The end of Mongol rule
The Ming dynasty came to power in 1368 by overthrowing the Mongol-led Yuan, which had ruled all of China since the 1270s. The background to Yuan dynasty China matters here, because by the mid-fourteenth century its rule was in trouble. Disastrous Yellow River floods, famine, heavy taxation and court disputes weakened it, and uprisings spread, among them the Red Turban movements, which drew on popular religious ideas.
Zhu Yuanzhang, the man who founded the Ming, was born in 1328 into a poor farming family. Famine and disease killed several of his relatives, and he spent some years as a Buddhist monk and wanderer before joining a Red Turban band. He rose through ability, built a disciplined army and took Nanjing in 1356. Over the next decade he defeated his main rival warlords, including Chen Youliang, whom he beat in a large naval contest on Lake Poyang in 1363, and Zhang Shicheng.
In 1368 Zhu proclaimed himself emperor at Nanjing, with the era name Hongwu. His armies took the Yuan capital, Dadu (modern Beijing), that same year, and the Mongol court withdrew north to the steppe, where a Mongol successor state, which the Chinese later called the Northern Yuan, survived for generations. The new dynasty presented itself as a restoration of native rule, which is why the idea of Ming restoration is part of how it is remembered, even though many Yuan administrative habits were carried over.
The Hongwu emperor’s government
Hongwu was a hard-working and suspicious ruler. He rebuilt the economy of regions devastated by war, ordered household registration and land surveys, and promulgated a legal code. He also resettled people and set up hereditary military households to provide soldiers.
His most important political decision was to concentrate power. After a purge of the chief minister Hu Weiyong, he abolished the post of chancellor in 1380, so that the six ministries reported directly to the throne. In practice this made the emperor responsible for an enormous volume of decisions, which later emperors handled by relying on grand secretaries and palace staff, including eunuchs. Hongwu also gave his sons princely titles and military commands on the frontiers, intending to shore up the dynasty. That plan backfired.
Yongle: usurpation, the capital and the voyages
When Hongwu died in 1398, he was succeeded by his grandson, the Jianwen emperor. The new ruler began to cut back the power of the princes, and his uncle Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, who was based in the north near Beijing, rebelled. After a civil war known as the Jingnan campaign, Zhu Di took Nanjing in 1402 and became the Yongle emperor. The fate of Jianwen is uncertain, since the palace burned and he was never positively accounted for.
Yongle shifted the centre of gravity of the empire north. Beijing was elevated to a capital and the Forbidden City, the palace complex at its heart, was built from about 1406 to 1420. Formal transfer of the court from Nanjing came in 1421. The northern location kept the emperor close to the Mongol frontier, which remained a threat. The work also required the Grand Canal to be repaired so that grain could be sent north. Yongle sponsored a huge compilation project, the Yongle Encyclopedia, as well.
His reign is also known for the treasure voyages commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He, a Muslim from Yunnan who had entered Yongle’s service. Between 1405 and 1433 there were seven expeditions, which sailed to Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa. They carried large fleets, and the exact size of the ships and numbers involved are debated because the sources are limited. The aims seem to have combined diplomacy, display of power and trade, with Ming tribute relationships at the centre. Such voyages built on much older ancient navigation methods and shipbuilding skills in Chinese waters. They stopped after 1433, partly because of their cost and partly because the court’s attention returned to the northern frontier.
Yongle also led several campaigns against the Mongols, and he died in 1424 while returning from one of them. During his reign the Ming sent envoys to the court of the Timurid empire as well, one of many diplomatic contacts across Asia.
Strengths and trouble in the middle Ming
For much of the fifteenth century the dynasty was stable and prosperous. The population grew, farming and handicrafts expanded, and cities along the Yangtze flourished. But the northern frontier was a continual problem. In 1449, in the Tumu crisis, the Zhengtong emperor was captured by Oirat Mongol forces, a shock that led to the court choosing a different emperor in his place. After this, the Ming became more defensive. Much of the brick-and-stone wall system visible today was built or rebuilt in the sixteenth century, using brick and stone techniques that went well beyond earlier rammed-earth Great Wall engineering.
Another strand of Ming history was the growth of a commercial economy that depended on silver. Silver arrived in large amounts through trade with Japan and, from the later sixteenth century, the Spanish colonies in the Americas, and a tax reform often called the Single Whip consolidated payments into silver. This tied China’s finances to global flows that the court could not control.
Late Ming decline and fall
The late Ming was marked by court factionalism, with the Wanli emperor (1572 to 1620) withdrawing from regular court business for long periods. The costly defence of Korea against the Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598 drained the treasury. Climate stress, famine, unpaid soldiers and the rise of the Manchu state in the north deepened the crisis.
Rebel armies, among them that of Li Zicheng, spread through north China, and in April 1644 Beijing fell and the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, died by suicide. Ming loyalist regimes in the south, together known as the Southern Ming, continued for some years, but the Manchu-led Qing took control of the country.
Legacy
The Ming left the Forbidden City, a large body of printed fiction and scholarship, and administrative structures that the Qing largely inherited. Historians continue to discuss how much of the Ming was really a revival and how much a new, more autocratic design. Compared with earlier eras covered in any Chinese dynastic timeline, it was a time of strong centralisation, domestic commerce and, despite the voyages, a mostly inward-looking foreign policy.