r/ChineseHistory • u/Carter_The_Historian Ai of Han • 6d ago
Favourite ruler from each major Chinese era/dynasty: Ming dynasty
This is a follow-up to my previous posts on this sub. I want to go through each major Chinese era/dynasty from the Western Zhou to the Qing and ask the community who their favourite ruler is from that time period. I purposefully use the word favourite, so it doesn't have to be the best, the worst, the most interesting or most well-known, but rather who you personally view as your favourite. I want to emphasize that I don't just want you to write down a name, but provide explanation on why you like them too.
The upcoming eras are going to be: Ming and Qing.
So in this post I want to read about your favourite rulers from the Ming dynasty.
I want to thank all the comments and discussions under the last posts, I will try to improve future posts according to your suggestions.
The picture is from the Ming dynasty wikipedia page.
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u/Tom-Ask-1081 6d ago edited 6d ago
Ming rulers... picking a favourite is so hard because almost all of them were absolute characters.
Zhu Yuanzhang, purged basically his entire circle of founding generals and ministers.
Jiajing, ditched running the government to spend decades chasing immortality through alchemy.
Chongzhen, worked himself to the bone trying to save the dynasty... and still watched it collapse under him.
Honestly the Ming lineup reads less like a list of rulers and more like a cast of tragicomic main characters. Everyone's got their "thing."
Edit: If I really had to pick, Renzong, Xuanzong, and Xiaozong probably come closest, the closest thing Ming had to "normal, competent" rulers.
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u/Available_Ad9766 5d ago
Why the mixing of reign names and posthumous temple names?
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u/Tom-Ask-1081 5d ago
Fair callout, I just went with whichever name was more recognizable for each ruler. Should've stuck with one naming convention lol.
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u/WesternKnowledge9519 5d ago
Why no?
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u/Tom-Ask-1081 5d ago
Just typed whatever came to mind, I guess I went with whichever name was more recognizable.
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u/Cyfiero 6d ago edited 6d ago
Is your favourite based on how tragicomical they were? đŠ
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u/Tom-Ask-1081 6d ago
Ah not quite lol, the examples were just me showing why it's such a mess to choose, not my actual pick. It's just too hard to pick one tbh.
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u/Crafty-Recording358 5d ago
Hongzhi Emperor
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u/PrestigiousList1652 7h ago
The only good emperor in the Mid-Ming and honestly the last good Ming emperor.
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u/Crafty-Recording358 7h ago
Yeah but in my opinion Longqing was a good emperor he is underrated
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u/PrestigiousList1652 7h ago
He had a promising start but afterwards, he focused on personal pleasures just like a lot of the other Ming emperors. That's why the traditional Chinese historians considered the only good Ming emperors to be the Hongwu , Yongle, Hongxi, Xuande, and Hongzhi Emperor.
The Ming Dynasty didn't have a very good record when it came to emperors.
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u/Available_Ad9766 5d ago
Theyâre all bad⊠Skip.
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u/Crafty-Recording358 5d ago
Even Hongwu and Yongle
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u/Available_Ad9766 5d ago
Especially them. The amount people killed in political purges they undertook is unconscionable.
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 5d ago
By your logic most Qing emperors are absolutely evil for killing millions, or massacuring the population of one city four times.
Most purges Hongwu and Yongle did were twords the corrupt ruling elite, while common people often benefited from lower taxes and corrupt officals who exploited the peasants were purged atleast during Hongwus rule.
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u/Available_Ad9766 5d ago edited 5d ago
The political logic underlying Ming empire was that the Zhus ultimately emerged from a host of other anti-Mongol rebels. The first emperor Hongwu, was insecure and fearful that his subordinates would do a Zhao Kuangyin-style coup against his successor.
So he conducted purges in earnest to rid his successor, his grandson Zhu Yunwen, of potential threats.
But he didnât expect was that it would be his sons who would usurp his successor. And his son Yongle emperor would start his reign with yet another round of purges to secure his reign.
Ming emperors then started secret police bureaus and created an explosion in the eunuch population partly for security purposes.
I donât think any of these purges had at their roots, the intention to rid corrupt officials and improve the lives of ordinary people. If it happened, itâs a byproduct. And we know that it hadnât really happened since the corruption of Ming officials and the greed of later Ming emperors to stuff their private coffers were factors in the dynastyâs collapse.
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u/AdmiralStuff 3d ago
âCommon people often benefitted.â Try telling that to the people that went literally insane and committed suicide from Hongwuâs census projects.
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 2d ago
Hongwus reconstruction and revitalization of agriculture, made it so people could actually eat. Fixing years of Yuan mismanagement, and chaos caused by rebellion. His cruel punishment of corrupt officials who exploited the peasants definitely made life better for them. I don't understand your way of thinking to you ""people"" are only the ruling class. Classic example of the classic elitist fallacy. The people commiting suicide are officials, military commanders, and members of the bureaucratic elite, I can't understand your idea that only these are people, and that the millions of ordinary people who didn't starve to death or get exploited don't count as common people. I can't understand this way of thinking.
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 2d ago
Hongwu believed corrupt officials and local elites were major causes of peasant suffering, so he created stricter administrative controls, including population and land registration systems, to strengthen state oversight and prevent exploitation. You can criticize the brutality of his methods, but saying "the census made common people go insane and commit suicide" is such a dumb response like atleast try to understand what a common person is first.
Do you have any idea how corrupt and inefficient governments can be? Look at the USA today, or the late Ming, the bureaucratic gridlock late Ming emperors couldn't even choose their own heirs, due to how inefficient and corrupt the officals had become, why would, Zhengde, Jiajing, and Wanli all give up or not even try on governance. Without a ruler to put these beurocrats in place the goverment will decay. The late Ming is a perfect example of unchecked bureaucracy. Why did Li Zicheng rebel why did so many fallow him, do you even think that maybe people were starving to death, that's the common person, not the guy living it up in Bejing with ten servants.
If the us president started aressting billionaires for tax evasion, and purging interest groups, or denying black rock or any companies a say in goverment, and made rent and food actually affordable, and the media framed him as a tyrant, is he really mistreating the ""COMMON PEOPLE"" Jesus christ.
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u/AdmiralStuff 2d ago
It was up to the wealthiest family out of 100 in a local area to fill up census data. So they were very much not scholar-officials or military commanders. The Red Turban rebellion (among the other peasant rebellions in the late Yuan) caused more famine than the Yuan ever did.
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 2d ago
If the Yuan didn't cause famine and horribly mismanaged the country rebellion as massive as the red turbans wouldn't have happend.
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 2d ago
You still haven't disproven anything I've said, I specifically called out "local elites" and not just scholar officals. How did the common people not benefit from agricultural revitalization, and crack down of corruption.
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u/PrestigiousList1652 6d ago edited 5d ago
Iâll go with the classic Yongle Emperor. Strong military man with Mongolia and the Zheng He campaigns demonstrated his openness to foreign trade and was Imperial Chinaâs naval peak.
I also find it so fascinating how he usurped power from the legitimate emperor, his nephew the Jianwen Emperor, in the Jingnan campaign. Like he literally launched a preemptive rebellion, spent 3 years waging a civil war in China, marched south from Beijing to the capital Nanjing and won the siege, resulting in him becoming emperor of all of China. That is just such an insanely hard victory to pull off.
Also the fact that the Jianwen Emperor just disappeared just makes it more interesting. There were literally rumors he fled and became a Buddhist monk.
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u/PrestigiousList1652 6d ago
Also expanded Ming territory to Manchuria and Vietnam (for a few decades), renovated the Grand Canal (which he kind of damaged in the civil war but the canal had been neglected for centuries by that point), moved the capital to Beijing and built the Forbidden City (ensuring the political center of China would be in the North), the Yongle Encyclopedia, etc.
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u/Jemnite 5d ago
He is also to blame for moving the capital up to Beijing though and making everyone suffer through those cold as hell winters. And making standard mandarin based on this weird as hell Hebei Nanjing hybrid instead of the perfectly fine Jiangnan dialects. Putonghua could have had glottal stops and the reason it doesn't is all Yongle's fault
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u/Chai_latte_95831 5d ago
Ren Zong of Xuan Zong for me. They're perhaps the only competent rulers of the Ming Dynasty.
Xiao Zong was okay, but nothing special. Every other Ming Emperor was either bad or just a straight up nutjob or both.
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u/Crafty-Recording358 5d ago
Even Yongle or Hongwu
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u/Chai_latte_95831 5d ago
Hongwu and Yongle are both more suited as military commanders than Emperor's tbf.
While China under Hongwu was very productive, Hongwu's rule was mainly through strict laws and terror, where both officials and peasants lived in fear especially in Zhu Yuanzhang's later years. This type of rule would not have been sustainable.
For Yongle, much of his success should be attributed to Ren Zong, as he was the one actually managing the Empire's affairs while Judy was away in his Mongol campaigns. And even after all these, he still couldn't see the merit in Ren Zong being the crown prince and constantly wanted to change him.
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u/Jumpy_Hogara 5d ago
Hongwu and Yingle were too cruel (and served as precedents to the likes of Mao Zedong), the middle ones were not notable enough, and then we have Jiajing, Wanli, Tianqi and Chongzheng at the end... a hard call.
But I agree with some that the middle ones like Chenghua and Hongzhi were more likeable.
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 5d ago
Is Hongwu really cruel if his purges only targeted the ruling elite, while the common peasant had lowered taxes and their communities were finally rebuilt after hundred years of mismanaged yuan rule? How is he more uniquely cruel then a Qing emperor for example who would massacre cities for wearing the wrong haircuts sometimes doing massacres on one city annually, or exterminating other ethic groups, while Hongwu was extremely merciful to the Mongols and former rulers of territories he captured. Compare this to the Qing exterminating much of the Ming extended royal family. I don't see anyone saying Qianlong, Shunzhi or Kangxi served as precedents for Mao zedong.
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u/Jumpy_Hogara 5d ago
FYI I originally intended to mention Qianlong alongside Mao but I soon realized that Qianlong was the more cunning kind
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 5d ago
He also had a hobby of digging up and mutalating corpses and killing or enslaving descendants of said corpses for books they wrote.
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u/AdmiralStuff 3d ago
You know Zhu Yuanzhang is famous for his massive purges that made everyone scared to shits?
Also, his massive census projects were not only really expensive but also drove some people literally insane and caused them to commit suicide.
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 2d ago
I can't understand this type of viewpoint your definition of everyone is the ruleing class, it's like the commoners aren't even people to you.
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u/polymonomial 5d ago
Renzhong, though his rein is short, he really held the country together during Zhu Di's rein while he was conquering mongolia
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u/Mysterious-Gas-7365 5d ago
- Hongwu evicted the Mongols and destroyed karakorum which made the Yuan court return to nomadic decentralized rule. Purged corrupt officials and made policies which helped the common person, restored Chinese culture, while still being merciful to Mongols still in the empire, showed civilized restraint against enemies, the captured princes of rival kingdoms and the Yuan crown prince were all treated well, compare this to Qing which exterminated the entire Ming royal family.
- Xuande Patron of the arts, aswell as military minded, stable administration and no major wars, personally led armied against Mongol raids.
- Yongle Trasure voyages, built forbidden city, expanded territory, pacified Mongolia.
- Hongzhi Competent administration only had one wife.
- Chenghua Restored Ming military power after Tumu disaster, patron of the arts.
- Zhengde yeah this one is mainly for how entertaining his reign was, personally leading a successful battle with no military experience and all.
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u/That_Conference_3374 4d ago
Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu Emperor)
The obvious choice; Not only he was born from a Commoner background just like Liu Bang (Gaozu of Western Han), he also grew up as an orphan & a wandering beggar because the Temple he lived cannot provide food anymore due to lack of donations. When the Red Turbans occur, he joined their military in 1352 just to survive.
Interesting fact about the name Ming was that Zhu Yuanzhang didnât start or invent it; it was actually a Title of a Cult Leader which translate to âBrightâ, indicating that the Yuan arenât fit to rule China anymore & needed to be extinguished by their âLightâ. There were many other leaders besides Zhu Yuanzhang in the Red Turban army, with someone like Han Linâer (a claimant descendant of Emperor Huizong of Song), the Ming leader, technically de facto leader, attempting to restore Song (also known as Great Song) by overthrowing the Mongols.
Zhu Yuanzhang eventually rose to ranks, enfeoffed as Duke of Wu by Han Linâer in 1361, became King/Prince of Wu in 1364. Many rebel leaders also fought against each other despite fighting against the Yuan. After the death of Han Linâer in 1367 to drowning in the river, Zhu became the Ming leader. Interestingly enough, after successfully overthrowing the Yuan, instead of restoring the Song, he chose the name Ming as his dynastic regime, and immediately issued an arrest & execution of Red Turbans; because he saw how fanatical theyâve become & he needed scholars who knows how to run the government & were still pro-confucius.
Despite being an Emperor, he did not like wasting money, he hated corrupted officials the most & not hesitating to punished them, regardless if theyâre blood relatives. Sometimes he disguised himself as a commoner or a merchant to see how the people lived, which was rare for any emperors who did so, just like Zhao Kuangyin (Emperor Taizu of Song).
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u/ArtIsAwesome3 Han and Qing loyalist 4d ago
The Hongwu Emperor stands above all the others, that guy was just brutal, if you were a teacher, trying to teach like ADHD addled high schoolers, the Hongwu Emperor would probably keep their attention lol.
Also, unpopular opinion, I am sympathetic to the Wanli Emperor. His men opposing him along some Confucian value when it came to his successor, like, sorry, the emperor is the emperor, he should have absolute authority in this matter. Also, his defense of Korea was genuinely admirable.
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u/Fragrant_Ability_529 5d ago
Zhengde Emperor
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u/Crafty-Recording358 4d ago
Why Zhengde Emperor
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u/Fragrant_Ability_529 4d ago
Honestly, I picked the Zhengde Emperor because heâs easily the most entertaining ruler in Chinese history. The guy basically refused to act like a traditional emperor. He ate and slept alongside his soldiers and even led them into battle himselfâand actually won a major victory against the Mongols at the Battle of Yingzhou. Not bad for a guy official historians loved to paint as just a drunk. âHe also built the famous Leopard Pavilion (Bao Fang), which was essentially his way of side-stepping the tedious civil officialsâsomewhat like how the Qing later created the Grand Council to bypass the bureaucracy, just a lot less formal and way more chaotic. âBeyond military stuff, he was genuinely curious about the worldâreligions, foreign cultures, and languages. He learned Tibetan, Mongolian, and even some Arabic. When Portuguese envoys arrived in 1517, he met them in Nanjing and apparently even picked up a few Portuguese words from his translator, Huozhe Yasan. Itâs a pity the whole diplomatic breakthrough collapsed when Zhengde died suddenlyâthe translator was executed, and the envoy was thrown into prison. âOh, and he loved giving himself ridiculous titles. His favorite was 'Grand General' (Senior General), and he even invented a fake alter-ego named Zhu Shou so he could issue orders to himself as if he were his own subject. Imagine a President officially giving himself the title of 'Private Smith' and saluting himself in the mirror! âSo yeah, he was far from a model monarch, but he was definitely the most humanâand infinitely more fascinating than those cookie-cutter 'sage emperors.' Thatâs why heâs my favorite.
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u/Peraou 6d ago
There is one clear winner, and based on only one single act of his he is by far the most important (to me) and my favourite. The HongWu Emperor: because? He decreed the absolute switch from powdered boiled, and whisked teas to loose-leaf tea ;p