User:Madalibi/Ming-Qing transition (1619-1683)

The Ming-Qing transition refers to the transitional period between the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1619, when Jurchen chieftain Nurhaci defeated several Ming expeditions sent to punish him for seizing the city of Fushun in Ming territory, to 1683, when Nurhaci's descendant the Kangxi Emperor defeated Koxinga, the last defender of Ming loyalism in southeastern China.

Historian Frederic Wakeman has called this period "the most dramatic dynastic transition in Chinese history." These dramatic events attracted the attention of writers and intellectuals, who tried to understand why the Ming had fallen. The Ming-Qing transition was thus a fruitful period for Chinese philosophy, arts, and literature.

Economic crises
During the last years of Wanli's reign and those of his two successors, an economic crisis developed that was centered around a sudden lack of the empire's chief medium of exchange: silver. Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621–65) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific towards China, in favor of shipping American-mined silver directly from Spain to Manila. In 1639, the new Tokugawa regime of Japan shut down most of its foreign trade with European powers, causing a halt of yet another source of silver for China. These events caused a dramatic spike in the value of silver and made paying taxes nearly impossible for most provinces. People began hoarding silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper to silver into a steep decline. For peasants this was an economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver but conducted local trade and sold their crops with copper coins.

In this early half of the seventeenth century, famines became common in northern China because of unusual dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season; these were effects of a larger ecological event now known as the Little Ice Age. Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and the declining inability of the government to manage irrigation and flood-control projects caused widespread loss of life and normal civility. The central government was starved of resources and could do very little to mitigate the effects of these calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic spread across China from Zhejiang to Henan, killing a large but unknown number of people.

The rise of the Manchus
A Jurchen tribal leader named Nurhaci (ruled in 1616–26), starting with just a small tribe, rapidly gained control over all the Manchurian tribes. During the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), he offered to lead his tribes in support of the Ming and Joseon army. This offer was declined, but he was granted honorific Ming titles for his gesture. Recognizing the weakness of Ming authority north of their border, he united all of the adjacent northern tribes and consolidated power in the region surrounding his homeland as the Jurchen-led Jin Dynasty (1115–1234) had done previously. In May 1618 he declared Seven Grievances against the Ming court and led ten thousand men to attack the Ming garrison and trading city of Fushun in Liaodong. In the spring of 1619, the four branches of a multi-pronged campaign led by Yang Hao Yang Hao to punish Nurhaci for taking Fushun was defeated by Nurhaci's unified army. These engagements, which are known collectively as the Battle of Sarhu, were the first of a series of Jurchen military successes against the Ming. This string of victories ended in 1626 at the Battle of Ningyuan, when Yuan Chonghuan use of western artillery helped to defeat the besieging Manchus. Nurhaci, who was hurt during the siege, died a few weeks later and was succeeded by his son Hung Taiji.

By 1636, Hung Taiji renamed his father "Later Jin" dynasty the "Great Qing" at Shenyang, which had fallen to Qing forces in 1621 and was made their capital in 1625. Huang Taiji also adopted the Chinese imperial title huangdi and changed the ethnic name of his people from Jurchen to Manchu. In 1636 the Manchu defeated and conquered Ming China's traditional ally Joseon with an army of 100,000 troops. Shortly after, the Koreans renounced their long-held loyalty to the Ming Dynasty.

Internal rebellions
A peasant soldier named Li Zicheng (1606–45) mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies there. In 1634 he was captured by a Ming general and released only on the terms that he return to service. The agreement soon broke down when a local magistrate had thirty-six of his fellow rebels executed; Li's troops retaliated by killing the officials and continued to lead a rebellion based in Rongyang, central Henan province by 1635. By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li—Zhang Xianzhong (1606–47) —had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu, Sichuan, while Li's center of power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan. In 1640, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. The Chinese military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat the Manchu raiders from the north and huge peasant revolts in the provinces, fell apart.

In February 1644, Li Zicheng founded the Shun Dynasty in Xi'an and proclaimed himself king. In March his armies captured the important city of Taiyuan in Shanxi. Li's troops then started approaching the Ming capital in Beijing. Seeing the progress of the rebels, in early April 5 the Ming Chongzhen Emperor requested the urgent help of any military commandant in the empire. Eager to secure the loyalty of his military elite, he even granted the title of "Earl" to four generals, but to no avail. The last garrison protecting the northern approach to Beijing surrendered to Li Zicheng on April 21. Li's main army reached the suburbs of the capital on April 23, but instead of mounting a full-scale attack on the city walls Li sent a recently surrendered eunuch to try to secure the emperor's surrender. The monarch refused. On April 24 Li Zicheng breached the walls of Beijing; the emperor hanged himself the next day on a hill behind the Forbidden City. He was the last Ming emperor to reign in Beijing.

The Qing conquest
As the Ming dynasty was faltering, the Qing state under Emperor Hung Taiji (r. 1626–1643) was becoming more aggressive. After an intermittent siege that lasted over ten years, Qing armies led by Jirgalang captured Songshan and Jinzhou in early 1642. In the summer of 1642, a Qing army managed to cross the Great Wall and ravaged northern China for seven months before withdrawing in May 1643 with prisoners and booty, without having encountered any significant opposition.

In September 1643 Hung Taiji suddenly died without having named an heir. To avert a conflict between several contenders for succession, a committee of Manchu princes chose to pass the throne to Hong Taiji's five-year-old son Fulin and appointed Hung Taiji's agnate brother Dorgon – a proven military leader – and Jirgalang as co-regents. Because Jirgalang had no political ambition, Dorgon became the prime ruler of the Qing government.

Historian Dai Yingcong has called Dorgon "the mastermind of the Qing conquest." Under his reign, the Qing subdued the capital area, received the capitulation of Shandong local elites and officials, and conquered Shanxi and Shaanxi, then turned their eyes to Jiangnan, where they fought and defeated the loyalist Southern Ming regime. From 1645 to 1647 the Qing also destroyed the last remnants of regimes established by Li Zicheng (killed in 1645) and Zhang Xianzhong (Chengdu taken in early 1647). Remnants of Ming resistance were defeated in Nanjing (1645), Fuzhou (1646), and Guangzhou (1647). In 1662 Wu Sangui caught Zhu Youlang, the last monarch of the Southern Ming, who had found refuge in the far southwestern reaches of China, and then in Burma.

The taking of Beijing
After Beijing fell to Li Zicheng in late April 1644, all territory outside the Great Wall was under Qing control. the only force standing between them and China proper was Wu Sangui's army garrisoning Shanhai Pass, at the eastern end of the Great Wall. Dorgon's Chinese advisors Hong Chengchou and Fan Wencheng (范文程) urged Dorgon to seize the opportunity of the fall of Beijing to claim the Mandate of Heaven for the Qing dynasty. Dorgon accepted to mount a military expedition under the pretense of punishing the rebels who had taken Beijing. When Wu Sangui sent two lieutenants to Dorgon's camp to request his help in defeating the bandits and restoring the Ming, Dorgon asked Wu to work for the Qing instead. Caught between the forces of Li Zicheng and those of the Qing, Wu Sangui accepted Dorgon's offer.

On May 27 Wu's battle-hardened troops and the Qing Banners decisively defeated Li Zicheng's army at the Battle of Shanhai Pass. Li fled back to Beijing, let his troops loot the capital for several days, and fled west one day after declaring himself Emperor of the Shun dynasty on June 3. Dorgon entered Beijing on June 5, receiving homage and the imperial regalia from a stunned population that was expecting Wu Sangui to bring back the Ming heir apparent instead. The young Shunzhi Emperor arrived in Beijing in October and was formally enthroned as Emperor of China on November 8.

Suppressing the bandits
Very soon after entering Beijing on June 5, 1644, Dorgon despatched Wu Sangui and his troops to pursue Li Zicheng. Wu managed to engage Li's rearguard many times, but broke pursuit and returned to Beijing after Li crossed Gu Pass into Shanxi. Li Zicheng then reestablished a power base in Xi'an (Shaanxi province), where he had declared the foundation of his Shun dynasty in February 1644. After suppressing revolts against Qing rule in Hebei and Shandong in the Summer and Fall of 1644, in October Dorgon sent several armies to extirpate Li Zicheng from his stronghold. Qing armies led by Ajige, Dodo, and Shi Tingzhu (石廷柱) won consecutive engagements against Shun forces in Shanxi and Shaanxi, forcing Li Zicheng to leave Xi'an in February 1645. Li retreated through several provinces until he was killed in September 1645, either by his own hand or by a self-defense peasant group.

In early 1646, Dorgon sent two expeditions to Sichuan to try to destroy Zhang Xianzhong's regime: the first expedition did not reach Sichuan because it was caught up against remnants; the second one, under the direction of Hooge (the son of Hung Taiji who had lost the succession struggle of 1643) reached Sichuan in October 1646. Hearing that a Qing army led by a major general was approaching, Zhang Xianzhong fled toward Shaanxi, splitting his troops into four divisions that were ordered to act independently if something were to happen to him. Before leaving, he ordered a massacre of the population of his capital Chengdu. Zhang Xianzhong was killed in a battle against Qing forces near Xichong in central Sichuan on February 1, 1647. Hooge then easily took Chengdu, but found it in a state of desolation he had not expected. Unable to find food in the countryside, his soldiers looted the area, killing resisters, and even resorted to cannibalism as food shortages grew acute.

The Southern Ming
After receiving the news of the Chongzhen Emperor's suicide, in May 1644 the highest officials in the Ming secondary capital in Nanjing met to ponder how they would face the crisis. Since the fate of the Ming heir apparent was still unknown, many thought it was too early to proclaim a new emperor, but most agreed that an imperial figure was necessary to rally loyalist support for the Ming. In early June 1644, the court decided that the caretaker government would be centered around Zhu Yousong, Prince of Fu, who was next in line for succession after the dead emperor's sons. Supported politically and militarily by Ma Shiying (馬士英) and Shi Kefa, the Prince entered the city on June 5. The next day he accepted the title of "Protector of the State" (監國; sometimes also translated as "Regent"), and on June 7 he moved into the imperial palace, where he received the insignia of his new office. Prodded by some court officials, the Prince of Fu immediately started to consider becoming Emperor. After he was officially crowned on June 19, 1644, it was decided that the next lunar year would be the first year of the Hongguang (弘光) reign era.

From the beginning, the Southern Ming regime was beset by corruption and political bickering. In early 1645, Ma Shiying ordered Shi Kefa to protect the court against a threat from Zuo Liangyu (左良玉), a former warlord who now served as governor of Wuchang for the Southern Ming. This displacement of troops facilitated the Qing capture of Yangzhou (which led to the Yangzhou massacre) and the death of Shi Kefa in May 1645, and led almost directly to the annihilation of the Hongguang regime. After the Qing armies crossed the Yangtze River near Zhenjiang on June 1, the Hongguang Emperor fled Nanjing, which surrendered to Manchu Prince Dodo without a fight on June 8, 1645. A detachment of Qing soldiers then captured the fleeing emperor on June 15, and he was brought back to Nanjing on June 18. The fallen Hongguang emperor was later transported to Beijing, where he died the following year.

The reign of the Hongguang Emperor's successor lasted a little more than a year. When Nanjing fell in June 1645, Zhu Yujian was in Suzhou en route to a new fiefdom in Guangxi. When Qing troops captured Hangzhou on July 6, Zhu retreated up the Qiantang River and proceeded to Fujian by land. In August 1645 he founded a new loyalist regime in Fuzhou on the coastal province of Fujian, where he reigned under the title Longwu (隆武). His court, which was based in Fuzhou, was under the protection of Zheng Zhilong, a seatrader with exceptional organizational skills who had surrendered to the Ming in 1628 and been made an earl by the Hongguang emperor. The childless emperor adopted Zheng Zhilong's eldest son, granted him the imperial surname, and gave him a new personal name: Chenggong. The name Koxinga by which this adopted son is still known to Westerners is a distortion of his title "Lord of the Imperial Surname" (Guoxingye 國姓爺). However, when Qing armies attacked Fujian in August 1646, Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Qing and Koxinga fled to the island of Taiwan with his fleet. The Longwu Emperor was captured and summarily executed by Qing troops in October 1646.

The last remains of Ming resistance did not fare much better. In 1646, troops protecting two different claimants to the Ming throne fought each other until one of the two emperors (who reigned under the title Shaowu) was caught and killed by Qing forces near Guangzhou in 1647. The remaining Yongli Emperor managed to resist until 1662, when a Qing expedition led by Wu Sangui caught up with him in Burma.

Philosophy, literature, and the arts


To many Chinese intellectuals, the fall of the Ming was a calamity. Notable thinkers like Wang Fuzhi, Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, and Qian Qianyi, as well as dozens of lesser-known figures, refused to submit to the new dynasty. Many had participated in the reform movements of the end of the Ming dynasty — such as the Donglin movement - and thus held serious reservations about the structure and functioning of Ming government, but they still refused to acknowledge the Qing as the Ming's rightful successor. Wang Fuzhi, who associated his refusal of the Qing with a refusal of rule by a foreign people (the Manchus), supported the Southern Ming regime in Nanjing.

Many, like Lü Liuliang, continued to write anti-Qing and anti-Manchu prose that was circulated among circles of sympathizers. Less active resisters refused to take part in the Qing imperial examinations and devoted themselves to private scholarly research instead. To avoid the haircutting command, many chose to become Buddhist monks. In so doing, they could shave their entire heads instead of only their foreheads in the Manchu style.

The dramatic political events of the Ming-Qing transition inspired novelists and poets. Kong Shangren's Peach Blossom Fan, which the Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature has called "China's greatest historical drama", describes a love story that takes place in Nanjing during the tumultuous reign of the Hongguang Emperor of the Southern Ming.


 * Arts: Gong Xian, Fu Shan (傅山), Wan Shouqi (萬壽祺).
 * Literature: Feng Menglong, Chen Zilong (陳子龍)

Historiography
"The history of the Ming-Qing transition was an instantly sensitive subject but not a forbidden one." One issue was how to speak of the year 1644, which could be either the seventeenth year of Chongzhen or the first year of Shunzhi.