blackchoas t1_jdmeqee wrote
Interesting stuff, it sounds to me like in the external letters he's merely willing to scapegoat the Yuan in an attempt to smooth over any diplomatic issues they caused in the past.
Internally he doesn't want the Yuan scapegoated though because he lived and understood the very real problems the Yuan court caused and to let his officials scapegoat the Yuan and their origins as barbarians as the "true cause" of all the problems would be to fail to learn from the real problems.
His view is pretty consistent with my understanding of the Mandate of Heaven, interestingly he refers to natural disasters but seems to suggest that those weren't so much directly a sign of the loss as the Yuan's failed reaction to them were. Further I feel like he is characterizing the rebels and banditry as a natural disaster in a way, a natural reaction to a court that isn't governing properly, something awful and violent and dangerous, definitely not to be encouraged or glorified as righteous, but to be expected if the government fails in their duty to the people.
This emperor was literally born a peasant and rose to the top, which I expect gives him a proper perspective on the wasteful luxury, arbitrary justice, local corruption and clueless isolationism that can characterize Chinese dynasties that lost the mandate, but also he literally wasn't the first peasant emperor. I find it hard to imagine that he didn't understand his situation, the Yuan didn't lose China because they were foreign barbarians, and that if his government didn't govern properly than the pattern would just repeat again and another peasant would replace him
rtb001 t1_jdoe61v wrote
Well by the nature of this concept of a "mandate from heaven", he kind of have to take this position. If the founder of the Ming dynasty claims he now has the legitimate devine right to rule China by taking this mandate from the preceding Yuan dynasty, then by definition the Yuan dynasty must have been at one point legitimate. After all, if they were never legitimate, and then you took the mandate to rule from them, that would mean your own mandate is also illegitimate.
Therefore the official stance of EVERY major Chinese dynasty has to be that the previous dynasty gained the mandate of heaven legitimately, but then lost said mandate due to poor rule, thereby allowing the new dynasty to claim the mandate and begin the cycle anew.
Interesting side note about the mandate is that there was once a physical symbol of it in the form of a massive jade seal made by the first emperor of China around 220 BCE, which survived multiple pronged periods of interdynastic chaos, until eventually the Heirloom Seal of the Realm was finally lost to history somewhere around the Song to Yuan dynasties. Zhu's forces looked very hard for the seal as they took over the country from the retreating Mongol five, but came up empty.
Babystepthree t1_jdp0ndf wrote
Thank you for sharing your insights on the concept of the "mandate from heaven" and its implications on the legitimacy of Chinese dynasties. Your point about the necessity for each new dynasty to acknowledge the legitimacy of the preceding dynasty in order to claim the mandate is particularly interesting. It demonstrates the continuity and stability of the Chinese imperial system, despite the frequent changes in ruling families.
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