Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2018

 

Accounts of the Wanli Korean Campaign in the Official Ming History Compiled under the Qing (Abstract)

 

Sun Weiguo

 

Compilation of the official Ming History (Ming Shi) by imperial officials took more than 90 years. In different stages of the project, Wan Sitong’s Ming Shi Gao (Draft Ming History), Wang Hongxu’s work with the same name and Zhang Tingyu’s imperial edition of the Ming History constitute the most important versions of Ming history. Wan Sitong gave considerable attention to the biographies of participants in the Wanli era Korean campaign; Wang Hongxu gave them scant notice; and Zhang Tingyu repudiated and obliterated them. In the latter’s Ming History, “Imperial Annals of Emperor Shenzong” (Shenzong Benji) sets the tone for the negation of the Korean campaign. Those of the campaign’s generals who gained a biography in the history did so either because of family connections or because they were involved in the Bozhou campaign or the Liaodong incident; almost none was admitted to the history on the strength of participation in the Korean campaign. The section on Korea gives a negative evaluation of the relevant figures and the campaign, rejecting and belittling them. The reasons for this were twofold. One was the influence of the history’s source material: since Yang Gao had to be held responsible for the defeat in the battle of Sa’erhu, the compilers of the Veritable Record of the Ming Emperor Shenzong (Ming Shenzong Shilu) accepted Ding Yingtai’s version of events and rejected the military feats of Yang Gao and the Ming army in Korea. The other arose from immediate political needs. Because the forces that participated in the eastern expedition to Korea subsequently became opponents of the later Jin dynasty in Liaodong, they had to be given a negative appraisal in order to foster Qing legitimacy. These factors determined the attitude of the Qing dynasty’s official Ming History to the Wanli Korean campaign.