Opening Thoughts:
During the Ming Dynasty, the capital of the Ming Dynasty was set at Jinling, which was the economic center of gravity of the Ming Dynasty and an important source of finance and taxation. And why did Ming Chengzu set the capital as Beijing, which was relatively backward in development at that time? What impact did this capital relocation have on the development of the country at that time?
First, what is the relocation of the capital
Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, moved the capital of the Ming Dynasty from the economically developed Nanjing to Beijing, the center of the ming dynasty's northern border defense. The time of this relocation is of great significance to China's history and will continue to have a far-reaching impact on China's future political, economic and cultural development.
Jinling flourished, why moved the capital to Beijing
It should be known that during the Ming Dynasty, Beijing was not as prosperous as it is now, and the weather in the north was not as pleasant as in the south, and the "Wanliye Ye Jie Jie Liangjing Street" once recorded: "The street is the most wide and clean in Jinling." Its most filthy people are nothing like beams, and after the rain, they are all dung, and mud is splashed on the waist and abdomen. Jiu Qing was windy and dusty, and he didn't know his face. If the Beijing division is not as big as Nanjing, the Kaifeng of the capital seems to be slightly better. In addition, the weather in Beijing is windy and sandy, and it will always be attacked by sandstorms, so it was spread among the people at that time
"The sky is always windy, the ground is everywhere dusty"
Proverbs. As can be seen from the above, compared with Nanjing, which has a pleasant and clean climate, Beijing at that time was not very attractive. So why did Ming Chengzu Zhu Di spend a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources, and after decades of construction and preparation, he decided to move the capital to Beijing? There are several main reasons.
Ming Dynasty Beijing
Complete Ming Taizu's unfinished thoughts
Zhu Yuanzhang, the ming emperor, declared himself emperor in Nanjing, but did not decide to make Nanjing the capital of the country, but successively inspected Kaifeng, Bieliang and other places. Because the war has not yet recovered, the early days of the founding of the country are in ruins to be rebuilt, and the construction of Bieliang requires a lot of manpower and material resources, bringing a heavy burden to the people, so they gave up the idea of fixing the capital in Bieliang. In the early years of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang, the grandfather of the Ming Dynasty, issued an edict that "Jinling is Nanjing, and Daliang is Beijing".
Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang
After the unification of the world, the Ming Dynasty monarchs believed that Jinling was the capital of the Southern Dynasty, and most of the dynasties with Jinling as the capital in history were not long-lasting and were not suitable for being the capital of Daming, so they decided to set the capital in Linhao Province and build a grand imperial city here. When the completion was about to be completed, the "tired town" incident occurred among the workers involved in the construction of the LinhaoFu Palace, "because the craftsmen were tired of the town and the town was tired of the hundred ends, Yu Xinfuning", so Zhu Yuanzhang decided to rebuild the Nanjing Palace.
Zhongdu Palace
In his later years, Zhu Yuanzhang did not like the terrain of Jinling's "former and backward depression", so he had the idea of moving the capital to Guanzhong, and in the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu, he sent the crown prince Zhu Biao to inspect Guanzhong, and the prince returned to investigate the things that Chen Qiandu Guanzhong did after he returned--that is, it meant that the relocation of the capital was a foregone conclusion, but the death of the crown prince Zhu Biao gave Zhu Yuanzhang a heavy blow and gave up the idea of moving the capital, "I wanted to move the capital, but I am old and tired, and the world is initially determined, and I do not want to work for the people." And there are many ups and downs, only to listen to the sky. In the end, Zhu Yuanzhang issued an edict with Nanjing as the capital and Fengyang as the capital, forming a two-capital system.
2. Ming Chengzu's living habits were northernized
Although Ming Chengzu Zhu Di was born in Nanjing, but later lived in Beijing for twenty years, living habits have been completely northernized, according to Ming Chengzu Zhu Di's dietary records, he preferred northern food, a vassal state once sent its own fire people to serve Zhu Di. Although the military and political situation was the main reason for the relocation of the capital, the characteristics of Zhu Di himself could not be ignored.
3. There are still remnants of Emperor Jianwen in the south
Ming Chengzu Zhu Di launched the Battle of Jingnan under the banner of "obeying the ancestral system", but there were still ministers in the DPRK who were not convinced, and the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen were unknown, indicating that these forces in the DPRK still existed and were only temporarily hidden. Nanjing was not suitable for Ming Chengzu to support his cronies to ascend to the throne and consolidate the throne, and his foundation was in Beijing, so moving the capital to Beijing was the best choice for Ming Chengzu.
Emperor Jianwen Zhu Yunjiao
4. The northern nomads posed a threat to the Ming Dynasty
In the first year of Yongle, the Mongol army attacked Liaodong, and the local commander was unable to resist and concealed the deterioration of the military situation in the north, and the root cause of its deterioration was that Zhu Di and Zhu Quan, the main figures who were originally responsible for the defense of the north, could not defend the northern border after the Jing Dynasty. Ming Chengzu Zhu Di was an outstanding military general, and moving the capital to Beijing was conducive to controlling the northern border and maintaining the rule of the Ming Dynasty.
5. As the capital, Beijing's geographical location has more advantages than Nanjing
Although Nanjing is economically developed and has the Yangtze River as a barrier, it is a good choice for building a capital in the south, but compared with some cities in the north, Nanjing is not conducive to defense, because it only has the Yangtze River as a line of defense, if the Yangtze River is lost, then Nanjing is in danger. Northern cities can use mountains and rivers as barriers, and the advantages of mountains and rivers as barriers are far greater than rivers, so moving the capital to Beijing is conducive to defense.
Third, the relocation of the capital to Beijing has a far-reaching impact
From a military point of view
The move of Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, to move the capital to Beijing made Beijing and its surrounding areas a very important military region of the Ming Dynasty, and the Han regime achieved an unprecedented degree of control over northern China. At the same time, it also better protected the security of the northern Part of the Ming Dynasty, and then there was
"The Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country"
statement. In the eighth year of Yongle, after the defeat of the general Qiu Fu, there was no suitable experienced general to resist the Mongol cavalry at the moment, and Ming Chengzu Zhu Di personally served as the commander, and in the same year he won a great victory, although this expedition did not completely solve the security problems of the north, but it
It dealt a heavy blow to the Mongol forces and bought peace for the northern border.
Ming Chengzu Zhu Di
However, not every generation of kings was as good a general as Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, and by the late Ming Dynasty, the national strength was not as strong as during the Yongle years, and Beijing was no longer suitable as a capital city. Due to Beijing's proximity to Mongolia, after Emperor Mingyingzong's rebellion at Tumu Fort, Wallachia drove straight in from the north and approached the capital. As a last resort, the generals led by Yu Qian began the defense of Beijing, a battle that would determine the fate of the Ming Dynasty.
In the defense of Beijing, the Ming Dynasty soldiers showed amazing strength in the face of the elite cavalry of the Wala invaders, and the strength of the Ming Dynasty was very different, but the Wala soldiers could not break through it for a long time, and one of the important reasons was that
The fact that Tianzi Shubian and the imperial tombs were on the front line made the imperial court more determined to resist tenaciously in the face of the Invaders.
These soldiers who guarded the city had a belief that these Wallachian invaders did not have, a belief in defending their homeland. When the defense of Beijing began, Yu Qian categorically expressed his intention in a sentence in front of the army: "Serve the country and kill the enemy, and die without abandoning."
The late Ming dynasty thinker Huang Zongxi pointed out in the "Records of Ming Yi To Be Visited" that it was wrong for Ming Chengzu to move the capital to Beijing, and that the gate of the country should be guarded by the great future, not the Son of Heaven. “
The son of the present husband, the warehouse of the servants, shall be guarded by himself, and the court shall be entrusted with concubines. She jinling and do notdu, is a concubine to the warehouse.
”
Ming Dynasty thinker Huang Zongxi
From an economic point of view
One of the major problems in Ming Chengzu's decision to move the capital to Beijing was the issue of food, and the main reason for moving the capital to Beijing was that in order to protect the northern border, a large number of troops were needed, and a large amount of grain was needed. At that time, Beijing was full of wind and sand, and it was not the main grain producing area of the Ming Dynasty, and Jiangnan was always the economic center of the Ming Dynasty, and its tax grain contribution to the imperial court was about 7.4 million stones, close to a quarter of the national tax revenue, which shows the richness of Jiangnan's wealth and grain. At that time, the best way to transport grain was Caoyun, but the routes of the north and south were not connected, in order to be able to transport rice grain from the south to Beijing.
In the ninth year of Yongle, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di ordered the then Ministry of Works Shangshu Song Li to govern the canal.
Song Li was a famous water conservancy official in the Ming Dynasty, and he was credited with the management of the canal many times. According to the "Ming Shi Yun Cao Certificate Sequence", "The Yuan kaikai passed through the river, and its merits were not completed, and Song Kanghui heeled it, opened the river and built a gate, and the north and south were connected. After the opening of the canal, not only solved the problem of grain going north, more and more merchant ships flowed into Beijing through the canal from all over the country, and commodities from all over the country appeared in the market in Beijing, "the ladder of all countries, the scales of the collection, the market is rampantly traded, all the goods are far away, running and shooting profits, all the people of the five parties."
During the Ming Dynasty, Beijing became a distribution center for national commodities, which led to the economic development of the north.
Ming Dynasty Lantern Festival
In addition to a large number of goods flowing into Beijing, more and more people have begun to gather in Beijing, "in the capital city, the people of Jingzhao are ten to one or two, the battalion guards are ten to four or five, and the people of the four sides are ten to six or seven." These immigrants have also contributed to Beijing's social and economic development to a certain extent. According to the "Great Ming HuiDian", in the thirteen years of orthodoxy, the population of the counties under the jurisdiction of Suncheon Province exceeded 2 million.
Although Ming Chengzu Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, but the economic center of the Ming Dynasty is still in the Jiangnan region, the military defense in the Jiangnan region is weakened, the wealth of Jiangnan in the late Ming Dynasty attracted the invasion of small countries along the southern coast, before Zhu Di officially moved the capital, there were also small-scale violations of small countries along the southern coast, but the military center at that time had not moved north.
Ming Chengzu Zhu Di quickly calmed down the storm
。 However, during the Jiajing period, without the previous military precautions, the situation of aggression by small countries along the southern coast became increasingly severe, and more than 20,000 people were once entrenched in the coast of Zhejiang, and the thieves of the small countries along the southern coast once caused turmoil and unrest in the Jiangnan region. Later, excellent generals represented by Qi Jiguang appeared one after another.
It took more than a decade to completely quell the turmoil.
Ming Dynasty Qi family army
epilogue
Moving the capital to Beijing during the Ming Dynasty had a positive effect on the development of the Ming Dynasty from a military and economic point of view
Although the relocation of the capital brought some problems, it did drive the economic development of the north of the Ming Dynasty and alleviate the imbalance in the economic development of the north and south. Moreover, it was conducive to resisting the invasion of Northern Mongol cavalry and better protecting the northern border of the Ming Dynasty.
Reference Content Sources:
History of the Ming Dynasty