The Wanli Emperor, 1596–1606

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Harry Miller

Published:

2009

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan US

On August 13, 1596, the Wanli emperor ordered a special team of officials into the countryside to open up silver mines. The team was composed of a palace eunuch, a bureau director from the Ministry of Revenue, and a member of the Embroidered Uniform Guard (jin yi, the imperial bodyguard), and it was dispatched to the environs outside Beijing. The next day, another officer from the Embroidered Uniform Guard was sent to open mines in Henan Province. Within the month, more eunuchs and palace guards were sent out to mine silver, to places as far away as Shandong, Shaanxi, Zhejiang, and Shanxi provinces. There is evidence that Wanli was acting in response to a memorial by a lowly officer named Zhong Chun (himself perhaps a eunuch) suggesting that the measure was necessary to make good the treasury depletions resulting from the Korean war and the rebuilding of the burned palace structures. Such recommendations in favor of silver mining had been made before, and they had always been resisted; but this time, Wanli decided to accept the recommendations. Thus, by the summer of 1596, under the orders of the Wanli emperor, the state's desperate search for silver had begun.1KeywordsLocal OfficialRegional OfficialMing DynastyCommon PeopleGrand CanalThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Türkçe sayfa →