On The Military Thought And Practice Of Xu Guangqi

As one of the important military scientists in the late Ming Dynasty,Xu Guangqi went through four emperor's reign all his life,namely Jiajing,Wanli,Tianqi,chongzhen,he experienced rapid decadence of the Ming dynasty.As an encyclopedic scholar of the Ming Dynasty,Xu Guangqi had a deep study on mathematics,agriculture,astronomy,calendar,classics and military affairs.Because of the influence from his family,he paid great attention to the military.After entering the official field,Xu Guangqi worried about the bad situation of incompetent armaments,he concerned about the military consciously and studied the knowledge of western military technology,and he wrote about the tips,lines of military training.Besides,he carried out military practice actively.On this basis,he gradually formed his own military concept,mainly including military training,weapons and equipment.The military concept and practice of Xu Guangqi not only played an important role in promoting the army's combat effectiveness of Ming Dynasty and defensing the military attack of Later Jin,his thought of developing the firearms and military training promoted the development of the military science of the Ming Dynasty during the period of interlace between the hot and cold weapons.This text includes three parts in all.The first part is the formative origin of Xu Guangqi's military concept,it mainly carries out analysis in three aspects:family edification and the military situation of the Wanli era,the change of academic atmosphere in the Late Ming Dynasty and the influence of the Jesuits in China,the assumption of uniting the Korea and coastal defense concept proposed by Xu Guangqi in the era of Wanli.The second part mainly elaborates the main content of Xu Guangqi's military thought from the thought of “machine wins”,the way of military training and the idea of logistics support.Besides,this part discusses the military practice of Xu Guangqi by his action,for example he proposed recruit Portuguese soldiers in Macau and purchase western artillery and try to make firearms and so on.The third part is make evaluation on Xu Guangqi's military concept.Firstly,it analyses the characteristics of Xu Guangqi's military concept from these three aspects,namely wholly consideration,refinement realitic and the development of firearms.Secondly,it analyses the function of Xu Guangqi's military concept from the angle of the military combat effectiveness of the Ming Dynasty and military development history.Of course,due to the limitations of the times,there are some shortcomings of Xu Guangqi's military thought inevitably.Thus,basing on the analysis of characteristic and function of Xu Guangqi's military thought,it is also discusses the limitations of its military concept.