Yongle Emperor
The Yongle Emperor was the third emperor of China's Ming Dynasty. His reign saw considerable developments in economics, foreign relations, and public works, including tally trade relations with the Ashikaga shogunate for a brief time, the first of the famous voyages of Admiral Zheng He, and the last change of capital in the Imperial period.
Zhu Di was the fourth son of the Ming founder, the Hongwu Emperor, and uncle to Hongwu's successor, the Jianwen Emperor. Following the death of Hongwu in 1398, and the ascension of Jianwen to the throne, Zhu Di sought to seize power for himself, succeeding in 1402 with an attack on the imperial palace at Nanjing, which was set aflame. The Jianwen Emperor was believed killed in the fire, and his uncle, Zhu Di, then declared himself emperor, taking the reign name Yongle. Early in his reign, however, Yongle sent missions periodically to search for the Jianwen Emperor, who it was believed might have survived the attack and escaped; these missions were then, if they found him, to kill him, securing Yongle's claim to the throne. Some scholars have suggested that searching for Jianwen may have been a secondary or ulterior motive for Yongle's launching of Zheng He's famous voyages across the entire Indian Ocean region.
Immediately after claiming the throne, Yongle officially named Beijing the new capital of the empire; ruling in Nanjing after having set fire to that palace was profoundly troublesome for his efforts to build a sense of legitimacy. He was not, however, able to actually relocate the Court and government to Beijing until 1420, after a major public works project repaired and reconstructed the Great Canal. For a time, Ming tax revenues had been shipped by sea, but wakô ("Japanese" pirates) attacks were making this increasingly unsafe. Once the Imperial Court, along with the army and numerous associated individuals and families, relocated to Beijing, the city grew to become, quite likely, the largest city in the world.[1]
The Yongle Dadian, the largest encyclopedia ever compiled, was commissioned by the Yongle Emperor in 1407; roughly 2,000 literati were involved in its production.
Yongle continued formal tribute/tally trade relations with the Ashikaga shogunate, established in 1401-1402 under his predecessor, receiving ambassadors from Kyoto in 1403; this 1403 mission marked the first time Japanese documents containing the phrases "your subject" and "King of Japan" were formally sent to a foreign court. This first initial phase of formal relations only lasted a few short years, however, as Ashikaga Yoshimochi, following the death of his father Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in 1408, severed ties. The Yongle Emperor sent envoys to Shogun Yoshimochi several times, in 1417 and 1419, seeking to establish formal relations, but was rebuffed both times.
Still, the great number of coins minted during the Yongle reign which eventually flowed into Japan over the course of the 15th-16th centuries (and later) is attested by the continued use in Japan, as late as in the 19th century, of the character 「永」 - the Yong in Yongle tongbao (J: Eiraku tsûhô), inscribed on the coins - to refer to copper coins in general.[2]
The Yongle Emperor died in 1424, and was succeeded by the Hongxi Emperor.
| Preceded by Jianwen Emperor |
Emperor of Ming 1402-1424 |
Succeeded by Hongxi Emperor |
References
- Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire, New York: W.W. Norton & Company (2000), 376-?.
- ↑ Hansen (p377) gives the figure of 2 million residents, but this seems difficult to believe, given that other sources indicate that Beijing and Edo were roughly tied for largest city in the world at roughly 1 to 1.5 million people in the mid-18th to early 19th centuries, hundreds of years later.
Yokohari, Makoto. "Agro-activities in the Fringe of Asian Mega-Cities." Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences, University of Tsukuba (2003), 1-2.
Nicholas Fiévé and Paul Waley, Japanese capitals in historical perspective: place, power and memory in Kyoto, Edo and Tokyo, Psychology Press (2003), 100.
Other sources, speaking of the early Ming, give the city's population as reaching 1 million at that time. Lillian M. Li, Alison Dray-Novey, and Haili Kong, Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City, Macmillan (2008), 27. - ↑ For example, an amount to be paid might be referenced or recorded in a document as 「永二〇〇文」 (ei nihyaku mon), meaning 200 mon, in copper.
