Yao
The Yaos are one of the oldest ethnic groups in China, but they have lived in the Huguangshan forest area for a long time and have insufficient communication with the Central Plains Dynasty. Until the Ming Dynasty, the Yao people's sense of identification with China was still not strong, and in the Ming Dynasty, the Yao people often rebelled, and the history called "Huguang Yao Rebellion". The emperors of the Ming Dynasty adopted a combination of suppression and care for the Yao people, on the one hand, actively suppressing the rebellion, on the other hand, they worked hard to promote the improvement of the quality of life of the Yao people and strengthen their national identity. By the Wanli period, the Yao people were basically stable, and by the Qing Dynasty, the Yao people had been completely subordinated.
The Yaos of the Ming Dynasty
First, the beginning of the Huguang Yao chaos
The Yao people first appeared in Hunan according to historical records and are one of the oldest ethnic groups in China. Historically, with the occurrence of the northern people's southern crossing incident, the contradictions between the Han people from the north and the Yao ethnic group in Hunan were frequent. Since then, the Yaos have gradually moved south and moved into Guangdong and Guangxi. Especially in Guangxi, the mountains and forests are densely packed, which is very suitable for the survival of the Yao people, and since then Guangxi has become the base camp of the Yao people. By the Yuan Dynasty, according to the historical records of the Yuan Dynasty, there were 13 Yao rebellions in Hunan, 10 Yao rebellions in Guangdong, and 28 Yao rebellions in Guangxi, of which the Taiding Yao rebellion in 1325 affected the whole province of Guangxi, and the Zhishun Yao rebellion in 1330 had more than 20,000 rioters, and the Yuan army took 2 years to quell it.
The two sides clashed
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the capital was Nanjing, to the southwest, Zhu Yuanzhang sent Mu Ying and others to attack, Mu Ying and others adopted a strategy of concentrating on attacking the Yuan Dynasty, maintaining a harmonious attitude towards the Yao people, and the two sides temporarily made peace. In the hongwu decade, the world was determined, the bureaucratic governance of the Ming Dynasty was on the right track, and the infiltration into the areas inhabited by ethnic minorities in the southwest intensified. The Yao rebellion finally began.
In the thirteenth year of Hongwu, Liu Maosan of the Yao tribe in Luoding, Guangdong, gathered a crowd to rebel. Liu Maosan was actually not a good man, and in the chaotic world at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, he took advantage of the chaotic situation, gathered people to fall into grass, and robbed his family and house; after the world was stable, Liu Maosan wandered around, but as a bandit thief, he was only arrested by the local government. It was not until the thirteenth year of Hongwu that he pulled the flag and rebelled, which was targeted by the regular army of the Ming Dynasty. At that time, the Guangdong Weisuo army encircled and suppressed Liu Maosan's base camp and quickly suppressed their rebellion.
Conflict between the two sides
2. Seeds that have been rehabilitated and returned to the stream
A major feature of the Yao chaos in the Ming Dynasty is that the Yao chaos is frequent, which actually reflects the intensification of ethnic integration. It is precisely because of the frequent contacts between the Han and Yao sides that the formation of the Chinese nation has been promoted.
In the sixteenth year of Hongwu, the Yao people at the turn of guangdong and Gansu rebelled, and their leader claimed to be King Shuntian. In this year, Zheng Zhen, the Duke of Shenguo of the Ming Dynasty, gathered the Wei forces of Guangdong and Jiangxi to carry out a large-scale encirclement and suppression of the Yao cottages on the border of Guangdong and Gansu, and suppressed the rebellion. In the 28th year of Hongwu, the Ming army suppressed the Rebellion of the Yao people in Tanyuan, Guangdong. In the thirty-first year of Hongwu, the Yao people in Luoding, Guangdong, were suppressed for rebellion.
After quelling the above-mentioned Yao rebellion, the Ming Dynasty reformed the governance of the Yao District, and with the victory on the battlefield, the Ming Dynasty changed the Yao District, which was beyond the reach of the previous King, from complete laissez-faire to the beginning of the establishment of Huairou Prefecture County. The Ming Dynasty gave the old Yao leaders official positions, such as Feng Yuantai, the Yao leader in western Guangdong, and the imperial court made him the official of the Yao people from Qipin Takishui County, responsible for the Yao people in the county, and his descendants would also inherit this position, but it must be canonized by the imperial court. In this way, both in terms of actual power and the name of the government, Feng Yuantai obtained the right to govern the Takishui Yao people; and his acceptance of the post of county magistrate meant that his authority to govern the people was formally derived from the central government, which laid the groundwork for the direct land reform and return of the Ming and Qing dynasties after this.
Third, the Ming Dynasty Yao chaos was frequent
During the Yongle period, because the Yongle Emperor's southern conquest of the northern war, especially the war against Vietnam, directly shocked the southwest Qunyi, so the Yongle dynasty, the southwest Yao people were the most stable. In a total of 22 years in Yongle, the Yao people in Guangdong paid tribute to the central government 11 times, and the Yongle Emperor also gave them a generous gift in the spirit of thick and thin, and both sides enjoyed their own pleasures.
During the Renxuan period, because the emperor was still quite diligent and the central government did not make major mistakes, the relationship between the two sides was still maintained, but because the capital was moved to Beijing, the Ming Dynasty's control over the southwest declined; coupled with the completion of the system of town eunuchs, Beijing sent eunuchs to guard the place, these eunuchs were greedy, and their representative was Ruan Neng, the eunuch of Guangdong Town, who colluded with The Soldier Shangshu Chen Ruyan, "The officials of xizhi tu attacked the shadows, and had to pay a bribe", which triggered the envy of the Yao people.
In the orthodox period, starting with the Luoding Yao Rebellion in 1446, the Ming Dynasty Yao Rebellion finally set off a climax. In 1446, Mao Zide, a Yao tuzhi prefecture, killed the Ming Dynasty official Qianhu Wang Yi, and the rebellion in Juzhou intensified, and its scale intensified, and spread to the entire western part of Guangdong and eastern Guangxi, and the Ming army encircled and suppressed it for 10 years before it was completely suppressed. The most representative of the Ming Dynasty is the Luoban Yao Rebellion. The Luopan Yao Rebellion began in the fourth year of Hongzhi (1491) and was not completely suppressed until the fifth year of the Wanli Dynasty (1576), during which the Yao people in the Luopan area continued to absorb the Sifang Yao people, and the Yao people throughout Guangdong were only their heads, and the Luopan Yao people seemed to be independent.
According to the statistics of Lin Tianwei, a famous history professor from Guangdong, from 1491 to 1583 (the eleventh year of the Wanli Calendar), in the 92 years, there were 57 large-scale Yao rebellions in the Huguang area, almost once a year and a half. Speaking of far-reaching influence, it is also the Yao Rebellion in the second year of Jingtai in 1451, when the anti-thieves looted three cities such as Maoming, Huazhou, and Wuchuan, and the Ming Dynasty deliberately set up the post of viceroy of Liangguang in order to eliminate them, and the post of viceroy of Liangguang in the Ming and Qing dynasties began.
The city of Guangzhou in the Ming Dynasty
Fourth, blending
History is always strange, before the eleventh year of the Wanli calendar, the frequent Yao chaos suddenly disappeared after the eleventh year of the Wanli calendar, what is the reason? In fact, the Yao chaos did not disappear suddenly, but the inevitable result of the combination of historical accumulation and unexpected events.
The so-called historical accumulation is that the emperors of the Ming Dynasty actively promoted the enlightenment of the Yao people, improved their quality of life, and allowed them to integrate into the Ming society. Prompting the Yaos to settle in the mountains was a policy implemented by the emperors of the Ming Dynasty. The Yaos of the Ming Dynasty were distributed in the rugged mountains and forests of Hunan, Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, and from the Hongwu period to the change of Tumubao, the central government of the Ming Dynasty still relied on the old Yao magnates to indirectly govern the Yaos through Tuguan. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Wang Ao, the first governor of Liangguang and the Jingtai Dynasty, adopted a combination of suppression and appeasement when governing the Yao people, and he adopted the method of cracking down on fierceness, coercion without asking questions, and dividing and disintegrating, and he tried his best to win over the pro-Ming Yao people's cottages and crack down on splitting the cottages, and at the same time, "all the Yao servants and others who have returned will be kind, those who come will be righteous, those who come will be righteous, those who will be ordered will be believed, rewards and punishments will be justified, great evil will be punished, and small things will be dishonest, and they will be wounded and wounded, and the armor and the soldiers will come to them, so that they will both admire their righteousness and fear their might." Under Wang Ao's administration, the Ming Dynasty ruled Yao with great success, greatly accelerating the Yao people's integration into society, but unfortunately, only two years after Wang Ao left, the new governor did not implement Wang Ao's strategy, so the Yao chaos re-emerged.
Ming court
Yao rebellion, in fact, the rebel army is not strong in combat strength, relying on only geographical advantages, "the enemy advances and I retreat" is the main method of warfare of the rebels, which is the reason why the Ming Dynasty has never been able to suppress the rebellion. Therefore, the Ming Emperors after Jingtai basically adopted a policy of blockade in the face of Yao chaos, but they could not do anything about Yao chaos.
Until the fourth year of the Wanli Calendar, under zhang Juzheng's reform, the Ming Dynasty showed a zhongxing atmosphere and began to solve various accumulated shortcomings. The status quo of the Luopan Yao people's division of the territory was finally broken. In this year, with the support of Zhang Juzheng, Yin Zhengmao and Ling Yunyi sent troops to encircle Luoban on ten roads, and this battle was surrounded by iron barrel tactics, surrounded on all sides, and the whole army advanced in unison, forcing the Yao base to continue to shrink, after four months of encirclement and suppression. After killing 43,000 thieves, the Ming army completely destroyed the divided regime that began in the four years of Hongzhi, and the blow to the Yao people was huge, the destruction of the largest cottage of the Yao tribe caused the loss of the main force of the Yao people, the rest of the Yao people were scattered, and the Ming Dynasty quickly set up Liuguanguan County in the old yao land, and finally made the remaining Yao people quickly integrate into the Ming society.
Yao soldiers
Wen Shijun said
Although after the Tang and Song dynasties, Guangdong and Guangxi regions have been civilized, but there are few people in the two Guangdong areas, they do not read much, they live in the mountains and forests for a long time, if the official government can be good guidance, they are still very willing to accept Han culture, the performance is that in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, which was seriously troubled, it was often seen that the two Guangdong wolf soldiers (the two Guangdong Shaomin troops, mainly the Yao and Zhuang ethnic groups) entered the southeast coast to resist the Wu, and they made great contributions to the defense of China. After Wanli Pingyao, the two Guangyao rebellions basically disappeared, and the subsequent Ming and Qing emperors did not exterminate the Yaos, nor did they erase their customs and cultures, but treated them equally, regarded them as the people under their rule, and developed together, and the Yaos eventually integrated into the Chinese nation and became a member of the Chinese nation. The inclusiveness of the Chinese nation is precisely the important reason why the Chinese nation has come to this day on its own and strong self-reliance.
bibliography
Lin Tianwei: "Yao Chaos in Guangdong in the Ming Dynasty", Lingnan Culture, No. 2, 1985.
Mai Sijie, "The Relationship Between Conscription and the Ming Dynasty's Dayeng Gorge Yao Chaos", Journal of Guangxi Normal University for Nationalities, No. 2, 2016.
Song Yongzhi, "From Yaoshan To YaoCun: The Evolution of the Settlement Form of Yao People in Guangdong during the Ming and Qing Dynasties", Jinan Historiography, No. 1, 2014.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Purple Orange)
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