In the inherent impression of many people, the collapse of the Ming Dynasty ultimately involves the corruption of officials, the greed for money of civil officials, the fear of death of military generals, coupled with frequent natural disasters, and the Xiaoice century, many reasons combined, and finally led to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty.
But what I want to say is that the above reasons may lead to the demise of the Ming Dynasty, but they are definitely not the main reasons, at least not corruption, natural disasters, and even more so foreign enemies!
Looking closely, we can find that the demise of the Daming Dynasty is very similar to a modern country that we are familiar with, this modern country is the Soviet Union.
The essence of their destruction is inefficient and high-intensity centralization, and the higher the centralization in history, the stronger the inefficiency. Corruption can hardly lead to extinction, as was the case with the Ming Dynasty and the former Soviet Union. Even to a large extent, US imperialism is much more corrupt than the Soviet Union.
Speaking of the Ming Dynasty, in terms of corruption and reaction, the Daming Dynasty was obviously not as corrupt and reactionary as the Manchu Qing Dynasty; In terms of force, the Daming Dynasty was even more martial than the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the military mobilization rate was higher.
But why did it perish? In fact, by the late Ming Dynasty, the entire empire was already in a state of numbness from top to bottom, and no one knew who the empire really belonged to, the old Zhu family's? Doctor's? Or whom? Already completely ossified.
Of course, this is a Game of Thrones and my analysis is not necessarily good. In the early Ming Dynasty, the emperor's authority was flourishing, relying on his own diligence to still take a control of the court, but over time, the subsequent emperors slacked off, and the courtiers gradually seized power and tried to replace the emperor in power, and the emperor let eunuchs participate in the government in order not to be erected. Directly pulling eunuchs into the water, the court contradiction also changed from a single contradiction to a multi-party contradiction. Of course, if it is just to let them fight and check and balance each other, it is actually a benign balance. But the ministers participate in the government on behalf of the localities, but what about the brocade guards and eunuchs? What do they stand for? On behalf of the emperor? Eventually leading to uncontrolled power, highly centralized and inefficient, and completely ossified.
The excessive centralization of power, and after Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, he left the capital Nanjing, resulting in the political and economic center of the division between the north and the south, the legitimacy of the imperial power gradually disappeared, the emperor did not come to court for decades, the eunuchs and scholars, and no one cared what happened to the empire.
This is also why Li Zicheng's Dashun regime, lacking political experience, but can sing all the way to Beijing, everyone feels that this empire is not their own, who is the emperor is the same, nothing more than kneeling the Zhu family today, kneeling the Li family tomorrow, the head is still the same, but the object is different, that's all!
However, Li Zicheng is still a pity, obviously he can win the world, but at the critical moment of his own victory in the world, all the backbone fighters will be stationed in the south of Hebei, and none of them will stay in the old nest of Shanxi, you must know that the northern part of Henan and the northern part of Shandong are not dangerous, which is a mistake made by Li Zicheng, which also led to the final decisive battle with the Manchu Qing being pushed to the end, allowing the Manchus to win the world.
Although at the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, like the Daming Dynasty, it encountered excessive centralization, which brought inefficiency and rigidity. However, the lords of the Manchu Qing Dynasty knew at least ideologically that this empire belonged to them, and they clearly knew or defined most of the peoples in Guanxi as enemies, and in general, the "brain" was quite clear.
On the other hand, the Daming Dynasty began with the Jiajing Dynasty, and everyone in the superstructure gradually evolved the idea that the empire did not belong to them. The emperor feels that he can't recognize his father, can't go out, can't change his heir, and he has to be sprayed by the ministers every day, is he really the emperor of this empire?
The officials felt that Daming's Jiangshan surname was Zhu, and what did it have to do with me, and the most important thing was that those eunuchs and Jinyiwei of the East and West Factories had bad intentions for themselves every day, looking for their own handles everywhere, dragging themselves into the water at any time, and serving as an official for only a few years, and this land was not their own, so why do they care. And his salary is still low, and the promotion is not necessarily fair, especially if the bad old man in Wanli has not approved the vacancy, it is simply not too frustrating.
Not to mention the officers, fighting and brushing people's heads is not necessarily useful, and he will be impeached every day by the plague scholar, a proper marginal figure, is this river and mountain mine? So what do you do!
The kings of the Zhu family don't care, they have no soldiers and no power in the later stage, the only thing they can watch over is the legendary millions of acres of land, but in fact, when did they check their own land? In the end, it is all calculated by discounting silver, and as for participating in politics and discussion, don't even think about it, it's hard to imagine that King Fu was the first and only clan king in the Ming Dynasty to send someone to check his food, but not long after going out, he fought with the magistrate... After the Battle of Zhu Dijing, Daming's sect was restricted to death, and this could not and that.
As for civilians and soldiers, not to mention, as for wanting them to defend their homeland, difficult! No one will feel that this empire is their own and should be fought for and guarded.
In the end, the fabrications of the Ming Dynasty are the same as the root causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and no one can answer who this empire really belongs. Even the emperors of the late Ming Dynasty did not fully feel that the Ming Empire was his. In a sense, although the Daming Empire at that time was still powerful, it was already a rigid idea, or it was like a fiction, dreamy and unreal. Just like the Soviet Union, the minorities of the Soviet Union feel that they are oppressed by the Russians, and the Russians feel that they are frantically bloodletting to feed other minorities.
To say that corruption, the Daming Dynasty has not rotted to the end, far less than the American Empire, as long as they have someone who can answer who this empire belongs to, even if it is not on the side of the people in the end, it can hold out for a while, just like the Qing Dynasty? Just like ancient Western Europe, many feudal aristocratic families ruled a region, easily surpassing the 300-year cycle law of the Chinese dynasty; Even the pre-Tang dynasty families, their control over the place can easily surpass that of the dynasty. Because they know very well that the land is theirs. Even if they are so bad, even if the local resistance is slaughtered by themselves, they can still get a bunch of displaced people over.
Of course, in addition to this most basic reason, there are also the intensification of class contradictions, military failures, natural disasters, decision-making errors, etc., but these are under the main principle above. In the past five thousand years, except for slave dynasties such as Xia Shang Zhou, there has not been a dynasty for more than three hundred years since the unification of the Qin dynasty (as for the Western Han and Eastern Han Dynasties, they are not much different from the two dynasties except that their ancestors are the same and they are all Liu Bang).
The reason, except that no one can explain who this empire really belongs to, is the balance between the rising population of agricultural countries and the carrying capacity of the land. Population growth is faster than the speed of economic development, the unbalanced distribution of social resources, high centralization and inefficiency lead to no one standing up to solve this problem, then even the tall edifice will collapse.
If we compare social resources to a piece of cake, more and more people want to eat, and this cake is so big, and there is no new cake, the contradiction naturally cannot be adjusted, at this time coupled with some unexpected factors, political turmoil is still inevitable. Under the situation of not changing the productive forces, the trend of outbreak will inevitably get out of control, and there will be chaos after the great rule, which is an iron law.
Even if we have God's perspective today, we cannot avoid this problem, even if we solve the inefficiency and rigidity, and cannot solve the increasingly prominent class contradictions, there will still be new problems in the end, and the intensification of contradictions in the end cannot be avoided.