Yonglo

Chinese emperor (r. 1402-1424)

• Born: May 2, 1363
• Birthplace: Chianning (now Nanjing), China
• Died: August 5, 1425
• Place of death: Beijing, China

Combining traditional Chinese and Mongol ideas of imperial rule, Yonglo brought the Ming Dynasty to its height, making it notable for the caliber of its ministers, internal improvements, support of the arts, and domestic stability.

Early Life

Zhu Di, who on ascension to the throne in 1402 took the reign name Yonglo (yoong-loh, meaning “eternal joy”) and later received the temple name Chengzu (Ch’eng-tsu; “completing ancestor”), was born in the Imperial Palace in Nanjing. He was the fourth son of Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), also known as Hongwu (r. 1368-1398), who was shortly to become the first Ming emperor, and a Korean palace concubine. A northerner and a commoner whose family background included lower-class Yangtze artisans and Huai River (northern Anhui Province) tenant farmers, Zhu Yuanzhang had emerged from a background of abysmal poverty, seeking refuge for a time in a Buddhist monastery, where he received a rudimentary education. Subsequently, he lived by his wits, eventually establishing a rebel power base in his northern home district. Before he was forty, by adroit selection of comrades and great military skill, he became the master of Han lands along the Yangtze, successfully expelled the Mongols (thus causing the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty , 1279-1368), and seized power.

Zhu Di’s early years were shaped by his father’s sometimes savage efforts to found and stabilize what he designated as the Ming, or “brilliant,” Dynasty (1368-1644). Conscious of the internal dynastic rivalries of his Yuan predecessors, Zhu Di’s father centralized authority in his own hands, maintained the loyalty of ministers and other officials by frequent bloody purges, and dispatched all of his sons to separate princely fiefs, except the heir apparent.

As prince of Yan, Zhu Di ruled over Beijing, not then the capital, and the region surrounding it. It was essentially a northern border post, and although the princes were not entrusted with civil administration, they were responsible to their father for the military security of their regions. Meanwhile, they were further educated both by members of the military aristocracy and by Confucian scholars. Nevertheless, military exigencies proved the dominant formative influence, for Zhu Di spent much of his early life in military campaigns and earned his initial reputation from them.

Placed in command in 1390 and again in 1391, he led notable expeditions against the Mongols, who although previously defeated by his father were not quiescent. Following his father’s massive purges of allegedly subversive nobles and military officials during the early 1390’, designed further to concentrate power in his own hands, Zhu Di, as a result of the shakeup, was given command over all troops within his fiefdom, along with generous subsidies of land and grain, a substantial administrative staff, and a body of princely guards. Thus, Zhu Di developed a powerful base for himself in a northern region, a region not only preferred by his father but also considered by most Chinese to be the heart of their civilization.

The final years of his father’s reign were peaceful ones. Zhu Di’s last victorious patrol north of the Great Wall was in 1396, and thereafter, there was a general stacking of arms. Still, the problem of succession was seriously unsettled when Zhu Di’s father died in June, 1398. The chief difficulty, as he himself had feared, was the power of Zhu Di and the other princes, whom with prospects of their plotting in mind he had previously banned from attending his funeral.

Twenty-one, gentle, scholarly, and eager to profit from his elders’ excesses, the dead emperor’s grandson and heir Jianwen (Chien-wen, r. 1399-1402) nevertheless immediately sought to impose his authority over his uncles, the princes. Five of the leading princes were systematically stripped of their support, and another died, leaving Zhu Di the oldest survivor, the most dangerously situated strategically, and the most popular and powerful.

Seeking to isolate Zhu Di, Jianwen and his advisers hoped to provoke him into a rebellion they believed they could crush. Overconfident, they rashly sent a force against Zhu Di in the summer of 1399 that Zhu Di ambushed and destroyed. Declaring that he was merely trying to liberate the new emperor from bad advisers, Zhu Di, as the prince of Yan, took to the field, and for the next three years, civil war raged in North China, essentially a conflict between north and south.

Notwithstanding serious handicaps, Zhu Di maintained himself against imperial forces, generally defeated them, and, in January of 1402, was able to commence precarious drives south across the Huang River toward the Yangtze River, Suzhou, and Nanjing. In July, 1402, Nanjing capitulated. The emperor and empress purportedly died in the blaze of the Imperial Palace, and the northern rebel, the prince of Yan, assumed the Ming throne.

Life’s Work

Hongwu, the first Ming emperor, was forty when, as a rebel, he seized the throne; Yonglo was thirty-nine and, like his father, a rebel destined to rule for about two decades. A large, strong, active man, Yonglo profited from his physical presence, his military reputation, and his capacity for ruthless action, and in these respects, he also resembled his father. Yet he evinced a greater confidence, more control of his temper, and a more sensitive ability to work effectively with subordinates.

Nevertheless, Yonglo’s reign opened with a bloody purge of Jianwen’s supporters. He reduced the remaining princes to mere figureheads and precluded any future threats to the stability of government from imperial family members or from within either the civil or the military establishment. Inevitably, this meant a further concentration of power in his own hands, but it was precisely that which permitted a resumption of the sounder policies of his predecessors and encouraged the return of stability within the empire.

Because his own power base had always been in the north, Yonglo transferred the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1407, gradually leaving only the heir apparent and his entourage in Nanjing. Beiping Province was transformed into a metropolitan area and given a functional importance as the seat of government that was confirmed when it was officially designated the capital in 1421. The recovering Mongols also lent impetus to Yonglo’s shift of power to Beijing. To counter their perpetual menace, he made Beiping Province the mainstay of his northern, hence major, defense system. After 1407, therefore, both personal predilection as well as security considerations kept him continuously based in his new capital.

Relocation northward brought substantial logistical problems. Previous establishment of sizable mercantile colonies along the northern frontier, plus his predecessors’ upgrading of regional agriculture, meant that the transport of grain by sea around the Shandong Peninsula for generations a costly expedient because of losses from pirates, rebels, and weather had become unnecessary. The presence of officials and the growing military establishment in the Beiping metropolitan area required new, assured avenues of supply.

To develop these avenues, Yonglo mobilized the Yangtze naval command to reinstitute sea transport of the capital’s grain supplies while simultaneously reconstructing inland waterways that were inadequate or had fallen into desuetude. His minister of works, Song Li (Sung Li), and Chen Xuan (Ch’en Hsüan), the Yangtze commander who had surrendered to Yonglo in 1402, began reconstruction of the Grand Canal , which had silted so badly that it was unnavigable. A system of forty-seven locks was brilliantly engineered so that after 1415, grain shipments could be delivered directly into the Huang River, precluding further perilous sea journeys around Shandong and ensuring the capital’s sustenance.

Yonglo dealt with potentially menacing or factious neighbors by resorting both to diplomacy and to force. In the north, he was able to extend indirect Chinese influence by successfully wooing Jurchen tribesmen, who, although previously under Mongol influence, had by 1402 come more under the influence of Korea. Offering them commercial inducements and incorporating them into Ming militia units, he brought them under Chinese overlordship by 1415. In addition, Mongols who had been settled between the Great Wall and the Liao River while retaining their own chieftains were encouraged to assimilate to Chinese organization; others, such as the Urianghad Mongols, were rewarded for having served as Yonglo’s cavalry by a grant of independence within the Beiping regional military organization. Still other such tribes were relocated farther in the interior under Chinese supervision.

More important were the menacing remnants of the Yuan Dynasty’s forces composed of Eastern Mongols, or Tatars, and the Western Mongols, or Oirats. Because far to the west, Tamerlane had conquered much of the Middle East, Syria, and parts of India, the great danger to Yonglo was Tamerlane’s potential for deploying various of these Mongol peoples against him. Indeed, Tamerlane had been preparing such a campaign when, fortunately for Yonglo, he died in 1405. Taking no chances, however, Yonglo personally led forces beyond the Great Wall into the Gobi Desert in attempts to keep various Mongol chieftains, particularly the Tatar Arughtai, divided and off balance.

Northern frontiers solicited no more of his attention than did those to the south. Since the 1370’, Annam had been rent by dynastic quarrels that by Yonglo’s ascension involved his government. Annamese refugees in China urged Yonglo to intervene in the restoration of their legitimate ruler, and in anticipation of Chinese interference, Le Qui-ly, the Annamese usurper, launched spoiling attacks along China’s southern border. Chinese envoys dispatched to seek a peaceful solution to the problem in 1406 were murdered.

Retaliating, Yonglo, from bases in Guangxi and Yunnan, invaded Annam, crushed the opposition, and, failing to discover an acceptable replacement for Le Qui-ly, absorbed Annam as a new Chinese province in 1407. Thousands of well-educated Annamese, many of them possessing superior knowledge about firearms, were brought into the employment of Yonglo’s government. Such actions did not stabilize the situation, and not even the best Chinese administrative and military talents could prevent the outbreak of guerrilla resistance, the deterioration of China’s position, and, after Yonglo’s death, the loss of the province.

Despite his background, events make it clear that Yonglo preferred the extension of Chinese influence through diplomacy, commerce, and other peaceful means. After years of tensions between his father and a Japan torn by political tumults, Yonglo was pleasantly confronted by the new Ashikaga shogunate, which had reunified Japan in 1392 and which sought amicable relations. In 1403, Japanese plenipotentiaries arrived in Beijing to announce that the shogun recognized himself as a subject of Yonglo and was eager for close commercial relations. These were sanctioned the following year, with the result that Japanese fleets were permitted periodic visitations to Ningbo to trade and deliver tribute. The shogun even hunted down Japanese pirates who for generations had scourged the Chinese boat traders and delivered them for punishment to Beijing. Such idyllic conditions dissipated with the succession of a new shogun in 1408, and thereafter relations cooled. The new shogun rejected a tributary position and ignored the pirates’ return to their enterprises.

Two of Yonglo’s remarkable eunuchs acted as emissaries and spread his influence into other parts of Asia. Beginning in 1403, when several fleets were sent to ports in Southeast Asia and Javanese and southern Indian ports, an unprecedented extension of China’s naval activities commenced. A number of expeditions were led by Hou Xian (Hou Hsien), who had previously journeyed to Tibet and Nepal, and by the famed Muslim admiral (also a eunuch) Zheng He (Cheng Ho), who had been in Yonglo’s service since he was a boy. Between them, Hou and Zheng, often with great fleets, tens of thousands of personnel, and vessels of immense size (440 feet, or 135 meters, in length; 186 feet, or 57 meters, in beam), traveled to thirty-seven countries, including a number on Africa’s west coast, on Zanzibar, and along the Persian Gulf.

These voyages were indisputably profitable in terms of tribute, commerce, and the emperor’s prestige. Occasionally these voyages encouraged the use of Chinese force: the suppression of pirates in Sumatra, intervention in a Javanese civil war, the capture of a hostile Ceylonese ruler for imprisonment in Beijing, and assistance to local rulers in quelling domestic rebellions. However, they were mostly peaceful and instructive, exotic adventures that lasted from 1403 until Yonglo’s death, although the indefatigable Zheng He continued voyaging after 1424.

After a vigorous reign generally marked by domestic stability and prosperity, Yonglo died in the autumn of 1424 as the result of an illness contracted on a campaign waged north of the Great Wall against Mongol tribesmen.

Significance

Yonglo’s two decades of rule consolidated Ming power. In many ways, his reign was the apogee of the Ming Dynasty. He persisted in concentrating authority in his own hands, thus ensuring continuation of an absolutism characteristic of his father, the dynasty’s founder. Yonglo was, however, less barbarous. There were fewer sanguinary purges during his reign, and a stabler environment developed in which his ministers could work more effectively. By relying heavily on eunuchs and military officers to implement his initiatives, he permitted the civil service to function somewhat apart and to cohere around Confucian principles: to recruit and indoctrinate through the jinshi examination system and to serve according to it, thus allowing it to evolve its own institutional ideology and esprit.

In part, these developments account for the unusual official longevity of Yonglo’s secretaries and ministers in their posts. There were two vitally important long-term consequences of these conditions. First, in a positive sense, the civil service was rendered more capable of removing from the emperor the daily burdens of administering justice, handling financial problems, and attending to the routines of governing. Second, in the process of assuming such responsibilities, the civil service became although not during Yonglo’s regime a powerful political force that was able to control and even thwart emperors.

Without question, Yonglo’s military and diplomatic actions aggressively secured China’s borders, even extending them somewhat, while establishing China’s presence throughout Asia and parts of the Middle East in an unprecedented fashion. In the fifteenth century, no other power could claim influence over such vast areas and numerous populations. The immediate import of this was domestic security and tranquillity. China ceased for a time to be torn by dynastic successions, warlords, powerful rebellions, and governmental incompetence. Inevitably, after Yonglo’s death, there was an erosion of some achievements: Annam fought its way out of the Ming grasp, Japan’s shoguns withdrew from their subjection to Beijing, and the several major Asian tribes to the north, west, and southwest remained actual or potential menaces and kept Ming borders in constant jeopardy.

More lasting was Yonglo’s consolidation of the Yuan absolutism that had characterized the rule overthrown by his father with an evolving Confucian, or scholars’, bureaucracy. Together, they defined much of the character of Chinese government for centuries.

Major Rulers of the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644

Reign

• Ruler

1368-1398

• Hongwu (Zhu Yuanzhang)

1399-1402

• Jianwen (Zhu Yunwen)

1402-1424

• Yonglo (Zhu Di)

1424-1425

• Hongxi

1426-1435

• Xuande

1436-1449

• Zhengtong

1450-1457

• Jingtai

1457-1464

• Tianshun

1465-1487

• Chenghua

1488-1505

• Hongzhi

1506-1521

• Zhengde

1522-1567

• Jianjing

1567-1572

• Longqing

1573-1620

• Wanli

1620

• Taichang

1621-1627

• Tianqi

1628-1644

• Chongzhen

Bibliography

Antony, Robert J. Like Froth Floating on the Sea: The World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial South China. China Research Monographs 56. Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2003. An examination of the pirates in South China during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Brook, Timothy. The Confusion of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. A look at the role of commerce during the Ming Dynasty. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

Chan, Hok-lam. China and the Mongols: History and Legend Under the Yuan and Ming. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999. An examination of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties’ relations with the Mongols. Index.

Dreyer, Edward L. Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355-1435. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982. Scholarly and eminently readable, this volume is one of the most extensive English-language studies of its subject. Detailed notes, an excellent annotated bibliography, a standard character list, and a very useful index.

Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Describes the life and activities of Zheng He as well as conditions in the Ming Dynasty during his lifetime. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

Menzies, Gavin. 1421: The Year China Discovered the Americas. New York: William Morrow, 2003. A somewhat controversial treatment of Zheng He’s travels that suggest that his ships reached the Americas. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

Ptak, Roderich. China and the Asian Seas: Trade, Travel, and Visions of the Others (1400-1750). Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998. An examination of the explorations of Zheng He and the trade in which the Chinese engaged. Bibliography and index.

Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. A study of how the eunuchs were used during the Ming Dynasty. One chapter focuses on Ming maritime activities. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. A study of the reign of Yonglo, Zheng He’s supporter, and its place within the Ming Dynasty.