The Ming in the Southwest: Conquest, Rule, and Legacy
07/31/22 • 39 min
In 1381, Ming armies marched into Yunnan and Guizhou and within a year had deposed the Mongol Yuan's Prince of Liang, who had been enfeoffed there by the Yuan court. The Hongwu's emperor's decision to annex Yunnan and Guizhou and establish Ming administration there was unusual, for before the Mongols conquered it in the mid-1250s, the area had never been under the control of a China-based empire. It was more Southeast Asian in character than it was Chinese in character. Yet for decades, the scholarly community has neglected the study of the southwest. In this episode, Sean Cronan will discuss the Ming's rule in the region, how the early Ming court reshaped the interstate environment of Southwest China and Upper Mainland Southeast Asia, as well as some of the legacies that the early Ming left on the region.
Contributors
Sean Cronan
Sean Cronan is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on East and Southeast Asian diplomatic encounters from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, tracing the development of new shared diplomatic norms following the Mongol conquests of Eurasia, as well as how rulers and scholar-officials in the Ming (1368- 1644) and Qing Dynasties (1644-1911) institutionalized and challenged these new norms. He explores how ideas of multipolarity, regime legitimacy, and the makeup of the interstate order came under debate throughout the Mongol Empire, Ming China, the Qing Empire, Chosŏn Korea, Dai Viet (Northern Vietnam), Japan, the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand, the Pagan Kingdom of Burma, and beyond. He works with sources in Chinese (literary Sinitic), Japanese, Thai, Burmese, Manchu, and Dutch.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 13
Release date: July 31, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles/Berkeley, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Sean Cronan
Images
Cover Image: A Buddhist monastery in Xishuangbanna (Sipsongpanna), located in Yunnan at the border with Laos and Myanmar. Note the distinct Southeast Asian style architecture. In Ming times this area was called Cheli 車里 and a native official ruled here on behalf of the Ming court. Today it is classified as an autonomous region for the Dai/Tai ethnic group. (Image Source)
https://i.imgur.com/tn3BrKI.jpg
A 1636 Ming map of Yunnan, from the Zhifang dayitong zhi 職方大一統志. Due to the large file size, it cannot be uploaded here. Please click on the link above to view it. The yellow rectangle denotes the location of Kunming, the prefectural seat of Yunnan. Red squares represent major settlements.
Map of the Möeng Maaw Empire at its greatest extent in 1398. . Areas in red were either governed by a Sa clan appointee or had long been conquered and integrated into the Maaw administrative structure. Areas in yellow were seized by more recent conquest or held only loosely. Map courtesy of Sean Cronan. Please do not cite or circulate.
A Yuan seal granted to the native official of Cheli. (Image Source)
References
Daniels, Christian. “The Mongol-Yuan in Yunnan and ProtoTai/Tai Polities during the 13th-14th
Centuries.” Journal of the Siam Society, 106 (2018), 201-243.
Daniels, Christian and Jianxiong Ma, eds. The Transformation of Yunnan in Ming China: from the
Dali Kingdom to Imperial Province. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020.
Fernquest, Jon. “Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382-1454).”
SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 4:2 (2006), 27-90.
In 1381, Ming armies marched into Yunnan and Guizhou and within a year had deposed the Mongol Yuan's Prince of Liang, who had been enfeoffed there by the Yuan court. The Hongwu's emperor's decision to annex Yunnan and Guizhou and establish Ming administration there was unusual, for before the Mongols conquered it in the mid-1250s, the area had never been under the control of a China-based empire. It was more Southeast Asian in character than it was Chinese in character. Yet for decades, the scholarly community has neglected the study of the southwest. In this episode, Sean Cronan will discuss the Ming's rule in the region, how the early Ming court reshaped the interstate environment of Southwest China and Upper Mainland Southeast Asia, as well as some of the legacies that the early Ming left on the region.
Contributors
Sean Cronan
Sean Cronan is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on East and Southeast Asian diplomatic encounters from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, tracing the development of new shared diplomatic norms following the Mongol conquests of Eurasia, as well as how rulers and scholar-officials in the Ming (1368- 1644) and Qing Dynasties (1644-1911) institutionalized and challenged these new norms. He explores how ideas of multipolarity, regime legitimacy, and the makeup of the interstate order came under debate throughout the Mongol Empire, Ming China, the Qing Empire, Chosŏn Korea, Dai Viet (Northern Vietnam), Japan, the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand, the Pagan Kingdom of Burma, and beyond. He works with sources in Chinese (literary Sinitic), Japanese, Thai, Burmese, Manchu, and Dutch.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 13
Release date: July 31, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles/Berkeley, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Sean Cronan
Images
Cover Image: A Buddhist monastery in Xishuangbanna (Sipsongpanna), located in Yunnan at the border with Laos and Myanmar. Note the distinct Southeast Asian style architecture. In Ming times this area was called Cheli 車里 and a native official ruled here on behalf of the Ming court. Today it is classified as an autonomous region for the Dai/Tai ethnic group. (Image Source)
https://i.imgur.com/tn3BrKI.jpg
A 1636 Ming map of Yunnan, from the Zhifang dayitong zhi 職方大一統志. Due to the large file size, it cannot be uploaded here. Please click on the link above to view it. The yellow rectangle denotes the location of Kunming, the prefectural seat of Yunnan. Red squares represent major settlements.
Map of the Möeng Maaw Empire at its greatest extent in 1398. . Areas in red were either governed by a Sa clan appointee or had long been conquered and integrated into the Maaw administrative structure. Areas in yellow were seized by more recent conquest or held only loosely. Map courtesy of Sean Cronan. Please do not cite or circulate.
A Yuan seal granted to the native official of Cheli. (Image Source)
References
Daniels, Christian. “The Mongol-Yuan in Yunnan and ProtoTai/Tai Polities during the 13th-14th
Centuries.” Journal of the Siam Society, 106 (2018), 201-243.
Daniels, Christian and Jianxiong Ma, eds. The Transformation of Yunnan in Ming China: from the
Dali Kingdom to Imperial Province. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020.
Fernquest, Jon. “Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382-1454).”
SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 4:2 (2006), 27-90.
Previous Episode
Professor Joanna Waley-Cohen on New Qing History
Since the 1990s, the New Qing History school has loomed large in the study of the Qing dynasty. It has greatly informed not only the study of the Qing but study of other dynasties as well. Yet what exactly is New Qing History? What is "new" about it? How did it come into being? How was it received in China and the West? To answer these questions, we talked to Professor Joanna Waley-Cohen of NYU, one of the leading scholars of the Qing dynasty.
Contributors
Joanna Waley-Cohen
Professor Joanna Waley-Cohen is the Provost for NYU Shanghai and Julius Silver Professor of History at New York University. Her research interests include early modern Chinese history, especially the Qing dynasty; China and the West; and Chinese imperial culture, particularly in the Qianlong era; warfare in China and Inner Asia; and Chinese culinary history, and she has authored several books and articles on these topics. In addition, Professor Waley-Cohen has received many honors, including archival and postdoctoral fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Goddard and Presidential Fellowships from NYU, and an Olin Fellowship in Military and Strategic History from Yale.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode no. 12
Release date: June 25, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA/New York, NY
Bibliography courtesy of Professor Waley-Cohen
Images
Cover Image: The Qianlong Emperor, who reigned from 1735 to 1796. After he abdicated, he continued to retain power as retired emperor until his death in 1799. He is the longest-reigning monarch in Chinese history and one of the longest in the world (Image Source).
The headquarters of the First Historical Archives in Beijing, which houses documents from the Qing. The opening of this archive and access to the Manchu-language documents held within helped give birth to New Qing History. (Image Source)
A copy of a Qing-era civil service examination answer sheet. Note the Manchu script on the seal. Currently held in UCLA Library Special Collections (Photo by Yiming).
The Putuo Zongcheng Temple, a Buddhist temple in the Qing's Rehe Summer Resort (in today's Chengde, Hebei province). The temple was built between 1767 and 1771 by the Qianlong Emperor and was a replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. It is a fusion of Tibetan and Chinese architectural styles and is one of the most famous landmarks in the Chengde Summer Resort. (Image Source)
A painting of a European-style palace constructed by the Jesuits for the Qing emperors in the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan). Note the fusion of Chinese and European styles. The Old Summer Palace was looted and burned by Anglo-French forces in 1860. The twelve bronze head statutes in front of the building have mostly been repatriated back to China, although some are in the hands of private collectors. (Image Source)
The Qianlong Emperor commissioned a series of artwork commemorating the "Ten Great Campaigns" of his reign. This particular piece of artwork depicts the Battle of Thọ Xương River in 1788, when the Qing invaded Vietnam. These artworks were collaborative pieces between Chinese and Jesuit painters. (
Next Episode
The Ming Bureaucracy and its Practices: A Conversation with Professor Chelsea Wang (Governing China, Part 1)
China has a long bureaucratic history and tradition, and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was no exception. The Ming was one of the largest empires in the world at the time and it established a large and complex bureaucracy to govern it. In this episode, Professor. Chelsea Wang talks to us about some of the bureaucratic practices, which might seem strange to us today, that the Ming employed to keep the empire running.
Governing China is a new series that explores the various bureaucratic institutions and administrative policies that the various Chinese dynasties employed to govern their empires.
Contributors
Chelsea Wang
Professor Chelsea Wang is an Assistant Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College. As a historian of late imperial China, Professor Wang’s research focuses on the intersection between communication and governance in premodern empires. Her current manuscript project is titled Logistics of Empire: Governance and Spatial Friction in Ming China, 1368-1644, and it examines how the Ming dynasty maintained control over its vast territories using certain administrative practices that modern observers often find counterintuitive and strange.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 14
Release date: August 21, 2022
Recording location: Vancouver, Canada/Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Professor Wang
Images
Cover Image: Section of a Ming officials' handbook showing a map of territorial government offices in
Zhejiang province (Image Courtesy of Harvard-Yenching Library's Digital Collections)
Structure of the Ming bureaucracy (Image Source)
Conceptual map of the Ming territorial bureaucracy (Image by Professor Wang)
Deadlines for newly appointed officials to arrive at their locations of service. The red star indicates the location of Beijing, the imperial capital (Image by Professor Wang. Please do not cite or circulate without permission)
A memorial reproduced in a Ming literary collection. This memorial, written by the controversial Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng and addressed to the Wanli emperor, contains information about Zhang's speed of travel when he returned to Huguang province to bury his recently deceased father (Image Courtesy of Harvard-Yenching Library's Digital Collections)
Section of a Ming officials' handbook showing information about individual administrative units in Zhejiang province. The text contains information about each prefecture's tax quota, subordinate counties, distance from Beijing, and arrival deadlines for officials traveling from Beijing (Image Courtesy of Harvard-Yenching Library's Digital Collections)
References
Dardess, John W. Ming China, 1368-1644: A Concise History of a Resilient Empire. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.
Guo Hong 郭红 and Jin Runcheng 靳润成. Zhongguo xingzheng quhua tongshi: Mingdai Juan 中国行政区划通史: 明代卷. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2007.
Hucker, Charles O. “Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 21 (1958): 1–66.
Nimick, Thomas G. Local Administration in Ming China: The Changing Role of Magistrates, Prefects, and Provincial Officials. Minneapolis: Society for Ming Studies, 2008.
Schneewind, Sarah. “Pavilions to Celebrate Honest Officials: An Authenticity Dilemma in Fifteenth-Century China.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orien...
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