty from officials and the populace. They contributed to the turbulence rather than attempting to restore stability through the reestablishment of institutions. Li lost considerable support because of the looting and massacres he appeared to sanction. When he ­proclaimed himself emperor of a new dynasty a couple of months later, he faced powerful opposition. The Confucian scholar-official class feared that Li might engineer a social revolution that would deprive them of power and transfer authority to an underclass composed of peasants and others on the fringes of society. Having no choice and having no independent military force to defeat Li, they turned to outsiders, the Manchus, to oust him. The Manchus had, by this time, received considerable assistance from those Chinese who wished to preserve an imperial system but with a Manchu emperor. Believing that they would fare better under a Manchu imperial structure than under a rebel, the Chinese elite ordered its commanders to permit Manchu forces entry into China. A few days later, a force of Manchu troops, supported by several Chinese detachments, ousted Li from the city, and a new longer-lived dynasty, the Qing, was established.

The Manchus did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. Most derived from the Jurchen peoples who had overwhelmed the Northern Song dynasty in 1126 and established the Jin dynasty that ruled north China for a century. The Mongols had crushed the Jin in 1234, leading many to return to their Jurchen homelands in Manchuria. They remained under Mongol sovereignty but regained their autonomy during the Ming, though they accepted a so-called tributary status in order to obtain trade with China. In the north the Jurchens were hunters and fishermen; in the west they survived as nomadic pastoralists; and in the south they farmed. The farmers lived a sedentary existence and could more readily develop an administrative structure. Foresight and unity were required to forge the Jurchens into an important force in east Asia.

Nurhaci (1559–1626) proved to have the skills needed to unify the Jurchens and neighboring peoples. His father had helped the Ming in a 1582 campaign against an obstreperous Jurchen leader, but a Ming commander had inadvertently killed him. Nurhaci demanded compensation for his father’s death, which he received. One reward was appointment as leader of one of the most significant Jurchen groups. Increasingly, however, he and the Ming came into conflict over trade and land, and he then conceived of creating a political organization to challenge the dynasty.

Styling himself on the sedentary agricultural contingent among the Jurchens and neighboring peoples and employing the advances they had made in ­developing iron and other industries, Nurhaci initiated his efforts at unification. Recognizing that he required revenues, he monopolized the Manchurian trade in ginseng and reaped huge profits from selling that “life-giving root” to the Chinese. He reopened gold and silver mines and gained control over the ­commerce in furs and pearls within Manchuria. Having considerable financial resources and a few industries, he could subsidize the production of weapons for his army and did not need to rely on foreigners for warfare. However, he quickly recognized that he needed foreign assistance in conducting censuses, devising a tax system, and the myriad other governmental tasks. Because his own people had had scant experience in administering an empire, he turned to the Chinese living across the border for such expertise. Many Chinese who had become disillusioned with the Ming’s corruption and misadministration defected to Nurhaci and served him by devising institutions similar to those found in China. Their assistance as well as his own military prowess led to his conquests of Jurchens and others in Manchuria. Additions of non-Jurchens to their cause eventually prompted Jurchen leaders to adopt the name “Manchu” for the entire new grouping.

Administrative reorganization was required as the Jurchens, or now Manchus, incorporated more units into their confederation. They broke up the original groups and dispersed them among the so-called Eight Banners, which consisted of Plain White, Bordered White, Plain Blue, Bordered Blue, Plain Red, Bordered Red, Plain Yellow, and Bordered Yellow. The Banners served as both the administrative units and the military organization for Manchu ­families. Consisting of companies of about three hundred, the Banners were originally made up of families of the same lineage, but soon many families were separated into different units. Dependence on their new associates eroded old alliances and led to loyalty to the new Banner leaders. As Mongol and Chinese defected, they sometimes joined the Manchu Banners or, when they began to outnumber the Manchus, formed their own Mongol or Chinese Banners. A few Chinese adopted Manchu names and identified with the Manchus, but most remained attached to Chinese culture. The Manchus gradually became more standardized as the troops received salaries instead of relying on booty. With such a strong financial and military base, the Manchus increasingly opposed the Ming forces. Battles frequently unsettled border inhabitants. In 1616, the Manchus raised the stakes by proclaiming the Later Jin dynasty, a direct reference to the earlier Jurchen Jin that had conquered China about five centuries in the past. In 1636, Hong Taiji (1592–1643), Nurhaci’s son, signaled that the confederation now consisted of groups other than the Jurchens by changing the name of the dynasty to Qing.

By the mid 1640s, the Ming dynasty no longer ruled the country, but ­remnants of the imperial family, along with Chinese patriots in south China, resisted the Qing until 1660. The patriots who undertook to preserve the Ming represented different interests and were often in conflict with each other, which undermined their efforts. Nonetheless, relying on naval forces and ­control over ports in the south, a so-called Southern Ming cohort withstood the Manchu Qing dynasty for almost two decades. In 1661, Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662), known in the West as Coxinga, the last remaining Ming loyalist, fled from the province of Fujian to Taiwan.

Zheng’s defeat of the Dutch East India Company in Taiwan attests to the military parity between China and the European colonial empires at this stage. Zheng capitalized on the Ming’s advances in military technology. The Ming’s development of cannon technology and artillery, its use of guns, and its skill with the tried and true bows and arrows contributed enormously to Zheng’s success. Dutch forces had needed to be powerful to conquer and occupy the East Indies (or modern Indonesia), but they could not resist Zheng, who ­commanded a hundred thousand troops and three thousand vessels in Taiwan. As seafarers, the Dutch had a stronger navy, but Zheng’s army was larger, ­better equipped, and more united than the Dutch troops. The Dutch forces lacked unity, their leaders were inadequate, and their supply lines were ­precarious. They had made peace with the aborigines in Taiwan and had ­succeeded in building forts on the island, but they were no match for Zheng’s troops. The Dutch withdrew, and Zheng even contemplated an attack on the Philippines. His death in 1662 prevented the dispatch of such an expedition. His son succeeded him, but in 1683 an expeditionary force from the mainland overwhelmed Zheng’s descendants and gradually integrated Taiwan under the government of Fujian province.

Timothy Brook,
The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

James Cahill,
Painting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty, 1368–1580
(New York: Weatherhill, 1978).

Victoria Cass,
Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies and Geishas of the Ming
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).

Craig Clunas,
Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004).

Craig Clunas,
Empire of Great Brightness, Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007).

John Dardess,
Ming China, 1368–1644
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

Edward Dreyer,
Zheng He and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433
(New York: Pearson Longman, 2006).

Ray Huang,
1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).

Andrew Plaks,
Four Masterworks of the Chinese Novel
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

Moss Roberts, trans.,
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

David Roy, trans.,
Plum in the Golden Vase or Chin P’ing Mei
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 5 vols., 1993).

Sarah Schneewind,
Tale of Two Melons: Emperor and Subject in Ming China
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006).

Henry Tsai,
The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty
(New York: State University of New York Press, 1996).

Henry Tsai,
Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011).

Arthur Waldron,
The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Anthony Yu, trans.,
The Journey to the West
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, rev. ed., 2012).