Zhu Xieyuan And The Local Governance Of Guizhou In The Late Ming Dynasty

At the beginning of the Tianqi Dynasty,the Tusi of Yongning,Sichuan,She Chongming,instructed his party members to suddenly set up rebellion in Chongqing and openly rebelled against the imperial court.An Bangyan,a Tushe in Shuixi,Guizhou,agreed to join the rebellion,and gathered Tusi from Zhanyi,Yunnan and other places to revolt in Bijie.Leading the break out of She’an Rebellion,which is the largest Yi Tusi rebellion in the history of the Ming Dynasty.An Bangyan besieged Guiyang heavily for ten months,killing more than 400,000 soldiers and civilians in the city.In the following seven years,the imperial court’s counterinsurgency war in Guizhou suffered heavy losses repeatedly.Guizhou Inspector Wang Sanshan,Southwest Governor Lu Qin and other important officials were all killed in the war,and the regional security situation was out of control.At the same time,the Ming Dynasty was deeply mired in the Liaodong War and could not withdraw from it,which fighting on the northeast and southwest fronts for a long time.In order to end the chaos in the Southwest as soon as possible,so as to fully deal with the increasingly powerful Later Jin Dynasty,in the second year of Chongzhen,the imperial court ordered Zhu Xieyuan,the governor of the five southwest provinces,to move to Guizhou,“ he was expected to quell the rebellion that the court had failed to quell for eight years,and empower him to lead five provinces”,to kill and capture the murderer for the court.After Zhu Xieyuan arrived in Guizhou,he made a comprehensive layout and precise planning.In just four and a half months,he completely defeated the Tusi rebels and captured and killed all the important leaders of the She’an Rebellion.In order to ensure Guizhou’s function as a southwestern transportation hub of “ the key of Yunnan,Hubei and Hunan province,and the borderland of Sichuan,Guangdong and Guangxi province”,and its strategic function of controlling Yunnan as “Guizhou is vital for the safety and stability of Yunnan”,Zhu Xieyuan launched the local redevelopment plan as “reasoning taxation to solidify borders,and rationalizing lawsuits to settle disputes,promoting study and politics to support education”,and the policy of“dividing territory to bureaucrats and bestow the barbarians with official positions”,implemented in the northwestern area of Guizhou after the Shuixi Tusi was revolutionized.Comprehensively manage Guizhou’s economy,administration,education and ethnic systems,with specific measures including:First,the economic governance policy of “attracting more people from other provinces to Guizhou,expand land reclamation and cultivation,and meet the needs of population survival,sort out finances and prevent hidden funds,reduce labor dispatch and officials’ bribery,and strictly implement the postal system,save unnecessary waste.” is to increase the population,expand the area of cultivated land,increase fiscal revenue,and reduce taxes and corvee at the same time to revitalize the local economy.Second,adjusting the boundary between Sichuan and Guizhou in the Yongning-Bijie section to resolve disputes over inheritance rights and land rights among Tusi,build a new Kaizhou in the Shuidong area after implementing the policy of bureaucratization of native officers,restore Shibing county government,and restore local order and ensure local safety through administrative means.Third,build a new Confucian temple,continue the teaching of ethical and moral education,increase the number of students,broaden the promotion channels for the Han and Barbarians children,rebuild local education,and build a platform for “Assimilating Barbarians with Chinese Civilization”.Fourth,in the local ethnic policy of “dividing territory to bureaucrats and bestow the barbarians with official positions”,the Pacification Commissioners’ public land that originally belonged to the Tusi was distributed to the meritorious officers and soldiers as payment and rewards,the private land of each order is still cultivated by the Barbarians and Han.In the local officials system,according to the merits of the officers and soldiers,their loyalty to the imperial court,and their influence in the local area,they are awarded different official positions and ordered to manage local affairs.Through the above measures,Zhu Xieyuan established a comprehensive,systematic and efficient social governance system in Guizhou,which effectively promoted the comprehensive recovery of Guizhou society in the late Ming Dynasty and accelerated the process of kingship in ethnic areas.Through the overall investigation of China’s social background in the late Ming Dynasty and the in-depth analysis of Guizhou’s social problems,this paper believes that:First,Zhu Xieyuan’s population management policy broke the household registration barriers between Guizhou’s civil,military,and barbarian registrations in the Ming Dynasty,and promoted the local population mobility,taking this as an opportunity,and under the blessing of its “benevolent governance” governance thought of reducing the burden of taxation and cost,Guizhou’s economy was able to recover quickly,and it completely got rid of Guizhou’s deep dependence on the finance and economy of neighboring provinces since the establishment of the province.Second,in the early Ming Dynasty,the system of different jurisdictions between between Tusi and Wei-suo implemented in the border area between Sichuan and Guizhou provinces was no longer suitable for local management in the late Ming Dynasty.However,under the restriction of the ancestral system,Zhu Xieyuan could only adjust the original Sichuan-Guizhou boundary line to a natural geographical boundary,and advance 80 miles southward.With the help of the natural barrier of the Chishui River,he blocked the loopholes in the ancestral law,increased local security,leading stability to Guizhou in the turbulent Late Ming Dynasty.Third,set up schools and courses in ethnic areas,and command the children of Miao and Han go to supervise the exams,and give tribute and imperial examinations separately,so as to promote the development of ethnic education and speed up the process of ethnic integration.Fourth,the policy of “dividing the territory to bureaucrats” prevented the high military expenditures that would inevitably be incurred in reforming the land and returning it to the locals,as well as the possible local rebellion in Guizhou,and successfully brought the Tusi’s area in northwestern Guizhou under the rule of the king.Under Zhu Xieyuan’s comprehensive governance at the end of the Ming Dynasty,Guizhou’s population gradually increased,the economy recovered rapidly,fiscal revenue increased,education achieved the expected development,the entire society was in order,and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment,“Stability and harmony have been restored to thousands of square kilometers of dangerous territory”,not long after Zhu Xieyuan passed away,the Ming and Qing Dynasties changed,and the prosperity of Guizhou local society created by him withered away.