The Study On Military Craftsmen Of The Capital Region In Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty inherited the household registration system of the Yuan Dynasty and divided the household registration by occupation.Military craftsmen are craftsmen in the military and belong to artisan groups.However,because the military craftsmen belonged to the military register rather than the craftsman’s household registration,the particularity of the identity makes the group of military craftsmen are different from the ordinary artisans.The military craftsmen who surrendered to the Ming Dynasty became the main source of the military craftsmen in the capital of the early Ming Dynasty.On this basis,in order to ensure the completion of the corvee in the capital region,the court obtained the military craftsmen through some methods,such as forcing people to become military craftsmen,exile as military craftsmen,becoming military craftsmen on their own initiative and fostering the young military craftsmen,and recruitment military craftsmen and so on.Due to the requirements of construction and the implementation of the craftsman’s system,a large number of military craftsmen were sent to the capital region.From Yongle period to Zhengtong period Beijing was built on a large and long term in the Ming Dynasty.A large number of military craftsmen were not allowed to return their hometowns for generations to be under the jurisdiction of the garrison of the capital region.The capital became the main gathering place for military craftsmen.A large number of military craftsmen gathered in the capital region,the effective management to them affected both the completion of the corvee and the stability of the society.First of all,from the perspective of the management institutions of the military craftsmen in the capital region,the uniqueness of the identity of the military craftsmen and different locations and work place,making the court’s management of military craftsmen reflect dualistic features,namely the daily management belonged to the garrison and the work management belonged to government office.Secondly,from the court’s management of the military craftsman’s household register of view,the court has strict regulations on the issue of household register of the military craftsmen who were sent to the capital region and their families.At the same time,under the rule of permanent service,the military craftsmen were forbidden to be divided and change their household register.Again,from the changes in the number of the military craftsmen of view,it experienced a period of expansion from the period of Zhengde to a reduction of the period of Jiajing.Finally,judging from the measures taken by the imperial court to deal with the escaping military craftsmen,supplement has become the most important way for the court to deal with the expulsion of the military craftsmen and ensure the completion of the corvee,it to a certain extent ensured the stability of the military craftsmen in the capital region.Under the strict restraint of the court,the military craftsmen in the capital region undertook heavy corvee.They are mainly responsible for the manufacture and repair weapons,the construction of palace mausoleums,the production of court handicrafts,trained and so on.When they were restrained in the service,the court also gave a certain amount of monthly payments,rewards,exemptions and so on to the military craftsmen to ensure their lives were maintained.With the continuous development of the Ming Dynasty,the change of social concepts and the acceleration of the social class flow,in the middle and late Ming Dynasty,the military craftsmen in the capital region were eager to realize the change of their status.Some of them achieved official status by means of imperial decrees,imperial examinations,and other methods.From the beginning of the Ming Dynasty,the military craftsmen inherited from the identity generation in the middle and later period of Ming Dynasty,gradually separated from the identity of household registration,and realized the change of their identity.This is essentially the result of the interaction between the relaxation of the household registration system and the acceleration of social mobility.