|
The southern Ming was a loyalist movement that was active in southern China following the Ming dynasty's collapse in 1644. The Ming were overthrown when peasant rebels captured Beijing. Ming generals then opened the gates of the Great Wall to the Qing, hoping they would fight the rebels. Loyalists fled to Nanjing, where they enthroned the Prince of Fu. The Nanjing regime lasted until 1645, when the Qing captured Nanjing. Later, a series of pretenders held court in various southern Chinese cities.〔See ''(The Oxford History of Historical Writing: 1400-1800 )'' (2011) by Jose Rabasa, p. 37.〕 The Nanjing regime lacked the resources to pay and supply its soldiers, who were left to live off the land and pillaged the countryside.〔It was projected that 7 million taels would be required to fund military activity alone. Revenue of 6 million taels was anticipated based on normal receipts from the areas under Nanjing's control. Severe drought, rebellion, and unsettled conditions combined to ensure that actual revenue was only a fraction of this amount. (''The Cambridge History of China: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644'', pt. 1, p. 645).〕 The soldiers' behavior was so notorious that they were refused entry by those cities in a position to do so.〔Wakeman, Volume 1, p. 354.〕 Court official Shi Kefa obtained modern cannons and organized resistance at Yangzhou. The cannons mowed down a large number of Qing soldiers, but this only enraged those who survived. After the city fell in May 1645, the Qing slaughtered as many as 800,000 inhabitants in a notorious massacre. Nanjing surrendered promptly and without resistance on June 6. The Prince of Fu was taken to Beijing and executed in 1646. The literati in the provinces responded to the news from Yangzhou and Nanjing with an outpouring of emotion. Some recruited their own militia and became resistance leaders. Shi was lionized and there was a wave of hopeless sacrifice by loyalists who vowed to erase the shame of Nanjing. By late 1646, the heroics had petered out and the Qing advance had resumed. Notable Ming pretenders held court in Fuzhou (1645-1646), Guangzhou (1646-1647), and Anlong (1652-1659). The Prince of Ningjing maintained a palace in the Kingdom of Tungning (modern-day Tainan, Taiwan) until 1683. The end of the Ming and the subsequent Nanjing regime are depicted in ''Peach Blossom Fan'', a classic of Chinese literature. The upheaval of this period, sometimes referred to as the Ming-Qing cataclysm, has been linked to a decline in global temperature. With agriculture devastated by a severe drought, there was manpower available for numerous rebel armies. ==Background== The fall of the Ming and the Qing conquest that followed was a period of catastrophic war and population decline in China, comparable to Europe's Thirty Years War (1618-1648). China experienced a period of extremely cold weather from the 1620s until the 1710s.〔"(China’s 2,000 Year Temperature History )"〕 Some modern scholars link the worldwide drop in temperature at this time to the Maunder Minimum, an extended period from 1645 to 1715 when sunspots were absent.〔Eddy, John A., "The Maunder Minimum: Sunspots and Climate in the Age of Louis XIV", ''(The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century )'' edited by Geoffrey Parker, Lesley M. Smith.〕 Whatever the cause, the change in the climate reduced agricultural yields and cut state revenue. It also led to drought, which displaced many peasants. There were a series of peasant revolts in the late Ming, culminating in a revolt led by Li Zicheng which overthrew the dynasty in 1644. Ming ideology emphasized authoritarian and centralized administration, referred to as "imperial supremacy" or ''huángjí''. However, comprehensive central decision-making was beyond the technology of the time.〔"Government finance under the Ming represented an attempt to impose and extremely ambitious centralized system on an enormous empire before its level of technology had made such a degree of centralization practical." Ray Huang, ''Taxation and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China'', p. 313.〕 The principle of uniformity meant that the lowest common denominator was often selected as the standard. The need to implement change on an empire-wide basis complicated any effort to reform the system, leaving administrators helpless to respond in an age of upheaval. Civil servants were selected by an arduous examination system which tested knowledge of classic literature. While they might be adapt at citing precedents from the Zhou dynasty of righteous and unrighteous behavior, they were rarely as knowledgeable when it came to contemporary economic, social, or military matters. Unlike previous dynasties, the Ming had no prime minister. So when a young ruler retreated to the inner court to enjoy the company of his concubines, power devolved to the eunuchs.〔Tong, James, ''Disorder Under Heaven: Collective Violence in the Ming Dynasty'' (1991), p. 112.〕 Only the eunuchs had access to the inner court, but the eunuch cliques were distrusted by the officials who were expected to carry out the emperor's decrees. Officials educated at the Donglin Academy were known for accusing the eunuchs and others of a lack of righteousness. On April 24, 1644, Li's soldiers breached the walls of Beijing. The Chongzhen emperor committed suicide the next day to avoid humiliation at their hands. Remnants of the Ming imperial family and some court ministers then sought refuge in the southern part of China and regrouped around Nanjing, the Ming auxiliary capital, south of the Yangtze River. Four different power groups emerged: *The Shun dynasty, led by Li Zicheng, ruled north of the Huai river. *Zhang Xianzhong's Great West regime controlled Sichuan province. *The Manchu-founded Qing dynasty controlled the north-east area beyond Shanhai Pass, as well as many of the Mongol tribes. *The remnants of the Ming dynasty could only survive south of the Huai river. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Southern Ming」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|