THE MING DYNASTY [click here for an overview with a map and some absolutely gorgeous illustrations; the map below is from this website, with even more background data]
Note: The green, or for some titles red, text is the original Wikipedia timeline, frequently corrected by me for grammar and spelling errors. The blue text is my gradual development of the timeline into a fuller history and commentary (with follow-up notes in amber). Because I am interested in the positives of human history, and can only find negatives in most of the politics, I have reduced most of the political history from green to grey, so it is still there, and you are obviously free to follow the links and find out more, but I honestly cannot imagine why you would want to.
[“After nearly a hundred years of Mongol rule, China returned to
native rulership in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644)...” more here]
1371 CE: Ming implemented the haijin, a ban on all private maritime commerce [power and control!] [calling him “Ming” is simply absurd: he was the Emperor Taizu of Ming, and his birthname was Zhu Yuanzhang, though apparently he was known affectionately as Guorui; Hongwu was the name he gave to the era of his rule, and all his successors followed suit, so I will need to look up the meanings of every one of them as we go through the next 300 years! Hongwu literally means “vastly martial”, which I think may be a euphemism for “megalomaniacal” or it may be a way of describing a society of immense strictness and serious enforcement of that strictness, though probably it’s both]
1373 CE: The Hongwu Emperor abolished the imperial examination in favor of a recommendation system for appointing local Ming officials [still more power and control! Skills irrelevant, sycophancy and obedience paramount]
The Temple of the Six Banyan Trees was rebuilt [where? and why a rebuild? click here]
1375 CE: 16 May: Liu Bowen died [who was he? the brain behind the Ming empire according to this website; a Chinese Nostradamus according to this one]
1380 CE: The Hongwu Emperor abolished the office of chancellor and took over direct control of the Three Departments and Six Ministries [and even more power and control!]
1382 CE: 6 January: Ming conquest of Yunnan: Basalawarmi, the prince of
Liang and a Yuan loyalist, committed suicide during a massive Ming invasion of
Yunnan [and
then extend the geographical range of power and control!]
The Jinyiwei [pronounced See-Eye-Eh in American; click here] was established and given supreme judicial authority and complete autonomy in making arrests and issuing punishments [no further comment needed, because, having completed the process, and confident of his longevity because there were no rivals or competitors left...but there can always be rebels, rivals, aspirant megalomaniacs, at home and overseas...]
1384 CE: The Hongwu Emperor
reinstituted the imperial examination [having put his cronies and lap-dogs in all the key jobs, he has now realised how ineptly incompetent most of them are...]
1397 CE: A legal code based on the
Tang Code was implemented in Ming [here for the outline of the
Tang, here for a
selection from the text; I haven’t yet found a website with this in full]
1398 CE: 24 June: The Hongwu Emperor died
[I must remember to add this date to my GER list]
30 June: The Hongwu Emperor's young grandson the Jianwen Emperor
became emperor of the Ming dynasty [birthname
Zhu Yunwen; Jianwen means “establishing civility”: we shall see]
1402 CE: 13 July: Jingnan Campaign: Forces loyal to the Jianwen
Emperor's uncle the Yongle Emperor entered the capital Nanjing and burned the
imperial palace with the Jianwen Emperor inside
[Yongle, you will not be at all surprised to hear, means
“perpetual happiness”: this too is how conquerors euphemise themselves: “the
land of freedom”, “the land of opportunity”, and “Arbeit Macht Frei” are just
three of our modern-day equivalents; his birthname was Zhu Di]
1405 CE: 11 July: Treasure voyages: The Yongle Emperor ordered a fleet
of Chinese treasure ships under the command of the admiral Zheng He to
re-establish tributary relationships with states in the South China Sea and
Indian Ocean [“tributary
relationships”: still more euphemisms; today we call it “out-sourcing”]
The Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum was completed [where? Nanjing. click here]
1406 CE: Construction began on the Forbidden City and Beijing city fortifications [but, as below, the capital is still Nanjing]
1407 CE: 10 April: The Kagyu
karmapa Deshin Shekpa, 5th Karmapa Lama arrived at the Ming capital Nanjing
[who was he and why did he come? click here:
presumably in hope of negotiating some measure of independence
or autonomy for Tibet: we have witnessed this before with changes of dynasty in
China, and it remains the case as I write this in 2024]
16 June: Ming–Hồ War: Ming forces captured the Hồ king Hồ Hán Thương - and typical of the Wikipedia timeline, this is not explained: but this website does explain it, so click here - a wonderful collection of coins too: and all of it Vietnamese, not Chinese!
1408 CE: The Yongle Encyclopedia was completed [what was it? a Chinese equivalent of the King James Bible? A Chinese equivalent of Wikipedia? And actually, those two are not terribly different (falsehoods and errors passing themselves off as authentic and accurate history)! click here]
1415 CE: Restoration work on the Grand Canal was completed [see 609 and 856 CE]
1420 CE: Construction of the Forbidden City and Beijing city fortifications was completed. The Yongle Emperor moved the Ming capital from Nanjing to Beijing
The Ming tombs were built [13 Ming emperors buried there, 3 not; all listed here]
1424 CE: 12 August: The Yongle Emperor died
7 September: The Yongle Emperor's son the Hongxi Emperor became emperor of the Ming dynasty [birthname Zhu Gaochi; Hongxi means “vastly bright”, whereas his Temple name, Renzong, means “benevolent ancestor”]
1425 CE: 29 May: The Hongxi Emperor died, probably from a heart attack
27 June: The Hongxi Emperor's son the Xuande
Emperor became emperor of the Ming dynasty [another item that should have made it into
“A Journey In Time”; his birthname was Zhu Zhanji; the word means “proclamation
of virtue”]
1427 CE: Shen Zhou was born [who was he? here for the man, here for the paintings]
1431 CE: Ming recognised the Lê
dynasty as a tributary state (the equivalent of the US
President affirming his country’s “special relationship” with the UK)
1435 CE: 31 January: The Xuande Emperor died
7 February: The Xuande Emperor's son the Zhengtong Emperor became
emperor of the Ming dynasty [Zhu
Qizhen his birthname, Zhengtong means “Good Government”]
1443 CE: The Zhihua Temple was
built [where? click here but
also worth looking at this]
á
ONLINE THIS REQUIRES AN ILLUSTRATION
1446 CE: The Precious Belt Bridge
was rebuilt [where? click here and here – both
local]
á
ONLINE THIS REQUIRES AN ILLUSTRATION
1449 CE: 1 September: Tumu Crisis: A Four Oirat force defeated a vastly superior
Ming army at Tumu in modern Huailai County and captured the Zhengtong Emperor [Monghols apparently]
22 September: The Zhengtong Emperor's brother the Jingtai Emperor
became emperor of the Ming dynasty [birthname
Zhu Qiyu; the title means “exalted view”]
1457 CE: 11 February: The Zhengtong Emperor overthrew the Jingtai Emperor in
a coup and took power as the Tianshun Emperor
[same man as before but under a new era-name, which means “Obedient
to Heaven”; he was eventually released, but placed under permanent house arrest
until he staged his coup]
1461 CE: 7 August: Rebellion of
Cao Qin: An uprising of Mongol soldiers in the Ming capital Beijing, led by the
general Cao Qin, was crushed
1464 CE: 23 February: The Zhengtong Emperor died
28
February: The Zhengtong Emperor's son the Chenghua Emperor became emperor of the
Ming dynasty [his
birthname was Zhu Jianshen, though he changed it to Zhu Jianru at the time of
his father’s release from house arrest and his own restoration as Crown Prince;
the title means “accomplished change”]
The Miao and Yao peoples
rebelled against Ming authority in Guangxi
1473 CE: The Zhenjue Temple was
completed [where? click here]
á
ONLINE THIS REQUIRES AN ILLUSTRATION
1487 CE: 9 September: The Chenghua Emperor died
22 September: The Chenghua Emperor's son the Hongzhi Emperor became
emperor of the Ming dynasty [“great
governance”; his birthname was Zhu Youcheng]
1488 CE: The Joseon official Choe Bu suffered a shipwreck in Zhejiang [why does this merit recording?
it was barely more than a minor local news story at the time]
1505 CE: 8 June: The Hongzhi Emperor died
19 June: The Hongzhi Emperor's son the Zhengde Emperor became emperor
of the Ming dynasty [“irreproachable
virtue”; birthname Zhu Houzhao]
1510 CE: 12 May: Prince of Anhua rebellion: Ming tax collectors were
murdered on the orders of Zhu Zhifan, the prince of Anhua in modern Shaanxi
1511 CE: 15 August: Capture of
Malacca: A Portuguese invasion force conquered the Malacca Sultanate [as
noted above, all alpha males want to rule the world: here is the next example
of nationalism as the flag of convenience; the Dutch and British are not far
behind and this will fill up the grey spaces of this page for the next four
hundred years]
1513 CE: The Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares arrived on Lintin
Island in the Pearl River Delta [“explorer” is an
interesting euphemism; “pirate” would be more accurate, though it is possible
he was only sent to explore the possibilities of piracy, and not at this stage
expected to bring home any treasures himself]
1516 CE: The Portuguese explorer Rafael Perestrello arrived in
Guangzhou [so we can say with certainty that in the second decade of the
16th century, Portugal “discovered China”, just as Spain had done
America two decades earlier]
1517 CE: The Portuguese ambassadors Fernão Pires de Andrade and Tomé
Pires arrived in Guangzhou
1519 CE: 10 July: Prince of Ning rebellion: The prince of Ning Zhu
Chenhao declared that the Zhengde Emperor was a usurper and led an expedition
toward Nanjing [but hsn’t the emperor moved to Beijing? see 1420 CE]
1521 CE: 20 April: The Zhengde Emperor died [sadly
Wikipedia provides no detail of how this came to pass so soon after the 1519
events: click here to
find out]
27 May: The Zhengde Emperor's cousin, the Chenghua Emperor's
grandson the Jiajing Emperor, became emperor of the Ming dynasty [“admirable tranquility”;
birthname Zhu Houcong, but it appears that all these emperors also had
Temple-names. so I will need to go back and find them all: this one’s was
Shizong, and several emperors had held the title before him]
The Jiajing Emperor expelled the Portuguese embassy
1529 CE: Wang Yangming died [who was he? a philosopher: click here for the general; here for the detail]
1530 CE: An improved sand-driven mechanical clock was invented
1549 CE: Portuguese trade ships first stopped at Shangchuan Island
1550 CE: The Mongol chieftain Altan Khan burned and looted the Ming
capital Beijing and its suburbs
1553 CE: The Ming capital Beijing was expanded to the south,
increasing its size from 10 to 12 square kilometres (4 to 4.5 square miles)
1554 CE: The Luso-Chinese
agreement (1554) for Macau is made between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Ming
dynasty
1556 CE: 23 January: Shaanxi
earthquake killed some eight hundred thousand people
1557 CE: The Kingdom of Portugal
established a permanent settlement in Macau [permanent
became something of an overstatement in 1999: click here for
the See-Eye-Eh account of this (I believe the article may have been written by
a resident of the Northern Mariana Islands and sub-edited in Equatorial Guinea)]
1558 CE: Ming forces led by Qi Jiguang dealt the wokou a defeat at
Cengang [“wokou”?
Japanese pirates: click here; and how do you say "wokou" in Portuguese? in English they are known as "drakes" and "raleighs"]
1567 CE: 23 January: The Jiajing Emperor died
4 February: The Jiajing Emperor's son the Longqing Emperor became
emperor of the Ming dynasty [“great
celebration”; birthname Zhu Zaiji, Temple name Emperor Muzong of Ming , but
this one also had an “art-name”, which was Shunzhai]
The Ming haijin (ban on private maritime commerce) was repealed [presumably because the Portuguese "traders" carried cannons and muskets among their cargo of goods, though these two items were not in fact for sale]
1572 CE: 5 July: The Longqing Emperor died
19 July: The Longqing Emperor's son the Wanli Emperor became emperor
of the Ming dynasty [“ten
thousand calendars“, birthname Zhu Yijun, art name Yuzhai, Temple name Shenzong
of Ming]
1573 CE: Spain established a
permanent base at Manila [Maynilad before the Spaniards couldn't pronounce it properly: "the place where the nilads grow": "nilads" being mangroves, the native language being Tagalog: click here]
1574 CE: Qin Liangyu was born [who was she? China’s Super-Idess and therefore more likely to reach my GER page than the “Exemplary Chinese Women”: cick here, but it’s pretty ghastly-male stuff: alpha female if you prefer]
1576 CE: The Pagoda of Cishou Temple was built [where? click here]
1577 CE: The Wanshou Temple was built [where? click here]
1580 CE: The grand secretary Zhang
Juzheng instituted the single whip law, under which all monetary and labour
obligations to the central government were consolidated into a single silver
payment [and I thought a “whip” was the means by which leaders of
political parties ensured that all their juniors in the democratic Parliament
voted the way they were instructed, and not the way they believed]
1582 CE: Jesuit China missions:
The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci arrived in Macau [and
now we have a conflict that merits serious investigation, because Rome is
already moving its Jesuit army to the borders, and both Catholic Spain and Catholic Portugal
have their trading expeditions sailing in post-Ming haijin waters; so will
China be conquered by Roman Catholicism, or by the Iberian East India Company,
or both, or neither? watch here for the answer]
Private newspapers were first published in Beijing [does that mean there were already public, which is to say “state-propaganda”, newspapers before this? what were their names? one gets listed below: 1638 CE: The Peking Gazette, though I think that is an error, that it should be plural, and that it was the generic name for all those "private newspapers": I would say more, based on this article, but I have no access to it beyond the landing page at the link, and what came up on the search engine where I found it: "The Peking Gazettes were often published by private publishers for profit. ... Because the Peking Gazettes were the only source of news on ..." ]
1584 CE: The earliest known depiction of the sailing carriage appeared [and what is a “sailing carriage” anyway? click here]
1587 CE: Li Shizhen published the
Compendium of Materia Medica [which contained what?
Arab-Moslem knowledge, or Chinese separately? see 657 and 1024 CE for 2
earlier examples of the same: click here for
him and his work]
1590 CE: Wu Cheng'en wrote Journey
to the West [I have come across this man before and
have a piece about him somewhere: yes indeed, right here in
Private Collection, with his personal tale told as well as his imaginary one
about the dragon, and a link to here]
1592 CE: Japanese invasions of Korea: Some two hundred thousand Japanese troops invaded Joseon [the next installment of my note at 1582: because there are also Monghol forces along the northern borders, and now Japanese samurai threatening from the east]
1593 CE: 8 January: Siege of Pyongyang: A combined Ming-Joseon force drove
the Japanese army from Pyongyang [oh
well, cancel my last note; or perhaps – not quite yet]
1597 CE: 23 December: Siege of Ulsan: A combined Ming-Joseon force arrived
at the Japanese-controlled Ulsan Japanese Castle
1598 CE: 29 September: Battle of Sacheon: A Japanese army under siege at
Sacheon drove off a numerically superior Ming-Joseon force after the accidental
explosion of the Ming powder cache
16 December: Battle of Noryang: The allied navies of Ming and Joseon
dealt heavy damage to a Japanese fleet attempting to break their blockade of
Suncheon Japanese Castle
The Peony Pavilion was first performed at the Pavilion of Prince Teng -[and eat your patience out Richard Wagner, this one takes 22 hours to perform!: click here. For the Bayreuth parallel, click here
1602 CE: The Dutch East India
Company (VOC) began shipping Chinese ceramics to Europe [Dutch.
Not Spanish or Portuguese. Dutch. Protestant Dutch. I did warn you]
1604 CE: The grand secretary Gu Xiancheng reopened the Donglin Academy in Wuxi, establishing the Donglin movement [the return to Confucianism: click here. For the man, here, and here]
1607 CE: Euclid's Elements was first translated into Chinese [I think that should be “were” translated]
1609 CE: Sancai Tuhui was published [“Assembled Pictures of the Three Realms”. click here]
1610 CE: Jin Ping Mei was published [a ghastly murder mystery by the sound of it; I am skipping this]
1615 CE: The Zihui was compiled
[yet another dictionary: click here; the
compiler was named Mei Yingzuo, with the courtesy name Dansheng: an explanation of how he defined the writing of Chinese characters here]
1616 CE: 17 February: Nurhaci declared himself khan of the later Jin dynasty
[as I reminded you at 1592, the Monghols haven’t given up yet;
though I take this to mean a wannabe prince in exile making a declaration of
aspiration: but was it? see 1619]
All foreign Jesuits were expelled from the Ming imperial court and astronomy bureau [How odd! Jesuists and astronomy don’t obviously go together, the one being priests of the mythological stage of human development, KS1, astronomy being a serious activity of the epistemological stage, KS3 or even 4: see my follow-up to this thought at the listing for Michał Boym in 1627. As to the politics of the incident, can we assume that Chinese Jesuits were permitted to continue, or was this about getting rid of Christianity altogether (but then, if they were selling china – albeit with a lower case C - to the Dutch, maybe they wanted to get rid of Roman Catholicism but allow Calvinist Protestantism)]
1619 CE: 18 April: Battle of Sarhu: The last of four Ming armies was
destroyed during a retreat from a punitive expedition against Nurhaci and the
later Jin. Its commander Li Rubai committed suicide
Wang Fuzhi was born [as under 1604 CE, the revival of Confucianism: click here; and
then add this as another option for my note to 1616]
1620 CE: 18 August: The Wanli Emperor died
28 August: The Wanli Emperor's son the Taichang Emperor became emperor of the Ming dynasty [“grand prosperity”, birthname Zhu Changluo]
26 September: The Taichang Emperor died
1 October: The Taichang Emperor's young son the Tianqi Emperor became emperor of the Ming dynasty [“heavenly opening”; birthname Zhu Youjiao]
1624 CE: The VOC established the state of Dutch Formosa
[what is the VOC? see 1604; and confirmation that none of these
people have come just to trade; they want to own the country, so they can
“provide job opportunities at home and abroad”, and “assist the native
population in mining its mineral resources (while taking a percentage of those
resources simply as a commission)”; and of course, at the same time, “bestow upon an
uneducated people the cultural wisdom and the system of good-governance that we have been fortunate to be born into”] today's Taiwan, as per the map below:
1626 CE: Johann Adam Schall von Bell wrote the first Chinese language treatise on the telescope [where and how did he learn Chinese? or was he a remnant of the entry on 1616? click here]
The Jesuit Nicolas Trigault invented the first system for the romanisation of Chinese [which may provide the easy answer to my previous ? - missionaries in the land will have needed to acquire the language: click here, but need to follow up who was Matteo Ricci; here. As to the Trigault system, click here
Battle of Ningyuan: A Ming force defended Xingcheng against a numerically superior later Jin army. Nurhaci suffered fatal wounds [and again we are mixing up the history of the “other” China with that of the “main” one: as though, in the midst of a piece about Richard the Lion-Heart, we heard that King William the Lion of Alba (Scotland) had been killed]
1627 CE: January: First Manchu
invasion of Korea: Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji, the khan of the later Jin dynasty,
invaded Joseon
30 September: The Tianqi Emperor died
2 October: The Tianqi Emperor's younger brother the Chongzhen Emperor became [the 17th and last] emperor of the Ming dynasty [“The Chongzhen Emperor, personal name Zhu Youjian, was the 17th and last Emperor of the Ming dynasty as well as the last ethnic Han to rule over China before the Manchu Qing conquest. He reigned from 1627 to 1644. "Chongzhen," the era name of his reign, means "honorable and auspicious." that from Google arts & Culture]
13 December: The eunuch Wei Zhongxian committed suicide on hearing that the Jinyiwei had issued a warrant for his arrest [why is this even listed? from what little I have bothered to find out, remove him immediately to the GER list]
The Zhengzitong was published [yet another dictionary: the Chinese are building the Library at Babel! click here]
The Polish Jesuit Michał Boym first introduced the heliocentric model of the solar system into Chinese astronomy [one hundred and fifty-four years precisely since Copernicus’ De Rerum was published (click here), and then banned and burned by Fra Boym’s church... maybe they didn’t go to China to proselytyse, but because it was far enough away from Rome that they could engage in science without risk of condemnation; given what Schreck - see below - took with him, and did when he got there... and the mathematicians listed above...] if you can read Polish, click here; if not here
1632 CE: The later Jin dynasty conquered Inner Mongolia [as noted previously, their land was Manchuria; so another intervention from the “other” China]
1634 CE: The Chongzhen Emperor
acquired the telescope of the late Johann Schreck [click here for the Galileo
connection; and yes, he too was a Jesuit missionary]
1635 CE: Liu Tong wrote a preface
to the Dijing Jingwulue [“A brief guide
to tourist spots in the imperial capital city"; click here]
1637 CE: 30 January: Second Manchu invasion of Korea: The Joseon king Injo of Joseon recognised Hong Taiji's Qing dynasty as the legitimate rulers of China [which is a very gentle way of saying “surrendered”; and they weren’t even ethnically Chinese! Manchu from Manchuria: different language, different culture, but they were about to become the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China, and by 1790 the fourth-largest empire in world history in terms of territorial size]
Song Yingxing published the Tiangong Kaiwu [which is what? natural history: click here]
1638 CE: The Peking Gazette first
used moveable type [but it was invented in 1041!]
Chen Hongshou arrived in Beijing [who was
he? here for
the man, here for
the paintings: adjacent is titled "Bird and Peach-Blossom Branch", but go to the link and look at "Lady Xuanwen giving instruction on the rites of Zhou"; too large to post here, but absolutely magnificent]
1641 CE: 8 March: Xu Xiake died
[who was he? “Chinas first travel-blogger” is the splendid
sobriquet at this website]
1642 CE: Yellow River flood: The
Ming governor of Kaifeng destroyed the levees holding back the Yellow River in
order to break the siege of the peasant army of Li Zicheng. The resulting flood
destroyed Kaifeng and killed some three hundred thousand people
A Han army was made the last of the Qing Eight Banners [what were they? click here; but NB this is Qing culture, not Ming, so presumably this was a facet of the conquest; see below]
1643: 21 September: Hong Taiji
died [and he the first of the Qing rulers, confirming my assumption
above; but the wiki text tells me his son was the 3rd, not the
second, as my assumption would insist: this needs following-up]
8 October: Hong Taiji's young son the Shunzhi Emperor became emperor of the Qing dynasty [“The Shunzhi Emperor (15 March 1638 – 5 February 1661), also known by his temple name Emperor Shizu of Qing, personal name Fulin, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper.”]
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