the fall of ming dynasty

[garudamon11]

hi, i'd like to know how and why did the ming dynasty fall and what caused it ? i know its the japanese invasion of korea but (as far as i know) the japanese armies didnt invade china so how did that war hurt ming dynasty so badly ?

[Lysimachus]

If I recall correctly, the Manchus invaded mainland China and assumed control over it, upon which they established themselves as the Qing dynasty.

[hellheaven1987]

If I recall correctly, the Manchus invaded mainland China and assumed control over it, upon which they established themselves as the Qing dynasty.

Well, kind of, although Manchus was allowed to come in only because the peasant rebellion was quite successed and Ming needed a new force to finish those rebellions.

[RollingWave]

Well, kind of, although Manchus was allowed to come in only because the peasant rebellion was quite successed and Ming needed a new force to finish those rebellions.

No, that was not what happened, the Peasant rebellion already overran the Ming capital and the Emperor commited suicide, the Ming dynasty had effectively desolved by then, the forces guarding against the Manchus in Shang-Hai Guang was now trapped between the Machus and the Rebells, both side tried to persuade the general there to join them, however when the General (Wu Shang Gui) wasn't able to come to a decision the Rebels attacked him first hoping to forces his surrender, instead it got the opposite result as this forced Wu to call to the Machus for help.

The Imjin war had very little to do with the Ming's fall or decline, for one thing, the end of the Ming came nearly 50 years after war, and even the decisive battle of Sarhu where a 140K ming army was devastating by a 60K Machurian forces happened 20+ years after the war.

The Imjin war was just one of several major conflicts in the reign of Wanli, it was the most expenive but not exactly disporpotionally so (it was roughly about as costly silver wise as the two other major rebellions combined), as the efforts to tackle rebellions at Ning Xia and Bo Zhou both mobilized even more men, and border wars were fought with the Mongols and forces from Burma.


The true issue with the Ming starts from it's economic policies, which really examplify the problem of a very large state in pre modern periods. by the Ming period, copper was running short in China so they had trouble minting new coins, so they decided to continue to Song / Yuan method of using paper money, the problem was, that they didn't have modern understanding of monetary policies, so there were no such thing as reserves to speak of, they also did not take back old money or based their tax on such money. they official valued the money but they had no real way of enforcing them, not to meantion account for the regional difference in value. in effect, it was a failed system, no one used it for everyday transaction within 30 years after it's start, after that only merchants used them to pass tarrif gates, and by mid dynasty they gave up on that altogether.

So the real effective money in the Ming went back to valuable metal again, which basically meant they fall all the way back to pre Han period level of monetary development. as even many of the later Warring states were able to sustain copper coin system effectively (but this is a issue that has a lot to do with regionalism.)

Namely, the metal was silver, mostly imported from the New World via Europeans (as the sea ban failed and was lifted mid dynasty) and from Japan. however, this was not under the Ming's control , and predictablly it would concentrate on coastal port regions, and flow in alright on the wealthy Yangtsi region, but be rare in even more northern inland regions.

This created massive problems, as one talone of silver might be worth a bag of rice on the south eastern coast but would be worth more like 10 bag of wheat in the north western region. (since they were rare). in the begining the Ming was still able to offset the problem somehwhat because of their garrisions in the North west, so they used government power to transfer silver over to try and stablize the regional difference.

But by late dynasty the Mongols were becomming less of a threat while the Manchu were rising, those the North Western garrisions decline in favor of the North Eastern onces, which triggered the unforseen consequeces of the North West region going to hell economically, as inflation exploded, combine with natrual disastors the results were predictable, with no other way to survive, the only choice was to attack other people.

Originally , the Ming had tried to get around the monetary problem by going back to even more premitive methods, basically just taxing in goods instead of money, however they eventually realize that this is absurd in a area this large, as the wheat / rice collected often just rot out without any uses for them in good periods anyway. so by mid dynasty they come to their sense and try to reform towards a monetary based tax again based on silver.

Of course, they had very little control of the silver flow and didn't adequetly understand the problem of natural commercial distribution of these metals... so the results were predictable. while the Southern / South Eastern people enjoyed what appeares to them to be light taxes, the same taxes turned into a devastating burdern for more inland area. not surprisingly then, that it was the north western interior that really blew up in rebellion and after Beijing was overran they still enjoyed strong support from the Southern Yangtsi region for awhile.

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Most of these problem would not exist for smaller states contained to a single geographic region, but the Ming was anything but that, and the attempt to create equality without enough regards to natural regional inequality really screwed them (and the Qing too, to a different extend) badly.

[Babur]

Well, kind of, although Manchus was allowed to come in only because the peasant rebellion was quite successed and Ming needed a new force to finish those rebellions.

indeed the rebellions diverted manpower away from dealing with the Manchu threat

[Lonck]

bunch of natural disasters and the devaluation of currency. Wiki on the decline of Mings.

[Exarch]

great post, rollingwave
can u hook me up with some sources?

[RollingWave]

Here's is a very good PDF (in Chinese, but is a fairly easy and good read ) on the matter of the Ming monetary system.

http://www.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/~tangsong/con/Pb14.pdf

[Exarch]

many thanks

[RollingWave]

Also, another use of these failed paper money was to pay the salaries of the officials, so when you hear about all those stories about corrupted Ming officials, they convinently left out the fact that their salary were being paid in useless paper money who's real value was about 0.5% of it's face value.

[Argeus the Paladin]

I blame Emperor Wenli.

Greedy, selfish, hedonistic bastard ruined EVERYTHING.

[bushbush]

some reasons are typical to chinese dynasties:
-a number of incapable emperors after the initial few capable ones
-vast size and difficulties to govern
-nomadic threat

some reasons are particular to ming:
-inability to tax; tax rate was already low due to confucianism ideology. Ming was particularly incapable of collecting taxes and accumulating revenue to defend its border and preserve stability at times of emergency like natural disaster
-factional politics, especially the eunuchs vs the dongling party

ming actually fell to peasant rebellion after years of mismanagement. A ming general at the end decided it was better to allow the manchus in and ally with them than to surrender to the peasant leader Li Zicheng, who already captured the capital and proclaimed a new dynasty.

[RollingWave]

There were some other notable systematic function problems of the Ming.

For example, for a large sum of donation your house hold can be exempted from taxes.... forever.... (can be inhereted) , it's not exactly a shocker then that the familes who can come up with the donation are also the wealthest.

Until the late dynasty, they had no effective system to properly valuate relative wealth to taxes, even for farmers, they did make strides towards the end for that goal (the whole One Whip Law thing) but by then many other problems were also poping up. they they could never properly get the tax down on merchants. ending up only putting a (pretty heavy) tax on travel merchants that need to pass tarrif gates but often have trouble with other forms of merchants, and labors and other city dwells often just escape taxation as awhole.

During the Foundation of the dynasty, Zhu Yuan Zhang confiscated a large portion of lands in the prime regions of the Yangtsi and designated them as state ran farms, supposedly to ensure their own food supply, but this was a major source of disbute and contempt, and the state ran nature also meant they didn't do the whole economy much good.