Many of the south-western non-Chinese minorities rebelled during the course of the dynasty's existence, including the Miao, who at the end of the sixteenth century launched an uprising under the leadership of Yang Yinglong (1551-1600). The resulting insurgency was eventually supressed under the leadership of civil officials. During the early dynasty forceful suppression by the military had been the norm. In contrast, civil officials, like Neo-Confucian thinker Wang Yangming (1472-1529), conceptualized mixed policies emphasizing moral exhortations and social engineering, in combination with military force using advanced technologies, as integrated solutions to ethnic insurgencies in the course of the sixteenth century. This paper will look at the extent to which these mixed policies were advocated and applied, including the use of advanced firearms, and their relative measures of success. Heart-Minds and Harquebuses: The Bozhou Rebellion in China (1587-1600)The two most well-known theatres of military action during the Chinese Ming dynasty are usually the long northern frontier facing the arid zone and roaming (semi-)nomads, and the south-eastern seaboard suffering frequent raids from Sino-Japanese pirate coalitions.A third significant theatre, however, was constituted by the south-western areas of the empire, containing the abodes of many ethnic minorities. Many of these non-Chinese minorities rebelled during the course of the dynasty's existence, including the Miao, who at the end of the sixteenth century launched an uprising under the leadership of Yang Yinglong (1551-1600).The uprising and the resulting insurgency were eventually supressed under the leadership of two civil officials, Guo Zizhang (1543-1618) and Li Hualong (1554-1611). Whereas during the early dynasty forceful suppression by the military had been the norm, by the late sixteenth century civil bureaucrats had assumed the overarching leadership of such operations. This phenomenon was exemplified by civil official and Neo-Confucian thinker Wang Yangming (1472-1529), who conceptualized mixed policies emphasizing moral exhortations and social engineering, in combination with military force, as integrated solutions to ethnic insurgencies in the course of the sixteenth century. This paper will look at the extent to which these mixed policies were advocated and applied, and their relative measures of success. Furthermore, the Bozhou Rebellion saw the use of Japanese harquebusiers and advanced firearms by the Ming empire, and a tentative assessment will be made of their impact on the course of insurgency warfare.
Volley fire with gunpowder weapons is often seen by modern scholars as one of the important innovations which allowed Europe to politically dominate other cultures and societies. Many historiographical theories, of the kind Lyotard termed metarécits , “metanarratives,” have attempted to explain this phenomenon. Recently, compelling evidence has emerged that other civilizations also practiced the technique, most notably China. This article brings together existing and new evidence that volley fire with firearms was developed and practiced in China long before it appeared in Europe and challenges several of the grand narratives of European exceptionalism. This new evidence shows that the volley fire technique arose in China primarily as a reaction to domestic and foreign (semi-)nomadic cavalry threats, belying geographically deterministic accounts, which suggest that sophisticated infantry tactics with firearms would not arise in states bordering the steppe. This article will also challenge the claim that volley fire in Europe benefitted from its emergence in a competitive system of states undergoing a tradition-challenging Renaissance. I call for a reconsideration of the innovative potential of Eurasian land empires bordering the steppe, and stress the importance of studying political contingencies and cultures of innovation in shaping world history.
This article analyses the reasons behind the delayed appropriation and adoption of Ottoman harquebuses by the Ming army. Although these weapons had reached the empire by the mid-16th century, their existence was only acknowledged at the end of the century. Through the lens of securitisation, I will argue that this delay was a result of the context of Luso-Ottoman geopolitical rivalries in which these weapons were possibly leveraged as an incentive to form a Sino-Ottoman alliance against the Portuguese. I will argue that a civil bureaucracy averse to assertive activist rulership could have prevented the emperor from participating in the resulting military diplomacy. By comparing this event with a later Dutch East India Company embassy with similar geopolitical intentions, I will argue that the Ming civil officials achieved their goal by controlling the emperor�s perception of Ottoman intentions. In terms of securitisation, this meant that the emperor himself was the main audience and his officials the securitising agents in matters of foreign relations.
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