In China, the Yuan Dynasty was collapsing.
Plague, flooding of the Yellow River, famine,
factional disputes among the Mongol princes,
and hyperinflation from paper money, a mane.
The Red Turban Rebellion erupted in 1351,
a millenarian Buddhist movement expecting
the coming of Maitreya, the future Buddha,
and the overthrow of the foreign Mongol detecting.
Zhu Yuanzhang, born a peasant, orphaned by plague,
who had briefly been a Buddhist monk, then a beggar,
joined the Red Turbans and rose through their ranks
to become a regional warlord with an eager leg-ger.
He captured Nanjing in 1356, made it his capital.
He gradually eliminated rival rebel leaders.
He defeated the warlord Chen Youliang at the naval
Battle of Lake Poyang in 1363, fortune seekers.
In 1368, his armies entered Khanbaliq (renamed Beiping).
The Yuan emperor fled north to Mongolia.
Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself the Hongwu Emperor,
founder of the Ming Dynasty, native rule's victoria.
He was one of the only Chinese emperors in history
to rise from genuine peasant origins. (The other
major one was Liu Bang, Han founder, a thousand years before.)
He ruled with the suspicion of someone who knew brothers
can betray, courts can conspire, and nothing
is safe forever. He launched massive purges
of officials he suspected — 30,000 killed in one purge,
40,000 in another, the court's splurges.
He abolished the position of chancellor which had
existed for a thousand years, and ruled personally
through direct correspondence with departments.
The emperor now did everything, generally.
He reinstated the civil service examination with
heavy Confucian emphasis. He promoted Neo-Confucianism
as state orthodoxy. He sealed China off from foreign
trade (the Maritime Prohibition), strict autarky-ism.
He established the penal code Da Ming Lü.
He rebuilt the Great Wall in its current form.
He redistributed land to peasants who had been
landless under the Yuan. He was stormy, firm.
He died in 1398. His grandson Jianwen became emperor,
but was overthrown in 1402 by his uncle
Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, in a civil war.
Jianwen disappeared in the palace fire, the buckle
of continuity broken. Zhu Di became the Yongle Emperor
(1402-1424), perhaps the greatest Ming emperor.
He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing,
rebuilt the Forbidden City, the symbolic emperor.
He commissioned the Yongle Encyclopedia, the
largest encyclopedia in the world for several centuries,
22,937 volumes. (Only about 400 survive today —
most were destroyed in wars or palace fires, mysteries.)
He sent out the great treasure voyages under
Zheng He — chapter 213's story.
He built huge fleets and massive shipyards.
He attempted to conquer Vietnam, in his glory.
After Yongle, the Ming would retreat from maritime
expansion. The treasure voyages would stop. The fleets
would be burned. China would turn inward again.
The Ming's early vigor would fade with seasonal sheets.
But the Ming would last until 1644, when
the Manchus would conquer from the north
and found the Qing Dynasty. That story is later.
For now, mark: native Chinese rule was called forth.
Stand.