Introduction
By nearly any standard, the polity that ruled China from 1368 to 1644, the Ming dynasty, should be understood as an empire. If one uses Bang and Bayly's definition, the Ming was a tributary empire, that is, it was based on “the conquest of wide agrarian domains and the taxation of peasant surplus production.”1 The Ming possessed other defining elements of empire.2 It ruled broad lands, approximately 1.5 million square miles, and a large population, 155 million subjects in 1500 and 231 million in 1600.3 It governed a diversity of peoples, from the great Chinese majority (a complex and highly diverse composite itself often denoted by the term “Han”) to sizable communities of Mongolians, Jurchens, Khitans, Tibetans, Miao, Loi, and others spread along the borderlands and in lesser numbers through the hinterlands.
It possessed formidable organizational capacity, including a fully articulated civil bureaucracy, a complex military system, and an extensive transportation and communication network of imperial highways encompassing approximately 1,000 courier stations (the precise number fluctuated over time), an empire-wide postal service, and the famous Grand Canal that linked the capital in Beijing to the thriving economy of the south.4 In its early decades, the Ming throne seized new lands along its southwestern and northeastern borders (in today's Yunnan and Liaoning provinces, respectively) and temporarily occupied what would today be northern Vietnam, eventually bringing hundreds of thousands of non-Chinese under increasing levels of imperial rule. It justified its control through a cluster of universalizing ideologies that integrated morality, a civilizing mission, politics, gender, geography, climate, and more into an encompassing cosmic order. In recent years, scholars have increasingly shown a salutary willingness to consider the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1636-1912) as a “normal empire” that bears, indeed merits, sustained comparison with its contemporary peers.5 It is time the Ming dynasty, too, claimed its proper place in Eurasian and global history.1 Bang and Bayly 2011, 6.
2 Burbank and Cooper 2010, 1-22; Maier 2006, 19-77; Thomas Barfield 2001. 29-33. Horner 2009, 53 has observed that China's growing power in the world has made it easier to perceive the Ming as “a Great Power like any other power—like any other imperialist power.”
3 Heijdra 1998, 438.
4 Hucker 1998; Brook 1998, 579-612.
5 Such a view informs much of the Qing History. For examples, see Perdue 1998, 2004, 2005. Recent comparativist work has sought to integrate studies of the Qing experience into global narratives. See Bang and
David M. Robinson, The Ming Empire In: The Oxford World History of Empire. Edited by: Peter Fibiger Bang, C.A. Bayly, Walter Scheidel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197532768.003.0019.
Despite enduring stereotypes to the contrary, the Ming was never closed or isolated as either a polity or economy.[1372] In addition to the Ming state's diplomatic relations with neighboring peoples and polities, the Chinese diaspora and its informal networks of Chinese communities throughout East and Southeast Asia played critical roles in private overseas trade, unofficial diplomatic interactions, and the development of econo-political elites in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Although this chapter focuses on the Ming as a continental empire, its maritime elements should not be ignored.[1373]
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