Selling a Dynasty

At the same time that they worked hard to keep the machinery of governance running smoothly, Hongwu and his successors energetically “sold” their ruler­ship.^[1396] The imperial palaces' imposing architecture and the capital's looming walls in Nanjing (and later Beijing) shouted power and resources.^[1397] An encompassing system of rituals emphasized the emperor's ability to communicate with Heaven and his centrality to the polity; the imperial family supported selected Buddhist temples and Daoist shrines that often had popular followings.^[1398] In sum, like nearly all courts, Ming sovereigns waged a ceaseless campaign to persuade audiences at home and abroad about the dynasty's legitimacy and their own personal fitness for rulership.

The Ming court used extravagant display to establish its grandeur and power. Coronations, funerals, investitures, and royal weddings marked important trans­formations of status. They often involved large processions with grand carriages, imposing military guards, and lavish garb. Senior ministers and other officials respon­sible for the dynasty's literary production celebrated such events in poems and prose accounts. In one well-documented spectacle from 1407, Yongle invited a Tibetan Buddhist monk to officiate over a an elaborate memorial service for his parents; he commissioned a lavish 50-meter- long silk handscroll painting in 49 separate sections that chronicled in five different languages the many miraculous manifestations asso­ciated with the ceremony and visiting monk.^[1399] During the first four decades of the fifteenth century, the state organized a series of seven massive armadas. As many as 27,000 men sailed through Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and as far as the African coast in some of the largest wooden ships ever constructed. These voyages visibly demonstrated Ming dynastic power and remind us of the Ming regime's maritime dimensions.^[1400]

Requiring economic and political capital, martial spectacles advertised rulers' superiority over potential competitors.^[1401] Tens of thousands of soldiers participated in mid-sixteenth century military reviews; royal hunts routinely involved hun­dreds, sometimes thousands, of men.

Although grandeur formed one element of the political contest for legitimacy and recognition, horsemanship and skill in mounted archery were inescapable dimensions of military conflict. Throughout Inner Eurasia and its periphery, the mounted archer remained an invaluable military technology during the medieval and early modern periods.^[1402] Steppe powers commanded both high-quality horses and men skilled in riding and shooting. Sedentary powers in West, South, and East Asia leveraged their superior economic resources to secure steppe horses and other transport animals needed for war.^[1403] Twenty-first-century audiences might assume that high-tech firearms were the apex military technology, but polities surrounding the steppe knew through painful experience that horsemanship and mounted ar­chery remained indispensable.