The Cambridge History of China - Volume 8 The Ming Dynasty, 1368 — 1644, Part 2

r

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY

OF CHINA

J General Editors r

DENIS TWITCHETT AND JOHN K. FAIRBANK

Volume 8

The Ming Dynasty, 1368 - 1644, Part 2

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Work on this volume was partially supported by the National Endowment for the

Humanities, Grants RO-20431-Sj, RO-21i}6i-86, andRO-22077-90.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CAMBRIDGE

HISTORY OF

CHINA

Volume 8

The Ming Dynasty, 1368 — 1644, Part 2

edited by

DENIS TWITCHETT and FREDERICK W. MOTE

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 iRP

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

1 o Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

© Cambridge University Press 1998

First published 1998

Printed in the United States of America

The Cambridge History of China

Vol. 1 edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe;

v. 3 edited by Denis Twitchett;

v. 6 edited by Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett;

v. 7-8 edited by Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett;

v. 10 edited by John K. Fairbank;

v. 11 edited by John K. Fairbank and Kwang-Ching Liu;

v. 12 edited by John K. Fairbank;

v. 13 edited by John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker;

v. 14—1 j edited by Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank.

Includes bibliographies and indexes

v. 1 The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.G-A.D. 220.

v. 3. Sui and T'ang China, 5 89-906, pt. I.

v. 6. Alien regimes and border states, 710-1368.

v. 7-8 The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, pt. 1-2.

v. 10-11. LateCh'ing, 1800-1911.pt. 1—2.

v. 12—13. Republican China, 1912-1949.pt. 1—2

v. 14—1 j . The People's Republic, pt. 1—2.

Library 0/Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data

(Revised for volume 8)

Main entry under title:

The Cambridge history of China.

Bibliography: v. 1 o, pt. 1, p.

Includes indexes.

Contents —v. 2, Sui and T'ang China, 589-906.

pt. 1. — v. 7. The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644,

pt. 1 — v. 8. The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644,

pt. u -v. 10. LateCh'ing, 1800-1911,

pt. 1 - [etc.]

1. China — History. 1. Twitchett, Denis Crispin.

11. Fairbank, John King, 1907—

DS735.C314; 93i'.o3 76-29852

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBNO 521 24333 5 hardback

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE

When The Cambridge History of China wasfirstplanned, more than two decades

ago, it was naturally intended that it should begin with the very earliest peri￾ods of Chinese history. However, the production of the series has taken

place over a period of years when our knowledge both of Chinese prehistory

and of much of the first millennium BC has been transformed by the spate of

archeological discoveries that began in the 1920s and has been gathering

increasing momentum since the early 1970s. This flood of new information

has changed our view of early history repeatedly, and there is not yet any gen￾erally accepted synthesis of this new evidence and the traditional written

record. In spite of repeated efforts to plan and produce a volume or volumes

that would summarize the present state of our knowledge of early China, it

has so far proved impossible to do so. It may well be another decade before

it will prove practical to undertake a synthesis of all these new discoveries

that is likely to have some enduring value. Reluctantly, therefore, we begin

the coverage of The Cambridge History of China with the establishment of the

first imperial regimes, those of Ch'in and Han. We are conscious that this

leaves a millennium or more of the recorded past to be dealt with elsewhere

and at another time. We are equally conscious of the fact that the events and

developments of the first millennium BC laid the foundations for the Chinese

society and its ideas and institutions that we are about to describe. The institu￾tions, the literary and artistic culture, the social forms, and the systems of

ideas and beliefs of Ch'in and Han were firmly rooted in the past, and cannot

be understood without some knowledge of this earlier history. As the modem

world grows more interconnected, historical understanding of it becomes

ever more necessary and the historian's task ever more complex. Fact and the￾ory affect each other even as sources proliferate and knowledge increases.

Merely to summarize what is known becomes an awesome task, yet a factual

basis of knowledge is increasingly essential for historical thinking.

Since the beginning of the century, the Cambridge histories have set a pat￾tern in the English-reading world for multivolume series containing chapters

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

VI GENERAL EDITORS PREFACE

written by specialists under the guidance of volume editors. The Cambridge

Modem History, planned by Lord Acton, appeared in sixteen volumes between

1902 and 1912. It was followed by The Cambridge Ancient History, The Cam￾bridge Medieval History, The Cambridge History of English Literature, and Cam￾bridge histories of India, of Poland, and of the British Empire. The original

Modem History has now been replaced by The New Cambridge Modem History

in twelve volumes, and The Cambridge Economic History of Europe is now being

completed. Other Cambridge histories include histories of Islam, Arabic lit￾erature, Iran, Judaism, Africa, Japan, and Latin America.

In the case of China, Western historians face a special problem. The history

of Chinese civilization is more extensive and complex than that of any single

Western nation, and only slightly less ramified than the history of European

civilization as a whole. The Chinese historical record is immensely detailed

and extensive, and Chinese historical scholarship has been highly developed

and sophisticated for many centuries. Yet until recent decades, the study of

China in the West, despite the important pioneer work of European sinolo￾gists, had hardly progressed beyond the translation of some few classical his￾torical texts, and the outline history of the major dynasties and their

institutions.

Recently Western scholars have drawn more fully upon the rich traditions

of historical scholarship in China and also in Japan, and greatly advanced

both our detailed knowledge of past events and institutions, and also our cri￾tical understanding of traditional historiography. In addition, the present

generation of Western historians of China can also draw upon the new out￾looks and techniques of modern Western historical scholarship, and upon

recent developments in the social sciences, while continuing to build upon

the solid foundations of rapidly progressing European, Japanese, and Chinese

studies. Recent historical events, too, have given prominence to new prob￾lems, while throwing into question many older conceptions. Under these

multiple impacts the Western revolution in Chinese studies is steadily gather￾ing momentum.

When The Cambridge History of China was first planned in 1966, the aim was

to provide a substantial account of the history of China as a benchmark for

the Western history-reading public: an account of the current state of knowl￾edge in six volumes. Since then the outpouring of current research, the appli￾cation of new methods, and the extension of scholarship into new fields

have further stimulated Chinese historical studies. This growth is indicated

by the fact that the history has now become a planned fifteen volumes, but

will still leave out such topics as the history of art and of literature, many

aspects of economics and technology, and all the riches of local history.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERAL EDITORS PREFACE Vll

The striking advances in our knowledge of China's past over the last dec￾ade will continue and accelerate. Western historians of this great and complex

subject are justified in their efforts by the needs of their own peoples for

greater and deeper understanding of China. Chinese history belongs to the

world not only as a right and necessity, but also as a subject of compelling

interest.

JOHN K. FAIRBANK

DENIS TWITCHETT

1976

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE TO VOLUME 8

Thirty years have elapsed since 1966, when the late John King Fairbank and

myself laid the first plans for a Cambridge History of China. The above Gen￾eral Editors' Preface was written twenty years ago, in 1976, and the first

volumes appeared shortly afterwards in 1978 and 1979. With the appearance

of this volume, eleven volumes are now in print.

Much has changed in the intervening years. In 1966, China and China's aca￾deme were entering into one of their bleakest periods with the onset of

Mao's Great Cultural revolution. The historical profession, in common

with all branches of intellectual endeavor, was devastated. Those Chinese col￾leagues whose participation in this enterprise we would have sought in nor￾mal times were silenced and humiliated. It was impossible to communicate

with them and would have endangered them had we done so.

When we wrote in 1976, the unbelievable scale of the human suffering and

the appalling damage that had been wrought was clear to see. Some promi￾nent historians were dead, some by their own hands. Very many others had

spent a decade and more living in degrading conditions in enforced banish￾ment, prevented from continuing their work. Great institutions had ceased

to function. Such academic life as survived was entirely politicized. The pub￾lication of serious scholarly historical journals and monographs had ceased

from 1967 until 1972. Such few historical works as appeared were banal poli￾tical propaganda. Even in 1976, serious publication was still a mere trickle,

much of it completed in happier circumstances before the Cultural Revolu￾tion. There was still no formal graduate-level teaching in Chinese universities

to produce the urgently needed younger generation of scholars.

When the first volumes of the Cambridge History of China appeared in

1978-9, the situation had begun to change. A number of Chinese historians

had been allowed to travel to the West, at first mostly senior scholars warily

participating in meetings and conferences. The initial planning of the two

volumes of The Cambridge History ofChina on the Ming, of which this is the sec￾ond, took place at two international workshops held in Princeton in 1979

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

X PREFACE TO VOLUME 8

and 1980, among the first such international meetings in which scholars from

the People's Republic of China took part. Shortly after, in the early 1980s,

the first students from the People's Republic began to enroll to take higher

degrees in Western universities.

Sixteen years later, this present volume has been completed in a trans￾formed atmosphere. Large international conferences on various aspects of his￾tory take place many times each year. Chinese graduate students come to the

West in great numbers, their standards of training ever improving. Western

historians no longer have to deal with Chinese contemporaries who have

been deliberately isolated from world scholarship for decades. Much of the

writing of Western historians on China is translated into Chinese. The spec￾trum of historical scholarship in China may still be more restricted than that

with which we are familiar in the West, but China's historians now enjoy rela￾tively free access to the world of Western knowledge. Many have been trained

pardy in Europe or North America, have a network of friends living abroad,

and have some sense of common purpose in trying to understand the past in

all its variety.

Fortunately, the disasters that befell those Chinese historians working in

the People's Republic did not affect all Chinese historians. There have always

been comparatively small groups of scholars in universities in Hong Kong,

Malaysia, and Singapore who fruitfully combined Western and traditional

Chinese historical approaches, and these have continued to thrive.

More important, however, has been the scholarly world of Taiwan, where

many important Chinese scholars of the 1930s and 1940s resettled, and

where they and their successors have systematically built up a scholarly com￾munity with great resources that has played a crucial international role in his￾torical studies since the 1960s. In addition to the abundant research of its

own scholars, who have preserved the best qualities of the historical scholar￾ship of the Ch'ing and Republican periods, Taiwan has been an important

training-ground for many Western historians. Its own historians have

enjoyed longer and closer contacts with the Western scholarly community

than their contemporaries working on the mainland. Many of them hold aca￾demic posts in North America. Their work is now available to and widely

read by historians in the mainland and this helps gready to give the historical

profession a feeling of common purpose.

The last quarter century has seen other changes. Western scholarship on

China has also been through a vast expansion in scale, in the diversity of sub￾ject matter that attracts serious academic interest, and has undergone a great

improvement in the overall quality of scholarship. Western historians now

freely use archival materials of all sorts both in the People's Republic and in

Taiwan, access to which a quarter century ago would have been undiinkable.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PREFACE TO VOLUME 8 xi

Western and Chinese libraries collaborate in compiling global catalogs. Not

only have a host of young Chinese scholars been able to travel abroad to pur￾sue historical studies; many young Western graduate students and scholars

have been able to study seriously in Chinese universities and institutes, and

to travel freely in parts of China that were forbidden to foreigners until the

early 1980s.

One striking result of this has been the emergence of a new generation of

young Western scholars specializing in the early history of China, afieldthat

had been seriously neglected in the west since the 1940s, but which had been

transformed by the emergence of modern archaeology in the China of the

late 1920s and 1930s, and particularly by new excavations after 1950. In the

mid-1970s, when the flood of new archaeological discoveries were beginning

to be published, we decided that the field of early Chinese history, although

obviously of crucial importance, was still in such a state of flux that it would

be premature to attempt an overview suitable for inclusion in The Cambridge

History of China, and reluctandy we left it out of our coverage. Specialists in

the period showed more courage, and eagerly exploited this new material;

many young historians, archaeologists, social anthropologists, epigraphers,

and linguists began to publish work of the highest standards and to form a

highly professional specialist group. This new wave of scholarship on early

China has recendy enabled Cambridge University Press to commission a sepa￾rate Cambridge History of Ancient China that will fill this very important gap.

Another striking change since this enterprise began has been the radical

change in our potential Western readership. In 1966, China was still for ordin￾ary Western readers, even for many professional historians, a country on the

periphery of Western man's vision, arousing general interest for the most

part because of its recent revolution and its role in world politics. Its history

was still territory for specialists. The movement to broaden the educational

horizons in Western countries to include some coverage of non-Western cul￾tures was then just beginning. It gathered momentum in the 1970s and

1980s and we can now assume that most educated persons will have had

some exposure to Chinese culture and history, at least on a superficial level.

The myopic view of the world that prevailed forty years ago, and which was

exaggerated by China's own deliberate exclusion of foreigners and hostility

to all things Western, broke down in the late 1970s and early 1980s as Asia

began to loom ever larger in our common economic future, and as more Wes￾terners began to visit the country as tourists and businessmen. Television

also had a large role in creating this new awareness. By the mid-i 980s, every

Western owner of a television had absorbed a wealth of vivid images of

what China looked like, from picturesque landscapes and some of the monu￾ments of the past to the belching pollution of the industrial cities. Television

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Xii PREFACE TO VOLUME 8

coverage of the events in T'ien-an men square produced visual impressions of

the political system with a worldwide impact far more memorable than the

best of printed journalism.

The end of isolation not only increased the knowledge of and interest in

China in the West. A new openness was also forced upon the rulers of

China. It was no longer possible for them to keep their population in ignor￾ance of events and conditions in the rest of the world. Through television,

the Chinese first saw in vivid images what the rest of the world looked like;

later, more and more of them travelled and saw the world outside, or were

able to establish links with relatives, colleagues, and business associates living

abroad. The coming of the computer and the fax machine established perma￾nent two-way links with the world outside which can no longer be broken,

however much the authorities deplore the flood of anti-social and decadent

influences that have accompanied it.

The Chinese historian of the 1990s to whom we address this volume,

whether he or she is Chinese or Western, whatever language he writes in, is

part of this new internationalized system created by information technology,

interlinkages, and interdependencies. We are still different in many ways, in

the subjects we find of prime importance, in our overall conception of the

social context of past events, in the lessons we seek from the past. But we all

realize that the past is a permanent part of our identity, however rapidly our

attitudes towards it and our interpretation of it may change. The disasters of

China in the 1960s sprang from a misguided and futile belief that men can

be made entirely anew and cut off from their past cultural experiences.

This past is not the monopoly of one country or of one culture. All our his￾tories are part of the past experience of mankind. As we were saying twenty

years ago, "Chinese history belongs to the world," and this becomes the

more compelling as we live on into a future world in which China will

undoubtedly regain its historical importance. We hope that this history,

which is currently being translated into Chinese both in Beijing and Taipei,

will contribute something to this mutual understanding.

DENIS TWITCHETT

1996

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONTENTS

General Editors'Preface pagev

General Editors' Preface to Volume 8 ix

hist of maps, tables, and figures xvii

Acknowledgments xix

Conventions xx

hist of abbreviations xxii

Ming weights and measures xxiii

Genealogy of the Ming imperial family xxiv

Ming dynasty emperors xxv

General map of the Ming empire xxvi

Introduction i

by DENIS TWITCHETT and FREDERICK W. MOTE

Ming government 9

by the late CHARLES O. HUCKER, University ofMichigan, emeritus

Administrative geography 10

The personnel of government 16

The structure of government 7 2

The quality of Ming governance 103

2 The Ming fiscal administration 106

by RAY HUANG

Introduction 106

The formation of the Ming fiscal system 107

Fiscal organization and general practices 114

State revenues and their distributions 126

Readjustments in the sixteenth century and the final collapse 148

Conclusion 168

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

XIV CONTENTS

3 Ming law 172

by JOHN D. LANGLOIS, JR., /. P. Morgan and Co., Incorporated.

The character of Ming law 176

The Ming penal system 180

Ming legal procedure 188

Legal education and professionalism 202

Conclusion 209

Appendix A: Ming commentaries on the code and handbooks

on jurisprudence 211

Appendix B: Ming handbooks for local magistrates 214

by THOMA S G. NIMICK, United States Military Academy

4 Th e Ming and Inner Asia 221

by MORRI S ROSSABI, Queens College

T h e sources 222

T h e Mongo l threat 224

T h e Ming and the disunited land of the lamas 241

Central Asia: diminishing relations with China 246

From Jurchens to Manchus 2 5 8

5 Sino-Korean tributary relations under the Ming 272

by DONALD N. CLARK, Trinity University.

The pattern of Sino-Korean tributary relations 272

Ming-Korean relations: the first phase 273

Tribute missions 279

The Ming-Korean-Jurchen triangle 284

Other issues in Ming-Korean relations 289

Ming-Korean relations during Hideyoshi's invasions 293

Korea and the fall of the Ming 299

6 Ming foreign relations: Southeast Asia 301

by WANG GUNGWU, University 0]r

Hong Kong, emeritus

7 Relations with maritime Europeans, 1514—1662 333

by JOHN E. WILLS, JR. University of Southern California

The tribute system matrix 333

The Portuguese entry, 1514 - 15 24 335

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008