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Person1328 – 1398

Hongwu Emperor (Taizu of Ming)

Also called: Zhu Yuanzhang, Taizu of Ming

Founder of the Ming (r. 1368–1398), a poor peasant who rose through the Red Turbans, abolished the chancellorship and built an emperor-centred state with the lijia system and the sea ban

Born to poor peasants at Fengyang in Anhui, he lost his parents to drought and plague in 1344 and became a monk at the Huangjue Temple, wandering as a mendicant. In 1352 he joined the Red Turban army of Guo Zixing, married Guo’s adopted daughter (later Empress Ma) and built up his own following. After founding the Ming in 1368 he entrenched his autocracy through the Hu Weiyong (1380) and Lan Yu (1393) purges, which killed tens of thousands of officials and generals. When the crown prince Zhu Biao died first in 1392 he named his grandson (the Jianwen Emperor) heir, and on his death in 1398 he was buried at the Xiaoling tomb in Nanjing.

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2 related events

  1. 1
    1368Fall of the Yuan and Founding of the Mingmonarch

    Zhu Yuanzhang, who rose amid the Red Turban Rebellion of the late Yuan, became emperor at Nanjing in 1368 and founded the Ming. When Ming forces took Dadu that year, the Yuan court withdrew to the Mongolian plateau as the Northern Yuan.

  2. 2
    1380 – 1398The Hongwu Emperor’s System of Rulemonarch

    In 1380 the Hongwu Emperor abolished the chancellorship and the Secretariat, placing the Six Ministries directly under the throne, and governed the countryside through the lijia system and the Yellow Registers and Fish-scale Registers. He instructed the people with the Six Edicts and banned private sea trade.

Themes this person appears in

  • Song, Ming and Samurai JapanAD 960 – 1500

    The age when the civil-minded Song bought peace from Liao, Western Xia and Jin while the lower Yangtze boomed and Neo-Confucianism took shape, and the Ming, having driven out the Yuan, rebuilt the East Asian order through imperial autocracy, the sea ban and tribute — as Japan passed through the Kamakura and Muromachi warrior governments into the Warring States era, and Korea from Goryeo to Joseon