Course Logistics

Name: Lecture 21: Early Modern? The Ming in the 16th Century
Uploaded: 2026-04-07T19:37:15.097448+00:00
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Description: Summary and key takeaways on Lecture 21: Early Modern? The Ming in the 16th Century — Summary, covering Course Logistics The semester schedule pairs the Ming
MIT OpenCourseWare
Apr 07, 2026
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The semester schedule pairs the Ming and Qing dynasties, and a recorded lecture will cover the death of the last Ming emperor.
The Establishment of the Ming

Zhu Yuanzhang, later known as Ming Taizu, seized power in South China and declared Nanjing the first capital in 1368. Although the new regime publicly rejected foreign influence, it retained many Yuan‑era administrative practices and naming conventions. Gunpowder weapons, highlighted in the “Fire Dragon Classic,” proved decisive in consolidating control.
Ming Taizu’s Reign

Taizu rose from absolute poverty, a background that shaped his paranoid and autocratic style. He repeatedly purged scholar‑officials, halted civil service examinations in 1373, and executed prime minister Hu Weiyong in 1380. By abolishing the prime minister post, he shifted the government toward absolute imperial authority. Through his “Six Maxims,” he attempted to speak directly to the common people (lao bai xing).
“He was truly one of the people who founded a dynasty in Chinese history from absolute poverty.”
The Yongle Emperor

Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor, usurped the throne from his nephew, the Jianwen emperor, and moved the capital to Beijing. He rebuilt the Grand Canal and commissioned Zheng He’s seven state‑directed maritime voyages, which sought prestige and diplomatic recognition rather than commercial colonization. Confucian scholars eventually opposed the costly expeditions, leading to their abandonment.
“Anytime you write something new, you have to pretend it’s old.”
State and Society

Beijing’s spatial cosmology centered on the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, reflecting a ritualized relationship between ruler and heaven. Local administration featured Wenmiao (civil temples), Wumiao (martial temples), and Chenghuangmiao (city god temples). Popular religion emphasized action over identity, with ancestor worship and paper money coexisting alongside state‑sponsored rites.
During the mid‑Ming, families organized as “lineage corporations,” allowing them to hold land collectively and govern internal affairs. This model reinforced social cohesion while integrating families into the broader state structure.
“Chinese religion is not identitarian. It’s all about doing. It’s all about action.”
The Middle Ming Crisis

The 1449 Tumu Crisis saw the Zhengtong emperor captured by Mongols, prompting official Yu Qian to rally Beijing’s defenses and preserve the capital. Later, the Great Rites Controversy sparked debates over ancestral hall expansions, while the Jiajing emperor faced the 1542 Renyin year palace plot, an attempted assassination that underscored court instability.
“You can’t go over and protest it at the local official. But what you can do is you can protest it at the city god.”
Takeaways

Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming by combining anti‑Mongol rhetoric with retained Yuan administrative practices and gunpowder weaponry.
Ming Taizu’s abolition of the prime minister role marked a decisive move toward absolute imperial autocracy.
Yongle’s relocation of the capital to Beijing and Zheng He’s voyages reflected an outward‑looking foreign policy that later collapsed under Confucian opposition.
The mid‑Ming emergence of lineage corporations transformed family landholding and self‑governance within the imperial framework.
The Tumu Crisis, Great Rites Controversy, and Renyin palace plot illustrate the dynasty’s recurring political and military vulnerabilities.
Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Ming Taizu abolish the prime minister position?

Ming Taizu eliminated the prime minister role to concentrate power directly in the emperor’s hands, creating a more absolute autocracy. By removing this intermediary, he reduced the influence of scholar‑officials and tightened his personal control over state affairs.
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Yes, the full transcript for this video is available on this page. Click 'Show transcript' in the sidebar to read it.
Helpful resources related to this video

If you want to practice or explore the concepts discussed in the video, these commonly used tools may help.
The Ming Dynasty History Book Recommended
Provides a comprehensive academic overview of the Ming Dynasty's political, social, and cultural evolution, complementing the lecture's themes.
Amazon →
The Forbidden City Architecture Book
Explores the spatial cosmology and design of the Forbidden City, which was a central focus of the lecture's discussion on imperial power.
Amazon →
Zheng He Maritime Voyages Book
Details the state-directed maritime expeditions led by Zheng He, providing context for the Ming's geopolitical ambitions.
Amazon →
Chinese History Calligraphy Brush Set
Allows the user to engage with the 'Wen' (civil) tradition and the importance of literacy and bureaucracy emphasized in the lecture.
Amazon →
Links may be affiliate links. We only include resources that are genuinely relevant to the topic.
Summarize another video
Full Transcript YouTube

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TRISTAN BROWN: Lot to do today.
I want to get through as
much of it as possible.
Here's the game plan.
So today, we'll do the--
we'll do the Ming.
I'll take you through
the 1400s, the 1500s.
We'll see how far we get.
On Wednesday, we do the
1600s, as you can imagine,
the end of the Ming
dynasty, which is a really,
really epic story
in and of itself.
And I will record it.
And you have to
understand something of--
I would say, one of the
highlights of the semester.
When I think about
the whole semester
and I think about highlights,
like writing systems
and everything like
that, the death
of the last Ming emperor,
his totally dramatic suicide,
is on Wednesday.
So you'll watch a video
of me talking about that.
Unfortunately, it
won't be in person.
But that's, I think, one of
the highlights of the semester.
And then next
week, we come back,
and it's the Qing dynasty pretty
much until the end of the class.
All right, so let's get started.
So the establishment of
the Ming dynasty, this
is where we kind of picked off.
I just want to say, this is not
super great resolution there.
But I'm going to show you this
photo, this painting, again.
That's a painting of Zhu
Yuanzhang, the first Ming
emperor.
And there's something--
when we always talk about,
what's the Mongol legacy
of the early Ming, I
that was a question for you this
week in your discussion post.
And you go, OK, there he is.
He's wearing his yellow,
big imperial costume.
He's the emperor and
everything like that.
But look at this carpet.
You know what I'm saying?
Do you ever look
at that-- that's
obviously a Persian,
Central Asian carpet.
So think about it like that.
I'll show you that
image later today,
where you can take
a good look at it.
And just remember, the
Mongols really changed China.
And he's coming back.
He's established
the Ming dynasty.
And he's going to,
of course, say,
I'm going to get rid of all
these foreign influences.
Of course he's
going to say that.
Of course the founder of the
Ming dynasty would say that.
Ming is, in a sense,
reacting to Mongol rule.
But they've already adopted
so much from Mongol rule
that it goes without saying.
Just think about what
even 80 years does.
Think about what the United
States was 80 years ago,
vis-á-vis today.
That would put us
in, what, the 1940s,
and the culture of the 1940s
versus the culture today.
So that's a serious
amount of time
that the Mongols were in China.
And, as you know,
parts of China,
they were in there for
a longer period of time.
All right, so to just
say something really
quickly about the fall
of the Yuan dynasty.
Basically, I already
covered this last week.
But just to give you
some highlights here,
there's a series of
civil wars that break out
breakout in the South.
You can see Chen Youliang was
a big contender against Zhu
Yuanzhang.
But Zhu Yuanzhang,
basically he takes over.
He's ultimately successful.
This is his territory that
he consolidated early on.
So basically, the Mongols
are going to basically
be driven out, back beyond
what is now the Great Wall,
into Mongolia.
But then it's this
question of the power play
in South China that
actually is going to render
Zhu Yuanzhang successful.
I'm going to talk a little bit
about the technologies that
might have aided in his
success in doing that,
in consolidating his rule.
He, I think, ultimately
defeats Chen Youliang
at this Poyang Lake.
And so that's where
he basically becomes
unrivaled in South China.
This is an interesting
story of, we don't usually
have the South unified first
and then conquering the country.
It's usually the
North goes South.
This is a case where
the South did it first.
That's why his
capital is at Nanjing.
Now, the one thing
I'll just say here,
the fall of the Yuan dynasty,
it doesn't totally go away.
There's this thing we sometimes
call the Northern Yuan, which is
sometimes called a rump state.
Basically, the Mongol
line of the Yuan
goes back into the steppe.
And they're, at various points
in the aftermath of the Mongol
Empire, unified.
Sometimes they're less unified.
But one of the things that
I will say here is that,
if you look at-- by the
time you get to the 1500s,
the Mongols are becoming a
serious geopolitical player
again.
And in particular, what one
of-- and this is a story
I'm just telling you right
now because we're not really
going to focus on it today.
But starting in the 1500s--
even the late 1400s,
but 1500s for sure--
the alliance between the
Mongols and the Tibetans,
and especially with patronage
for Tibetan Buddhism.
So it's in this
period that you're
going to have Altan
Khan, who's going
to be the most powerful
Mongol of his day,
basically create institution
of the Dalai Lamas.
That happens during
the Ming period.
And that happens with the
Mongol-Tibetan connection.
Ultimately, when you
see 1635 right there,
what happens to the
Mongols up there?
What happens to
this Northern Yuan?
What happens to all this?
Basically, they're going to
get incorporated, most of them,
into the Manchu project, which
will be the Qing project.
So next week, when I talk
to you about the Qing, where
it comes from and
everything like that,
I can catch you all up on
the details of the Tibetans
and the Mongols and that
alliance and everything
like that.
But just realize, when the Ming
is doing this thing, this--
the Tibetans and
the Mongols stuff,
that's a really important story.
All right, when we talk about
Zhu Yuanzhang and his victory
and his establishment
of the Ming--
Ming and bright,
brightness; Ming, clear,
something like this; that's
what this title means--
he kind of followed in
the Mongol tradition of,
where do you get
your reign name from?
Where do you get your dynastic--
sorry, dynastic name from?
And the Mongols had picked
from the Classic of Changes.
They would pick a nice name--
Yuan-- this nice character
out of that classical text.
So he picks Ming-- also
nice, auspicious, prosperous,
everything like that.
Do I-- I'll show you
in just a second.
But one of the things that he
is going to-- possibly ascribes
his victory to is
basically weaponry,
in particular
gunpowder-based weaponry.
This is a fascinating text that
is written during his reign
as the first emperor of China.
And it's basically the
fire dragon classic.
And by the way, of course,
"classic" here is a nice way,
polite way, very nice way
to call an important book.
But it is not a classic.
It is a 14th-century text.
It claims to have commentaries
and such, or knowledge,
from Zhuge Liang.
Of course, remember,
this is all strategic.
Anytime you write something new,
you have to pretend it's old.
And 'Zhuge Liang knew all about
these strategies,' blah blah
blah. 'He knew all
about'-- no, he didn't.
There was no gunpowder during
the Three Kingdoms period.
Zhuge Liang did not write
a preface for this book.
This is a late
14th-century book,
but it's really interesting
because you get to take a look
at, this is a-- what
do you think this is?
It's a bomb.
So this is a bomb that was
used during the Ming wars
of their establishment.
And look at this.
This [CHINESE]
shen huo jian pai--
this is this 'heavenly fire'
arrow, this kind of thing,
lighting them all at once.
This kind of art-- this
weaponry and artillery--
there's all different images
of the weapons that were used
in the 14th century.
This was composed by two
members, two officials,
who had supported Zhu Yuanzhang
in his conquest of China
and the establishment
of the Ming.
One of them later got executed.
You will see Zhu Yuanzhang
executes a lot of people.
But this is this book.
Two famous people wrote it.
And you could just
kind of see here,
this is from Ming Taizu,
Zhu Yuanzhang's reign.
That's a Ming bronze firearm.
You can see what the primitive
firearms look like at this time.
But they were used.
And we will see, of
course, references.
Later in the Ming
dynasty, we'll actually
see the appearance of overseas
cannon, especially when Macau
opens in 1557.
You'll see overseas cannon.
But there was, right from the
very start of the dynasty,
firearm, artillery, et cetera.
What we can say is
that, from the creation
of this book by some prominent
officials in the early Ming,
probably these weapons
were ascribed by Ming Taizu
as having helped them
consolidate their rule,
when they were
fighting before 1368.
All right, so here he is.
That's a better image--
better, more clear image.
Look, that's him.
He was not known as
an attractive man,
I have to tell you.
He had very bad skin.
They think he had some sort of--
I don't know what that
is, but a pockmarked face.
He was not a particularly
attractive person,
according to the annals.
He was super intense.
You got to understand,
this is a guy
with a huge chip
on his shoulder.
He was truly one
of the people who
founded a dynasty in Chinese
history from absolute poverty,
from really absolute poverty.
So you've seen that
kind of, like, we
say Liu Bang, from the
founder of the Han dynasty.
That's another time we
saw something like that.
But with Ming Taizu,
we know more about him.
Just take another
closer look right here.
Look at this beautiful Persian,
Central Asian carpet right
there, just totally there--
totally there, totally
under not even a comment.
'I'm the emperor of the Ming.
This is my new dynasty.
And look at that carpet.'
So again, it just gives you a
sense of that cultural moment
in that late 14th century.
That's his name, Zhu Yuanzhang.
He picks his era name.
What's his era name going to be?
He picks this name, Hongwu.
So what does Hongwu mean?
Kind of gives you a sense
of what he's all about.
AUDIENCE: Martial.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah,
overflowing martial valor.
So he sees himself--
when you pick a name like that
for being your reign title--
and by the way, just
realize reign titles
in the Ming and the Qing
become more important
because they don't change
during a dynasty anymore.
Let me just explain
what I mean by that.
During the Tang, like Wu
Zetian, she comes to the throne,
and she'll basically say, OK,
here's the name of the era.
And they'll use it
for a few years.
And then Wu Zetian will say,
here's the name of the new era.
So during her reign, there
will be multiple era names.
She can change them.
They all could change them.
But in the Ming and the
Qing, you pick one era name,
and that's the era name that you
have as long as you're emperor.
So Hongwu is Hongwu
the whole way through.
And you'll see that throughout
the Ming and the Qing.
So picking a name like that
is kind of saying, like,
I'm full of martial valor,
which, of course, was true.
That's how he came to power.
But it's also going to give
you a sense of his attitude
because, remember, what is
the complement to the Wu?
AUDIENCE: Wen.
TRISTAN BROWN: Wen, right?
So he does not pick a
name with "Wen" in it.
That's something to
just be aware of.
Remember, all of these words
of what the leaders pick
will always tell you
something about them.
When Xi Jinping picks, I
don't know, "Zhongguo meng"
or something like that--
"Chinese dream" or something
like that-- in hindsight,
you'll go, oh, I see
why that made sense.
What they pick matters.
There he is, the 13
provinces of the Ming.
The Ming is never going to
reach the territorial heights
of the Tang.
It's not going to reach the
territorial heights of the Yuan.
It's kind of boxed
in, especially
towards that northern region.
But it's serious.
It's powerful.
And it's so important
in ways that I'm going
to try to explain to you today.
It's so important not just
for Chinese cultural history--
intellectual history,
economic history.
During the Ming
dynasty, this is really
where we're really
going to start talking
about the global economy.
The Ming is presiding over
a truly-- before this, Tang
dynasty, you go, oh, Silk
Road, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, OK-- overland,
camels, takes forever
to get stuff anywhere.
But we get maritime trade here.
And we also get--
during the Ming,
you really get Chinese living
overseas in Southeast Asia.
There's all of these big things
that happen during the Ming.
And the Ming is also--
it lasts for a long time,
like 277 years,
something like that.
Any dynasty that
lasts that long, you
got to tip your hat to that.
They did something right.
So let's take a look.
Well, they did a
lot of things wrong.
But let's take a look
at what they did right.
All right, so one of the things
he does when he comes to power,
he outlaws foreign elements.
He comes to power, and he
says, you can no longer use
foreign names, Mongol names.
You got to use Chinese names.
He says, if you're a Mongol
or you're a [Chinese] si mu,
I think he basically says, you
have to marry a Han Chinese--
tries to get involved
with who you marry.
Now, of course, what
is it all about?
It's all about this
assimilation process.
In other words, of course
that's what he was going to do.
After you're living under Mongol
rule for over 70 years-- parts
of China longer
than that-- you're
going to want to have
a reaction like this,
reestablishing who
we're all about.
This is the standard.
You got to wear--
remember, he says, wear
Tang dynasty dress.
Don't wear Mongol dress.
Well, what was
Tang dynasty dress?
Did people know what that was?
OK, whatever.
The point is, he's got
this kind of aspect to him.
But what's also really
interesting about Ming Taizu
is he's also very tolerant
in some surprising ways.
Remember, I told you
all those [Chinese]
si mu ren that came
into the country,
and they were
establishing themselves?
Many of them were Muslim.
So Ming Taizu famously
says, I'm OK with Islam.
They can have their mosques.
The Jews can stay in Kaifeng.
I'm OK with all of that.
Just dress in the
Tang dynasty style.
You know what I mean?
So it's like, what's the line?
What's the line for him?
So I don't want you
to think that it's
this kind of, like,
reactionary xenophobia.
It's more complicated than that.
He wants to reestablish
Chinese identity, no doubt.
And he has an idea
of what that is.
But he's also dealing
with a very, very changed
social landscape from the
fall of the Mongol era.
And you got to deal
with all these people.
There's millions of Muslims
now living in your country.
What are you going to do?
You're going to
kick everybody out?
So no, he keeps them in.
And he says, OK, I'll do edict
of toleration, [INAUDIBLE]
mosque, do all this stuff.
But there's some
things they police
and some things
they don't police.
I told you his
capital is Nanjing.
Please visit Nanjing.
It's a beautiful city.
Remember the Salted Duck?
Yeah, good?
Salted Duck?
Yeah?
This was his capital.
It's the capital very shortly,
just basically during his reign.
It's also going to be the
capital of China in the early
20th century.
Nanjing has this fate of never
being a very long capital.
But it is a capital
city twice in the last--
wah-- 700 years, for
short periods of time.
Ming Taizu is buried in Nanjing.
So he is the only Ming
emperor, as far as we know--
I don't think we know where
the body of his grandson--
I'll tell you about
that in a second.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
He's the only Ming emperor that
we know who's buried in Nanjing.
Everybody else is buried in the
Ming Shisanling, the 13 Ming
tombs outside of Beijing.
That's after the capital
is moved to Beijing.
It's a beautiful city.
The other thing he does
is he builds this wall.
He builds the city wall
of Nanjing, fortifies it.
That makes Nanjing
really interesting
because it's one of the few
Chinese cities, especially
provincial capitals--
Xi'an is one of them;
Nanjing is one of them-- that
still has their old city wall.
You got to realize Beijing
used to have its city wall.
It was torn down in the 1950s.
Communists torn it down.
Kind of a tragedy, to
be honest with you.
I realize there are
some people-- it's like,
are you a developmentalist?
We got to change things.
The wall made Beijing seem
so small and so quaint,
and I get it, I
get it, I get it.
But it was the whole
atmosphere of the city.
Nanjing still has its wall.
This wall is really
interesting, too,
if you're interested in the
history of World War II--
how the wall served in
fortifications against
the incoming Japanese army, the
gates that the Japanese army
marched through when they were
taking the city, and, of course,
all the scenes associated with
what was later called the "Rape
of Nanjing."
So the wall is really,
really interesting to see,
to experience.
Now, you could kind of guess
Ming Taizu hated the scholar
establishment.
He does use this--
I mean, it's kind of
fitting for our most
recent presidential
election, if I may say.
Ming Taizu hated
the establishment.
Who was the establishment?
The Confucian scholars
who thought they
were better than everybody.
And he was not
formally educated.
So he kind of had a little
bit of a chip on his shoulder.
So one of the things he
does, which is kind of, like,
take it as you will,
he orders every county
in the empire to open a school.
Now, how well-funded
these schools were
or how long did they last--
you can have a school on paper.
But after 20 years, it becomes a
tavern for drinking or something
like that.
It doesn't necessarily
always work out.
But he did want everybody to
have access to some education.
So he's kind of got
this bent to him.
He halts the civil service
examinations in 1373,
after complaining
that the 120 scholar
officials who obtained
a jinshi degree
were incompetent ministers.
So he basically had
a graduating class.
They came.
He goes, you guys
are just awful.
I'm just going to
stop these exams.
So it's fascinating how
you say to yourself,
wait, I thought the
exams were so important.
Aren't the exams so important?
Who would dare end them?
And it tells you a
lot about Ming Taizu,
that he would just be like,
yeah, just forget about it.
Just, we're not going to do it.
And then he brings it back.
And then, when he
brings it back in 1384,
he executes the
chief examiner, who--
when it was discovered that
he had only allowed candidates
from the South to
be granted degrees.
That's, I thought,
always a funny--
and I remember we were
talking about this,
I think, after class last
week-- very funny episode.
I mean, it's kind of tragic.
Don't get me wrong.
This is an execution.
But when he looks at
the list and he goes,
they're all Southerners,
what are you doing?--
executes the chief examiner.
He executes supposedly about
100,000 people who were
affiliated with the
government and their families.
This guy executed probably
more people than most emperors
in Chinese history.
He was paranoid.
He was always thinking
that people were going
to overthrow him, all of that.
And then he resettles over
14,000 wealthy families from
Zhejiang and Jiangsu to Nanjing.
One of the things
that he does is--
because you had these
wealthy families,
especially in South China.
They had big, landed estates.
He tries to weaken their
power base a little bit.
One way to do that is to
send them to the countryside,
make them move somewhere
else, or send them
to a military colony far away,
or send them to his new capital
in Nanjing, where
he's close to them,
taking them away from
their inherited estates.
So he kind of does--
take that as you will.
This is how he reigns.
Now, I want you to understand
something about the Ming.
The Ming we separate into the
beginning of the Ming dynasty,
the middle of the Ming dynasty,
and the end of the Ming dynasty.
Now, that might sound
like the most boring movie
you've ever seen.
Of course, it has a beginning
and a middle and an end.
But no, in this case, you got
to really pay attention to it.
Ming Taizu is really unique.
There's only one Ming Taizu.
All the stuff that he does,
it doesn't follow through
in the later reigns.
Some stuff remains consistent.
But it's a reign unto its own.
Yongle is sometimes seen as the
re-establishment of the Ming.
He does his own thing.
It's kind of a
reign into its own.
Then you get into a bunch of
emperors that nobody remembers.
And that's the
middle of the Ming.
And then when
things really start
to get bad at the
end of the dynasty,
that's the end of the Ming.
So beginning, middle, and end.
Beginning is basically
Ming Taizu and his son,
the Yongle emperor.
And we're going to get to the
Yongle emperor in a second.
So for instance, he has huge
turnover in his cabinet,
as you could imagine.
It kind of reminds you of
the first Trump presidency,
if I may say.
It was kind of like, he
had this guy, Hu Weiyong,
who was the prime minister.
And Hu Weiyong helped him
purge a bunch of other people.
But then Hu Weiyong
was implicated
in some plot against him.
And then he executed Hu Weiyong
and a bunch of other people
in 1380.
And then he just abolished
the post of prime minister.
He said, I don't even
need a prime minister.
I'm not going to fill it.
So he just didn't fill it.
This is the last prime
minister in Chinese history.
So remember all those
people in the Song dynasty?
We talked about Wang
Anshi, Sima Guang debates.
What is Wang Anshi doing?
He's like a prime minister.
He's going to be the
chief official guiding
the emperor in policy.
Ming Taizu just says,
forget about it.
So this is a move, in
a way, you could say,
to autocracy in Chinese history.
That's sometimes what it's seen.
The Song dynasty kind
of gives us this moment.
Remember when Ouyang Xiu
says, hey, why don't we
have political parties?
Remember, they tried [CHINESE]
Su Shi because of poetry.
The Song dynasty is this
remarkable time and place
where you really have
officials who are openly
debating stuff and talking
about all this stuff like that.
This is like a slow
turn towards something
that's much more centralized
in terms of that regulation.
That being said,
the Ming is kind of
remarkable in the degree
to which officials
challenge the emperor.
And I'll show you that.
But not Ming Taizu.
Don't challenge Ming Taizu.
The other ones, you can.
Basically, here's
his six maxims.
This is totally
what you'd expect.
But what I just want
to point out here
is, again, this is something
that goes well back
in Chinese history,
where you'll say,
during the one-child
policy, 'one child is great,
two is too many.
Don't even think about three.'
There'll be these phrases.
And so this goes well back.
Ming Taizu, he's
got these phrases.
"Be dutiful to your parents."
And you might say,
isn't that obvious?
Yeah, but his object
is he's talking
around the literati scholars.
Remember, he doesn't like
the scholarly establishment.
He doesn't like those gentry.
He doesn't trust them.
So he wants to talk directly
to the [CHINESE] lao bai xing.
He wants to talk directly
to the common people.
So he comes up with,
here's my six maxims.
"Live in harmony with your
neighbors," blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
OK, so here's what happens.
He dies in 1398.
And the way that Ming's
succession rules worked
was that it would go
to the eldest-- it
would go to the son of
the primary empress.
Now, that guy who was
designated to inherit the throne
passed away, meaning that,
in the succession line,
it would go to
his son, which was
the grandson of Ming
Taizu, who's going
to be the Jianwen emperor.
Now, the Jianwen emperor, you
go, I've never heard of him.
Yeah, he's erased
from Chinese history
because Ming Taizu's
son, his uncle,
is going to overthrow
him almost immediately.
So the Jianwen emperor
comes to the throne,
the grandson of Ming Taizu.
He's kind of like, OK,
what are we going to do?
What are we going to do?
I got to consolidate.
I got to be a new emperor.
How are you going to
follow up Ming Taizu?
All of that stuff like that.
And this guy, Zhu
Di, the Yongle--
who's going to be the Yongle
emperor, he's not having it.
He's not having it.
Now, this guy, this is Zhu Di.
This is the guy who's
going to take over.
He's the son of Ming Taizu.
But he wasn't in line for
the throne, technically.
So his brother was in
line for the throne.
So this guy, his power
base is in Beijing.
Now, let me just stop
right here for a minute
and explain what this means.
In the Ming dynasty, one thing
that makes the Ming unique
is that the sons of Ming Taizu
were enfeoffed as princes.
And they were given territories
all around the empire.
So there was a prince
of Shu, Sichuan.
There was a Prince of
Nanchang in Jiangxi.
There were princes that
belonged to the royal family
all across the empire.
The Manchu Qing
will not do this.
But the Ming did do this.
And there were reasons they
did this-- for succession,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So the line that
he comes from was
he was given a state by his
father in the Beiping area.
That's the old
territory seat of Yan.
That's basically
greater Beijing.
This was very, very close
to the Mongol frontier.
So this is a very,
very important region
in terms of geopolitics,
considering that the Mongols had
just retreated.
So this is where he was
enfeoffed as the Prince of Yan.
Now, Jianwen comes
to the throne.
And Jianwen is kind of saying,
I want to-- one of the things
that we're going to
try to do is lessen
the military independence
of the princes,
including the Prince of Yan.
Well, basically, you can imagine
this guy wasn't having it.
And when they come to
basically confiscate his army,
he just says, I'm going to try
to overthrow this, and he does.
This is the first of many-- of
not the only princely rebellion
during the Ming, but it is
the most successful one.
What he does is he
basically marches down
the Grand Canal with his armies,
causing tons of destruction
along the way, until
he takes Nanjing.
He takes Nanjing.
The Jianwen emperor-- I don't
know what happened to his body.
That's what I was saying.
Where's his grave?
Nobody knows.
He's probably burned in
the palace, whatever.
All the evidence was destroyed.
His name was removed completely
from all the history books.
It didn't exist, didn't happen.
So the second emperor of
the Ming dynasty is Yongle.
AUDIENCE: So how
do we know that--
TRISTAN BROWN:
Because, of course,
the records say it
euphemistically.
And it was widely
reported, let's say.
You couldn't miss this.
You couldn't miss this.
But it's a short-lived reign.
But he tries to eliminate them.
Remember, it reminds
me of Henry VIII.
When he executed his wife,
he would try to purge her.
He tried to purge her.
And I remember one of the most
fascinating things I've ever
saw, in Cambridge-- in
King's College, Cambridge--
there's this big altar screen.
And it's like, all
across England,
Henry VIII ordered every
reference to Anne Boleyn
to be destroyed after he had her
beheaded at the Tower of London.
But the one emblem--
and it was "HA"--
after they got married, it
was "HA," Henry and Anne.
And all of those emblems
were all over the country,
like propaganda.
And there was this
one church altar
that was a little bit too
high in King's College Chapel.
And nobody bothered
to take it down.
And then nobody-- it's
kind of hard to see.
But remember, you go there,
and you go, oh, my God, that's
Anne Boleyn.
It's just, nobody took it down.
And it's like, thank god
nobody took that down.
It's kind of like what
we're dealing with here.
It was like, delete
the Jianwen emperor.
It never happened, never
happened, never happened.
But you couldn't delete
Anne Boleyn, especially--
Elizabeth was Anne
Boleyn's daughter, right?
Am I right on that?
Elizabeth was able-- so
you can't delete Jianwen,
but he tried.
So then Yongle
comes to the throne.
Yongle is going to
totally take the country
in a different direction.
What is one of the
things he's going to do?
He moves the capital
back up to Beijing.
Yeah?
That was his power base.
So it makes sense to move
it back up to Beijing,
especially if you want to have
a muscular foreign policy.
He does the Zheng He voyages to
Southeast Asia and the Middle
East.
He rebuilds the Grand Canal
after having destroyed it
during his military campaign.
He spends tons of
money, but he's
much more outwardly focused.
Now, for those of you who
are in my modern China class,
you will remember this next
slide that I'll give you.
But now you'll see it from
a whole new perspective.
So I was thinking about the
resonance of Chinese history
in China today.
That's Ming Taizu.
Who was he?
He was a Southerner from
a peasant background
who came to power
by overthrowing
foreign rule in China.
He then established a, let's
say, kind of populist--
if we use that word-- agrarian--
first-- anti-foreign merchant,
very inward-looking rule
over China.
You then have the
Jianwen emperor,
who comes in very briefly,
before being overthrown
by the Yongle emperor, who takes
the country in a completely
different direction--
outward-looking,
basically totally pursuing
a different policy
direction than his father.
OK, you know where
this is going.
There you go.
So who is Mao Zedong?
Mao Zedong is a Southerner from,
let's say-- whatever it was.
He was from a pretty
decent family, actually,
but reasonably medium--
I don't know if he's
[CHINESE] fu nong--
wealthy peasant
family, let's say,
who kicks out foreign influence
from China, establishes this,
let's say, inward-looking, kind
of populist, against the gentry,
against the scholarly
establishment,
pro farmers, all of that.
He dies.
You get a very,
very short interlude
with Hua Guofeng, who comes
in as the paramount leader
before he gets deposed by Deng
Xiaoping, who then does reform
and opening up.
So you say, wow, the PRC
is kind of like Ming China.
And I think it kind of is.
Out of all the dynasties
of Chinese history,
the one that the PRC reminds me
most about is Ming, actually.
So that's another reason to
care about the Ming dynasty.
So there you go.
That's your story.
Mao, Hua Guofeng,
and Deng Xiaoping.
All right, let's go on.
All right, ooh, the
Tibetan Karmapa--
ugh, why did I put this here?
So basically, look, what
I'm just trying to show you
is that there's stuff--
there's moments of
Ming history that
are so intriguing that you
wouldn't even believe them.
So for instance, after
Yongle comes to the throne
and he's like, hey,
hey, I want to have--
I want to be outward-looking,
I want to be--
I want to be powerful in that
way, of being outward-looking,
he actually hosts
the Tibetan Karmapa,
who is the head of one of the
Tibetan religious lineages.
It's like, the Sakya order
had the-- that we talked about
during the Mongol period.
The Karmapa was one of the
heads of the Kagyu order.
And then the Dalai Lama becomes
the head of the Gelug order.
So he hosts in Nanjing.
So it's just incredible to
think about, in Nanjing,
Southern China, the
Ming emperor hosting
the Tibetan-- the head of the
Tibetan religious establishment.
But this is some of the things
that Yongle was trying to do.
You know that, of course,
the big thing of what
he was trying to do--
another thing, more
prominent, architecturally
prominent-- right there,
the Forbidden City.
He constructs it, basically
takes every remaining big--
what is it?-- rosewood log--
the Hongwu, the redwood--
the redwood tree
logs from Yunnan and
Sichuan provinces.
And they basically ship
them down the Yangtze River
and then up the Grand
Canal after he's
repaired the Grand Canal.
So he basically gets all
those logs up from South China
to build this.
You can see-- think about
this in Chinese architecture.
In theory, that's a log.
That's a log-- all the
timbers, all the stuff
used to construct this.
So that's what he constructs.
And you can see, this is the
Forbidden City, inner city--
the nei cheng and
then the wai cheng,
where a lot of, let's say,
the common people might live.
By the way, take a look.
Take a look.
This is-- what was
this going to say?
That, to me-- I
was going to say,
where's the Temple of Heaven?
I think--
AUDIENCE: North.
TRISTAN BROWN: Temple
of Heaven is south.
Temple of Heaven is
south of the palace.
It's to the southeast
of the palace.
I have it later.
I was just going to
say, I think that--
AUDIENCE: It's
southeast of the palace.
TRISTAN BROWN:
This is the palace.
So this is south.
AUDIENCE: It should
be in a line, right?
TRISTAN BROWN: It's
kind of a line.
Yeah, no, Beijing
is totally a line.
I think this is Tiantan.
I think that looks like it.
That looks like Tiantan to me.
AUDIENCE: Also, looks like
it's kind of the right shape.
TRISTAN BROWN: It kind of
looks like the right shape.
Yeah, I agree with you.
It kind of looks like the
right shape-- the bell tower,
the drum tower, all that stuff.
You can still visit this stuff.
I'm going to skip over the next
slide in the interest of time.
What was the government like?
Trust me, it was interesting.
[LAUGHTER]
There was 13 provinces,
local county officials,
heads of the provinces,
and the central government.
But what I really want
to just say to you
is you can think
about it like this.
Like we had in dynasties past,
there's the central government.
And then there's
local officials.
And it's basically about
the center and the local.
That is the constant
theme in Chinese history.
I'm going to get back.
Don't worry, I know many
of you are thinking about,
where's Zheng He?
We're going to get to Zheng
He in just a few moments.
But before I do that,
let me just say something
broadly about the nature
of the Ming government
as it was created,
let's say, by this time.
When you look at Beijing, as
we were just talking about--
this is why I premised it here--
Beijing is laid out as a very
religious, cosmological city.
You never would guess
that, especially
if you see its layout today.
Not only do you have--
the palace there,
the inner city there,
that's the Temple of
Heaven to the south.
Up to the north--
north of the city--
do you know what you have?
What altar do you
have right there?
Take a guess.
Take a guess.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
TRISTAN BROWN: No.
No, no, no.
So temple of the Earth,
the Ditan, is north.
And then over here to the
east, over here to the west--
east-- I think it's sun.
It's the Ritan.
And then the moon.
Yeah, sun, moon, Earth--
or this could be--
I think this is moon.
Yeah, you can go,
and you can go visit.
They're all now parks.
You can go basically visit them
as parks, all laid out there.
It's really, really cool
to think about this.
Again, you think about Beijing.
It's a capital city,
everything like that.
It had a logic.
It had a real spatial
cosmology to it.
Every county in China from the
Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty
is going to basically
have these three things.
They're going to have a
Confucian temple, which
is a kind of bad translation for
a wenmiao, which is basically
the miao dedicated to wen--
culture, civilization,
all of that.
That will be associated with the
local scholars, the examination
system as it is
practiced in the county,
in the most local of the
administrative districts.
There's also a wumiao.
Every county will have a wumiao.
And the wumiao is kind of where
the military candidates go.
Remember, there's also
military exams in China.
So it's not just
the civil exams.
There's also
military exams if you
want promotion in the military.
So you have the wenmiao, wumiao.
And you will see these.
If you go to China
today, you can
see-- they'll have a really
well preserved wenmiao, wumiao,
and everything like that.
And then you'll have the
chenghuangmiao-- city god
temple.
Just a question--
chenghuangmiao,
the city god temple, literally
the temple of walls and moats.
But who is the city god?
Who is his counterpart?
Take a guess.
Ideas?
AUDIENCE: The local mayor?
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah,
the local official.
So basically, this is what
I want you to think about.
You go, was China
a secular state?
Or was China a religious state?
Well, again, these
are words that
don't make sense in
the Chinese context
because China was
both at the same time.
You could totally say, oh, I
don't believe in the deities.
I don't think any of this works.
I think this is
all superstition.
That's fine to say.
On the other hand,
the state maintained
a very, very elaborate system
of rituals and sacrifices
and temples that
were state temples,
so the state temple to wen,
the state temple to wu,
the state temple of
the chenghuangmiao.
So this is really,
really important
scenes because, for instance,
if the local people are really
upset at the performance
of a local official, well,
you can't go over and protest
it at the local official.
But what you can do is you can
protest it at the city god.
So we have examples of people
taking the city god out
of his temple and whipping him.
And it's like, why are
you whipping the city god?
And the people say,
well, because I
think the city god
is doing a really
bad job at the administration
of our county right now.
[LAUGHTER]
So you see, religion is
really an important realm
of speech in voice.
Villages in local places tend
to have a tudigong, an Earth god
shrine.
So literally, again,
this goes into what
you've seen from the very
beginning of the Daoist
movement in China, of the gods
and the celestial bureaucracy
mimicking the human bureaucracy.
And this is now
basically become,
to a certain extent, the
state, the way that the state
orthodoxy is organized.
And of course, you even
have, of course-- houses
can have a kitchen god, which
is really the god of the house,
something like that.
So as I was telling
you last time--
I think sometime before--
as we get into this topic,
Chinese religion is
not identitarian.
It's all about doing.
It's all about action.
That's the real question.
Rather than saying, 'what are
you?' 'I'm a Buddhist,' 'I'm a
Daoist,' people didn't really
usually talk like that.
Here's my outline of it for you.
Confucian "orthodoxy" and the
imperial state cult at the top.
So Confucian orthodoxy
by the Ming period
basically means the five
classics and the four books
with Zhu Xi's commentaries.
That's Confucian orthodoxy.
Plus, the imperial state cult,
which is, over the calendar
year, there are some deities
and some festivals that
just have to be celebrated.
And the government basically
says, we recognize these.
So that could be
like, at this point,
Guan Yu from the Three Kingdoms.
He's in the state cult.
Many, many other deities are
in the state cult.
Then, that's Temple of
Heaven, blah, blah, blah.
Go down.
OK, Buddhism, religious Daoism.
So I want you to think
about it like this.
You might say, hey, wow,
Buddhism was really important
in Chinese society.
Daoism was really important
in Chinese society.
Yes, those are true.
I won't disagree with
those statements.
But just realize, how
are most people in China
experiencing this
religious landscape?
It's not really like
Buddhist, Daoist.
The Buddhists are there.
There are monks.
They read sutras.
You can go and
hang out with them.
You can even become
a lay Buddhist
and be a vegetarian,
stuff like that.
There are real
religious Daoists who
are priests, who have
mastered the Daoist
canon and various texts
associated with Daoism,
going all the way back.
But for most people,
it's a combination.
For most people,
it's a combination.
And this is sometimes,
for lack of a better word,
we call popular religion
in China, basically just
meaning religion
that everybody does.
Or everybody-- paper money.
You know what I'm talking about
when I talk about paper money?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
TRISTAN BROWN: What do
you do with paper money?
AUDIENCE: You burn it.
TRISTAN BROWN: You burn it,
and you basically send money
to either ancestors
in the afterlife who
need a little bit
of cash, or you
bribe gods to treat them well.
So this is the whole
thing of paper money.
And even, I have over here--
I think somebody in
Taiwan was burning a car.
Oh, they were sending a
car to their ancestor.
AUDIENCE: Paper car, paper
microwave, and paper TV,
and paper phone.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Paper house.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah, just
making sure they're doing well.
And I also think
it's so fascinating
that Chinese religion and
the religious practices
tell you so much
about Chinese history.
It's like, when you
see paper money was
a super widespread
practice for bribing gods
and you say, why
would you bribe gods,
it's because the people
bribed officials all the time.
So they were saying, of
course the gods accept bribes.
What god wouldn't
take a bribe, right?
I got to send him the money and
make sure my grandfather's OK.
So there you go.
So there you go.
And then on the
other end of it, you
got to understand-- you go, but
what does the Chinese state say
about this?
Isn't the Chinese state cracking
down on religion, blah, blah,
blah?
Look, it's complicated,
but here's the point.
Illegal secret
societies and cults--
of course, the government always
rails against illegal worship
of such and such deity, illegal
cults, secret society, blah,
blah, blah.
They always talk about it.
But the thing is, is that you
say, when do people actually
get caught?
When do they actually
get brought in?
When there's a
rebellion or something.
So ultimately, this is-- you
see how this is a spectrum?
It's not like, this
is the correct one.
This is the incorrect.
No, it's fluid.
And it's all open
to interpretation.
One thing that
I've often noticed
as a scholar of
Chinese religion is
that, towards the end of
dynasties, lots of gods
get promoted by the state
because they're just running out
of fumes.
And it's like, hey, our
famine-relief protocols
have totally failed.
So we just got to pray
for rain right now.
So you will see if you--
I would love somebody
to actually do
a digital analysis
of, when do gods get
promoted in Chinese history?
And if you look, at
the end of dynasties
are a really ripe time where
the dynasty, on its last leg,
says promote Guan Yu,
promote Guan Yu, we need him,
we need him, we need him.
At the founding of dynasties,
they go, oh, no, we're
strong and powerful.
We're good.
Just Temple of
Heaven will cover it.
So it's really, again,
a sight to watch.
And then this will
be more for Qing,
but Tibetan Buddhism,
it's its own thing.
The state always does have a
space for Tibetan Buddhism.
I was talking about
how the Ming--
Yongle takes the Karmapa in.
Also, Islam-- tolerated
with exceptions.
So that's another, it's
there, it's on the landscape.
It's not widely
practiced among people
in terms of the general
public; mainly by Muslims.
But it is there, as well.
Yeah, go ahead.
AUDIENCE: So if
Islam is over there,
is the principal that Chinese
religion is still largely not
identitarian [INAUDIBLE]?
Or were people like--
TRISTAN BROWN: So
Muslims, Jews--
Muslims, Jews were
exceptions to this.
They were exceptions to this.
That's why they stood
out in Chinese society
to a certain extent, because
it was an identity, meaning
it wasn't like, oh, I'm
going to the mosque today,
maybe I'll go to
that temple tomorrow.
It was like, they always
went to that mosque.
You know what I mean?
And they had certain
culinary dietary restrictions
that set them apart, especially
like not eating pork for Muslims
and things like that.
So this is what I was actually
just talking about right here.
Ultimately, the Ming
is the era where
you see the emergence of
the Hui Muslims in China.
These are the people today who
are going to be called Hui zu.
They're basically
Chinese-speaking-- they're,
frankly, culturally Chinese.
But traditionally,
they practice Islam.
Increasingly, you'll see a
lot of Hui are secular today,
especially if they live in
Beijing or Shanghai or whatever.
But you will still see
a lot of religious Hui.
And like those are--
I think this is Niujie,
if I'm not mistaken.
That's the big
mosque in Beijing.
So again, Islam was tolerated.
It was OK to do it.
It was OK to build mosques
and stuff like that.
But there were
restrictions, of course,
on what the buildings could look
like and everything like that.
It's an interesting topic.
Now, you might say, why
am I bringing this up?
Why is this so important?
Because probably one of
the most famous Muslims
of Chinese history is
this guy, Zheng He.
I don't know if you recognize
or even knew that he was Muslim,
but he was.
And that's part of what makes
his story so interesting,
because he is
captured as a child,
I think, from Yunnan province,
as the Ming is basically
coming in and conquering
the rest of Southeast China.
He's taken as a child captive.
And he's, of course, castrated.
So he becomes a eunuch.
And then, when Yongle gets to
the throne and he's saying,
OK, I want to do this big
overseas expedition, which
is going to be the first of
the seven voyages of Zheng He,
he's like, who am I going
to pick to lead this up?
And he picks Zheng He.
Now, why would
you pick Zheng he?
Part of the reason,
I suspect, that he
picked Zheng He is
because having a Muslim do
this job, especially
in the early Ming,
was definitely an
advantage for the state.
So Zheng He probably
was familiar with a lot
of the places in Southeast Asia.
He knew Islam.
He might have known
Arabic a little bit.
He might have known
Persian a little bit.
These were knowledges.
And part of the scene that
the Ming government recognized
was important for
foreign diplomacy.
So it's like, let's
send Zheng He.
Zheng He, on one of
his voyages, ends up,
we think, going to
Mecca, actually.
But you could basically
see what he does.
He goes down.
He goes basically
into Southeast Asia.
He goes down to Java in
a few of the voyages.
He goes through the
Strait of Malacca.
He ultimately gets to Kolkata--
well, gets to Southern India,
gets into the Strait of Hormuz.
Those are the seven voyages.
They were super expensive.
They involved ships that were,
again, huge, so we think.
So they required tons of timber
to build, like the palace
that Yongle was building at the
same time he was doing this.
And so that's the
story of Zheng He.
Now, one of the things
that I'll just say--
this is kind of a fun
thing-- anybody know--
I was going to say there's a
really fun story with Zheng He,
when Zheng He brings back an
animal from one of his voyages.
And all the animals he
brought back, all the stuff
he brought back would
have to be classified
by the imperial government.
What is it?
What did you bring back?
And so they
classified one animal
he brought back as a qilin.
So now, qilins are
mythical animals.
They look kind of like that--
or one example of qilin.
And what animal do you
think he brought back
that they classified as such?
AUDIENCE: A lion.
TRISTAN BROWN: No,
you would think lion,
but it was actually the giraffe.
[LAUGHTER]
It was like, he
brought back a giraffe.
And then they were like,
what is this animal?
And then they were like,
oh, that's the qilin.
It lives in Africa.
So there you go.
So Zheng He delivered
on his promise.
And Yongle probably thought
it was totally worth it.
So now, this is the question.
And I was going to ask you this.
We were talking about this at
the end of class last week.
Why do expensive voyages happen?
And why do they stop?
And when I always
think about Zheng He,
I do think about the
NASA space program
and sending people to the moon
and all the money that took
and all the technology that
took, and, of course, the risk
that was involved with
doing that, and the very
high publicity with it.
And it's kind of one of those
things that we did from the late
1960s through the 1980s, but
then just kind of stopped doing
it.
And it's like, I don't know.
So what do you think?
I mean, how do
you read the whole
Zheng He episode in history?
I mean, do you see other
historical parallels?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: I guess if we're
comparing it to the US moon
launch, to establish superiority
over the Soviet Union.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I guess
you can compare
this to establishing superiority
in the rest of the world.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah, no,
but it definitely was.
This is a great point.
I'm glad you brought this up.
So what are they trying
to do with the Zheng He
voyages, do you think, in terms
of the geopolitical situation?
Any idea?
What do you think?
So you're right on the track.
So the US was competing
against the Soviets.
Ming is competing
against Mongols.
The thing about Mongols is
they just had a world empire.
They had influence
all across Eurasia.
And then you can't go up to
the North, if you're the Ming,
and go on your geopolitical
campaigns that way.
The North is really dangerous.
You have to go South.
So the South, into
Southeast Asia,
that was their opening
to basically say, hey,
let's do trade.
Let's get some relations going.
Let's get some
recognition going.
Yongle also-- I think we have
to consider this, as well--
he's a guy who
usurped the throne.
This is always kind of tricky.
If you inherit the throne
the fair and square way,
nobody ever questions you.
But if you kill your nephew and
steal the throne and everybody
knows it-- and by the
way, some officials
were pretty disgusted with
Yongle for doing that.
They refused to serve him.
That did happen
early in his reign.
So he's constantly
trying to show, no,
I'm serious emperor stuff.
I'm serious emperor material.
Look at the Grand Canal.
Look at the palace in Beijing.
Look at my fabulous voyages.
I think there is a little
bit of that going on, too.
So, I mean, it's
one of those things
of, we don't do it all the
time, this kind of thing.
The other thing that Zheng
He is constantly compared to,
of course, is the European,
Portuguese, Spanish exploration
stuff, which happened later in
the same century that Zheng He
did his thing.
But what do you see
as the difference?
What's the difference between
Vasco da Gama or whoever
and the Zheng He stuff?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: I think for a
lot of the [INAUDIBLE]
that they do is
they eventually want
to set down roots and
establish trade routes and all
of this stuff.
And it becomes a
whole economic thing,
where it's the beginning
of this establishment
of foreign relationships
and colonialism.
But there's no real
major colonization
that seems to happen
and occurs, and also
no real type of
economic or trade
thing that results
from this, which
is what I think all of the
Portuguese and all of them
intended to do, was to
go to India and East Asia
and trade and get
various goods and stuff.
TRISTAN BROWN: I
know what you mean.
Yeah, there's such an
emphasis with the Zheng
He voyages on relations
between the countries.
It's like, we want the
Ming to be recognized.
So I agree with that.
What else?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]-- sorry,
so the European voyages were
mostly for commercial reasons,
to circumvent the Ottoman
blockade of the spice route.
TRISTAN BROWN: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: And that's mainly for
like, I want paprika or saffron
or whatever.
Zheng He was just like--
Yongle was like,
I don't know, man,
I need to build my prestige.
Give me a giraffe.
TRISTAN BROWN: Right.
Well, this is a very good point.
And I think you're definitely
on the right track here,
which is to say a lot of the,
quote, unquote, "European"
voyages are basically private
people who get charters from
a royal family to say,
OK, go abroad and do this.
And if you find something
in the name of the crown,
claim it, or
something like that.
In the case of Zheng He,
it's a state mission.
It's a real
state-directed mission.
So the state is involved
with paying for everything.
This isn't about sharing the
booty, sharing the money,
sharing the spoils.
It's not about that.
This is a state mission, state
ships, state-directed voyages.
So it kind of has
that aspect of it,
which basically meant it was
very expensive for the state
in a way that Columbus--
how expensive was that voyage?
I mean, I'm not
saying it was cheap.
But I'm just saying--
you get what I'm saying?
So it basically makes it--
I think that the private
enterprise element of it
may have-- and the
profits focused of it--
may have made some of
the European voyages,
even though they had high
risk, more sustainable.
Whereas in the case of
Zheng He, the problem is
there was no
constituency within China
who was going to defend
these voyages after Yongle
left the throne.
What constituency would
want these to continue?
The Confucian literati, you
can imagine, they were like,
this is a waste of money.
Don't do it.
The military officers
were like, eh, I
don't see a huge
military use for this.
So it's like just gonna happen.
It's like, why did the
space-- why did the moon
stuff end basically?
I know it's not
technically ended,
but it's a pale shadow of
what it was like decades ago.
Why did it end?
Well, the geopolitical
threat from the Soviets
kind of disappeared.
And the federal budget's
got-- it's really big.
And it's very expensive to do
these big government-funded
projects.
Maybe we could do
other projects.
It's an interesting
question of, if we're
talking about interplanetary
space travel, how much would
that-- how much state
support will that require
to sustain over the long term?
Because it's not one
thing that you could do,
like oh, I'm coming
in as president,
let's do this for four
years, and then we'll
do something else after
he or she leaves office.
You got to do this for decades
in order to actually see results
from it.
So it might be
that basically you
have to just make travel to Mars
tourism, like private tourism,
that it will actually happen.
You know what I mean?
And then, I don't know,
that's just-- anybody else
have any thoughts on this?
Just something to think about.
Yeah, it's a fascinating moment.
But let me just say--
and I want to make
this really, really--
I don't want to overstate the
connection between these things.
But since we're on this topic
of Zheng He, I do want to say,
in the centuries after Zheng
He, specifically the 1500s,
this is really where you start
to see the overseas Chinese
communities.
And when I say "overseas
Chinese communities,"
at this point I'm not talking
about Canada, North America,
or Australia.
I'm talking really about the
first places people in China
went, which were Taiwan
and Southeast Asia,
with big Chinese populations.
So the thing is, for these
communities, a lot of them--
when I was in
Malacca in Malaysia
a few years ago,
just after COVID,
the Chinese community there
makes a big deal about Zheng He.
Zheng He's a big deal
for them because Zheng He
is kind of a symbolic
beginning of their community
and why they're there
and their presence
in this Malaysian society.
But they don't come
with Zheng He, per se.
What happens is, in the decades
and centuries after Zheng He,
private Chinese merchants
do go out to Southeast Asia.
And they do establish
roots in Southeast Asia.
It's just that they
don't have state support.
They do so kind of illegally or
under quasi-legal gray areas.
They go abroad and do that.
So one place that they go--
and I'll just tell you this.
We'll get into this
in the next few weeks
more because Taiwan really
comes on the map here.
So the Chinese, the
Fujian province,
and the coastal
areas in particular,
they want to go abroad.
They go basically right
across the Straits of Taiwan.
And Taiwan starts to
see a Chinese community.
I know, in Chinese history
books, they'll say,
in the Song dynasty, there
was already an expedition.
Whatever, guys.
Look, the bottom line is it
was in the 1500s, really,
that you have a community there,
that you can really say that was
a community.
Same thing with Southeast Asia.
Indonesia is going to have
a big Chinese community.
Malaysia is going to have
a big Chinese community.
I mean, Malaysia in the early
20th century, like 1900,
it was a third
Chinese or something.
It was an absolutely massive
Chinese community in Malaysia.
That number goes down because
Singapore became independent.
And many of the Chinese
were in Singapore.
But still, Malaysia still has
a very large Chinese community.
This is a really, really
fascinating history.
So you could do
Chinese communities.
You could do timeline projects
for any of those countries
if you're interested.
So I will say--
let me just put that
there for right now.
And let me just go to
early Ming key takeaways.
The early Ming, under
Ming Taizu and Yongle,
reacted against the
years of Mongol rule,
but also adapted critical
elements from it.
The Ming dynasty sees
the birth of a group
of people who
consider themselves
Han Chinese, different from
Mongols, Tibetans, et cetera.
This is what I was saying
of, like, Han comes out
at this time for reasons that
you can clearly think about.
Same thing of Hui
comes out at this time.
So a lot of those identities
that you're going to see tossed
around in 20th-century China
come out of this Ming moment,
this post-Mongol moment.
But the Ming can't be simplified
as a reactionary Han dynasty.
Ming Taizu and Yongle supported
and recognized the rights--
"rights" is kind of an
overladen legal word there.
But it's still, they recognize
Muslims to live in China
and employ them in
their governments.
Zheng He is actually
an example of that.
The Zheng He expeditions
were hugely important.
Zheng He made contacts with
countries in the Middle East
and Africa decades before
Columbus or Magellan set sail.
After the Zheng He voyages,
no subsequent government will
express great interest in
overseas expeditions or learning
until the 19th century.
But Chinese themselves in
the following centuries
started to move abroad, to
Taiwan, to Southeast Asia,
and beyond.
So it's not that--
I want to just reemphasize--
it's not that Zheng He
goes on his voyages
and he brings all
these Chinese with him.
No, it's that Zheng He
goes on the voyages.
Then they stop, and
nothing happens.
And then private
Chinese from Fujian
and Guangdong, they start
going to Southeast Asia.
But they do so
without state support,
which is why there are no
Chinese colonies in Southeast
Asia.
You get what I'm saying?
With the very, very interesting
possible exception of Singapore,
which is a Chinese state in
the middle of Southeast Asia.
Of course, I understand that's
not the Singaporean story.
Singapore has its
own unique identity.
It was carefully crafted
over the 20th century.
But you get what I mean.
If you wanted to push it,
that's what you could push.
Questions?
Good?
All right, 17 minutes left.
Let's use it.
So let's talk about this
really incredible crisis.
So in the post-war Yongle
era, the voyages stop.
The government's in Beijing.
And we kind of settle into
a more status-quo Ming.
And I kind of
promised you, the Ming
is going to have basically
some of the worst
emperors of Chinese history--
just really incompetent
people, one after another.
Some of them are just
absolutely off their rockers.
So this individual
involved with this crisis
becomes emperor twice
in a story that you just
have to hear to believe.
So he comes to the throne
as the Zhengtong emperor.
He serves.
And then the Mongols,
under his reign,
basically cross over
into Ming territory.
And not only does he want to
meet them and kick them out,
he wants to personally go
into battle against them.
So he goes.
He leaves Beijing with his army.
And then at the Fort
of Tumu, right here,
he is surrounded and
captured by the Mongols.
So you have right
here a Chinese emperor
on the throne, who is now
captured by the Mongols
and taken back to Mongolia.
That's embarrassing.
That's really bad.
That would be as if the
Canadians took Biden.
[LAUGHTER]
It's like, what are
you going to do?
So then what happens is that
there was this big official.
I want to say he's
from Zhejiang,
but you could kind of guess.
If you have to ever guess,
hey, where's the official from,
just pick a Jiangnan province.
And then you say, OK, I
think he was from Zhejiang
because his death--
his tomb is on West Lake.
Yu Qian.
So Yu Qian is this official.
And he basically-- this is
an unprecedented situation--
he basically kind of takes
control of the government.
He says-- because the
Mongols want a ransom.
They want territory.
They want all this stuff.
And they said, we'll give
you your emperor back.
So then Yu Qian is
basically facing down
a Mongol invasion
of Beijing, which
is really tough, really brutal.
And he basically says, look, no,
we're not going to negotiate.
Let them keep the emperor.
Just put a new emperor in,
and we're going to keep going.
So Yu Qian saves the Ming.
And he basically also
fortifies Beijing.
And the Mongols, who thought
they were going to negotiate,
realized they're not going
to negotiate with us.
And so Beijing is saved.
Yu Qian, maybe he's
kind of a hero,
except eventually
the Mongols get
sick of holding this
emperor under house arrest
and then just let him go.
[LAUGHTER]
So he comes back to Beijing.
And he's like, what
were you guys doing?
You just let me stay there.
So then he goes
under house arrest
because there's a new
emperor on the throne that
was put on there basically
under the reign of--
under the watch of Yu Qian.
So the Zhengtong emperor
is under house arrest.
Then-- oh, classic Ming--
there's a eunuch coup,
and they take out that emperor.
And then this guy comes back
to the throne as Tianshun
and then, I think, probably
has him immediately executed.
So then Yu Qian has a very,
very fascinating legacy
in Chinese history of being a--
he sold out the emperor,
but he saved the country.
So in later centuries, he
kind of became celebrated.
And today, you can visit
his mausoleum on West Lake.
It's kind of a site to visit.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Why wouldn't they just
kill him instead of putting him
on house arrest and
be like, 'oh, no,
he had an accident'?
'What are the chances?'
TRISTAN BROWN: So I mean, this
is-- that's a great question.
Why not just kill him?
I mean, it might have
just been bad press.
I mean, it was kind of
obvious that the Mongols
brought the emperor back.
And, I mean, it was so
awkward because this is not
something that
ever should happen,
because technically
he's still the emperor.
He was crowned the emperor.
He didn't die.
So what is he?
So nobody knew what he was.
So it was like, OK, just
put him under house arrest.
But then he was back
with a vengeance.
And so it was just brutal.
I mean, it's just brutal.
So this is what I'm saying
about all the Ming stuff.
And realize, the Ming-- of all
the eras of Chinese history--
this is the heyday
of the eunuchs.
The eunuchs are super
powerful during the Ming.
And they're-- again, it's
not fair to say this,
but as the historical annals
go, they're seemingly always up
to some mischief.
I'll show you some more examples
of that not too long from now.
The Great Wall.
Why does the Great
Wall come to exist?
It comes to exist right around
this time in the way that you
know it today, basically
right during these reigns,
the Zhengtong to
Tianshun reigns,
this era in the middle of
the 15th century, the 1400s.
And why?
Because basically this
is the reaction to,
the emperor was taken.
We need to fortify
the northern defense.
So it's right around this
time that basically you
could say there's all this money
thrown to this defensive version
of the Great Wall.
You got it?
You good?
All right.
AUDIENCE: And it was useless.
TRISTAN BROWN: Useless, yeah.
Yeah, so it was pretty useless.
I mean, think about this.
Just remember this.
The wall does not work like
a wall to keep people out.
You can't ride a horse
up this mountain.
Look at that mountain.
It's not like the horse
isn't going to come up
and say, oh, wow,
the wall's there.
I can't go in.
No, the wall exists to
basically unify the watchtowers.
Do you understand
what I'm saying here?
The wall is actually--
quote, unquote, the "wall"
is a misnomer of the Ming.
It's the watchtowers
that give you
the signaling and the
communication system.
The wall itself is really there
for the walkway between them
so that you can walk
between the mountains.
It's not actually like, I'm
riding my horse up this Mount
Everest.
That's not going to work.
No horse is going to
get over that anyway.
So you can think
about it like that.
So it's not really fair
to say it was useless,
in the sense of it did
work as guard towers,
and it did work as
communication relay.
It did work as those things.
But in terms of, did it work
to keep invaders out, no.
It didn't.
All right, now let's get
on to the Jiajing emperor.
This guy, I got to say, probably
one of-- probably the craziest.
Probably the craziest.
I'll tell you some
good stories about him.
And then I'll get
through Jiajing today.
And I'll tell you some
fun stuff about him.
And then we'll call it a break.
And I'll give you a
recording for Wednesday.
So first things first.
Jiajing-- you will
be confused, I
guarantee you, because there is
a Qing emperor called Jiaqing.
So just realize there's
Jiajing in the Ming,
Jiaqing in the Qing.
So just think, "Jiaqing,"
"-qing", that's the Qing.
"Jiajing," that's the Ming.
So he comes to the throne,
and already there's a problem.
And it's actually kind of an
interesting problem to have.
This is called the
Great Rites Controversy.
So in the Ming, basically
you come to-- the emperor
comes to the throne.
And the emperor does
the ancestral sacrifices
to his father, who is
the previous emperor.
That's how it's supposed to be.
The problem was Jiajing was not
the son of the previous emperor.
The previous emperor did
not have a male heir.
So he was like the cousin--
oh, no, sorry, nephew.
Nephew.
So you have, then, a problem,
which is to say, OK, no problem.
We can handle this.
The Ming can handle this.
So according to the rules,
what you have to do,
Jiajing, is you have to adopt--
the previous
emperor posthumously
adopts you as his son.
So you do the ancestral
sacrifices to that emperor,
who's like your uncle.
But then Jiajing is like, no,
I want to sacrifice to my dad.
That's my biological dad.
So you can see you have
here a Confucian problem.
Is it the family or the states?
So Jiajing makes the
argument that, no,
I want to give the
sacrifices to my dad.
And then there's all
of these officials
who are up in arms over this.
There's a public
protest among officials
who are scandalized at the idea
that he won't be adopted and do
the proper sacrifices.
You can think about--
I know you say this, but
today, when presidents,
they visit the
cemetery at Normandy
or they do some other
ritual, people get up
in arms about how they
act, what they say,
was Biden asleep, whatever.
[LAUGHTER]
People talk about these things.
They matter, the
public performance
of being a leader like this.
So it mattered right
from the very beginning
of Jiajing's reign.
So what he basically
does is that he
makes this ancestral
rites adjustment.
He holds his ground on this.
And then something
really remarkable
happens in Chinese
society during this time,
which is that basically Jiajing
sort of encourages people
across China to
build ancestral halls
and worship their ancestors.
So this is a really
fascinating story
because let me basically
pose it to you this way.
This is an accidental--
this is an accident
of Chinese history
that it happened this way.
So the rites controversy--
let me put it this way.
In the Song dynasty, people
worshipped their ancestors,
of course.
But everybody can worship
their mother, their father,
their grandparents.
But in terms of deep ancestors,
long-standing ancestral lines,
in the Song dynasty,
building an ancestral hall,
that was reserved for people
who had passed the exams
and became officials.
You had the right to build
a temple to your own family.
That's really nice.
Here's Tristan's family temple.
There you go.
In the Song, if I was a jinshi
degree holder and official,
I could do that.
I had the right to do that.
And by the time you
get to the Ming,
as a result of this
rites controversy,
Jiajing basically says
everybody can do it.
So that's where
you're going to start
to see the Liu family
ancestral hall, the Wong family
ancestral hall.
Every family can build
an ancestral hall now
because he basically
takes off the guardrails.
So in other words, this extends
the rite of ancestor worship,
really true ancestor worship.
I'm not just saying father,
mother, grandfather,
grandparent.
That always existed.
But I'm talking about
building a freestanding temple
that the lineage under the
name of a common ancestor
held the land and paid taxes.
This is, again, when we talk
about the gender relations--
we were talking about that
last year; sorry, last week--
I was telling you about how
property inheritance rules,
everything like that.
In the Ming, the
big family lineage
becomes more and more important.
That patriline becomes
more and more important.
And with this change
and this incentive
to worship ancestors and
build ancestral halls,
basically all the land
is held in the name
of the ancestor,
who then becomes
the taxpayer when he's dead.
So who owns the land?
Well, our great,
great grandfather.
So then the structure
of the lineage
becomes really important.
The Chinese family became
a lineage corporation.
And the pattern of late imperial
society from the Ming and Qing
dynasties became strong central
government, a small government
bureaucracy, a large body
of exam-taking gentry,
and strong family units that
essentially govern themselves.
So this is what I want you
to think about this paradox.
You go, was the state strong?
Or was the state weak?
Well, the central
government was strong.
The emperor could be strong.
But in terms of the
penetration into local society,
it was pretty much the
families govern themselves.
They establish their own temples
and everything like that.
So that's what you
can think about it.
So I'll just say--
and I was just
going to give you the
Chinese-- the family names.
You can think of all the famous
Hong Kong family corporations
and things like that.
This is really-- this looks old.
This looks ancient.
Oh, these Chinese
family lineages.
Oh, god, wow, this
is traditional China.
This is not traditional China.
This is mid-Ming-dynasty
China and after.
It's only in the mid-Ming
dynasty that these family units
emerged in the way that we
came to know them in the 20th
century.
So just so that you know that.
Now, I'll just get back.
OK, so really, really
quickly, I promised you
some stories about Jiajing.
I will deliver on them.
I'll talk really, really
briefly about the palace
plot of the Renyin year.
This is something that
comes up every now and then.
And it's an example of just
how out there Jiajing was.
Just really, really quickly--
how do I even say this?
So basically, Jiajing was
interested in all types
of self-cultivation.
Of course he was, right?
And he was trying to get
elixirs to live forever.
And this involved basically--
[SIGHS]
He did some really
strange stuff, OK?
Just take my word for it.
I don't know how much detail
about this I should go into.
But I'll just say that
he collected young women
from around the empire
to basically help
him make these elixirs.
And we know he did this
because, in 1542, there
was literally a rebellion.
And these women, who were in the
palace, tried to strangle him.
And you say, well, how do
you know this happened?
This is actually recorded.
It is recorded.
Like, this woman was strangled.
This woman was strangled.
This woman was
strangled-- or beheaded--
because they tried to
strangle him this night.
That's how out there he was.
Now, again, you can look it up
for the details, I'll just say.
But this is a moment
that reflects,
let's just say, the
unique governing realities
of the Jiajing reign.
He's not particularly-- I won't
say he's asleep at the wheel.
He's not at the wheel.
He's doing his own thing.
He's involved in his own stuff.
And I think it's
really fascinating
to look at this
moment in history of,
he nearly was assassinated.
So he ultimately was not killed.
The empress, Empress
Fang, I think,
saved him in the middle of
the assassination attempt.
And then all of the women
who were basically trying
to kill him were then executed.
But basically,
this is the moment.
Now, this gives
me an opportunity
in the last two minutes
here to say something
about the subject of actually
women coming into the palace.
And remember, as I've
said to you time and time
and time and time again, that
the Forbidden City was basically
a palace of eunuchs
and women, particularly
the rear of the Forbidden City,
where the imperial family lived.
And so this is that-- when you
look at the map of the Forbidden
City, this is the ho gong,
the inner court of it.
So there's a great interactive
article from a few years
ago of the South
China Morning Post,
where they talk about, during
the Ming dynasty, the selection
process of becoming an imperial
concubine in the imperial city.
And when it comes to the
plot of the Renyin year,
I thought it was good background
information to give it to you.
So basically, what you'd have--
this is an example,
"The Outstanding 50."
In 1621, Ming emperor Tianqi
sends eunuchs across the country
to handpick 5,000 young
women aged 13 to 16,
for whom he would select a wife.
This was true of the
wife-selection process.
This was also true of the
concubine-selection process.
So basically, you'd have--
I think this is 5,000.
So 5,000 women would
come into the palace.
And then they would be selected.
And there would be examinations.
And it gets narrowed
down as the days go on.
And they ultimately
narrow it down to 50.
And then they, in turn, narrow
it down further than that.
And then he selects from there.
So this is kind of in the
background to this whole palace
plot.
The thing is, this palace
plot against Jiajing
is possible because
there's so many women who
are in the palace, you
have to understand.
They constituted a majority
of the palace population.
So I'm out of time.
Great to see you.
I'll record for Wednesday.
And have a great break.
[AUDIO OUT]
The Establishment of the Ming

Ming Taizu’s Reign

The Yongle Emperor

State and Society

The Middle Ming Crisis

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