Page 58 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Plate 5.2 Satellite image of Beijing
municipality

construction started only in 1417, therefore, when Zhu Di retrospect, 1450 can be seen as a special moment, because
moved to Beijing to supervise the work. After four years the city was fully in place, so to speak, but the population
enough had been done for the court to move entirely to had not yet started to explode. But 1450 was also a special
Beijing. At the beginning of 1421 the city was duly moment in a bad sense, both for China and for Beijing. Two
designated the principal capital of the empire. 5 years earlier, in 1448, the Mongols had invaded north
Thirty years later, in 1450, the city had settled into its new China, and in 1449 they had captured in battle the emperor
role. During the intervening three decades construction had of the day, the Zhengtong 正統 emperor (r. 1436–49, later
not stopped, as the city’s architects and builders gradually Tianshun 天順 1457–64). In 1450, Zhengtong’s younger
worked their way through the important building projects brother ruled China as the Jingtai 景泰 emperor (r. 1450–6),

that had been omitted from the initial five-year push.The but with the threat of illegitimacy hanging over him.
following is a summary of the Beijing construction timeline: Moreover, the country had entered the same economic
• 1403: Beiping is renamed Beijing. depression that afflicted most of Eurasia during the mid-15th
• 1406–17: accumulation of materials necessary to century. Furthermore – and this partly explains the
8
transform Beijing into the new capital. economic problems – the 1440s and 1450s were marked by
• 1409–16: construction of Changling mausoleum. repeated climatic anomalies and natural disasters, including
• 1417–20: construction of the Forbidden City, major ritual flooding within the city of Beijing. This was Beijing’s
9
sites and major government buildings. temporal situation in 1450. Now I want to consider the city’s
• 1421: Beijing is designated the new capital. configuration as a place-in-movement.
• 1421: destruction by fire of three major palace halls.
• 1424–7: expansion of Changling mausoleum. Flows: water
• 1437–9: construction of city gates and associated Without water and the hydraulics that kept water flowing,
structures. Beijing could not have operated as a city at all. It was the
• 1440–1: reconstruction of the three major palace halls availability of water in the Beijing area that had made it a
burned down in 1421, and strengthening of the walls of preferred site for an urban centre for hundreds of years. As
the Forbidden City. we have seen, there had long been a large lake there, which
• 1442: construction of the remaining major government by the 15th century had been broken up into a series of
offices. smaller lakes. The water for these lakes, and for Beijing
10
• 1445: strengthening of the city wall, and replacement of more generally, came from two sources. First, Beijing was
wooden bridges at the city gates by stone bridges. 6 located within the watershed of the Yongding 永定 River,
In addition, trees had grown, residential neighbourhoods which runs southeast from northern Shanxi province and at
7
had crystallised and commerce had established itself. In one point comes close to Beijing. The city was located in the

48 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450