Foreign Relations
The same institutional flexibility and potential for subversion were apparent in the Ming dynasty's approach to relations with neighboring polities and peoples. Often labeled the “tributary system,” the Ming dynasty's foreign relations were predicated in part on an encompassing, hierarchical worldview that took the Chinese emperor, his court, and its protocol as central, order-giving, and standard-setting.
The Ming state and educated men often described such relations in terms of a compassionate and munificent Son of Heaven who encouraged with generous gifts and titles neighboring rulers to report to the capital with local tribute as material evidence of their acknowledgment of the emperor as holder of the Mandate of Heaven and supreme ruler in the world. In recent years, the tributary system regained has prominence, as scholars, pundits, and politicians look to history as a guide to how an ascendant China may use its new influence and power. Some argue that past understanding of the tributary system has been overly facile, a misleading and essentializing caricature of China's foreign relations that obscures striking parallels with other major early modern empires.[1460] One hopes that scholars will essay integrated analyses of Ming imperial rhetoric, geopolitical demands, court politics, economic burdens, and military capabilities. In a now classic study, Arthur Waldron demonstrated that the Ming state's massive investment in the construction and maintenance of the Great Wall resulted not from unchanging cultural preferences, but as a compromise solution to unresolved political, intellectual, and economic tensions surrounding dynastic defenses and foreign relations. His central concern was, however, was not the practice of Ming diplomacy per se.[1461] Focusing on the gap between symbolic rhetoric preferences and “hard realpolitik strategic culture,” Alastair Johnston rejected the characterization of Chinese foreign relations as fundamentally war-averse, an image primarily derived from a particular reading of the classical textual tradition, noting instead the Ming state's readiness to use force both in external extermination campaigns and against Mongols raiding in Ming territory.[1462] Johnston's study also focuses primarily on Ming approaches to the Mongols and is not concerned with the specifics of how the Ming state attempted to shape neighbors' behavior. Drawing on structural realism, Yuan-kang Wang has stressed that the tribute system was “a function of material power” and that “behind the facade of harmony and benevolence lay the iron fist of military force.”[1463] Many more empirical and conceptual studies are needed before a clear understanding of Ming foreign relations is possible. Jurchen and Mongol nobles, patriarchs of Tibetan religious orders, sultans of Central Asian city-states, kings of Choson Korea or Le Vietnam, and the military authorities of Muromachi Japan varied in terms of rhetoric and practice far beyond the distinction sometimes drawn between countries that used the Sinitic script (such as Korea, Vietnam, Ryukyu, and Japan) and all the rest. Although they may enhance narrative clarity and conceptual elegance, blanket terms like Mongols, Jurchens, Tibetans, and Yao efface the diversity of leaders (including the nature of their authority, preferred modes of interaction, geographical span, and sheer numbers) with which the Ming state and its local representatives maintained relations. To give a sense of the variety of leaders that the Ming state engaged on a regular basis, let us briefly consider just two contrasting examples, the Choson dynasty and the Mongols.Among all its neighbors, the Choson dynasty best conformed to the ideals of the tribute system and most closely resembled the Ming's political organization and cultural traditions. In fact, in most ways it was exceptional and should not be taken as a representative illustration of the tributary system at work.[1464] It was a sedentary society with relatively clear borders, a stable hereditary ruling house headed by a king, a clearly articulated bureaucracy divided into civil and military branches, and a literate aristocratic elite with a deep and multifaceted engagement with Chinese literature, history, philosophy, military science, medicine, arts, and political institutions. The Choson court strove to adhere to Ming diplomatic protocol, including regular delivery of felicitations to the emperor and the imperial family, presentation of stipulated tribute, consistent use of deferential titles, language, and notification of important domestic political developments (most especially matters related to the king and heir apparent) and foreign relation issues of common interest.[1465]
Despite the Choson court's efforts to observe Ming diplomatic protocol and its reputation as “a land of propriety and righteousness,” its political traditions and socioeconomic structures diverged from those of the Ming and it never abandoned its pursuit of dynastic interests.[1466] Choson kings seldom enjoyed the power or stature of Ming emperors; aristocratic pedigrees loomed far larger for Choson than Ming elites; the Choson economy was far smaller, less commercialized, more regional, and much more dependent on slave labor.[1467] In the realm of foreign relations, the Ming and Choson ruling houses clashed periodically over their borders (particularly during the fourteenth century), relations with Jurchen nobles, terms of trade, and the portrayal of the Choson founder in official Ming publications.
The Choson court aggressively lobbied influential members of the Ming court (from senior ministers to lowly eunuch attendants) and important border officials to shape Ming political, military, and ritual decisions (including recognition of kings who came to power through usurpation and coups d'etat).[1468] The Choson court cultivated relations with Jurchen nobles, Japanese aristocrats (and warriors), and the Okinawan royal house, which it hierarchically structured in ways that often mirrored its own relations with the Ming.[1469] The Ming court's understanding of Choson court dynamics and domestic socioeconomic conditions was flawed and incomplete. Finally, this “ideal” tribute state switched its allegiance to the Ming's greatest rival of the seventeenth century, the Qing dynasty, in 1636, nearly a decade before the Ming fell.[1470]The social relations that grew out of empire both promoted and subverted Ming strategic objectives and ideological constructs. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Ming emperors demanded that the Choson court provide eunuchs and less frequently women to serve within the imperial palace, where they should care for the emperor's intimate needs. Despite service in Beijing, such Choson eunuchs retained ties to Korea, a situation that both the Ming and Choson courts attempted to exploit. The Ming court often employed Choson eunuchs, who spoke Korean as their native language and understood court protocol as a result of training, as its official envoys to the Choson court, where they were to pursue Ming interests. At the same time, the Choson court prevailed upon Korean eunuchs to provide details of Ming court politics and occasionally act as unofficial spokesmen for Choson interests. Such private lobbying had no place in the mode of exclusive ruler-to- ruler relations that the Ming court officially espoused. Nor was it consonant with the image of an earnestly obedient tribute state that scrupulously followed the directives of the Son of Heaven.
Finally, Choson (and Chinese) eunuchs exploited their position as intermediaries with access to powerful men and women at the Ming court to seek wealth, influence, and status for themselves and their (usually male) family members.In contrast to the Choson dynasty, “the Mongols” from the late fourteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries were not a united polity under the leadership of a single ruler. In addition to the successors of Chinggis Khan and Qubilai who claimed privileged status as the Great Yuan ruling house (until the 1630s), a series of ambitious nobles from regional aristocratic orders from the eastern Mongolian steppe to Central Asia attempted to bring more people and territory under their direct control through marriage alliances, political jockeying, military force, and perhaps most importantly promises of material wealth.[1471] Thus, rather than a single king and single court, the Ming court interacted simultaneously with dozens of Mongol nobles of various pedigrees and spheres of influence.[1472] Mongol rulers' territory, vast and ill-defined in Ming eyes, and the array of steppe alliances, unstable and unpredictable when compared to a sedentary kingdom like the Choson, posed acute challenges to the Ming court. Its representatives, including civil officials, military officers, and Mongols and Muslim Central Asians in the employ of the Ming state, traveled to the borderlands and into the steppe to meet with both established leaders and up-and-coming men. Such meetings took the form of hunts, banquets, the exchange of gifts, formal presentation of imperial edicts, or informal negotiations with promises of military assistance, reminders of past favors and generosity, threats of recrimination, and a constant evaluation of self-interest and temporary alliances. The specifics of such interactions are poorly recorded, usually available only in formal Chinese-language pronouncements couched in terms of a mighty but compassionate Chinese emperor who sought to guide errant and often grasping Mongol leaders back into the Ming fold.
Relatively few Mongol communications to the Ming throne survive, and those that do are heavily edited Chinese- language versions.[1473]As noted earlier, the Ming state sought to efface its competition with other aspiring rulers. Its rhetoric recognized no ruler commensurate to the Ming emperor; nor did it acknowledge that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century steppe rulers such as Esen-Temur (d. 1455), Dayan-qaghan (1464-1543), and Altan-qaghan (1507-1582) aggressively sought the obedience and allegiance of what the Ming considered subject peoples and polities.[1474] Although many aspects of contemporary Mongolian empire-building are only poorly reflected in extant Chinese records, the repeated references to “traitorous” Ming subjects who allied with Altan-qaghan as political and military advisors, marriage ties with ostensible Ming allies such as the Uriyangkhad Doen, Fuyu, and Taining (on the Ming's northeast border), and the loss of client states such as Hami (in today's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China) reveal that educated Chinese observers knew that the Ming Empire's dominance was contested. Mongol leaders threatened the Ming state not only because they raided the border, seizing livestock, grain, and captives, but also because they constituted an alternate source of political patronage and military support. The same can be said of the Choson court, which supplied Jurchen leaders with titles, grain, access to frontier markets, and occasional military support in its effort to secure stable borders.
Seen in this light, a major focal point of the Ming dynasty's foreign relations was the effort to win allies and influence behavior through incentives.[1475] The Ming court offered valuable gifts such as gold brocade gowns, opportunities for lucrative, state-subsidized trade, official recognition and investiture as king or military commander that conferred a measure of political capital at home, the privilege of travel to Asia's greatest capital, access to the exclusive space of the Imperial City and audience with the emperor, and finally, implicit promises of material and military aid in times of crisis—in a word, a place in the Ming imperial order.
Although it is tempting to conclude that neighboring peoples and polities discounted the formal structure and rhetoric of such relations as a vain-glorious charade, empty hubris to be endured as the price of gifts from the Ming throne and access to China's economy, the value and understanding of a place in the Ming imperial order varied according to time and region. Some Choson envoys were deeply moved by imperial court rituals, especially audiences with the emperor, recording not only their grandeur and majesty, but also a sense that informed inclusion in such events distinguished them from barbarians who were shown lesser favor and demonstrated little appreciation of court protocol and its cosmological underpinnings. Far from wideeyed ingenues, Choson envoys were fully cognizant of officials' corruption, lackluster emperors, and venal bureaucrats, but they and their king valued their place in the Ming imperial order. Economic advantage figured far more prominently for Japanese leaders during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when domestic political control devolved away from both the court and the military government headed by the Ashikaga family that held power through the court's authorization. Tribute tallies, issued by the Ming government and required by local authorities before Japanese were admitted to the port of Ningbo, their cargoes inspected, prices set, trade conducted, and a portion of the mission escorted to the capital, became commodities that were bought, stolen, and occasionally forged.[1476]Mongolian perceptions of the Ming imperial order raise several questions. One can point to the behavior of leaders like Esen, who in the mid-fifteenth century dispatched envoy missions to Beijing whose size exceeded regulations by a factor of 10 (and were correspondingly expensive to host), as cynical manipulation of the Ming imperial order designed to maximize economic resources and further political consolidation on the steppe. This is part of a long-term pattern of interaction that Thomas Barfield calls the “outer frontier strategy,” whereby steppe leaders intimidated the Chinese court with raids and, through alternating war and peace, extracted great subsidies and trade privileges.[1477] Morris Rossabi similarly highlights the economic dimension of the tributary system, characterizing it as often little more than thinly disguised trade.[1478] The emphasis that Barfield, Rossabi, and others place on the wealth to be gained through regulated trade and its importance to political consolidation is an indispensable counterpoint to an idealized Chinese rhetoric of the Son of Heaven bestowing generous gifts on obedient and faithful subordinates who were moved to offer local tribute without thought of profit or personal advantage.
However, to reduce the relationship to nothing more than extortion and subsidized trade is to ignore some key questions. Did contemporaries understand rulerships as ethnically or geographically circumscribed (self-enclosed and isolated) or as part of a more encompassing whole a la Stanley J. Tambiah's galactic polity?[1479] Based on Chinese and Mongolian documentary evidence, several scholars have observed that Mongols considered the presentation of gifts or tribute to the throne as “an act of allegiance in accordance with Central Asian traditions.”[1480] If we grant some measure of commensurability and interaction of Ming and Mongol rulerships, how were such dynamics perceived and represented? Such questions are especially relevant given the legacy of the Mongol Empire, when Khans of Khans (qaghans) were simultaneously Sons of Heaven (in eastern Eurasia), who claimed universal rulership over highly diverse populations. From the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, Ming emperors periodically claimed rulership over the steppe and the sown, appealing to the Buddhist concept of cakravartin, the universal ruler whose chariot wheels move without obstruction in all directions, as had Mongol khans during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries.[1481] Sixteenth-century Mongolian chronicles celebrate military raids on Ming territory and rich booty-t aking by Dayan-qaghan and Altan-qaghan, but they also acknowledge a special supernatural status for the mid-fifteenth century emperor, Zhengtong, and speak of “a China-Mongol state.”[1482] Other Mongolian (and Chinese) accounts held that the Ming emperor Yongle was actually the son of Toghan-Temur (by a Yuan woman captured and added to the Ming founder's harem), thus incorporating him into the Chinggisid lineage and in effect placing a Mongol on the Ming throne.[1483] Finally, recent work by David Sneath has challenged long-standing, essentialized kinshipbased models of tribes and clans, highlighting the constructed nature of polities and warning against a strict bifurcation between state and society.[1484] As we rethink the nature of steppe political and social organization, we will need to reconsider the interplay of Mongol and Ming rulerships.
The Ming court was one court among others in Eurasia, the Ming state one among many in the world. The Ming state's specific objectives varied according to individual peoples or polity, but its overarching goals, such as security, extraction of resources, and political legitimization (international recognition), had ready parallels to other empires in other times and places. It showed limited interest in projecting its dominant cultural or ideological values, usually only insofar as they facilitated acceptance of a hierarchical order that granted the Ming pride of place. To achieve its security objectives in Eurasia, the Ming state adopted several main strategies, including military force, diplomacy, and the “soft power” elements of the tributary system, which shifted depending on the perspectives of individual rulers, dynamics of court politics, developments in wider political culture, and geopolitical circumstances. The Ming dynasty maintained sophisticated and flexible institutions to govern its varied and complex populations. The imperial state recognized divergent traditions of political organization and governance, understood that borderland populations were fluid, in both administrative and demographic senses, and realized that insistence on a monolithic system of rule throughout the empire was futile. Finally, no single enduring consensus unified the Ming throne, capital bureaucrats, local officials, educated men, or border populations on any question.
Divergent ideas and policies regarding the nature of “the Other” informed policies of interaction. Were non-Chinese populations inherently and inalterably alien, or were differences in language, dress, and other lifeways the product of divergent cultural and material conditions? Was the inculcation of proper moral values through education and gradual “mainstreaming” through integration into standard administrative governance possible, or was the wiser course to reduce conflicts by keeping populations separate through self-rule? Ming observers engaged such matters as both metaphysical questions and domestic policy issues.[1485] Parallel tensions shaped foreign relations, as officials and scholars argued whether fundamental differences between Chinese and “the Other” would inevitably lead to conflict best managed through minimizing contact, or whether a confluence of interests (and humanity) suggested that the mutual satisfaction of desires might lead to stability and some measure of peace. No single Ming answer to any of these issues ever emerged.[1486] Intellectual fashion shifted; rulers and officials often viewed the world differently; rulers' vision of the world diverged from that of their predecessors; and geopolitical questions seldom yielded easy consensus.