The History of China - #204 - Ming 2: Winning Was Easy, Young Ming, Governing Is Harder

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

The Hongwu Emperor officially accedes to the throne as the founding ruler of Great Ming, to as much pomp and circumstance as his ministers can possibly pack in to the ceremony. After the parties are all done and the sacrifices all made, however, the real work of governing an empire that has been ravaged for centuries begins… and not everyone is happy about having a new sovereign sitting atop the dragon throne. Time Period Covered: 1367-1373 CE Major Historical Figures: Great Ming: The Hongwu Emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang) [r. 1368-1398] Empress Xiaocigao (née Ma Xuying) [1332-1382] Zhu Biao, Crown Prince [1355-1392] Zhu Shuang, Prince of Qin [1356-1395] Zhu Gang, Prince of Jin [1358-1398] Zhu Di, Prince of Yan [1360-1424] Tao Kai, Minister of Rites General Xu Da [1332-1385] General Deng Yu General Fu Youde [1327-1394] Ambassador Zhao Zhi Xia Kingdom (Sichuan): Emperor Ming Yuzhen [r. 1360-1366] Emperor Ming Sheng [r. 1366-1371] Nanchō Japan: Prince Kaneyoshi, the Chinzei Shogun [c. 1329-1383] Monk Sorai Major Works Cited: Chan, Hok-Lam. “Ming Taizu’s Problem With his Sons: Prince Qin’s Criminality and Early Ming Politics” in Asia Major, Third Series, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2007). Langlois, John D. “The Hung-wu Reign” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to the History of China. Episode 204. Winning was easy, young Ming. Governing is harder.

Today, we start off with a royal affair. A splendid imperial ceremony that was in every respect a once-in-a-lifetime event for almost all present. The accession and enthronement of an emperor. And not just any emperor at that, the founding emperor of the new regime that would soon govern all under heaven and the four corners of the world. The mighty and victorious warlord, Zhu Yuanzhang, who had proclaimed himself the Duke of Wu following his conquest of Nanjing in 1356, was reluctantly persuaded to at last declare himself as the supreme monarch and, well, thearch of the realm in a ceremony to be held on January 23rd, 1368. Of course, as an event with such sweeping ramifications, both political and spiritual, there would needs must be appropriate

preliminary steps taken well in advance of him accepting his minister's exhortations to take up the throne. Those preparations began a year before the actual ceremony was eventually to take place, with new palaces designed and constructed within the imperial city of Danjing, such as new statues, laws, and ordinances that were all drafted and printed, as well as a renewed version of the imperial examination system approved, and a new Hanlin academy and even Imperial University founded. New altars to heaven and earth, as well as a family shrine for the Zhu families past four generations built at key points across or even just outside the capital. And of course,

what dynastic founding could be complete without that most important of elements, a new calendar called the Datongli, the calendar of great unification. On the religious front, Zhu consulted with the spirits, both heavenly and those of his family, offering all in turn sacrifices, in one ritual to the spirits of rivers and streams, and in another the lord on high, Shangdi, at the end of 1367. Professor Zhongding Lenghua writes of the ceremony, quote, Zhu beseeched the deity to make known whether he, Zhu, could serve as the ruler of the empire by making the weather clear or stormy on the day of the offering. He stated that his ministers had

pressed him to ascend the throne of the Son of Heaven, and that he had reluctantly agreed to do so. Evidently, either through divine reply or simply accurate weather forecasting, the reply came back in the affirmative. A clear bright day marked the soon-to-be emperor's acceptance of the throne, which was set on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, year two of the Hongwu era. We have in the enthronement of Zhu Yuanzhang as the Hongwu Emperor a fantastic look into the specific ceremonies and rites that such an event entailed, not just for the Emperor himself, but for all of those around him as well. Apparently, Zhu requested that his ministers not bend over backwards too much in trying to adhere to the ancient models and customs of

enthronement ceremonies from dynasties gone by. And, you know, with his typical peasant warrior practical mentality, he instead asked them to, quote, adopt only measures suited to the times, end quote. A request which was, in the end, pretty much totally ignored by his ministers' desires for elaborate and complex rites which carried the day. It's kind of like a groom on his wedding day. Yeah, it's sort of about you, but I mean, at the same time, it's very much not at all about you. Just wear the suits, say the lines, and smile. Happy ministers, happy life. The proclamation of the accession of the new son of heaven was officially read to the spirits of heaven and earth, along with the formal establishment of the new dynasty's title, the Ming, meaning brightness and radiance.

Once this was complete, the emperor formally ascended the throne and then, well, stayed put. Next, the highest civil office of the regime, Chancellor Li Shancheng, who had been one of Zhu Yuanzhang's three closest inner circle members since the very beginning, led the assembled officials, ministers, and courtiers in offering their official congratulations, quote, following which the emperor proceeded at the head of his entourage to the ancestral shrine, where he proffered the patents and seals conferring posthumous temple names on four generations of his ancestors, end quote. Now, it should be noted here that this last part of conferring honors onto his ancestors had to be done in absentium, or at least rather more indirectly than might have usually been the case. This was because Zhu Yuanzhong,

who was, after all, the son of poor, illiterate farmers, knew almost nothing about his family or its prior generations. Thus, it had been necessary for him to confer the honorifics on the idea of them, rather than on the named individuals themselves. I know we're kind of splitting hairs here, but it's interesting, at least to me, that all these specific little details had to be painstakingly thought through and accounted for in order for the ritual to go forward without a hitch. After all this was complete, the new emperor finally donned his ceremonial robe and cap of the office, and then proceeded to the

Fengtian Hall, or the Hall of Receiving Heaven's Blessing, at the heart of the Forbidden City. Therein, he once again received a congratulatory memorial, read out by the civil and military officials all together. Though such things might seem perhaps overly elaborate, they were designed to serve a specific set of purposes, namely, legitimizing the new sovereign in each and all of his roles in turn. Again from Lingua,

The accession ceremony blended the emperor's two roles in a formal ritual. The emperor was the head of the imperial lineage, which he ruled by birthright in perpetuity. He thus performed sacrifices and acts of filial submission to his ancestors in a shrine constructed especially for this purpose. He was also the head of the bureaucracy and the representative of all the empire vis-a-vis the powers of heaven and earth. The ceremonies allowed the officials and the emperor to act out symbolically their respective relationships. End quote. All of these were recorded in the official Proclamation of the Accession, which I will read for you now, beginning with the rather interesting abbreviated history lesson. And please note here that we is in here the royal we, and refers to Zhu Yuanzhang himself.

We are the rulers of the Middle Kingdom. When the dynastic fortune of the Song had reached an end, heaven commanded the immortal in the desert, Kublai Khan, to enter the Middle Kingdom and become the lord of the empire. The throne was passed from son to grandson for more than a hundred years, but now the dynastic fortune has also ended. Local strongmen in the land vied with local magnates. We stem from common stock of huayu, on hui. Bearing the favor of heaven above and the spirits of the ancestors, we availed ourselves of the autumn of chasing the deer. Side note, i.e., a time where there were many contenders for power, and side note continuing the quote, to obtain valorous worthies on either side, as helper in our task. As for the bandits and

raiders in Lianghui, Liangzhe, Jiangdong, Jiangxi, Hu, Xiang, Han, Mian, Min, Guang, Shandong, and the southwestern commanderies of the Man barbarians, we repeatedly commanded our military officers to make a rigorous show of our military might. The four quarters were suppressed and settled, and the people have come to rest secure in their fields and villages. to make a rigorous show of our military might. The four quarters were suppressed and settled, and the people have come to rest secure in their fields and villages. Today, the great civil and military officers, the numerous officials, and the masses join in urging us to ascend the throne, revering us as Huangdi, thereby making us lord of the black-haired people.

Reluctantly acceding to the requests of the multitude, on the fourth day of the first moon of the second year of Wu, we offered sacrifices to heaven and earth on the south side of Zhong Mountain and ascended the throne of the emperor at the southern suburban altar. The title of the empire has been set as Great Ming. The present year has been made the first year of Hongwu. Respectfully entering the ancestral temple, we have conferred posthumous titles of emperor and empress upon four generations of our ancestors. We have erected in the capital a great altar to the spirit of the soil and a great altar to the spirit of the grain. Our consort, surnamed Ma, has been made empress, and the eldest son has been made heir apparent. This shall be promulgated throughout the empire, and all shall be made to know of it.

End quote. So, there you have it. In an unbroken line of legitimate succession, Hongwu had been rendered, same as Kublai before him and the Song emperors before that the highest priest of all humanity charged with interfacing with and making sacrifices to heaven and earth on their behalf as well as the secular king of the whole earth the most filial son on earth who honors his ancestors as no one else possibly could and finally the protector and provider of all human sustenance by ensuring through sacrifices to the spirits

that agriculture would remain happy and bountiful. This was all totally above board, legitimate and spiritually sanctioned, you see. Of course. They've got all the paperwork right here, so please form an orderly queue to submit and pay homage to your lawful lord. Especially you outlying states and territories still on the fence about any of this. Just right over there to the left, if you please. Just any time now. Queue up. Suffice it to say, certain of those outlying territories were rather less willing to accept this ritual as being, you know, an actual thing. Now, we've covered the Mongol reaction already in the past several episodes, of course, but so too with Korea, whose kings would continue to hold out and

retain recognition of the Yuan claim to sovereignty over the subsequent decade or so, only gradually and rather bloodily coming around at the end of the 1370s. Other areas that would require further persuasion were the kingdom and the self-styled dynasty of Xia in the Sichuan Basin, which we will get to more in a little bit in this episode, as well as the Yunnan Mountains and jungles in which existed both adamant Yuan loyalist holdouts, as well as the intensely self-deterministic and multivarious peoples across the region who had long suffered under the UN occupation, and certainly now did not intend to just meekly accept a new foreign overlord in place of the former. I'm talking about peoples like the Dai,

Yi, Bai, Zhuang, and Miao, just to name a few. By that same token, likewise, with the ever-tenuous quasi-claim that the UN had held over parts of northern Vietnam, they now reverted to their own statehood, and were in little mood to accept another would-be suzerain from the north claiming lordship over them any time soon. So, to sum it up, though Hongwu's speech was very nice and certainly made it sound like major military operations were all completed and very much successful. As a practical matter, little could have actually been further from the truth. The final victory was decades away in some regions, and in others there never would be a victory.

Only time, ultimately, could possibly tell. In the meantime, at least, it was time for some name changes and some thought about the future. The capital city, which I've been until now calling Nanjing for simplicity's sake, but was, you may recall, actually called Yingtian at this time, was now actually redubbed in truth Nanjing, the southern capital, Dadu, the former Mongol seat, was now renamed as Beiping, meaning the north is pacified, an aspirational rechristening if ever there was one. Even early on in the Hongwu era, it seems that most everyone was clear that, though the dynasty began and was currently seated in the south, it would ultimately take up the traditional place of a Chinese dynasty in the north along the Yellow River. Exactly where, when, and how

this transition would take place, however, was up for considerably more debate. The emperor himself seemed to at first favor establishing the northern capital at Kaifeng, the ancient seat of the Song dynasty's Zhao clan. Hongwu even made two trips to the city as of 1368 and seemed rather smitten with the locale, enough so, for a time at least, that he even renamed it Beijing, the northern capital. Another site, in fact the emperor's own home district of Linhao, which is modern Fengyang on Hui, some hundred miles north of Nanjing, was also deemed as suitable and appropriate to be the northern Ming capital. Quote,

Located on the southern side of the Huai River, it was believed that it would be an important bastion of the Ming Empire, which drew its fiscal resources primarily from the lower Yangtze region. End quote. Ground was even broken, and vast projects set in motion to render the city as a suitable imperial seat beginning in the year 1369 and continuing on until Hongwu's fourth son and the third Ming emperor, Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, aka the Yongle Emperor, formally re-established the primary imperial capital at Beiping, which was, go figure, his own personal seat of power. Except now it's Beijing. How about that? All that, of course, after Zhu Di had his nephew, the Jianwen Emperor, kinda, sorta, maybe burned to death to seize the throne. But yeah, you know what, we're getting ahead of ourselves. One reign at a time, people, okay?

In early 1369, Hongmu took steps to flex his new spiritual clout as prime priest and son of heaven. He would now extend imperial power to the realm ethereal. To that end, he formally invested, quote, all the spirits of walls and moats in the entire empire, end quote, into his regime's formal service. The spirits, typically known as city gods, were given formal court ranks and royal titles granted by the throne itself. Quote, So too did the founder of Ming seek to extend his authority, and thus legitimacy, to the realm of history itself. In late 1368, Hongwu ordered a group of top men under the direction of the preeminent literati Song Lian and Wang Wei to compile what would

become the official history of the Yuan, a project that began in March 1369 and proceeded at an incredible and almost rather worryingly rapid pace. It was completed in little more than a year, even after a brief delay when the scholars were forced to wait upon the arrival of a final set of records of the last Yuan emperor, Togentemur. As such, and as with so many other records of, by, and about the Yuan, it has been viewed as a somewhat less accurate than ideal sourcebook, but so it goes. Also in 1369, Hongwu would demonstrate his sincerity by undertaking a sacred ritual at the imperial altar of Shannong, the ancient god of agriculture and revered as

one of the three primal sovereigns of the world at the dawn of time. At the site of the altar, the emperor personally plowed a furrow of soil, quote, with two plows covered in azure raw silk fabric and four oxen draped in azure cloth. Not until the 20th year of his reign did the emperor again perform this rite. The ceremony was carried out with such attention to detail in 1369, partly because the rite had been abandoned during the period of Mongol rule. End quote. That same spring, in the north, General Xu Da began his conquest of the two Shanxis and proceeded deep into the Gansu Corridor, pacifying the region in at least a technical sense by mid-April, in spite of fierce Yuan resistance from the likes of Kokutemur. At the same time, the great hero of the realm, General Chang Yu-chun,

led an anti-Yuan expedition against First Kaiping, the Yuan's summer capital at Chengdu, which he was successfully able to seize along with many of the Mongol gentry and royal family as of July 20th. General Chang had precious little time to enjoy his victory, however, as he would take ill and die less than three weeks later, on August 9th, at the age of just 40. When word reached Hongwu of Chang's passing, as of the 25th, he went into a period of seclusion and mourning, which seems to have been broken only when the Great General's remains were returned to Nanjing for their official state funeral, as of October 10th.

The Emperor likewise summoned both Xu Da and Tang He back to the capital to attend the ceremony, and the Ming hero was buried with all the honors Hongwu could possibly heap upon him, personally writing a poem of elegy about the great leader. My blood is infused with pig iron. I know I will never cry even for my own children. Yet yesterday I heard of the death declared as the Prince of Kaiping, and the posthumous name Zhongwu, meaning the Faithful and Marshal. In somewhat more corporeal and temporally relevant proceedings than posthumous titles, Hongwu decided that his family and progeny, the princes of the blood, were to play key roles in

the regime that he had won and was now in the process of consolidating. He would write out and order promulgated a set of instructions and rules for his family, quote, governing the powers of the princes and assigning them key military positions on the perimeters of the empire, end quote. Titled as the Zishunlu, which is literally the records of the founder's instructions, but also rendered as ancestral instructions, these lists would form the basis of Ming prince's rights and duties, which would be further expanded by his successors later on. Hongwu's initial draft, composed in the year 1370, laid out the rationale for these rules as follows. Quote, The elder son born to the primary consort was appointed to the legal position as the heir apparent.

For the other sons, they were to divide and share the land of the country to establish princely investitures. This is the way to mark the distinction between the elder and the young, and the means to stabilize the land from within and without. Historian Hock Lam Chan explains, It is clear that Zhu Yuanzhang, goaded by historical precedent and political concerns, sought to establish the feudalistic princedoms simply in order to ensure his control of the country as a family enterprise and pass it on to his offspring by invoking civil order. By this intent, the enfivement system became a family-oriented state institution, and the training of princes, who were to become head of the individual fief states and play a pivotal role

in securing the country, took on special characteristics and purposes. End quote. The crown prince, the 15-year-old Zhu Biao, was not included in this system. But as for his younger brothers, the three eldest would receive the largest and most powerful princely titles within the realm. His second son, the 14-year-old Zhu Shuang, would become the Prince of Qin, the third, 12-year-old Zhu Gang, the Prince of Jin, and his fourth son, 10-year-old Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, with their seats at Xi'an, Taiyuan, and Beiping, respectively. Though it would be several years before any of them were actually old enough to take up residence within their fiefdoms,

they would receive tremendous annual stipends from the throne. This in lieu of being able to tax or have any direct administrative control over the populations of their regions, which were instead managed by court-appointed officials. In addition, the three princes were entitled to hold up to three military guard units of between three to nineteen thousand men apiece. The intent by Hongwu was that these great princes, along with six of their lesser brothers and half-brothers, would exist within their realms situated on the borders of the empire, thereby serving as an effective bulwark against any external threat or invasion, while at the same time protecting the empire itself from

any potential internal threat by making sure that any potential rivals to the crown prince's claim to the throne were well out of striking distance to do anything about it, and, of course, were watched closely at all times against any such thoughts of treachery. The emperor's instructions vis-à-vis his sons and their conduct was divided into 13 sections, and they are as follows. Admonition and warning, observance, proper sacrifice, precautions on coming and going, prudence in affairs of state, ceremony, law, palace regulations, eunuchs, rules of office, military guards, constructions, and finally, provisions. In time, and with further revisions in 1376, 1381, and one final one in 1395,

the instructions for imperial princely conduct were widely disseminated not only among the imperial clan, but even to the empire as a whole, being posted in public places throughout the capital. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, the French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty, to its descent into the infamous reign of terror, there's plenty to discuss, and plenty of grey

to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History, The French Revolution today. Or simply search for The French Revolution. Their purpose, after all, was as applicable to the wider empire as it was to his own sons. Quote, After ascending the throne, and under the influence of Confucian teachings and historical precedents,

Hongwu yearned to be a strong, inspiring dynastic founder, as well as a benevolent moral emperor. He wanted to set a strict, moralist example to his children by showering them with paternal affection and guidance and providing them with a curriculum of classical education.

End quote. His injunctions urged avoidance of frivolousness and absurd speech and laughter, moderation of food and drink, frugality in clothing and supplies. Of course, classical education was of paramount importance to the emperor, who had himself grown up illiterate and impoverished, and had mastered both the written word and classical philosophy by himself and all while participating in the Red Turban Rebellion. And, ever the classic tough-loved dad,

Hongwu tried to make his sons feel at least a minimum of discomfort in their lives by having them perform at least a perfunctory amount of physical labor and public service. He expressed his expectations and fears to one of the prince's longtime tutors, Kong Kezhen. Quote, My sons will be given the responsibilities of governing the land under heaven. The children of meritorious officials will also be assigned administrative duties. The way of teaching them is to rectify their heart and mind. If the mind and heart is rectified, then everything will fall into the right principle.

If they are not guided in the proper way, all kinds of desires will invade them, and the harm will be too great to enumerate. You, gentlemen, should complement the curriculum with practical subjects. Do not just emulate the literary men by making your pupils memorize passages of literature. End quote. As of June 1370, Hongwu ordered the re-implementation of the old imperial civil service examination system that had been abandoned for a century under Kublai and his Yuan regime. Until this point, the Ming had been reliant on the personal recommendations

of those already in government to fill official vacancies, an admittedly ad hoc system which evidently was no longer able to meet the growing needs of the nascent dynasty. This revived imperial examination, to be held in the 8th lunar month of 1370, was to be broken into several successive segments, the first of which would consist of three parts. First, the meaning of the classics in the four books, which are respectively the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, the Doctrines of the Mean, and the Great Learning. Second, Discourses. And third, Political Analysis. After this, the second portion of the exam would consist of successful applicants then demonstrating their physical and martial prowess, in addition to their mental aptitude. Tests of archery, horsemanship, calligraphy, and arithmetic.

Quote, the emperor was evidently quite adamant about the importance of archery. End quote. The Honglu emperor, all could clearly see, meant not simply to reconstruct the ancient song and tongue style scholar officials who'd never held anything more warlike than a calligraphy brush. Though he surrounded himself with and listened to the advice of Confucian scholars, he had never held their long-standing disdain for the military caste, and intended his new empire to reflect the necessity of a China re-armed and ready for military action at all levels of society. He was a warrior first, and emperor second, forged in the fire of battle after battle against numberless enemies, both foreign and domestic. They had been crushed and

driven out by Zhu and the martial men that he called his comrades-in-arms and battle brothers. But those barbaric enemies yet prowled around the firelight of the Ming, circling at the dark edges of civilization and just waiting for another opportunity to pounce back upon the unwary empire. Hongwu, therefore, intended the realm he now governed to reflect that reality. Ming China would not fall back into some sleepy dream of safety and security, protected by foreign soldiers and under some illusion that men of letters, moral scolding, and scary long fingernails would protect them. Not on his watch. Though, Zhu Yuanzhang had begun his career as a Buddhist monk,

and then attached himself to the apocalyptic Red Turban sect for a time, as a star had risen. He had diligently worked to distance himself from, and then at last outright condemn, the White Lotus and Manichaean ideologies of the Red Turbans as heretical, dangerous, and finally, outright illegal. Now, as the Hongwu Emperor, he had, in addition to Confucian philosophy, largely embraced the Taoist aspect of his role as both temporal monarch and high priest to the spirits and gods, as we mentioned before. He did not, by all accounts, just pay lip service to this role, but instead, he took his job very seriously indeed. When, during the summer of 1370, a severe drought gripped the empire, Hongmu took it upon himself to fast and expose himself to the elements for three days in order to commune with the spirits and convince them to bring rain to his withering lands and people.

From Lenghua, quote, On 24th June 1370, he ordered the heir apparent, Zhu Biao, and the princes of the blood to fast. At the fourth watch, well before dawn, the emperor donned a plain gown and straw sandals and went on foot to the altar of mountains and rivers outside the palace. There he spread a mat and sat down, exposing himself to the heat of the sun for a full day. Crude farmer's food was prepared for the occasion by the empress and consorts, who personally entered the kitchen for this purpose. The Emperor devoted three days to this exposure ritual, after which he returned to the palace to continue his fast. The records say the clouds began to gather five days later on 29th June, and that rain fell in torrents on the following day. End quote. Part and parcel to his taking

seriously the role of Emperor as the prime and sole conduit through which the masses communicated with the spiritual realm, Hongwu issued decrees forbidding anyone but the person of the sovereign himself from offering sacrifices to heaven and earth, declaring such actions illicit sacrifices. Commoners were thereafter permitted to offer sacrifices only to their own family ancestors and the spirits of the stove, and that only at the end of the year. In small farming communities, the populace was allowed to offer additional sacrifices to the spirits of the soil, but again, this was restricted to twice per year, once at the beginning of the planting season, and the other at the time of the autumn harvest.

In terms of his own sacrificial rituals, both official and personal, Honglu further demonstrated his commitment to the serious, vital nature of the practice by ordering the construction within the Forbidden City of perhaps his most significant innovation in terms of establishing new imperial rights and customs in 1370. The emperor had inquired with his scholar advisors about how he could best honor and make appropriate sacrifices to his imperial lineage and ancestors, to which the scholars pointed out that he already had a fully constructed Taimiao, or ancestral temple, within the capital specifically for that purpose. Quote,

But the sacrifices offered there, he felt, were made in accordance with rigid precedents that did not permit the exercise of daily household observances. End quote. What of the sacrifices that were to be made at dawn and dusk on the days of the new and full moons each month? He asked the Minister of Rights, Tao Kai. Surely there must be some precedent that would allow him

to make these very important bi-monthly observances in the proper way. Minister Tao, to his credit, delved deep into the rituals and records and at last came back with, um, something at least that sort of fit the bill, kind of. Quote,

Tao could find only a precedent from Song times, when a temple of imperial filial piety had been constructed. Good enough, replied Hongwu, then that's what we'll do too. Precedent, therefore technically in hand, Hongwu ordered the construction of his new Feng Xian Tian, or the Palace of Honoring the Ancestors. In this new hall were placed the shrines of his four paternal ancestors. Each day, incense was burned, while offerings to the ancestors' spirits was renewed on every full and new moon. Sacrifices were made on the birth and death anniversaries of the ancestors,

all in accordance with household rituals, rujiazhenli. Some rites were transferred to the Fengxian Palace from the ancestral temple. The emperor was quite determined to practice fasting on sacrificial occasions to set a good example. As an aid in this effort, he ordered Tao Kai to cast a copper statue holding a bamboo tablet on which the words, Observe Fast, Zai Jie, were inscribed. The emperor decreed that the statue was to be displayed before him on fast days as a reminder. End quote. The imperial economy, at this point of course thoroughly devastated by decades of tumult, disasters, and civil war,

was likewise in dire need of a little serious TLC. As an immediate measure to relieve the hardest-stricken regions such as the recently liberated but depopulated and devastated Shanxi, Hongwu was able to initiate the Kaizhong system, or the middleman system, wherein vouchers would be provided to independent merchants to induce and incentivize them to transport their own shipments of grain and other much-needed goods to afflicted regions of the northwest. The imperial vouchers allotted for this service could be redeemed in salt from the imperial salt monopoly stores, which the merchants could then turn around and resell at retail for a sizable profit. Many of these merchants, enterprising as they were, eventually found new and more

creative ways to minimize their own labor and costs while still receiving these same levels of government rewards. From Lengua, quote, Merchants discovered that they could hire farmers to plant crops in the border regions, and thus save them the cost of transporting grain from the interior. They still received their salt vouchers, which were calculated on the basis of the distance to the border and the quality of the grain delivered. The system spurred agricultural growth on the frontiers, End quote. So all that's to say, yeah, everyone was a winner. 1370 likewise saw a rollout of that favorite and time-honored imperial tradition.

That's right, it was time for an official population registration and census taking in order to better assess and reform tax laws. Under the authority of the Ministry of Revenue, all households in the realm were ordered to report and register themselves with the local government, where they would receive an official household certificate called a hutie, which listed the name of the male head of households and their ages, as well as the properties that they owned. Across the empire, households that reported no property ownership were frequently, and as a matter of policy in fact, relocated to areas that had been largely

depopulated in the course of the string of disasters across the realm from the 1340s, 50s, and 60s. Once re-established there, they were issued new lands to occupy and work. This, of course, was a tremendous and long-lasting project, and the fruit of this labor, a completed census of the Ming population as a whole, wouldn't actually be completed for another decade until 1381, after the remaining holdout territories against the new regime had been brought back into the fold. Regardless, it would show a registered population of roughly 59,873,000 people, putting it very closely in line with the last Yuan-era census as of 1291, which likewise put the empire's population at about 59

to 60 million. Speaking of those holdout states, one of those that the Ming could no longer afford to keep ignoring was Sichuan. There, a Manichean hardliner named Ming Yu Zhen had declared his own red-turban-aligned but independent state of Xia, and thereby ruled it as a nominal emperor until his own death in 1366. In the course of the five years that had followed Yu Zhen's demise, the state had vacillated in the hands of political schemers who dominated his son's court. For a period, then, Zhu Yuanzhang could write off the so-called Xia state of Sichuan as something to be eventually taken care of, but not of an immediate priority. Certainly not when the Yuan Mongols were still first and foremost on the threat list. Yet late in 1370, the Sichuan state was suddenly thrust way up to the top of the Ming's to-do list when its government refused to grant safe passage across their territory to a Ming expeditionary force on its way to Mongol-held Yunnan. It was one thing

to call yourself emperor and wear a fancy hat, but quite another when your little make-believe game crossed into actually interfering with the big kids and their affairs. In the face of such an egregious slap in the face to his authority, what else could Hongwu do but teach Xia exactly its place in the Ming worldview? General Deng Yu was appointed to head the punitive force against Sichuan, with orders to conquer it outright and bring it, kicking and screaming if must be, into the Ming fold. Preparations for the invasion proceeded through the early months of 1371, and were finally completed that May. Deng Yu had stationed his forces at the city of Shanyang,

on the upper ridges of the Han River, in order to move against Xia from east to west. Meanwhile, another commander, Fu Yude, amassed his forces in Shanxi, and prepared to strike from north to south. Fu's forces took Wenxian in southern Gansu, near the Sichuan border on 18th May, and continued south to take Long'an on the Fu River. From there, Fu continued on southward in Sichuan, eventually reaching Mianzhou, 80 miles northeast of Chengdu. His general, Lan Yu, engaged the city's defenders in a night battle and forced them to flee across the Lower River. As it stood, the Lower River was one of the Sichuanese state's defensive redoubt lines, and the fact that the Xia defenders had been forced to fall back behind it caused immense concern for the high command within Chengdu.

General Fu ordered the construction of hundreds of rafts to ford the floodwater swollen river, which were completed within several weeks and a safe crossing made into the heartlands of Sichuan. Meanwhile, the Xia began to draw on their defensive lines from Chutang, 200 miles to the northeast, at the gorge near modern Fengjie on the Yangtze. This was done to protect Chengdu from the anticipated attack by Fuyu De, whose forces were now gathering at Hangzhou, modern Guanghanxian, a major defensive position 30 miles northeast of Chengdu. End quote.

It would prove to be a wasted effort. In spite of the Xia's re-entrenchment at Hangzhou, the position would fall in the course of that July, in a battle involving considerable naval as well as land forces. Even with the withdrawal of the majority of Xia's defenders from the northeast, Tang He's army, advancing from that direction, still had a difficult enough time advancing through that region that it took the arrival of another Ming fleet, this one under the command of Admiral Liao Yongzhong, for them to collectively break through the Xia's defensive lines and proceed into Sichuan proper, proceeding then directly for Chongqing. That metropolis would fall as of August 3rd, 1371, with both the Xia nominal ruler, the 15-year-old Ming Sheng, as well as his mother taken captive. However, given the figurehead status of this Xia monarch, this did not immediately signal an end to the fighting. Several of the Xia officials, the actual powers behind the throne, still clung to a forlorn hope while ensconced within Chengdu.

Admiral Yao therefore ordered several sons of the defeated Xia generals to make their way to the capital and deliver a message to the intransigent holdouts, surrender at once. Yet, even before these messengers could reach Chengdu, the Xia holdouts decided to play what they'd hoped would be a trump card. Quote, The Chengdu defenders, hoping to rout the Ming army, had decided to send out their trained war elephants. The animals panicked, however, and trampled many of the Xia soldiers. Once the Chengdu defenders had heard of Ming Sheng's surrender at Chongqing, they opened their gates and surrendered to the Ming forces. End quote.

As was pretty typical in these sorts of situations, not everyone was willing to allow themselves the indignity of falling into enemy hands. All but one of the Xia generals, who had been holed up in Chengdu, opted to drown themselves in the nearby river before they could be taken captive. The lone holdout from among the high command, General Wu Yuren, was indeed taken alive, though that would hardly prove the better outcome. He was subsequently shipped back to Nanjing, where he was publicly put to death by imperial order. In the weeks and months to follow the surrender of Chengdu and the fall of Xia to the Ming, Hongwu ordered his nephew,

Li Wenzhong, to travel to the newly captured city and there supervise the reconstruction of its city wall. Once the job was done, he would return to the capital, leaving Chengdu in the capable hands of one of the emperor's adopted sons and a full imperial garrison. We'll leave off today, though, with a hint of what is shortly to come. Namely, Ming interactions with Japan, as well as those who it decided to conveniently call Japanese. In 1370, Hongwu sent his first ambassador across the eastern sea to the stormy isles of Japan, headed by an envoy called Zhao Zhi. At this time, it should be noted, the Japanese were most frequently referred to in

Chinese texts as the Wo, or the Wokou, a reference to the ancient name given to the Japanese, which was, to put it bluntly, a gulling, though unsurprising, slight. Deriving from at least the first century BCE, the Chinese term 倭, phoneticized in Japanese as 倭, was largely synonymous with Japan itself, even serving as the basis for the ruling dynasty's name, the Yamato. And no, before you try, don't go try to figure it out phonetically, Japanese just doesn't work like that. You're just going to have to trust me on this. Of course, the Chinese word 老 also means dwarf and submissive lesser. So as you might well imagine, around about the 8th century or so, the Japanese decided to do the old homonym switcheroo with that name, and replaced it with a character that means peaceful and harmonious. This did not stick in China, who continued to call them the dwarves,

often adding in the kuo, meaning bandits or pirates. So yeah, wu kuo, the dwarf pirates. Never mind, of course, that probably the majority of these so-called Japanese pirates had never so much as even been to Japan, much less came from there. Eh, they're trouble, so they're probably foreign. The more things change, the more they stay the same, wouldn't you know it. Anyways, Ming ambassador Zhao Zhi arrived to re-establish contact with Japan as of 1370 and landed on Kyushu Island, the southernmost of the Japanese home islands. And the domain of the Chinze Shogun, or the commander-in-chief of the western defensive area,

a man named Prince Kanayoshi. This just about went the same way it had when Kublai had sent his own emissaries over to Japan, and Envoy Zhang came a hair's breadth away from losing his head over his unapproved visit. Yet he was able, rather amazingly, to talk himself back from the brink, and even convince Prince Kanayoshi, in due course, to agree to call himself a vassal of the Hongwu Emperor and the Ming Dynasty. The prince, in turn, sent an envoy of his own back with Zhao Zhe, a monk called Sorai, along with, as a show of good faith, a host of Chinese that had previously been taken prisoner.

In response to this, Hongwu would dispatch a monk of his own, the Buddhist Zhisan, on a follow-up mission. This is not to say, however, that Hongwu was all about letting his coastal waters get all willy-nilly with unapproved traffic. Much to the contrary, the emperor would in 1371 issue a set of edicts that would very likely be considered the harshest ever laid out in terms of maritime travel and trade. In what would amount to a total cost to his regime of more than 2 million tails of silver per year thereafter, Hongwu rolled out the haijin, or the maritime prohibitions policies, which would deeply affect both the Ming and East Asia overall for the subsequent 200 years. Li Kanying explains that the Haijin was a, quote, systematic control over foreign contact and foreign trade relations that prevented Chinese people from leaving the empire and foreigners from entering it. The regulation stated coastal people are prohibited from going to the seas and those who have trade dealings with

the barbarians deserve the death penalty and their family members will be sent into exile. Their neighbors, if found to have failed to report them to the authorities, will be declared guilty and receive the same punishment. Facilities for ocean-going voyages were purposely destroyed. Regulations stipulated that no ships with two masts are allowed to be built, and those already made will have to be dismantled without exception. Trading ports were deliberately paralyzed with stone, rocks, and pine stakes. The export of Chinese goods was forbidden. Foreign goods, if possessed, must be destroyed within three months. The coast was heavily guarded. Seventy-four military garrisons were established

from Guangdong to Shandong. One in every four peasants was drafted to patrol the coast. The grand ideal of the policy was to maintain an imagined situation where not one single piece of wood was allowed to float on the sea. End quote. Unsurprisingly, as with any such broad and sweeping injunction, both the populace at large and even the agents of the Ming's own government would, in the two centuries to follow, devise uncountable numbers of ways by which to skirt these extremely harsh prohibitions. Nevertheless, it was deemed necessary to at least keep up the pretense of such a heavy sea-border Maginot Line.

And next time, we'll delve into more about why. The Mongols, of course, but also those incorrigible Wokuo Japanese pirates prowling the waterways. Thanks for listening. empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.