“Whatever has been separated for long must unite; whatever has been united for long must separate”. Wars of succession following a dynasty's collapse have been a staple of Chinese history; the war of succession following the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in the early 16th century (itself the result of a failed power struggle between factions of eunuchs) was no different.
The 30-year-old Five Kingdoms period, which culminated in the proclamation of the Sheng Dynasty by General Huang Shunyang, illegitimate son of a Taoist priest from Sichuan, is widely considered to have broken many frontiers, in effect making the modern world. The roots of the fall of the Ming are often attributed to its institutional failure to cope with the pressures surrounding the Great Production, which had begun with the invention of the coal-fired steam engine in Shanxi in the late 14th century.
From its humble beginnings as an irrigation tool on Shanxi's dry but fertile Loess Plateau, the coal-fired steam engine had by the mid-15th century enabled the rise of textile industries and other formerly labour-intensive goods. The legendary Shanxi-based trading guilds then reinvested their profits in other technologies, initially to expand their empires: railways, steel, steamships, and telegraph were all created by increasingly powerful guilds to provide an advantage in an increasingly cut-throat and remarkably laissez-faire Chinese economy.
By the late-15th century, China had changed beyond all recognition: the Emperor could now telegraph orders to sentries in faraway Yunnan; the middle class in Nanjing invested wealth in budding stock markets; millions of peasants formerly condemned to their ancestors' land now roamed China through cheap and fast railways. Even Confucian scholars struggled to maintain their relevance, with an increasingly popular school claiming that merchants who run their businesses efficiently are as much noble sages as a good king. The age-old Mongol and Japanese problems were no match to China's new military technologies. Vast quantities of Chinese goods were flooding marketplaces around the world, with the Imperial Court's traditional indifference to the outside world undergoing a sea change. Most infamously, the Ming Navy ruthlessly backed rival factions in Japan's Sengoku Period to ensure open markets for Chinese exporters.
Yet behind the facade of a modernising China lay deep social problems: peasants who entered industrial work (often due to improving agriculture yields leading to a fall in grain prices) found lower wages and harsher life, the introduction of cheap paper allowed the rapid spread of subversive ideas, and scholar-bureaucrats who had previously frowned upon high finance were themselves openly indulging in it. Worse still, the now vastly powerful guilds supported rival factions in the Imperial Court, with the relatives of eunuchs typically amassing vast wealth in exchange for political support. China's age-old political intrigue was taking higher stakes. All this was a powerful disincentive on action to alleviate the social ills brought by industrialisation.
Although historians commonly attribute the beginning of the Five Kingdom period to Emperor Zhengde's assassination in an attempted coup by a group of eunuchs (the so-called Dingmao Incident in 1507), it is acknowledged the incident was a culmination of events which began in the steel-making town of Changzhi two years earlier. An industrial accident which killed 34 workers led to an impromptu street protest, initially demanding recognition of workers' unions. A ham-fisted attempt by local officials to forcibly disperse the crowd soon spiralled into a major crisis, despite attempts by the Imperial Court to appease unrest by demoting local officials to duties in Tibet.
Soon, however, the eunuchs in the Imperial Court were evenly split between the Jiangnan faction, which advocated partially meeting the demands to maintain the peace; and the Chang'an faction, which advocated ruthlessly ignoring them. Although the urban middle class slightly favoured the Jiangnan faction, they were also fearful of rhetoric in pamphlets circulated among radical workers denouncing the Jiangnan faction as obstructing the advance of workers by false appeasement. It is claimed that China's political crises was splitting families apart, the gravest of all sins in Confucian thought.
The details of the Dingmao incident are shrouded in mystery. The prevailing theory is that Zhengde was assassinated by the Chang'an faction for going beyond the Jiangnan faction. Others claim a sentry was bribed by the Jiangnan faction to allow the installation of a pro-Jiangnan regent. Still others claim false flag.
In any case, the incident, and the Ming Court's subsequent flight to Nanjing, soon led to the disintegration of the empire. By late 1509, the North China Plain and Shandong was controlled by the Zhumin Gonghe (“Commonwealth of the Masses”), which espoused equal distribution of land and industry. The Ming Court fought on, vowing to recover the north from the “disloyal bandits”. Yet more factions emerged: General Ma Zhongsheng, espousing an eclectic Muslim-based ideology which simultaneously sympathised with the workers while denouncing the Zhumin Gonghe, consolidated over Shanxi, the Guanzhong Region, and areas to the north and west. And one of the Ming Court's most loyal generals, Huang Shunyang, staged a kidnapping incident and proclaimed a faction of his own; by 1511, he controlled crucial Sichuan and areas to the south and west. Yet the Ming still controlled the middle and lower Yangtze Basin as well as (nominally, at least) the southeast coast; they would not relinquish the fight. Finally, a ham-fisted attempt by the Zhumin Gonghe to enlist the support of Jurchen tribes eventually led to their unity – something that decades of Ming diplomacy had sought to prevent; they too proclaimed themselves the Later Jin.
Although total wars were nothing new, the advent of modern technology drastically increased the scope: the entire population was constantly politically mobilized by the spread of propaganda pamphlets; the entire scientific knowledge of the factions were dedicated solely to improving their battlefield advantage; the entire industrial base was tooled to produce ever-more efficient weapons. It is widely claimed that had China not experienced the 30 years of war, it would take 100 years to obtain the technological progress.
Although the Five Kingdom Period lasted 32 years, the first 25 years saw relatively few territorial changes. It was still a time of great upheaval, as if China was one sociological laboratory.
General Ma's Feng Empire (Feng meaning "submission", as in submission to God) was dominated largely by Hui Muslims, who largely respected the polytheistic traditions of the Chinese people while using the Koran *and* Confucian classics to justify its almost socialistic policies. However, propaganda leaflets from other factions denounced the dogmatic implementation of Islamic law.
The Zhumin Gonghe was, on paper, a federation of many regional workers' and peasants' councils which supervised production and distribution of goods; capitalists and landlords were "persuaded" to "renegotiate" contracts with the proletariat; those who resisted were often beheaded in market squares as "enemies of the people", as were those deemed "anti-workers". However, contrary to Southern Ming propaganda, private enterprise was allowed within limits, and the nutrition of the average person in the Zhumin Gonghe actually improved.
What the Jurchen lacked in numbers, they made up in industrial might and ingenuity. Using Liaoning's massive coal and iron reserves, the Later Jin became, on a per capita basis, the most industrialised state in the world. Its industrial talent came mostly by the massive scientific community in the former Imperial Academy who fled north from the Zhumin Gonghe. The Later Jin was characterised by almost total segregation between the Jurchen upper class and the Han lower class, this being justified as the natural Confucian order. Of course, this was attacked in Zhumin Gonghe propaganda pamphlets, which simultaneously praised the Jurchen while denouncing the "enemy of the workers".
The remnants of the Ming, after having stabilised its territory, built its legitimacy as the "sole legitimate" government under heaven, denouncing all other factions as "bandits". Despite its catastrophic loss, the same political forces which caused the civil war still obstructed attempts at reforming the government. If anything, the scandalous wealth gap widened: chief to blame was the Southern Ming's consistent printing of money. Life for the average person in this area was tough, but in general, tolerable.
The Later Ba lacked the ideological zeal of the Zhumin Gonghe, the religious fervour of the Feng Dynasty, or the conservatism of the Ming; life under the Later Ba was scarcely different than under the Ming. However, General Huang was free to experiment with social reforms, including an independent judiciary, universal schooling, and more gender equality.
Starting from 1532, the informal truce broke down. Having developed ironclads, the Zhumin Gonghe engaged in ransoming foreign ships around Southern Ming ports, hoping to obtain rice as ransom. The Ming response was ferocious: its ten most advanced infantry and artillery divisions marched to Xuzhou, besieged the city until its residents starved to death, and withdrew (it then provided food aid as "concern for compatriots"). With this attendant loss of face, the Supreme Committee of the Zhumin Gonghe, fractious in the best of times, was increasingly riven by infighting (much of it instigated by Southern Ming and Feng spies working together). Each factions increasingly sought regional support and raised local militia, as the Zhumin Gonghe's Supreme Committee was unable to accomplish anything. After the Chairman of the Kaifeng Regional Committee died in mysterious circumstances on Mid Autumn Night 1533, the Zhumin Gonghe quickly imploded into chaos and insurrection, with each faction denouncing each other for revisionism and betrayal. Scorched earth tactics killed 5 million people in the former Zhumin Gonghe between 1533 and 1537.
To the north, anti-Jin propaganda by the Zhumin Gonghe was beginning to strain the dynasty's formidable industrial might. A wave of strikes, bombings, and assassinations by unions led to a savage crackdown by the Jin; by 1534 it too was fractured and paralyzed. The Southern Ming planned to push northwards, knowing its western flank was quiet.
Back in Chengdu, General Huang sensed an opening. A series of bad harvests, ever-rising inflation, and continued corruption, led to discontent in the crucial rice baskets of Hunan and Hubei. Huang made a massive infantry attack on the city of Hengzhou in June 1535, with gunboats sailing down the Yangtze River to harass Hubei cities. After a bloody siege and scorched earth warfare, all of Hunan and Hubei fell by December 1535, with a death toll of 3 million; soon after, General Chen defected to Huang, taking the formidable Southern Fleet with him.
Jiangxi fell after similarly lethal fighting by Spring 1536. And with astonishing speed surprising even General Huang himself, cities along the mid-Yangtze fell without a shot fired; by Summer Solstice 1536, Nanjing was taken without a shot fired. The last Emperor of the Southern Ming bit a cyanide pill while evading capture at Ningbo. Yet Huang had captured a vast territory suffering famine and disease, the likes which China had not seen since the Mongol conquests; in his diaries he fashined himself as Li Hong, the legendary Taoist messiah who would bring peace to a desperate world.
Huang's next move was astonishing in its path and scope: 100000 foot soldiers marched from Sichuan through the impregnable Qinling Mountains, catching General Ma completely off guard and taking the Guanzhong Plain by Winter 1536 (Huang was helped greatly by his spies spreading false intelligence to Ma claiming his next move was into the North China Plain).
With all his opponents destroyed, defected, or in disarray, the path was clear for Huang's final victory: marching an unheard-of 40 km per day northwards, his troops entered Beijing on March 7, 1537; Shenyang, capital of the Jin, fell a mere month later. On Summer Solstice 1537, in an elaborate ceremony, General Huang Shunyang proclaimed the Sheng Dynasty.
The Sheng Dynasty still had "bandits" in Fujian, Taiwan, Gansu, and parts of Manchuria to "pacify". Yet it had just won the world's first industrial scale war, with 20 million dead (most by famine and disease, of course) out of a pre-war 120 million; the brunt of these were in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Henan. It would take decades to rebuild from the apocalyptic war, yet with a centuries-long technological advantage over any other power, the path was clear for China to expand.
