House of Zhu


The House of Zhu, also known as the House of Chu, was the imperial family of the Ming dynasty of China. Zhu was the family name of the emperors of the Ming dynasty. The House of Zhu ruled China from 1368 until the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, followed by the rule as the Southern Ming dynasty until 1662, and the last Ming princes, the Prince of Ningjing Zhu Shugui and Prince Zhu Honghuan held out until the annexation of the Kingdom of Tungning in 1683.

Family history

Founder

The founder of the Ming dynasty was the Hongwu Emperor, who is also known variably by his personal name "Zhu Yuanzhang" and his temple name "Taizu of Ming". He was the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. His regnal name, Hongwu, means "vastly martial".
In the middle of the 14th century, with famine, plagues and peasant revolts sweeping across China, Zhu Yuanzhang became a leader of an army that conquered China, ending the government of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and forcing the Mongols to retreat to present-day Mongolia. With his seizure of the Yuan capital Khanbaliq, he claimed the Mandate of Heaven and established the Ming dynasty in 1368. The Ming's mission was to drive away the Mongols and restore Han Chinese rule in China.
Under the Hongwu Emperor's rule, the Mongol bureaucrats who dominated the government in the Yuan dynasty were replaced by Han Chinese officials. The Hongwu Emperor revamped the traditional Confucian examination system. Mongol-related things, including garments and names, were discontinued from use and boycotted. There were also attacks on palaces and administrative buildings previously used by the Mongol rulers.

Rise of the Ming dynasty

The Hongwu Emperor's grandson, Zhu Yunwen, assumed the throne as the Jianwen Emperor after the Hongwu Emperor's death in 1398. In a prelude to a three-year-long civil war beginning in 1399, the Jianwen Emperor became engaged in a political showdown with his uncle Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan. The Jianwen Emperor was aware of the ambitions of his prince uncles, establishing measures to limit their authority. The militant Zhu Di, given charge over the area encompassing Beijing to watch the Mongols on the frontier, was the most feared of these princes. After the Jianwen Emperor arrested many of Zhu Di's associates, Zhu Di plotted a rebellion. Under the guise of rescuing the young Jianwen Emperor from corrupt officials, Zhu Di personally led forces in the revolt; the imperial palace in Nanjing was burned to the ground. The Jianwen Emperor, his wife, mother, and courtiers were supposedly killed. Having overthrown his nephew, Zhu Di seized the throne and became known as the Yongle Emperor ; his reign is universally viewed by scholars as a "second founding" of the Ming dynasty since he reversed many of his father's policies.

After his coronation, the Yongle Emperor decided to move China's capital from Nanjing to Beijing. According to a popular legend, the capital was moved when the emperor's advisers brought the emperor to the hills surrounding Nanjing and pointed out the emperor's palace showing the vulnerability of the palace to artillery attack.
The Yongle Emperor also ordered to build a massive network of structures in Beijing in which government offices, officials, and the imperial family itself resided. After a painfully long construction time, the Forbidden City was finally completed and became the political capital of China for the next 500 years.
皇孫府 The Ming dynasty modified and made changes from the Tang dynasty system for regulating the Imperial family.
The early Ming Emperors from Hongwu to Zhengde continued Yuan practices such as hereditary military institutions, demanding Korean concubines and eunuchs, having Muslim eunuchs, wearing Mongol style clothing and Mongol hats, engaging in archery and horseback riding, patronizing Tibetan Buddhism, with the early Ming Emperors seeking to project themselves as "universal rulers" to various peoples such as Central Asian Muslims, Tibetans, and Mongols, modeled after the Mongol Khagan, however, this history of Ming universalism has been obscured and denied by historians who covered it up and presented the Ming as xenophobes seeking to expunge Mongol influence and presenting while they presented the Qing and Yuan as "universal" rulers in contrast to the Ming. The Zhengde Emperor even learned to speak Mongolian and Tibetan. The martial-themed Ming dynasty Grand Review was copied by the Qing, as noted in rebuke to those who sought to present it as a Qing feature from the "New Qing History" school, in a review of David M. Robinson's Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court.
Hongu had a "mirror" 宗藩昭鑒錄 宗藩昭鉴录 宗藩昭鑑錄 written for Ming Princes to educate them and stop misbehavior after having to discipline his nephew Zhu Wenzheng's son, grandnephew Zhu Shouqian.
Military power was delegated to princes. Korean and Mongol women were among the concubines of Zhu Yuanzhang who bore his 26 sons. The sons of the founder were given their own fiefs.
Land was granted to the Princes as their fiefs during the Ming. The Ming dynasty granted fiefs to its Princes. In the 17th century were more than 80,000 members of the Ming Imperial Zhu family. The Ming drew on the example of the Song dynasty Imperial family.
The Prince Liaojian was Zhu Quan. Zhu Yuelian was the Prince of Shu.
One of the Princes was noted for delinquent behavior. Zhu Shuang the Prince of Qin, while he was high on drugs, had some Tibetan boys castrated and Tibetan women seized after a war against minority Tibetan peoples and as a result was reprimanded after he died from overdose. 征西番，將番人七八歲幼女擄到一百五十名，又將七歲，八歲，九歲，十歲男童，閹割百五十五名，未及二十日，令人馱背赴府，致命去處所傷未好，即便挪動，因傷致死著大
The Prince of Ning rebellion was led by Prince Zhu Chenhao. An accomplished military commander and archer was demoted to commoner status on a wrongful charge of treason was the Prince of Lu's grandson in 1514.
At the Guozijian, law, math, calligraphy, equestrianism, and archery were emphasized by the Ming Hongwu Emperor in addition to Confucian classics and also required in the Imperial Examinations.
Archery and equestrianism were frequent pastimes by Zhengde. He practiced archery and horseriding with eunuchs. Tibetan Buddhist monks, Muslim women and musicians were obtained and provided to Zhengde by his guard Ch'ien Ning, who acquainted him with the ambidextrous archer and military officer Chiang Pin. An accomplished military commander and archer was demoted to commoner status on a wrongful charge of treason was the Prince of Lu's grandson in 1514.
He was disinterested in military matters but had prowess in archery.
Archery competitions, equestrianism and calligraphy were some of the pastimes of Wanli Emperor.
The Imperial Princes who were enfeoffed were kept under heavy control by the Ming government.

Decline

The financial drain of the Imjin War in Korea against the Japanese was one of the many problems—fiscal or other—facing Ming China during the reign of the Wanli Emperor. In the beginning of his reign, the Wanli Emperor surrounded himself with able advisors and made a conscientious effort to handle state affairs. His Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng built up an effective network of alliances with senior officials. However, there was no one after Zhang Juzheng who was as excellent as him in maintaining the stability of these official alliances; these officials soon banded together in opposing political factions. Over time, the Wanli Emperor grew tired and frustrated about court affairs and frequent political quarreling amongst his ministers, and chose to stay behind the walls of the Forbidden City and out of his officials' sight.
Officials aggravated the Wanli Emperor about which of his sons should succeed to the throne; he grew equally disgusted with senior advisors constantly bickering about how to manage the state. There were rising factions at court and across the intellectual sphere of China stemming from the philosophical debate for or against the teaching of Wang Yangming, the latter of whom rejected some of the orthodox views of Neo-Confucianism. Annoyed by all of this, the Wanli Emperor began neglecting his duties, remaining absent from court audiences to discuss politics, lost interest in studying the Confucian Classics, refused to read petitions and other state papers, and stopped filling the recurrent vacancies of vital upper level administrative posts. Scholar-officials lost prominence in administration as eunuchs became intermediaries between the aloof emperor and his officials; any senior official who wanted to discuss state matters had to persuade powerful eunuchs with a bribe simply to have his demands or message relayed to the emperor.

Fall of the Ming dynasty

In the early 1630s, a Minister named Li Zicheng mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi. Li's rebel forces retaliated the government by killing the officials, and led a rebellion based in Rongyang, central Henan province by 1635. By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li—Zhang Xianzhong —had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu, Sichuan, while Li's center of power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan.
Meanwhile, after years of providing tremendous support to the Korean royal family during the Imjin War against Japanese warlord Hideyoshi, the Ming military and finance, which had not gotten fully recovered, were forced to go into the new battles. Exhausted, Unpaid and unfed, the Ming army was struggling hard between the Manchu raiders from the north and huge peasant revolts in the provinces. Eventually, the Ming army fell apart, and was defeated by Li Zicheng—who called himself the King of Shun—and took the capital without much of a fight. On 26 May 1644, Beijing fell to Li Zicheng's rebel forces; during the turmoil, rather than facing capture and probable execution at the hands of the rebels, the Chongzhen Emperor arranged a feast and gathered all members of the imperial household aside from his sons. Using his sword, he killed all of them there. All people died except his second daughter, Princess Changping, whose attempt to resist the sword blow resulted in her left arm being severed by her father. The Chongzhen Emperor then went to Jingshan Hill, and hanged himself with the hair covering his face on a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City.

After the Ming dynasty

Since the fall of the Ming Empire, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty started persecuting the Zhu clan, hence a number of members of the Zhu family have changed their surnames to Zhou, Wang, Gao, Guang, Dong, Zhang, Zhuang, and Yan. Some of them changed their family names back to Zhu after the collapse of the Qing dynasty.
Several Ming princes accompanied Koxinga to Taiwan in 1661-1662, including the Prince of Ningjing Zhu Shugui and Prince Zhu Honghuan, son of Zhu Yihai, where they lived in the Kingdom of Tungning. Koxinga's grandson Zheng Keshuang surrendered to the Qing dynasty in 1683 and was rewarded by the Kangxi Emperor with the title "Duke of Haicheng" and he and his soldiers were inducted into the Eight Banners. The Qing sent the 17 Ming princes still living on Taiwan back to mainland China where they spent the rest of their lives in exile since their lives were spared from execution.
In 1725, the Yongzheng Emperor bestowed the hereditary title of marquis on a descendant of the Ming imperial family, Zhu Zhiliang, who received a salary from the Qing government and whose duty was to perform rituals at the Ming tombs, and was also inducted the Chinese Plain White Banner in the Eight Banners. Later, the Qianlong Emperor bestowed the title Marquis of Extended Grace posthumously on Zhu Zhuliang in 1750, and the title passed on through twelve generations of Ming descendants until the end of the Qing dynasty.
In 1912, after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution, some advocated that a Han be installed as Emperor, either the descendant of Confucius, who was the Duke Yansheng, or the Ming dynasty Imperial family descendant, the Marquis of Extended Grace.

Notable members

Ming dynasty (1368–1644 C.E.)