Page 20 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

had forfeited control over the people and territory of China. The Hu fortune is forever over, 胡運永終
Pitying the people’s abject suffering, Heaven then chose the [Yet] there are these traitorous remnants. 有此遺孽 10
Ming founder as the vehicle through which to restore order
and establish a new polity capable of saving the people. The appellation hu 胡 referred in general to horse-riding
Thus, the Ming founder had not betrayed his sovereign or nomadic pastoralists from the steppe and here in particular
rebelled against the reigning dynasty. In such a view, to the Chinggisid rulers of the Yuan dynasty. Zeng Qi’s
although the Mongols may have still physically occupied choice of Hu created a sense of distance and difference,
Chinese territory when the Ming founder began to suggesting a contrast between Hu with China on the one
consolidate power, they had already lost possession of the hand and between the Hu, a contemporary steppe polity
Mandate of Heaven, rendering them illegitimate. The Ming without any transcendent basis of authority, and the Great
founder and his court repeated this justification in official Yuan, a historical dynasty that ruled China and that was
proclamations for domestic audiences, communications with acknowledged to have held the Mandate of Heaven. Zeng
neighbouring rulers and in letters to the Chinggisid court Qi’s proud declaration that the fortunes of the Hu or
and its allies for decades. Mongols were a thing of the past belied the Ming court’s
6
This was part of a wider narrative about the Chinggisids continuing unease about the imperial ambitions of these
that the Hongwu emperor and his advisors developed to ‘traitorous remnants’, the Chinggisids, who retained
explain the rise, the glory and the irreversible fall of that considerable status in the present as successors to Chinggis
house in terms that were advantageous to the Ming court. and Qubilai. In a poem entitled ‘Pacification of the Hu’ (Ping
All such discussions of the Chinggisid past were explicitly hu song 平胡頌), one of the Yongle emperor’s officials
tied to the Ming court’s narrative of the Chinggisid present. dismissed the Chinggisids in the following terms:
The Ming court acknowledged the Chinggisids on the Only they, the remnant Hu, 唯彼殘胡
steppe as biological descendants of Chinggis, Qubilai and
Toghan-Temür but categorically denied their status as Those Hu did not know. 彼胡岡知
political successors. 7 The Mandate of Heaven is not usurped. 天命不謇
The fortune of the Yuan is already ended. 元祚既終
The early fifteenth century
Before turning to the Yongle emperor and his successors in How can a taper blaze? 爝火何焰 11
the early 15th century, a few words about developments on The official bemoans the Chinggisids and their allies
the Mongolian steppe are in order. By the late 14th century, who failed to acknowledge that their allotted span of rule
the power and authority of the Yuan Mongol court on the had run its course. He seeks to minimise the Chinggisids’
steppe was in steep decline. Violent competition among importance by contrasting the light given off by a single
different branches of the Chinggisid family intensified, and taper with the blazing illumination generated by the sun
influential Mongol leaders outside of the Chinggisid family and moon, a reference to the Ming dynasty.
began to seize power, although most continued to use The Yongle emperor’s court continued the founder’s
Chinggisid figureheads to legitimate their rule. At the same strategy of marginalising the Chinggisids by casting them as
time, the Oirats (Qalmaqs/Kalmyks), based in present-day the aberration that failed to recognise the transfer of the
northwestern Xinjiang, began to rival the Eastern Mandate of Heaven:
Mongols, occasionally even abandoning the Chinggisid Whosoever has teeth in his mouth and hair on his head,
principle, that is only Chinggis Khan’s descendants were whosoever has blood and breath, none does not come in
qualified to serve as the khan of khans, to rule in their own submission. Only the traitor remnants of the northern caitiffs
name. To legitimise political ambitions, men and women located on the distant border gather like clouds and assemble
8
on the steppe began crafting their own Chinggisid like crows, moving without constancy. They are stubborn,
narratives. The contested and contingent nature of such conniving and arrogant.
9
developing narratives, combined with the open rivalry 凡含齒戴髮有血氣者岡不率服。獨北虜遺孽處於荒裔。雲聚烏
between the Yuan and Ming courts during the late 14th 合，遷徙無常，倔強黠驕。 12
and early 15th centuries, may have allowed the Ming court
to exercise greater influence over recent memories of Although such rhetoric might suggest a blanket
Chinggis, Qubilai, Toghan-Temür and their successors at condemnation of all Mongols, the Ming court never pursued
this point than would be true later on, after the mid-15th genocidal campaigns against the entire steppe. The Yongle
century. emperor famously led his armies into the steppe five times,
The Yongle emperor and his court in the early 15th but the objective was always two-fold, namely to destroy a
century maintained key elements of the Ming founder’s particular Mongolian polity and to secure Mongolian (and
narrative of Chinggisid rule. They continued to insist that Jurchen) allies. In the preface to a ‘Poem of the Pacification
13
the Chinggisids’ allotted span of rule or fortune (yun 運) had of the Hu’ (Ping hu shi 平胡詩), penned on the occasion of the
run its course; the biological descendants of Qubilai and Yongle emperor’s first campaign in 1410, the senior court
Toghan-Temür might still populate the steppe, but they official Yang Shiqi 楊士奇 (1365–1444) wrote:
would never revive the Mongol empire. In an imperially As for the great mass of those with braided hair, felts and
commissioned poem celebrating one of the Yongle emperor’s leather clothing from the steppe, each led his subordinates,
victorious campaigns against the Mongols, the official Zeng surrendering in earnest and responding to righteousness. They
Qi 曾棨 (1372–1432) wrote: prostrated themselves at the foot of the palace. Those who

10 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450