By H. Miller
This e-book appears on the sour factionalism that plagued the final days of China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) as an ideological fight among these scholar-officials who believed that sovereignty resided within the imperial kingdom and people who believed that it resided with the discovered gentry. This dichotomy offers a transparent elucidation of late-Ming factional strife, which inevitably looks very chaotic and has been defined very imperfectly in contemporary histories. It for that reason contributes drastically to our realizing of the autumn of the Ming, and sheds gentle on statecraft in different cultures the place sovereignty is an argument.
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Example text
While carrying out the Single Whip, Hai undertook to restore to poor families various lands that had been expropriated from them by engrossers. This policy brought him famously into conflict with Xu Jie (1503–1583), a former grand secretary in the central government, who had amassed a large estate in Songjiang. The ensuing battle between the two men attests to the preponderance of relative or subjective factors distinguishing the reformers from the reformed. Hai Rui was animated by a Confucian ideology that could well be described as fundamentalist, since he believed its tenets should be Introduction 23 followed literally.
Perhaps he was right. The Longqing emperor died on July 5, 1572, and the deceased monarch’s favorite, Gao Gong, who lacked Zhang’s political savvy as well as his zeal, alienated chief eunuch Fang Bao (1530–1582) and so was forced into retirement. Zhang thus emerged as senior grand secretary, a uniquely powerful position, especially considering that the new Wanli emperor was an eight-year-old boy (for whom Zhang continued to act as guardian). 42 Although Zhang Juzheng has the reputation of being a reformer, his true historical significance derives not from his initiating new reforms but from his centralization of existing reforms, and that is why the narrative of this book begins in 1572, the year of Zhang’s ascension to power.
Again, however, style trumped substance, and benevolent policies became in Zhang’s hands frightening schemes. In a memorial of July 31, 1576, Zhang repeated the adage from the Confucian classic known as the Book of Documents (Shu jing) that the people were the foundation of the state. He next asserted that it was a large part of a local official’s responsibility—as a representative of the state—to remain sensitive to the needs of the people and keep them from hardship. Then, with a sweep of his ministerial hand, he urged that most of the accumulated tax arrears dating back to the end of the emperor Jiajing’s reign be summarily waived.