[h=3]Decline and fall of the Ming dynasty[/h] Main article:
Fall of the Ming dynasty
[h=4]Reign of the Wanli Emperor[/h]
The
Wanli Emperor (ruled in 1572–1620)
The financial drain of the
Imjin War in Korea against the Japanese was one of the many problems—fiscal or other—facing Ming China during the reign of the
Wanli Emperor (1572–1620). In the beginning of his reign, Wanli surrounded himself with able advisors and made a conscientious effort to handle state affairs. His Grand Secretary
Zhang Juzheng (1572–82) built up an effective network of alliances with senior officials. However, there was no one after him skilled enough to maintain the stability of these alliances;
[55] officials soon banded together in opposing political factions. Over time Wanli grew tired of court affairs and frequent political quarreling amongst his ministers, preferring to stay behind the walls of the Forbidden City and out of his officials' sight.
[56] Scholar-officials lost prominence in administration as eunuchs became intermediaries between the aloof emperor and his officials; any senior official who wanted to discuss state matters had to persuade powerful eunuchs with a bribe simply to have his demands or message relayed to the emperor.
[57]
[h=4]Role of eunuchs[/h]
Tianqi-era teacups, from the Nantoyōsō Collection in Japan; the Tianqi Emperor was heavily influenced and largely controlled by the eunuch
Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627).
The Hongwu Emperor forbade eunuchs to learn how to read or engage in politics. Whether or not these restrictions were carried out with absolute success in his reign, eunuchs during the Yongle Emperor's reign and afterwards managed huge imperial workshops, commanded armies, and participated in matters of appointment and promotion of officials. The eunuchs developed their own bureaucracy that was organized parallel to but was not subject to the civil service bureaucracy.
[46] Although there were several dictatorial eunuchs throughout the Ming, such as
Wang Zhen,
Wang Zhi, and
Liu Jin, excessive tyrannical eunuch power did not become evident until the 1590s when the
Wanli Emperor increased their rights over the civil bureaucracy and granted them power to collect provincial taxes.
[57][58][59]
The eunuch
Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) dominated the court of the
Tianqi Emperor (r. 1620–1627) and had his political rivals tortured to death, mostly the vocal critics from the faction of the
Donglin Society. He ordered temples built in his honor throughout the Ming Empire, and built personal palaces created with funds allocated for building the previous emperor's tombs. His friends and family gained important positions without qualifications. Wei also published a historical work lambasting and belittling his political opponents.
[60] The instability at court came right as natural calamity, pestilence, rebellion, and foreign invasion came to a peak. The
Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–44) had Wei dismissed from court, which led to Wei's suicide shortly after.
[h=4]Economic breakdown and natural disasters[/h]
Spring morning in a Han palace, by
Qiu Ying (1494–1552); excessive luxury and decadence marked the late Ming period, spurred by the enormous state
bullion of incoming silver and by private transactions involving silver.
During the last years of the Wanli era and those of his two successors, an economic crisis developed that was centered around a sudden widespread lack of the empire's chief medium of exchange: silver.
The Portuguese first
established trade with China in 1516,
[61] trading Japanese silver for Chinese silk,
[62] and after some
initial hostilities gained consent from the Ming court in 1557 to settle
Macau as their permanent trade base in China.
[63][64] Their role in providing silver was gradually surpassed by
the Spanish,
[65][66] while even
the Dutch challenged them for control of this trade.
[67][68] Philip IV of Spain (reigned 1621–1665) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from
New Spain and
Peru across the
Pacific towards China, in favor of
shipping American-mined silver through Spanish ports. In 1639 the new
Tokugawa regime of Japan shut down most of its foreign trade with European powers, cutting off another source of silver coming into China. These events occurring at roughly the same time caused a dramatic spike in the value of silver and made paying taxes nearly impossible for most provinces.
[69] People began hoarding precious silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper to silver into a steep decline. In the 1630s a string of one thousand
copper coins equaled an ounce of silver; by 1640 that sum could fetch half an ounce; and, by 1643 only one-third of an ounce.
[65] For peasants this meant economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver while conducting local trade and crop sales in copper.
[70]
Famines became common in northern China in the early 17th century because of unusually dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season - effects of a larger ecological event now known as the
Little Ice Age.
[71] Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and inability of the government to manage irrigation and flood-control projects properly caused widespread loss of life and normal civility.
[71] The central government, starved of resources, could do very little to mitigate the effects of these calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic spread across China from Zhejiang to Henan, killing an unknown but large number of people.
[72] The deadliest earthquake of all time, the
Shaanxi earthquake of 1556, occurred during the
Jiajing Emperor's reign, killing approximately 830,000 people.
[73]
[h=4]Rise of the Manchu[/h]
Shanhaiguan along the Great Wall, the gate where the Manchus were repeatedly repelled before being finally let through by
Wu Sangui in 1644.
A
Jurchen tribal leader named
Nurhaci (r. 1616–26), starting with just a small tribe, rapidly gained control over all the
Manchurian tribes. During the
Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s, he offered to lead his tribes in support of the Ming and
Joseon army. This offer was declined, but he was granted honorific Ming titles for his gesture. Recognizing the weakness of Ming authority north of their border, he united all of the adjacent northern tribes and consolidated power in the region surrounding his homeland as the
Jurchen Jin dynasty had done previously.
[74] In 1610, he broke relations with the Ming court, and in 1618 demanded a tribute from them to redress "Seven Grievances".
By 1636, Nurhaci's son
Huang Taiji renamed his dynasty from the "Later Jin" to the "
Great Qing" at
Shenyang, which had fallen to Qing forces in 1621 and was made their capital in 1625.
[75][76] Huang Taiji also adopted the Chinese imperial title
huangdi, declared the
Chongde ("Revering Virtue") era, and changed the ethnic name of his people from "
Jurchen" to "
Manchu".
[76][77] In 1638 the Manchu defeated and conquered Ming China's traditional ally Joseon with an army of 100,000 troops in the
Second Manchu invasion of Korea. Shortly after, the Koreans renounced their long-held loyalty to the Ming dynasty.
[77]
[h=4]Rebellion, invasion, collapse[/h] Main article:
Qing conquest of the Ming
A peasant soldier named
Li Zicheng mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies there.
[71] In 1634 he was captured by a Ming general and released only on the terms that he return to service.
[78] The agreement soon broke down when a local magistrate had thirty-six of his fellow rebels executed; Li's troops retaliated by killing the officials and continued to lead a rebellion based in Rongyang, central
Henan province by 1635.
[79] By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li—
Zhang Xianzhong (1606–47) —had created a firm rebel base in
Chengdu,
Sichuan, while Li's center of power was in
Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan.
[79]
In 1640, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. The Chinese military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat the Manchu raiders from the north and huge peasant revolts in the provinces, essentially fell apart. Unpaid and unfed, the army was defeated by Li Zicheng— now self-styled as the Prince of
Shun —and deserted the capital without much of a fight. On 26 May 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng when the city gates were treacherously opened from within. During the turmoil,
the last Ming emperor hanged himself
on a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City.
[80]
Portrait of the
Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627-1644)
Seizing opportunity, the Manchus crossed the
Great Wall after the Ming border general
Wu Sangui (1612–1678) opened the gates at
Shanhai Pass. This occurred shortly after he learned about the fate of the capital and an army of Li Zicheng marching towards him; weighing his options of alliance, he decided to side with the Manchus.
[81] The Manchu army under the Manchu Prince
Dorgon (1612–50) and Wu Sangui approached Beijing after the army sent by Li was destroyed at
Shanhaiguan; the Prince of Shun's army fled the capital on the fourth of June. On 6 June, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young
Shunzhi Emperor ruler of China. After being forced out of
Xi'an by the Manchus, chased along the
Han River to
Wuchang, and finally along the northern border of
Jiangxi province, Li Zicheng died there in the summer of 1645, thus ending the
Shun dynasty. One report says his death was a suicide; another states that he was beaten to death by peasants after he was caught stealing their food.
[82]
Scattered Ming remnants held out after 1644, including that of
Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) who established the
Kingdom of Tungning on
Taiwan (Formosa). Despite the loss of Beijing and the death of the emperor, Ming power was by no means totally destroyed. Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Yunnan were all strongholds of Ming resistance. However, there were
several pretenders for the Ming throne, and their forces were divided. Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662, when the last southern Ming Emperor died, the Yongli Emperor,
Zhu Youlang. The last Ming Princes to hold out were the Prince of Ningjing
Zhu Shugui and the Prince of Lu
Zhu Honghuan (朱弘桓) who stayed with Koxinga's Ming loyalists in the
Kingdom of Tungning until 1683.
In 1725 the Qing
Yongzheng Emperor bestowed the hereditary title of Marquis on a descendant of the
Ming dynasty Imperial family, Zhu Zhilian (朱之璉), who received a salary from the Qing government and whose duty was to perform rituals at the
Ming tombs, and was also inducted the Chinese Plain White Banner in the
Eight Banners. Later the
Qianlong Emperor bestowed the title
Marquis of Extended Grace posthumously on Zhu Zhilian in 1750, and the title passed on through twelve generations of Ming descendants until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912. The last Marquis of Extended Grance was Zhu Yuxun (朱煜勳).
