The Hongwu Emperor was the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty, which ruled China between 1368 and 1644.
Rise to Power
His name was Zhu Yuanzhang before seizing to the throne. He was born in 1328, into a poor farming family. When he was aged about 16 his parents died from one of the epidemics ravaging China at that time. He then became a Buddhist monk, and as was the practice at that time, made his living by begging.
From the mid-14th century, China began to descend into chaos as peasant rebellions broke out against the Mongol (or Yuan) dynasty. Zhu joined one of the rebel groups, which formed a part of the “Red Turbans” movement. With his strong personality, Zhu quickly gathered a large following, which was employed fighting not only Mongol troops but also rival rebels.
In 1356 he and his followers captured one of the greatest cities in China, Nanjing. From there, by defeating other rebel leaders and Mongol forces, he extended his control over central and southern China. Once this was achieved, he sent his armies north, and in 1368, they drove the Mongols from their capital, Beijing (at that time called Dadu). The last of the Yuan emperors was forced to flee across the borders into Mongolia.
A New Dynasty
Zhu proclaimed himself emperor, taking the reign name Hongwu (“Vastly Martial”), and thus founded a new dynasty. He called it the Ming (i.e. “Bright”) Dynasty.
The Hongwu Emperor – unknown artist (Public Domain)
Over the next few years his armies brought the whole of China under his rule. He made Nanjing his capital, and in the early years of his reign thousands of workmen were used to refurbish the city and make it fit to be the centre of a huge empire.
From the start, the Hongwu emperor’s style of rule was despotic. He knew he could not govern the huge country without the help of the scholar-officials of the civil service, but he was deeply distrustful of them. On one occasion, when he became convinced that a group of these officials were plotting against him, he had 30,000 of them killed.
The emperors of previous dynasties had ruled through chief ministers, but in 1381 the Hongwu emperor had his chief minister executed, and ordered that the heads of the six ministries report directly to himself. To aid him with the resulting workload, he appointed a group of secretaries from the Hanlin Academy – traditionally a palace-based institute for the most able civil servants – and formed them into his own “Grand Secretariat” working under his personal supervision. It was these officials who advised the emperor on the formulation of policy, while the six ministers were merely required to carry out the decisions handed down to them.
A Conservative Ruler
The Hongwu emperor was deeply conservative in his views, as well as being very frugal in his way of life. He expected others to follow his example, too, particularly government employees. He greatly reduced officials’ pay compared with what that had been under Yuan, which allowed him to significantly reduce taxes on the peasantry.
His policies were aimed at creating a society based on traditional Confucian teachings. They were designed to benefit the peasantry (from which he himself had sprung), so that they were able to live as subsistence farmers on their own lands. This involved taking land from the landowners and giving it to landless peasants. In reality how much land was redistributed in this way is hard to say, as a leisured landowning class certainly continued to exist under later Ming emperors.
The Examination System
To reduce the political influence of the landowning classes, the Hongwu emperor made the examination system almost the only source of recruitment to the civil service. Patronage, which had been a major form of recruitment up until now, was there by almost eliminated.
The examination was now based squarely on Confucian (or more accurately, Neo-Confucian) teachings. To make doubly sure that the examinations could be made as widely accessible as possible, he had the government pay for schools throughout the empire, which had the express aim of preparing young men for the exams.
Having first hand experience of the corruption and oppression of officials under the Mongols, the Hongwu emperor ferociously attempted to prevent corruption from spreading amongst government officials. Those who came under suspicion were tortured, and in many cases put to death. Even so, he ultimately failed in this. Indeed, his own policies encouraged it – he had so diminished officials’ pay that they did not have enough o live on properly. They therefore came to supplement their official income by unofficial payments (or bribes); and this embedded this practice within the civil service. inevitably it got worse over time.
Hongwu’s adherence to Confucianism also led him to have contempt for merchants, whom Confucian teaching held to be parasites on society. Overseas trade was restricted to just one port, Guangzhou, and heavy dues had to be paid on goods travelling out of China along the Silk Road into central Asia. He forbade merchants and their sons from entering the examination system (and thereby becoming officials), and placed other restrictions on them.
This did not prevent commerce from flourishing within China under the Ming, as the stability which the dynasty gave China led to economic and demographic expansion in the empire.
One of the Hongwu emperor’s final acts was to enact the Great Ming Law Code, which had been many years in preparation. This was based on the Tang dynasty law code of the 8th century CE, which in turn had its roots in the Han and Qin law codes of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. Its ancient roots were reflected in the strict, even harsh, punishments it laid down.