Hongwu Emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang)

Few rulers in Chinese history rose from circumstances as humble as those of Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398), founder of the Ming dynasty and posthumously known by his era name as the Hongwu Emperor. Born to a destitute tenant-farming family in the Huai River region, he lost most of his relatives to famine and epidemic in 1344 and entered a Buddhist monastery as a novice, spending several years as a mendicant monk before joining the Red Turban rebellion against the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty in 1352.

Zhu proved an able commander and gradually eliminated rival rebel leaders in the Yangtze valley, most decisively Chen Youliang at the naval battle of Lake Poyang in 1363. In 1368 he proclaimed the Ming dynasty at Nanjing and dispatched armies north, capturing the Yuan capital of Dadu (modern Beijing) that same year and driving the Mongol court onto the steppe. His reign title, Hongwu ("vastly martial"), became so closely identified with him that Ming and Qing emperors were thereafter conventionally known by their era names.

As emperor he reorganized the state around a registered agrarian population, promoting land reclamation, fixed tax quotas, and hereditary occupational households. His rule grew increasingly autocratic: after accusing his chancellor Hu Weiyong of treason in 1380, he abolished the chancellorship outright and concentrated authority in the throne. Successive purges connected with the Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu cases destroyed tens of thousands of officials and military officers. Contemporaries credited his consort, Empress Ma, with moderating some of his harsher impulses; her death in 1382 was widely seen as removing a restraining influence.

Dynastic arrangements occupied much of his later reign. He enfeoffed his many sons as princes guarding the frontiers, an arrangement with lasting consequences, and groomed his eldest son Zhu Biao as heir. When Zhu Biao died in 1392, the emperor passed the succession to his grandson Zhu Yunwen rather than to a surviving son. Hongwu died in 1398; within four years his fourth son, the Prince of Yan, had overthrown the grandson and taken the throne as the Yongle Emperor. The institutional framework Hongwu created nonetheless endured, shaping Ming government until the dynasty's fall in 1644.