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Much More Than Tribute: The Foreign Policy Instruments of the Ming Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Felix Kuhn Open the ORCID record for Felix Kuhn [Opens in a new window]
Felix Kuhn*
Affiliation:
Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, Email: felixkuhn@bfsu.edu.cn.
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Abstract

The Ming Empire entertained relations with countries all across Asia and beyond. To deal with these many different polities, Ming China relied on a range of foreign policy instruments, among them the granting of special trading rights, the dissemination of cultural objects, and the use of military threats. This article puts the spotlight on the diversity of these foreign policy means. Building on the literature, it takes as its purview all relations that the Ming Empire entertained with foreign polities, exploring the many means that the Ming employed to further their interests. It does so by classifying the instruments into four categories—economic, diplomatic, cultural, and military—showing that the Ming made full use of instruments belonging to each of them.

Keywords

Ming Empireforeign policyinternational relations
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊 , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 59 - 82
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Antoine Roth and Wang Ying for their constructive comments, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions, which have helped me improve my arguments.

References

1 Several of these theoretical conceptions are laid out in Chen Zhigang 陈志刚, “Guanyu feng gong tixi yanjiu de ji ge lilun wenti” 关于封贡体系研究的几个理论问题, Qinghua daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 25 (2010), esp. 60–62.

2 For a recent iteration of this debate, see the special issue on the tributary system in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 77 (2017).

3 Van Lieu, Joshua, “The Tributary System and the Persistence of Late Victorian Knowledge,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 77 (2017), 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See e.g. Lo, Jung-pang, “Policy Formulation and Decision-Making on Issues Respecting Peace and War,” in Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies, edited by Hucker, Charles O. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 41–72Google Scholar.

5 See e.g Yunquan, Li 李云泉, “Mingdai zhongyang waishi jigou lun kao” 明代中央外事机构论考 Dong yue lun cong 27 (2006), 128–33Google Scholar.

6 See, for instance, the following studies on the Ming diplomat Chen Cheng: Hecker, Felicia J., “A Fifteenth-Century Chinese Diplomat in Herat,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 3 (1993), 85–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Church, Sally K., “Centre and Periphery in Ming Foreign Relations: The Case of Chen Cheng,” Furen lishi xuebao 24 (2009), 1–52Google Scholar; Rossabi, Morris, “From Chen Cheng to Ma Wensheng: Changing Chinese Visions of Central Asia,” Crossroads 1/2 (2010), 23–31Google Scholar.

7 See e.g. the following studies on the Ming maritime trade policy: Li Qingxin 李庆新, Mingdai haiwai maoyi zhidu 明代海外贸易制度 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian, 2007); Li Kangying, The Ming Maritime Trade Policy in Transition, 1368–1567 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010); Danjō Hiroshi 檀上寛, Mindai kaikin = chōkō shisutemu to ka'i chitsujo 明代海禁=朝貢システムと華夷秩序 (Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Gakujutsu Shuppankai, 2013).

8 This constitutes by far the most extensive literature on this subject. By way of example, one can mention here the chapters by Morris Rossabi, Donald N. Clark, Wang Gungwu, and John E. Wills, Jr. in the The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2, ed. Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), or, more recently, the chapters by Edward L. Farmer, Kenneth R. Hall, John K. Whitmore, Sixiang Wang, and Masato Hasegawa in The Ming World, edited by Kenneth M. Swope (London: Routledge, 2020).

9 Li, The Ming Maritime Trade Policy in Transition, 1368–1567, 5–9.

10 See e.g. John E. Wills, Jr., “Relations with Maritime Europeans, 1514–1662,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, 333–34; Qi Meiqin 祁美琴, “Dui Qingdai chaogong tizhi diwei de zai renshi” 对清代朝贡体制地位的再认识, Zhongguo bianjiang shidi yanjiu 16 (2006), 52; William T. Rowe, China's Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), 135–36; Danjō Hiroshi 檀上寛, Eirakutei: Ka'i chitsujo no kansei 永楽帝—華夷秩序の完成 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2012), 68–73, 251–52, 296–98.

11 Li, Mingdai haiwai maoyi zhidu, 44–46; Danjō, Mindai kaikin, 77–78.

12 Danjō, Mindai kaikin, 74–75, 78–79, 83–84; Li Guoqiang 李国强 and Liu Junke 刘俊珂, “Tiaozhan yu biandiao: Mingdai haijiang zhengce tan lun” 挑战与变调—明代海疆政策探论, Shehui kexue zhanxian 2014.1, 96.

13 Li, The Ming Maritime Trade Policy, Chapter 2; Danjō, Mindai kaikin, 85–86.

14 Morris Rossabi, ‘The Tea and Horse Trade with Inner Asia During the Ming,’ Journal of Asian History 4 (1970), 136–68.

15 For a useful periodization of the Ming trade system until 1567, see Gakusho Nakajima, “The Structure and Transformation of the Ming Tribute Trade System,” in Global History and New Polycentric Approaches: Europe, Asia and the Americas in a World Network System, edited by Manuel Perez Garcia and Lucio De Souza (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 141–51.

16 Shunli Huang, “The Rise of Private Maritime Trading Powers in Fujian and Their Impacts on the View of the Sea During the Ming Dynasty,” trans. Ng Eng Ping, in The Maritime Defence of China: Ming General Qi Jiguang and Beyond, edited by Y. H. Teddy Sim (Singapore: Springer, 2017), 227–28.

17 See the figure in James Kai-sing Kung and Chicheng Ma, “Autarky and the Rise and Fall of Piracy in Ming China,” Journal of Economic History 74 (2014), 510.

18 Li, The Ming Maritime Trade Policy, 57–73.

19 Nakajima, “The Structure and Transformation,” 141.

20 See Morris Rossabi, “Ming Foreign Policy: The Case of Hami,” in From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia: The Writings of Morris Rossabi, edited by Morris Rossabi (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 19–37.

21 Rossabi, “From Chen Cheng to Ma Wensheng,” Crossroads 1/2 (2010), 30.

22 Rossabi, “Ming Foreign Policy,” 32; Rossabi, “From Chen Cheng to Ma Wensheng,” 30.

23 Rossabi, “Ming Foreign Policy,” 35–36.

24 Arthur Waldron, “Chinese Strategy from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries,” in The Making of Strategy: Ruler, States, and War, edited by Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 103–4.

25 Li, The Ming Maritime Trade Policy, 103.

26 F.W. Mote, Imperial China: 900–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 697.

27 Quoted in Li, The Ming Maritime Trade Policy, 108.

28 Oláh Csaba, “Debatten über den japanischen Tribut nach dem Zwischenfall in Ningbo (1523) und der chinesische Umgang mit der ersten darauf folgenden japanischen Gesandtschaft (1539–1540),” in The East Asian Maritime World 1400–1800: Its Fabrics of Power and Dynamics of Exchanges, edited by Angela Schottenhammer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), 176–82. On the reaction of one high official, Xia Yan, see also John W. Dardess, Four Seasons: A Ming Emperor and His Grand Secretaries in Sixteenth-Century China (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 101–2.

29 Quoted in Li, The Ming Maritime Trade Policy, 153.

30 Li, “Mingdai zhongyang waishi jigou lun kao,” 129. This tally system was developed under Hongwu and expanded under Yongle. Danjō, Mindai kaikin, 88–89. For a description of how this system worked (in the case of Ayutthaya), see Piyada Chonlaworn, “Ayutaya no tai Min kankei: gaikō monjo kara miru” アユタヤの対明関係–外交文書からみる, Shigaku kenkyū 238 (2002), 64–66.

31 According to one assessment, from 1368 to 1567 Korea sent more than 600 missions and Ryukyu 295 missions. Nakajima, “The Structure and Transformation,” 141.

32 Okamoto Hiromichi, “Foreign Policy and Maritime Trade in the Early Ming Period: Focusing on the Ryukyu Kingdom,” Acta Asiatica 95 (2008), 43–45. The preferential treatment, including the granting of ships would already lessen under the Zhengtong emperor (r. 1435–49). Okamoto, “Foreign Policy and Maritime Trade,” 48–49.

33 Cha Hyewon, “Was Joseon a Model or an Exception? Reconsidering the Tributary Relations during Ming China,” Korea Journal 51 (2011), 42.

34 Akamine Mamoru 赤嶺守, Ryūkyū Ōkoku: Higashi Ajia no kōnāsutōn 琉球王国 東アジアのコーナーストーン (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2004), 46–48; Okamoto, “Foreign Policy and Maritime Trade,” 41–43.

35 Roderich Ptak, Die maritime Seidenstraße: Küstenräume, Seefahrt und Handel in vorkolonialer Zeit (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2007), 218, quotation marks also in the original.

36 Exceptions existed; see Danjō Hiroshi 檀上寛, “Mindai chōkō taisei shita no sakuhō no imi: Nihon kokuō Minamoto Dōgi to Ryūkyū koku Chūzan-ō Satto no baai” 明代朝貢体制下の冊封の意味-日本国王源道義と琉球国中山王察度の場合, Shisō 68 (2011), 163–64.

37 The Ming also invested female rulers, as shown especially in titles bestowed on local rulers in the southwest of the empire. For one example, see John E. Herman, Amid the Cloud and Mist: China's Colonization of Guizhou, 1200–1700 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 83–85.

38 Frederick W. Mote, “The Ch'eng-hua and Hung-chih Reigns, 1465–1505,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1, edited by Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 393.

39 Morris Rossabi, “The Ming and Inner Asia,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, 228–30.

40 Henry Serruys, Sino-Mongol Relations during the Ming, II: The Tribute System and Diplomatic Missions (1400–1600) (Brussels: Institut Belge Des Hautes Etudes Chinois, 1967), 99, 104.

41 David Spindler, “A Twice-Scorned Mongol Woman, the Raid of 1576, and the Building of the Brick Great Wall,” Ming Studies 60 (2009), 73–74.

42 See Mote, Imperial China: 900–1800, 688.

43 Serruys, Sino-Mongol Relations, 104. Johan Elverskog, Our Great Qing: The Mongols, Buddhism and the State in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 22–23.

44 Adam Bohnet, “Debating Tumen Valley Jurchens during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” Korean Studies, 39 (2015), 27.

45 Weirong Shen, “‘Accommodating Barbarians from Afar’: Political and Cultural Interactions between Ming China and Tibet,” Ming Studies 56 (2007), 51–52.

46 Elliot Sperling, “Tibetan Buddhism, Perceived and Imagined, along the Ming-Era Sino-Tibetan Frontier,” in Buddhism between Tibet and China, edited by Matthew T. Kapstein (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2009), 158–66.

47 Peter Schwieger, “Significance of Ming Titles Conferred upon the Phag mo gru Rulers: A Reevaluation of Chinese–Tibetan Relations during the Ming Dynasty,” Tibet Journal 34/35 (2009–2010), esp. 325–26.

48 For a wider theorization and examination of domestic legitimation strategies and how they related to Chinese hegemony, see Ji-Young Lee, China's Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).

49 This was much less so the case for Japan, since the Japanese rulers did not use the Ming title in the formal domestic settings. Tanaka Takeo 田中健夫, ‘Ashikaga shōgun to Nihon kokuōgō’ 足利将軍と日本国王号, in Nihon zenkindai no kokka to taigai kankei 日本前近代の国家と対外関係, edited by Tanaka Takeo (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1987), 6.

50 Seung B. Kye, “Huddling under the Imperial Umbrella: A Korean Approach to Ming China in the Early 1500s,” Journal of Korean Studies 15 (2010), 51–52.

51 Turrell V. Wylie, “Lama Tribute in the Ming Dynasty,” in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson: Proceedings of the International Seminar on Tibetan Studies, Oxford 1979, edited by Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1980), 336.

52 Wang Gungwu, ‘Ming Foreign Relations: Southeast Asia,’ in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, 330.

53 Kathlene Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 182–83.

54 Rossabi, ‘The Tea and Horse Trade,’ 139.

55 Peter I. Yun, “Rethinking the Tribute System: Korean States and Northeast Asian Interstate Relations, 600–1600” (PhD diss., University of California Los Angeles, 1998), 178–80; Lee Jin-Han, “The Development of Diplomatic Relations and Trade with Ming in the Last Years of the Koryŏ Dynasty,” International Journal of Korean History 10 (2006), 5.

56 Sixiang Wang, “Co-constructing Empire in Early Chosŏn Korea: Knowledge Production and the Culture of Diplomacy, 1392–1592” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2015), 123–24.

57 Rossabi, “The Ming and Inner Asia,” 250. As the report by a member of a Timurid embassies maintained, “The emissaries bowed and lowered their heads but did not touch their foreheads to the ground.” Ghiyathuddin Naqqash, “Report to Mirza Baysunghur on the Timurid Legation to the Ming Court at Peking,” in A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art, translated by W. M. Thackston (Cambridge, M.A.: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989), 289. See also Zhang Wende 张文德, “Ming yu Zhongya Tiemuer diguo de liyi wanglai” 明与中亚帖木儿帝国的礼仪往来, Xiyu yanjiu 2005.3, 35.

58 Murai Shōsuke 村井章介 et al., eds., Nichi-Min kankeishi kenkyū nyūmon: Ajia no naka no kenminsen 日明関係史研究入門 アジアのなかの遣明船 (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2015), 325–26.

59 Ming shilu 明實錄 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 1962–1966), Taizong 71.7a, Geoff Wade, trans., Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: An Open Access Resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore, available at: http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/yong-le/year-5-month-9-day-30, accessed 14 July 2020.

60 Morris Rossabi, A History of China (Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 247–48.

61 Danjō Hiroshi 檀上寛, Tenka to tenchō no Chūgokushi 天下と天朝の中国史 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2016), 218–19. It should be added that the reason Japan was elevated at this time, was the exceptionally warm relationship between Yongle and the Japanese ruler Yoshimitsu. Japan would soon be looked at with very different eyes. When the Ming leadership much later offered investiture to Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who had laid waste to Korea in his attempt to conquer Ming China, he was given the same clothes as the king of Ryukyu, i.e. one level down. Zhao Lianshang 赵连赏, “Mingdai ci fu Liuqiu cefeng shi ji ci Liuqiu guowang lifu bianxi,” 明代赐赴琉球册封使及赐琉球国王礼服辨析 Gugong bowuyuan yuan kan 153 (2011), 106.

62 Jiang Yuqiu 蒋玉秋 and Zhao Feng 赵丰, “Yiyidaishui yibang hua fu: Cong ‘Ming shilu’ Chaoxian ci fu kan Ming chao yu Chaoxian fushi waijiao,” 一衣带水 异邦华服——从《明实录》朝鲜赐服看明朝与朝鲜服饰外交, Meishi yu sheji 2015.3, 35–37.

63 Gregory Smits, “Ambiguous Boundaries: Redefining Royal Authority in the Kingdom of Ryukyu,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 60 (2000), 111–12. On the clothes that the Ming empire bestowed on Ryukyu, see Zhao, “Mingdai ci fu Liuqiu cefeng shi ji ci Liuqiu guowang lifu bianxi.”

64 For a map that shows the location of the two buildings of the Huitongguan and a temple in which some envoys were occasionally housed, as well as a list of where polities were housed, see Murai et al., eds., Nichi-Min, 296.

65 Wang Jianfeng 王建峰, “Mingdai huitongguan zhineng kao shu” 明代会同馆职能考述, Lanzhou Daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 34 (2006), 103.

66 Feng Zhang, Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 163.

67 Johannes S. Lotze, “Translation of Empire: Mongol Legacy, Language Policy, and the Early Ming World Order, 1368–1453” (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 2016), 68.

68 Martin Slobodník, “The Relations between the Chinese Ming Dynasty and the Tibetan Ruling House of Phag-mo-gru in the Years 1368–1434: Political and Religious Aspects,” Asian and African Studies 13 (2004), 160.

69 Sixiang Wang, “Korean Eunuchs as Imperial Envoys: Relations with Chosŏn through the Zhengde Reign,” in The Ming World, edited by Kenneth M. Swope (London: Routledge, 2020), 460–80.

70 Two more languages were added in the mid-sixteenth century. Lotze, “Translation of Empire,” 86, n. 20.

71 Lotze, “Translation of Empire,” 118.

72 Francis Woodman Cleaves, “The Sino-Mongolian Edict of 1453 in the Topkapi Sarayi Müzesị,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 13 (1950), 431–46.

73 Graeme Ford, “The Uses of Persian in Imperial China: The Translation Practices of the Great Ming,” in The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, edited by Nile Green (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), esp. 125. The Ming Empire actively encouraged others to use Persian. For instance, the Ming ordered Ayutthaya (Siam) not to use its own script but rather use Persian. Ayutthaya refused to comply, and the Ming empire finally created a Siam department in the Siyiguan in 1579 to have some officials study the Thai language. Chonlaworn, “Ayutaya no tai Min kankei: gaikō monjo kara miru,” 59–61.

74 Carla Nappi, “Tilting toward the Light: Translating the Medieval World on the Ming–Mongolian Frontier,” The Medieval Globe 2 (2016), 166.

75 He Fangchuan 何芳川, “‘Huayi zhixu’ lun” “华夷秩序”论, Beijing daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 35 (1998), 41–42.

76 Champa was located in today's central and southern Vietnam.

77 Ming shilu, Taizu 47.3b–4a, translated by Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-2-month-12-day-1.

78 Ming shilu, Taizu 67.4b–5a; Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-4-month-7-day-25.

79 Ming shilu, Xianzong 219.1a–b, translated by Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/cheng-hua/year-17-month-9-day-1.

80 This was especially the case during the fifteenth century, see Geoff Wade and Sun Laichen, eds., Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century: The China Factor (Singapore: NUS Press, 2010).

81 Ming shilu, Taizong 72.5a, translated by Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/yong-le/year-5-month-10-day-21.

82 Chonlaworn, “Ayutaya no tai Min kankei,” 56–57.

83 See Ming shilu, Xiaozong 105.6b–8a; Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-zhi/year-8-month-10-day-28.

84 See Jennifer Holmgren, “A Question of Strength: Military Capability and Princess-Bestowal in Imperial China's Foreign Relations (Han to Ch'ing),” Monumenta Serica 39 (1990–91), 31–85.

85 David M. Robinson, “The Ming Court and the Legacy of the Yuan Mongols,” in Culture, Courtiers, and Competition: The Ming Court (1368–1644), edited by David M. Robinson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 382–85.

86 The following is based on Cui Jing 崔靖, “Mingdai hougong yizu feipin yu Ming, Meng, Chao sanfang guanxi” 明代后宫异族妃嫔与明、蒙、朝三方关系, Yunnan shifan daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 46 (2014), 151–56.

87 Hok-lam Chan, “The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-hsi, and Hsüan-te Reigns, 1399–1435,” The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7, 268–69, 301; and Donald N. Clark, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations Under the Ming,” The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, 291–92.

88 Benjamin I. Schwartz, “The Chinese Perception of World Order, Past and Present,” The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations, edited by John King Fairbank (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 276–88.

89 See e.g. David C. Kang, East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

90 Dates from Christopher P. Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (New York: Facts On File, 2004), 170.

91 Walter Fuchs, “Notizen zur Übersetzertätigkeit ins Mongolische um 1400,” Oriens Extremus 9 (1962), 70.

92 Ming shilu, Taizong 34.3a; Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/yong-le/year-2-month-9-day-13. On the potential influence on Southeast Asian literature, see Geoff Wade, “Engaging the South: Ming China and Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 51 (2008), 588.

93 Chan, “The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-hsi, and Hsüan-te Reigns,” 301. Ming shilu, Yingzong 279.2a; Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/tian-shun/year-1-month-6-day-2-0.

94 Chen Wen 陈文, “Annan hou Lichao beishi shichen de renyuan goucheng yu shehui diwei” 安南后黎朝北使使臣的人员构成与社会地位, Zhongguo bianjiang shidi yanjiu 22 (2012), 123–24.

95 Murai et al., eds., Nichi-Min, 296.

96 See e.g. the exchanges between Korean and Vietnamese envoys. An overview of these exchanges can be found in Shimizu Tarō 清水太郎, “Pekin ni okeru Betonamu shisetsu to Chōsen shisetsu no kōryū: 15-seiki kara 18-seiki o chūshin ni” 北京におけるベトナム使節と朝鮮使節の交流: 15世紀から18世紀を中心に, Tōnan Ajia kenkyū 48 (2010), 334–63.

97 Wang, “Mingdai huitongguan,” 102.

98 Murai et al., eds., Nichi-Min, 333–39.

99 Guo Peigui 郭培贵, “‘Mingdai waiguo guansheng zai hua liuxue ji kekao’ zhiyi” 《明代外国官生在华留学及科考》质疑 Lishi yanjiu 1997.5, 159.

100 For a list of Ryukyuan students in Ming China until 1482, see Geoff Wade, “Ryukyu in the Ming Reign Annals 1380s-1580s,” Asia Research Institute Working Paper 93 (2007), 17.

101 Ming shilu, Taizu: 254.6b, translated by Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-30-month-8-day-27.

102 Okamoto Hiromichi 岡本弘道, “Mindai shoki ni okeru Ryūkyū no kansei haken ni tsuite: ‘Nanyōshi’ ni miru kokushikan ryūgakusei no ichizuke toshite” 明代初期における琉球の官生派遣について-『南雍志』にみる国子監留学生の位置付けとして Rekidai hōan kenkyū, 6/7 (1996), 29, 36–37.

103 Tanaka Takeo 田中健夫, Higashi Ajia tsūkōken to kokusai ninshiki 東アジア通交圏と国際認識 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1997), 63.

104 Quoted in Barry D. Steben, “The Transmission of Neo-Confucianism to the Ryukyu (Liuqiu) Islands and Its Historical Significance: Ritual and Rectification of Names in a Bipolar Authority Field,” Sino-Japanese Studies 11 (1998), 42.

105 For an overview, see Yü, Chün-fang, “Ming Buddhism,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 8, 893–952. On the early emperors, Hongwu and Yongle, see also Elliot H. Sperling, “Early Ming Policy Toward Tibet: An Examination of the Proposition that the Early Ming Emperors Adopted a ‘Divide and Rule’ Policy Toward Tibet” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1983), Chapter 2. On the later emperors, see also Hoong Teik Toh, “Tibetan Buddhism in Ming China” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2004), 176–203.

106 Tanaka Takeo 田中健夫, “Kanji bunkaken no naka no buke seiken: Gaikō monjo sakuseisha no keifu” 漢字文化圏のなかの武家政権-外交文書作成者の系譜, Shisō, 796 (1990), 7–14.

107 Charlotte von Verschuer, “Japan's Foreign Relations 1200 to 1392 A.D.: A Translation from Zenrin Kokuhōki,” Monumenta Nipponica 57 (2002), 441, emendation in original.

108 On early Ming-Japan relations, see e.g. Zhang, Chinese Hegemony, Chapter 4.

109 Charlotte von Verschuer, “Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's Foreign Policy 1398 to 1408 A.D.: A Translation from Zenrin kokuhōki, the Cambridge Manuscript,” Monumenta Nipponica 62 (2007), 282, n. 50.

110 John K. Whitmore, Vietnam, Hồ Quý Ly, and the Ming (1371–1421) (New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1985), 26.

111 Marsha Haufler, “Beliefs: Miracles and Salvation,” in Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, edited by Craig Clunas and Jessica Harrison-Hall (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014), 243.

112 Martin Slobodník, “Tribute and Trade—Economic Exchanges Between Central Tibet and Early Ming China,” Studia Orientalia Slovaca 12 (2013), 237, 240.

113 Kazuo Enoki, “Tsung-lê's Mission to the Western Regions in 1378–1382,” Oriens Extremus 19 (1972), 47–53.

114 Sperling, “Early Ming Policy,” 80; Slobodnik, “Tribute and Trade,” 242.

115 Robinson, “The Ming Court and the Legacy of the Yuan Mongols,” 377.

116 Patricia Berger, “Miracles in Nanjing: Record of the Fifth Karmapa's Visit to the Chinese Capital,” in Cultural Intersections in Later Chinese Buddhism, edited by Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), 145–69; Shen, “Accommodating Barbarians from Afar,” 58–59.

117 Seen, for instance, in an edict that Yongle sent to a Tibetan monk. Shen, “Accommodating Barbarians from Afar,” 59–60.

118 Dora C.Y. Ching, “Tibetan Buddhism and the Creation of the Ming Imperial Image,” in Culture, Courtiers, and Competition, 343. See also Sperling, “Early Ming Policy,” 140.

119 Toh, “Tibetan Buddhism,” 106–7.

120 Morris Rossabi, “Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia,” in From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia, 116, 119.

121 Klaus Sagaster, “The History of Buddhism among the Mongols,” in The Spread of Buddhism, edited by Ann Heirman and Stephan Peter Bumbacher (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 396.

122 Ban Shin'ichirō 伴真一朗, “Min-sho ni okeru tai Mongoru seisaku to Kasei ni okeru Sakya Pandita no cheruten saiken: Kanbun, Chibettobun taiyaku hikoku, Sentoku 5 nen (1430) ‘Jūshū Ryōshū Hakutō-shi' no rekishiteki haikei” 明初における対モンゴル政策と河西におけるサキャ・パンディタのチョルテン再建–漢文・チベット文対訳碑刻，宣徳5年(1430) 「重修涼州白塔誌」の歴史的背景, Ajia, Afurika gengo bunka kenkyū 84 (2012), 39–65.

123 Sagaster, “The History of Buddhism among the Mongols,” 396–401.

124 This link between Altan Khan and Tibet also saw the bestowal of the title “Dalai” on a Tibetan lama, the beginning of the Dalai Lamas. But it was only under the Qing dynasty that deep ties to the Dalai Lamas were established and, on this basis, foreign policy instruments developed. See e.g. Patricia Berger, Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003).

125 Serruys, Sino-Mongol Relations, 89–90. Toh, “Tibetan Buddhism,” 209.

126 Serruys, Sino-Mongol Relations, 90.

127 Quoted in C.R. Bawden, The Modern History of Mongolia, 2nd edn (London: Kegan Paul International, 1989), 27–28.

128 Yuan-kang Wang, “Power and the Use of Force,” in Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan, edited by Timothy Brook, Michael van Walt van Praag, and Mike Boltjes (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018), 75.

129 Kawagoe Yasuhiro 川越 泰博, “Mindai hokuhen no ‘yo fu shū’ ni tsuite” 明代北辺の「夜不収」について, Chūō daigaku bungakubu kiyō 186 (2001), 57–83, on information-gathering specifically, see 66–68.

130 Slobodník, “The Relations,” 158.

131 See Hecker, “A Fifteenth-Century Chinese Diplomat.”

132 Hecker, “A Fifteenth-Century Chinese Diplomat,” 86.

133 Kenzheakhmet Nurlan, “The Qazaq Khanate as Documented in Ming Dynasty Sources,” Crossroads 8 (2013), 152. That Ming geographic knowledge of Central Asia did not decline after Yongle, but actually increased, based on information provided by envoys, is also stressed in Morris Rossabi, “Ming Officials and Northwest China,” in From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia, 97–99.

134 Kenneth J. Hammond, “Cartography in the Ming,” in The Ming World, 135.

135 Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, Bunretsu kara tenka tōichi e 分裂から天下統一へ (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2016), 148.

136 Atsushi Kobata and Mitsugu Matsuda, Ryukyuan Relations with Korea and South Sea Countries: An Annotated Translation of Documents in the Rekidai Hōan (Kyoto: Atsushi Kobata, 1969), 29–34.

137 This identification is, however, not uncontested. See Johannes L. Kurz, “Two Early Ming Texts on Borneo,” Ming Studies 70 (2015), esp. 60–62; and Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/place/bo-ni.

138 Kurz, “Two Early Ming Texts on Borneo,” 63.

139 On this polity, see Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/place/san-fo-qi.

140 Ming shilu, Taizu 254.6b–7a, translated by Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-30-month-8-day-27.

141 Wang, Yi-T'ung, Official Relations between China and Japan, 1368–1549 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 93–94.

142 Lee Jin-Han, “The Development of Diplomatic Relations,” 6.

143 Fuma Susumu, “Ming-Qing China's Policy towards Vietnam as a Mirror of Its Policy towards Korea: With a Focus on the Question of Investiture and ‘Punitive Expeditions,’” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 65 (2007), 9–10.

144 Church, “Centre and Periphery in Ming Foreign Relations,” 21–29.

145 On the invasion itself, see Kenneth M. Swope, “Gunsmoke: The Ming Invasion of Đại Việt and the Role of Firearms in Forging the Southern Frontier,” in China's Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier Over Two Millennia, edited by James A. Anderson and John K. Whitmore (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 156–68. On the occupation period, see Whitmore, Vietnam, Hồ Quý Ly, and the Ming (1371–1421), Chapter 6.

146 See e.g. the discussions in Wang, “Ming Foreign Relations,” 315–16; Fuma, “Ming-Qing China's Policy towards Vietnam,” 11–13; Danjō, Eirakutei, 256–58.

147 These conflicts are chronicled in Fujiwara Riichirō 藤原 利一郎, Tōnan Ajia shi no kenkyū 東南アジア史の研究 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1986), 116–27.

148 Ming shilu, Xianzong 136.6b, translated by Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/cheng-hua/year-10-month-12-day-14.

149 Ming shilu, Xiaozong 38.7b, translated by Wade, Southeast Asia, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-zhi/year-3-month-5-day-25.

150 Fuma, “Ming-Qing China's Policy,” 16–17.

151 Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 77–79.

152 Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, Chapter 5.

153 See David Robinson, “Why Military Institutions Matter for Ming History,” Journal of Chinese History 1 (2017), 297–327.

154 Wan Ming 万明, “Mingdai waijiao moshi ji qi tezheng kao lun: Jian lun waijiao tezheng xingcheng yu beifang youmu minzu de guanxi” 明代外交模式及其特征考论—兼论外交特征形成与北方游牧民族的关系, Zhongguoshi yanjiu 2010.4, 27–57.

155 See, for instance, Jon Fernquest, “Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382–1454),” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 4 (2005), 27–81; Wade, “Engaging the South,” 584–85, 600–601; and He Shengda 贺圣达, “Jiajing monianzhi Wanli nianjian de Zhong Mian zhanzheng ji qi yingxiang” 嘉靖末年至万历年间的中缅战争及其影响, Zhongguo bianjiang shi di yanjiu 12 (2002), 73–80.

156 See Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). See also the discussion in John W. Dardess, A Political Life in Ming China: A Grand Secretary and His Times (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 40–42. That Ming strategy underwent changes over time, with three distinct periods, is emphasized by John Dardess, More Than the Great Wall: The Northern Frontier and Ming National Security, 1368–1644 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020).

157 See e.g. the different views on the defense of Manchuria in the early 1620s. John W. Dardess, Blood and History in China: The Donglin Faction and Its Repression, 1620–1627 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 50.

158 Edward L. Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), xii, 33.

159 Quoted in Zhang Fan, “A New Period in the History of Chinese-Foreign Relations,” in The History of Chinese Civilization, Volume III: Sui and Tang to mid-Ming Dynasties (581–1525), edited by Yuan Xingpei, English text edited by David R. Knechtges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 446.

160 Tansen Sen, “Zheng He's Military Interventions in South Asia, 1405–1433,” China and Asia 1.2 (2019), 168–75.

161 Andrew R. Wilson, “The Maritime Transformations of Ming China,” in China Goes to Sea: Maritime Transformation in Comparative Historical Perspective, edited by Andrew S. Erickson, Lyle J. Goldstein, and Carnes Lord (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009), 260–63.

162 Tonio Andrade, “Cannibals with Cannons: The Sino-Portuguese Clashes of 1521–1522 and the Early Chinese Adoption of Western Guns,” Journal of Early Modern History 19 (2015), 311–35.

163 Morris Rossabi, “Ming Foreign Policy.”

164 Lam, Yuan-Chu, “Memoir on the Campaign Against Turfan (An Annotated Translation of Hsü Chin's P'ing-fan shih-mo Written in 1503),” Journal of Asian History 24 (1990), 133Google Scholar.

165 See Swope, Kenneth M., A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009)Google Scholar; and Lewis, James B., ed., The East Asian War, 1592–1598: International Relations, Violence, and Memory (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015)Google Scholar.