Tianqi Emperor

Zhu Youjiao (朱由校), who reigned as the Tianqi Emperor, was the fifteenth ruler of the Ming Dynasty. His era name, Tianqi (天啓), ran from 1621 to 1627, and his temple name is Xizong.

He came to the throne as a teenager at a time when the dynasty was already in serious trouble, and he left the government almost entirely to the eunuch Wei Zhongxian. His reign is remembered for Wei's dictatorship and the persecution of the Donglin officials, for the loss of territory to the Manchus, and for the emperor's own passion for carpentry, which contemporaries described with a mixture of wonder and dismay.

The Reign of the Tianqi Emperor

Zhu Youjiao was born in 1605, the eldest son of the future Taichang Emperor and grandson of the Wanli Emperor. Wanli had neglected the education of his son and grandson, and when both Wanli and Taichang died within weeks of each other in 1620, the fourteen-year-old prince came to the throne with little preparation for government.

The new emperor is said to have had little interest in formal study or in state affairs. He preferred to work with his hands, making furniture, models and lacquered pieces, and he was reputed to be a skilled carpenter and builder.

Wei Zhongxian and Madam Ke

Real power passed to two people: Madam Ke, the emperor's former wet nurse, to whom he remained deeply attached, and her associate Wei Zhongxian, a palace eunuch who had served in the household of the emperor's mother. With Madam Ke's support, Wei rose to high office in the Directorate of Ceremonial, the most powerful eunuch agency, and took charge of the Eastern Depot, the palace secret police.

Wei built up a network of informers and placed his followers in key posts. From 1626 officials across the empire competed to build shrines in his honour during his lifetime, an unprecedented distinction for a eunuch. Madam Ke dominated the inner palace and is said to have had at least one of the emperor's consorts starved to death.

The Persecution of the Donglin Officials

The Donglin faction, a group of officials and scholars who took their name from the Donglin Academy in Wuxi, stood for Confucian principle in government and opposed Wei's rule. In 1624 the censor Yang Lian presented a memorial accusing Wei of twenty-four crimes. Wei struck back. In 1625 and 1626 many of the Donglin leaders, including Yang Lian and Zuo Guangdou, were arrested and died under torture in prison, and the academy was destroyed.

War and Rebellion

In the north-east, the Jurchen leader Nurhaci, who had founded the Later Jin state in 1616, took Shenyang and Liaoyang in 1621 and much of Liaodong soon after. The Ming commander Yuan Chonghuan halted his advance at Ningyuan in 1626, the first serious check Nurhaci had suffered, and Nurhaci died later that year. His successor, Hong Taiji, would found the Qing dynasty.

In the south-west, the She-An rebellion of the Yi chieftains She Chongming and An Bangyan tied down Ming armies for years, and in Shandong a White Lotus rising broke out in 1622. On the coast, the Dutch occupied the Penghu Islands in 1622 and in 1624 moved to Taiwan, where they established a colony. The treasury, drained by Wanli's wars and the cost of defending the north-east, could not meet these demands.

The Wanggongchang Explosion

On 30 May 1626 the Wanggongchang armoury in Beijing, a gunpowder works, blew up. The explosion devastated a large area of the western city, and contemporary reports put the dead at around 20,000. The cause has never been established.

Many saw the disaster as a sign of heaven's displeasure with the emperor's rule. His only surviving son, an infant, is reported to have died after being badly frightened by the blast. The emperor issued an edict of self-reproach and released funds for relief.

Death of the Tianqi Emperor

The emperor is said to have fallen into the water while boating on a lake in the palace grounds, and his health never fully recovered. He died in September 1627, aged twenty-one. None of his children had survived.

On his deathbed he named his younger brother, Zhu Youjian, as his heir, a choice strongly supported by Empress Zhang, who had long opposed Wei Zhongxian and Madam Ke. Zhu Youjian came to the throne at the age of sixteen as the Chongzhen Emperor. Within months Wei Zhongxian had been banished and took his own life, and Madam Ke was put to death.

Porcelain of the Tianqi Reign

Imperial orders to the kilns at Jingdezhen had largely ceased by the end of the Wanli reign, and the potters of the town turned to private and export markets. The Tianqi reign therefore marks the start of the so-called Transitional period in Chinese porcelain, which lasted until the imperial kilns were revived under the Qing.

The best known wares of the reign are the blue and white pieces made for the Japanese market and known in Japan as ko-sometsuke, "old blue and white". Freely and often humorously painted, they were used in the tea ceremony, and Japanese taste valued the small rim flakes left by firing, called mushikui or "worm-eaten" edges. Kraak porcelain continued to be exported to Europe through the Dutch trade.

Pieces with a Tianqi reign mark are uncommon and are mostly the work of private kilns rather than the imperial factory. Our guide to Transitional porcelain describes the private kiln wares of these years, and our page on the late Ming dynasty covers the wider history.