Hongwu Emperor
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| Image:Hongwu1.jpg | |
| Hongwu Emperor | |
|---|---|
| Birth and death: | Sep. 21, 1328–Jun. 24, 1398 |
| Family name: | Zhu (朱) |
| Birth name (小名): | Chongba¹ (重八)</small> |
| Given name (大名): | Xingzong (興宗), later Yuanzhang² (元璋)</small> |
| Courtesy name (字): | Guorui (國瑞)</small> |
| Dates of reign: | Jan. 23 1368 ³–Jun. 24, 1398 |
| Dynasty: | Ming (明) |
| Era name: | Hongwu (洪武) |
| Era dates | Jan. 23 1368–Feb. 5, 1399 4 |
| Temple name: | Taizu (太祖) |
| Posthumous name: (short) | Emperor Gao (高皇帝) |
| Posthumous name: (full) | Emperor Kaitian Xingdao Zhaoji Liji Dasheng Zhishen Renwen Yiwu Junde Chenggong Gao 開天行道肇紀立極大聖至神仁文 義武俊德成功高皇帝 |
| General note: Dates given here are in the Julian calendar. They are not in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. | |
| ——— | |
| 1. Name given by his parents at birth and used only inside the family. This birth name, which means "double eight", was allegedly given to him because the combined age of his parents when he was born was 88 years. | |
| 2. Was known as Zhu Xingzong when he became an adult, a name that was changed into Zhu Yuanzhang in 1352 when he started to become famous among the rebelled leaders. | |
| 3. Was already in control of Nanjing since 1356, was made Duke of Wu (吳國公) by the rebelled leader Han Lin'er (韓林兒) in 1361, and started autonomous rule as self-proclaimed Prince of Wu (吳王) on February 4, 1364. Was proclaimed emperor on January 23, 1368, establishing the Ming Dynasty that same day. | |
| 4. The era was officially reestablished on July 30, 1402 when Emperor Jianwen was overthrown, with retroactivity for the 4 years of the Jianwen era, so that 1402 was considered the 35th year of Hongwu. The Honwgu era then ended on January 22, 1403, the next day being the start of the Yongle era. | |
The Hongwu Emperor (September 21, 1328 – June 24, 1398), personal name Zhu Yuanzhang, was the founder and first emperor 1368 - 1398 of the Míng Dynasty of China. His era name, Hongwu, means "Immensely Martial." He is also known as Emperor Tai Zu.
The previous Mongol Yuan Dynasty was perceived as "foreign", and the Chinese had strong feelings against their rule. Zhu Yuanzhang led a peasant revolution which pushed the Yuan dynasty back to the Mongolian Steppes. He established the Ming Dynasty in 1368. Hongwu was one of only two Chinese dynasty founders who emerged from the peasant class. The other one was Han Gao Zu of the Han Dynasty. Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are the two other peasant revolutionaries to have ruled the world's most populous nation.
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Early life
Orphaned as a teenager, Zhu Yuanzhang entered a Buddhist monastery to avoid starvation. This is where he learned to read. At age 25, he joined a gang of rebels, where his natural leadership talents made him a leader of the gang. Later, as a strong willed rebel leader, he came in contact with well-educated Confucian scholars and gentry from whom he received an education in state affairs. He acquired training in the Red Turban Movement, which was a dissident religious sect combining cultural and religious traditions of Buddhism, Taoism, and others. No longer a Buddhist, he positioned himself as defender of Confucianism and neo-Confucian conventions and not as a popular rebel. Despite his humble origins, he emerged as a national leader against the collapsing Yuan Dynasty.
Emperor of China
After defeating rival national leaders, Chu proclaimed himself emperor in 1368. The capital was established at Nanjing, and Hungwu was adopted as the title of his reign.
Under Hungwu, the Mongol bureaucrats who had dominated the government for nearly a century under the Yuan Dynasty were replaced by Chinese. The traditional Confucian examination system that selected state bureaucrats or civil servants on the basis of merit and knowledge of literature and philosophy was revamped. Candidates for posts in the civil service or the officer corps of the 80,000-man army once again had to pass the traditional competitive examinations as was written in the Classics. The Confucian scholar gentry, marginalized under the Yuan for nearly a century, once again assumed their predominant role in the Chinese state.
Historians consider Hungwu to be one of the greatest Emperors of China. From the beginning, great care was taken by Hungwu to distribute land to small farmers. It seems to have been his policy to favor the poor, whom he tried to help to support themselves and their families. For instance, in 1370, an order was given that some land in Hunan and Anhui should be distributed to young farmers who had reached manhood. This order was made in part to preclude the absorption of this land by unscrupulous landlords, and as part of this decree it was announced that the title to the land would not be transferable. During the middle part of his reign an edict was published to the effect that those who brought fallow land under cultivation could keep it as their property without it ever being taxed. The people responded enthusiastically to this policy, and in 1393 cultivated land rose to 8,804,623 ching and 68 mou, a greater achievement than any other Chinese dynasty.
Having come from a peasant family, Hungwu knew only too well how much the farmers suffered from the gentry and the wealthy. Many of the latter, relying on their influence with the magistrates, not only encroached unscrupulously on the land of farmers, but even contrived through bribes to lower officials to transfer the burden of taxation to the small farmers they had wronged. To prevent such abuses Hungwu instituted two very important systems: "Yellow Records" and "Fish Scale Records". These systems served to guarantee both the government's income from land taxes and the people's enjoyment of their property.
In 1372, Hungwu ordered the general release of all innocent people who had been enslaved during the anxious days towards the end of the Mongol reign. Fourteen years later he ordered his officials to buy back children in the Huinan province who had been sold as slaves by their parents because of famine.
Despite having fought off the calamities of the Mongol invasion, Hungwu realized that the Mongols still posed a real threat to China. He decided that the orthodox Confucian view of the military as an inferior class to the scholar bureaucracy should be reassessed. Simply put, maintaining a strong military was essential. Hungwu kept a powerful army organized on a military system known as the Wei-so system, which was similar to the Fu-ping system of the Tang dynasty. According to Ming Shih Gao, the political intention of the founder of the Ming dynasty in establishing the Wei-so system was to maintain a strong army while avoiding bonds between commanding officers and the soldiers.
Soldier training was also conducted within their own military districts. In time of war, troops were mobilized from all over the Empire on the orders of a Board of War, and commanders were chosen from Wu chin tu-tu fu to lead them. As soon as the war was over, all of the troops returned to their respective districts and the commanders lost their military commands. This system largely avoided troubles of the kind which had so often been caused under the Tang and Song dynasties by military commanders who had great numbers of soldiers directly under their personal control. The Wei-so system was a great success in early Ming because of the Tun-tien system. Hung Wu, well aware of the difficulties of supplying such a number of men, adopted this method of military organization in order to assure that the empire had a strong military force without burdening the people heavily for its support.
Hungwu also noted the destructive role of court eunuchs under the previous dynasties, and drastically reduced their numbers, forbidding them to handle documents, insisting that they remained illiterate, and liquidating those who commented on state affairs. Hungwu had a strong aversion to the imperial eunuchs, a castrated court of servants for the emperor, epitomized by a tablet in his palace stipulating: "Eunuchs must have nothing to do with the administration." However, this aversion to eunuchs being in the employ of an emperor was not popular with Hungwu's successors, and eunuchs soon returned to the emperors' courts after Hungwu. In addition to Hungwu's aversion to eunuchs, he never consented to any of his imperial relatives becoming court officials. This policy was fairly well maintained by later emperors, and no serious trouble was caused by the empresses or their relatives.
The legal code drawn up in the time of the Hung Wu emperor was considered one of the great achievements of the era. The Ming Shih mentions that as early as 1364 the monarchy had started to draft a code of laws. This code was known as Ta-Ming Lu. The emperor took great care over the whole project and in his instruction to the ministers told them that the code of laws should be comprehensive and intelligible, so as not to leave any loophole for lower officials to misinterpret the law through twisting its language. The Ming code laid great emphasis on family relations. The code was a great improvement on the code of the earlier Tang dynasty in regards to the treatment of slaves. Under Tang code, slaves were treated as a species of domestic animal. If they were killed by a free citizen the law imposed no sanction on the killer. Under the Ming dynasty, however, this was not so. The law assumed the protection of both slaves and free citizens.
Hungwu attempted to, and largely succeeded in, consolidating control over all aspects of government, so that no other group could gain enough power to overthrow him, and also buttressed the country's defenses against the Mongols. As emperor, Hungwu increasingly concentrated power in his own hands and abolished the prime minister post which had been the main central administrative body under past dynasties, by suppressing a plot for which he had blamed his chief minister. Many argue that the Hung Wu emperor, wishing to concentrate absolute authority in his own hands and having abolished the office of prime minister, removed the only insurance against incompetent emperors. However, Hungwu's actions were not entirely one-sided since he did create a new post, called "Grand Secretary" to take the place of the abolished prime minister. Ray Huang, Professor from Sate University argues that Grand-secretaries, outwardly powerless, could exercise considerable positive influence from behind the throne. Because of their prestige and the public trust which they enjoyed they could act as intermediaries between the emperor and the ministerial officials, and thus provide a stabilizing force in the court.
Hungwu had little understanding of economics and market forces, and backed by the Confucian scholar gentry, offhandedly accepted the Confucian viewpoint that merchants were solely parasitic. In a typically Confucian viewpoint, Hungwu felt that agriculture should be the country's source of wealth and that trade was ignoble and parasitic. Perhaps this view was accentuated because of his background as a peasant. As a result, the Ming economic system emphasized agriculture, unlike that of the Song Dynasty, which had preceded the Mongols and relied on traders and merchant for revenues. Due to this aversion to trade, Hongwu also supported the creation of self-supporting agricultural communities.
However, Hung Wu's prejudice against the merchants did not diminish the numbers of traders. On the contrary, commerce increased significantly under Hung Wu due to the growth of industry throughout the empire. This growth in trade was in part due to poor soil conditions and overpopulation of certain areas of the dynasty which forced many people to leave their homes and seek their fortune in trade. A book entitled, Tu Pien Hsin Shu, written during the Ming dynasty gives a very detailed description about the activities of merchants at that time. These factors indicate that Hung Wu's policies did not cause trade to decline at all during his reign.
Although Hungwu's rule saw the introduction of paper currency, capitalist development would be stifled from the beginning. Not understanding inflation, Hungwu gave out so much paper money as rewards that by 1425 the state was forced to reintroduce copper coins because the currency was worth 1/70 of its original value.
During Hungwu's reign, however, the early Ming Dynasty was characterized by rapid and dramatic population growth, largely due to the increased food supply and Hungwu's agricultural reforms. The population rose by perhaps as much as 50 percent by the end of the Ming Dynasty, stimulated by major improvements in agricultural technology promoted by the pro-agrarian state, which came to power in the midst of a pro-Confucian peasant's rebellion. Under his tutelage, living standards greatly improved.
Hungwu increasingly feared rebellions and coups. He even made it a capital offence for any of his advisors to criticize him. A story goes that a Confucian scholar who was fed up with Hungwu's policies decided to go to the capital and berate the emperor. When he gained an audience with him, he brought his own coffin. After delivering his speech, he climbed into the coffin, expecting the emperor to execute him. Instead, the Emperor was so impressed by his bravery he spared his life.
Hungwu died after a reign of 30 years.
He had 24 sons, all of whom became princes. They include:
- Zhu Biao (1355-1392), Hungwu's first child, and the father of his successor Jianwen
- Zhu Di (1360-1424), Hungwu's fourth son, and third emperor after usurpation of the throne from Jianwen
- Zhu Quan (1391-1448), 17th son
Names
Hongwu is also known as Hung-Wu. That name is also applied to the period of years from 1368 to 1398 when Chu Yuan-chang ruled. Other names for him include, his temple name Ming Tàizǔ (明太祖) "Great Ancestor of the Ming", and the "Beggar King," in allusion to his early poverty.
In the West, he is now sometimes called "the Chinese Napoleon".
See also
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