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Ming Dynasty

Ming dynasty
明朝
1368–1644
Ming China around 1580
Capital Nanjing (Yingtian prefecture)
(1368–1644)
Beijing (Shuntian prefecture)
(1403–1644)
Languages Official language:
Mandarin
Other Chinese languages
Other languages:
Turki (Modern Uyghur), Old Uyghur language, Tibetan, Mongolian, Jurchen, others
Religion Heaven worship, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, Islam, Roman Catholicism
Government Absolute monarchy
Emperor ()
 •  1368–1398 Hongwu Emperor
 •  1627–1644 Chongzhen Emperor
Senior Grand Secretary
 •  1402–1407 Xie Jin
 •  1644 Wei Zaode
History
 •  Established in Nanjing 23 January 1368
 •  Beijing designated as capital 28 October 1420
 •  Fall of Beijing 25 April 1644
 •  End of the Southern Ming 1683
Area
 •  1415 6,500,000 km² (2,509,664 sq mi)
Population
 •  1393 est. 65,000,000 
 •  1403 est. 66,598,337¹ 
 •  1500 est. 125,000,000² 
 •  1600 est. 160,000,000³ 
Currency Paper money (1368–1450)
Bimetallic:
copper cashes (文, wén) in strings of coin and paper
Silver taels (兩, liǎng) in sycees and by weight
Preceded by 		Succeeded by
Yuan dynasty
Qing dynasty
Today part of
Remnants of the Ming dynasty ruled southern China until 1662, and Taiwan until 1683 a dynastic period which is known as the Southern Ming.
¹The numbers are based on estimates made by CJ Peers in Late Imperial Chinese Armies: 1520–1840
²According to A. G. Frank, ReOrient: global economy in the Asian Age, 1998, p. 109
³According to A. Maddison, The World Economy Volume 1: A Millennial Perspective Volume 2, 2007, p. 238
Ming Dynasty
Ming dynasty (Chinese characters).svg
"Ming dynasty" in Chinese characters
Chinese 明朝
Great Ming
Chinese 大明
Empire of the Great Ming
Traditional Chinese 大明帝國
Simplified Chinese 大明帝国

The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Empire of the Great Ming – for 276 years (1368–1644) following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history," was the last imperial dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the Shun dynasty, soon replaced by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty), regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683.

The Hongwu Emperor (ruled 1368–98) attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang Ming Zu Xun, a set of published dynastic instructions. This failed spectacularly when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attempted to curtail his uncles' power, prompting the Jingnan Campaign, an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, and restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa.


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