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Following the [[An Lushan Rebellion]] ([[755]]-[[763]]), eunuchs came to hold considerable power within the Court, maneuvering themselves and their adopted sons (including some who were not eunuchs) into influential positions, particularly within the Imperial army. By the ninth century, a Eunuch Palace Council had formed alongside the regular system of court ministers; eunuchs came to serve as direct advisors to the emperors, and as messengers and spies, becoming significant rivals for the court ministers in matters of court influence and intrigues.
Following the [[An Lushan Rebellion]] ([[755]]-[[763]]), eunuchs came to hold considerable power within the Court, maneuvering themselves and their adopted sons (including some who were not eunuchs) into influential positions, particularly within the Imperial army. By the ninth century, a Eunuch Palace Council had formed alongside the regular system of court ministers; eunuchs came to serve as direct advisors to the emperors, and as messengers and spies, becoming significant rivals for the court ministers in matters of court influence and intrigues.
==Ming Dynasty==
By the Ming Dynasty, palace eunuchs came to play essential roles in the administration of government, and in the management of the palace. Roughly 20,000 eunuchs lived within the Imperial City at the height of the Ming, and though they are sometimes characterized as mere "domestic servants who rose to meddle in state affairs,"<ref>Huang, 19.</ref> many were officially appointed to administrative roles, often on the basis of genuine merit (talent, skill, intelligence), and so were not necessarily overstepping their bounds. Some eunuch officials were dispatched to the province to oversee tax collection and other matters, and some were sent overseas as Imperial envoys to [[tribute|tributary]] states. [[Zheng He]], the admiral who famously commanded a Ming treasure fleet across the Indian Ocean, as far as India, the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa, and Mozambique in the early decades of the 15th century, was one such palace eunuch.<ref name=huang>Ray Huang, ''1587: A Year of No Significance'', Yale University Press (1981), 19-20.</ref>
By the middle of the period, eunuchs came to play indispensable roles as the emperor's personal secretaries, conveying palace memorials, presenting to the emperor the business of the day, and otherwise handling edicts, decisions, imperial rescripts and so forth between the Emperor and the various arms of government. A number of these eunuch secretaries briefed the emperor each morning in closed-sessions, in this way having the ear of the emperor in a manner most high scholar-bureaucrat officials did not enjoy.<ref name=huang/>
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==References==
==References==
*Valerie Hansen, ''The Open Empire'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company (2000), 231.
*Valerie Hansen, ''The Open Empire'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company (2000), 231.
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[[Category:Political Institutions]]
[[Category:Political Institutions]]
