The Ming Dynasty: Last Native Han Chinese Rule

This is the complete story of the Ming Dynasty of China, the dynasty that built the Forbidden City. That built most of the Great Wall of China as we know it today. The Dynasty that, at its peak, was the richest society on Earth, it was so rich that silver mined in the mountains of Bolivia was crossing the Pacific just to end up in Chinese tax offices.
The last dynasty founded by native Han Chinese.


TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:52 The Beggar Who Became Emperor Of Ming
05:24 The Paranoid Founder Of Ming Dynasty
08:34 Zhu Di The Usurper Prince
11:30 Yongle’s Golden Age
13:29 Ming Dynasty And The Treasure Fleet
16:47 The Tumu (土木) Disaster
20:56 The Ming Dynasty Wall
22:25 Ming Dynasty And The First Global Economy
26:47 The Emperor Who Went On Strike, Wanli Emperor
32:05 The Perfect Storm
35:47 The Fall Of The Ming Dynasty
39:17 Conclusion


📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING
This video was researched using the following scholarly works and reputable references:

• The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7 & 8: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644 — ed. Frederick W. Mote & Denis Twitchett (Cambridge University Press)
• F.W. Mote — Imperial China, 900–1800 (Harvard University Press)
• Timothy Brook — The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Harvard University Press)
• Timothy Brook — The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (University of California Press)
• John W. Dardess — Ming China, 1368–1644: A Concise History of a Resilient Empire (Rowman & Littlefield)
• Ray Huang — 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (Yale University Press)
• Edward L. Dreyer — Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433 (Pearson Longman)
• Louise Levathes — When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne (Oxford University Press)
• Arthur Waldron — The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge University Press)
• Kenneth M. Swope — A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (University of Oklahoma Press)
• Kenneth M. Swope — The Military Collapse of China's Ming Dynasty, 1618–1644 (Routledge) • Frederic Wakeman Jr. — The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China (University of California Press)
• Jonathan D. Spence — The Search for Modern China (W.W. Norton)
• Geoffrey Parker — Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (Yale University Press)
• William S. Atwell — "International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy, circa 1530–1650" (Past & Present, No. 95)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica — "Ming dynasty," "Zhu Yuanzhang," "Zheng He," "Great Wall of China"
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History — "Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)"
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre — "The Great Wall" & "Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties"
• China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage — 2009 survey of Ming-era Great Wall length (~8,850 km)

Note: Where historical figures are debated (treasure ship dimensions, the size of the Tumu campaign army, population totals, silver-flow estimates), this video presents the range accepted by modern historians and flags traditional chronicle numbers as such.