A SOCIAL HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE CAPITAL PEKING DURING MING-CHING DYNASTIES

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This study is an attempt at re-investigating the so-called northward movement of the capital planned by the Hung-wu emperor is his later years in order to clarify the historical significance in the early Ming dynasty of the move to Peking carried out by the Yung-lo emperor in 1421.Since the publication of Wu Han's research on the subject, it has generally been interpreted that the dispatch of the crown prince Chu Piao to Shen-his in 1391 (Hung-wu 24) indicates the Hung-wu emperor's unchanged intention to move the capital to the north.However, at that time, ten years after its establishment, the system of princely enfeoffment showed signs of decline as evidenced by the political blunder of the Prince of Ch'in who had been given fiefs (wang-fu) in His-an and the accused treason of the Prince of Chin who had been enfeoffed in T'ai-yuan. This leads the present author to the supposition that the real purpose of dispatching the crown prince to Shen-his was to let him handle the various probl … More ems facing the princely establishments which had been placed mainly along the northern border with the location of the capital at Nanking as a prior condition, and also to let him inspect the structure and condition of the northern defense system.By investigating the process of the construction of the capital at Nanking the present author clarified that there was little chance for the plan to move the capital to the north or any place other than Nanking to be reconsidered. By Hung-wu 24, as a result of the suspension of the construction of Chung-tu in 1375 (Hung-wu 8), the overall consolidation work for the infrastructure of the capital Nanking to had reached its final stage with the completion of reconstructing the palaces of Nanking and the construction of Hsiao-ling (Filial Piety Mausoleum).Based on the above investigation, the present author concludes that the historical significance of the civil war of Ching-nan and the ensuing move to Peking lies in the fact that the system of Nanking, which had been in the making after Hung-wu 11 as the unified political and economic center, was changed to "the system of Peking" which was the separation of the political center from the economic one. Less