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 The Ming founder designed a fiscal system
for a frozen, unchanging agrarian economy — an economy far
different from the
commercialized market system existing at the time. Each man was to
register his
occupation with the authorities, who fully expected his descendants to
perform
the identical task in perpetuity. ... The dependence of the Ming on
agrarian revenue marked an important reversal. Since the years after
755, inadequate land revenue had forced the central government to
develop commercial taxes and monopolies. The success of the Ming in
registering people
and land allowed them to ignore all nonagrarian sources of revenue.
Paper money,
which the Chinese had been the first in the world to invent, and which
the
Mongols had printed in such large quantities that it lost its value,
completely
fell from use by 1450, leaving copper coins the main medium of exchange
for
small transactions and hunks of silver for large ones. (OE, 347)
| The Ming founder planned to update the Yellow and the
fish-scale registers [i.e. the land registers that were used for taxation], but as in the case of the equal-field registers, the
government lacked the manpower to do so. Like the provincial quotas set in the
years after the An Lushan rebellion, the amounts that individual districts paid
in the 1390s became the basis of all subsequent exactions, regardless of
changes in land ownership or productivity. The Ming succeeded in collecting
twice what the Mongols had in land tax, which proved to be more than enough for
the needs of the central government in the 1380s and 1390s. Yet, once inflation
began, as it did in the fifteenth century, these land-tax revenues no longer
sufficed. (OE, 350) |
A Bipolar Emperor?
 Famous for his erratic treatment of officials, the Ming emperor oscillated between periods of relative
lenience and excessive violence. ... After he had launched a massive purge of the
bureaucracy, dismissing some ten thousand officials, he solicited criticism.
When one official dared to explain that … many innocent officials had been
unfairly dismissed, the emperor sentenced him to forced labor. ... In 1380, when
the emperor fired his chancellor and dismantled the Grand Secretariat, thirty
thousand people disappeared. In 1385, some ten thousand were sentenced to death
in another corruption scandal over grain, and in 1393, fifteen thousand died
when the emperor suppressed a challenge to his authority. (OE, 352) |
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[T]he Ming founder had named a
grandson to succeed him, but when the founder died in 1398, civil war broke
out. The new emperor’s uncles did not accept his claim to rule, and in 1402,
his senior uncle led an army who stormed the capital at Nanjing. The troops set the palace on fire,
and the unfortunate grandson, then only twenty-one, probably burned to death.
Rumors of his survival circulated in the years after his uncle succeeded to the
throne, and the new emperor ordered periodic searches for his missing nephew.
The new emperor chose Yongle as his reign title, meaning “Eternal Happiness.” (OE,
352)
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Under
the leadership of a Muslim eunuch named Zheng He (1371-1433),
an imperial fleet of over three hundred ships traveled to Southeast
Asia,
India, and Africa one hundred years before Columbus’s and da Gama’s
more famous
voyages. Some of these treasure ships were 60 meters (200 feet) long,
making them the largest wooden boats in the world. The full fleet
carried over twenty-eight thousand men, who traveled in relative
luxury,
dining on fresh fish kept in separate compartments filled with water.
Dwarfing
those of the European explorers in size, these Chinese ships made a
statement to
the world about the power of the Ming dynasty. But it was a temporary,
even
vainglorious, statement, for the Chinese conquered no territory and
retained no
seaports. The voyages ended as quickly as they had begun, canceled on
grounds
of unnecessary expense soon after the death of the eunuch admiral in
1433. (OE, 354)
The compass was invented in the early Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE)
and then adopted for naval use in the Song dynasty
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Comparisons with Columbus
Whereas Columbus’s
crew eked out the days on their diet of hardtack supplemented by bread baked
with ocean water, Zheng He’s men traveled in style. Columbus traveled with 4
boats, Zheng He with 317. The Santa
Maria was 24 meters (80 feet) long, with a capacity of
250 metric tons (280 English tons). The treasure ships were at least 60 meters
(200 feet) long and carried 2,200 metric tons (2,500 English tons). ... All
comparisons between the Chinese and the European ships make the same point: the
Chinese ships exceeded the European ships, often by a factor of ten or more, in
size, staff, and equipment. (OE, 357-9) |
The
Ming fleet engaged in tribute trade, following the traditional pattern of
giving gifts to foreign rulers and receiving gifts in return. The Chinese gave
items of great prestige value, like suits of clothing, umbrellas, calendars,
and books, but with little intrinsic value. They also gave out grants of paper
money and copper coins to local peoples, who tended to buy back Chinese goods
with the money and to trade valuable horses, copper, wood, animal hides, gold,
and silver. Ming accounting practices make it impossible to estimate the
balance of trade the Chinese had with these outlying peoples — or even the cost
of the expeditions — but the terms seem to have favored the Chinese. (OE, 355)
The Chinese ships had every advantage over the Europeans but one: the
Chinese lacked continuing government support. After the death of the Yongle
emperor in 1424, the voyages were suspended, with the central government
reluctantly allowing a seventh, and final, voyage in 1433. Zheng He died in the
same year. The ostensible reason for the suspension was the excessive cost of
the voyages, yet clearly civil officials seized this pretext to rein in the
eunuchs who controlled the navy. (OE, 359)
Why were the "Confucian" officials so
deeply opposed to these voyages?
What were the long term consequences of
ending these voyages?
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Meanwhile,
China's grain harvests and local mercantile transport remained safe on
the rivers and canals, but the coasts could all too easily become
vulnerable to predatory attacks by a different kind of wandering enemy.
... Throughout the Ming dynasty, the Chinese coast was subject to
attacks by "Japanese pirates," fleeing unrest and deprivation on their
native islands and turning to crime on a foreign shore.
The pirate problem would only
truly subside in the 1560s, although in one final irony, the Chinese
then had to deal with a new bandit problem in the area, after local
paramilitaries, recruited to fight the pirates, turned to crime after
they were disbanded in lean times. The last of the pirates drifted
south into Fujian, where many of them were dispelled by the simple
expedient of allowing them to become legal traders once more. (BHC, 197-8)
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