Changes in the Military Service at the Chiang-hsi Guards during the Ming Dynasty

Yue Chih-chia

Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica

    In order to secure sufficient military service, the Ming dynasty established the Guards and Battalions system (wei-so 衛所) by using the hereditary military households (chun-hu 軍戶) as the principal source of man power. In time of peace, however, the government faced the problem of maintaining an enormous military force in need of economizing its maintenance costs. During 1368-1424, the government opened state-owned tracts called Military Farms throughout the country, and fixed a ratio between the Farm troops (t'un-chun 屯軍) and the stationed troops (shou-chun 守軍). Later, part of the Guards were used in provisions transportation. During that time, after the distinction of Farm troops and stationed troops had been confirmed, the transportation troops were usually recruited from the Farm troops, while the duties of farming fell on the supernumerary service-men or the tenants. For the transportation troops, provisions transportation became their major duty, and the rent from the Military Farms became their supplementary family incomes and subsidiary funds for building ships and transporting provisions. In early Ming times, before inheriting their families' military service, the supernumerary service-men were not directly involved in the regular military service at their Guards. However, following the expansion of military service at the Guards and the number of run-away Guard soldiers in the growth, more and more supernumerary service-men were taken into regular military service. At short-handed Guards, the supernumerary service-men were even drafted by a certain ratio to become the largest source of regular soldiers. In addition to formal duties like farming, military exercises, and provisions transportation, the regular Guard soldiers must also perform in rotation a lot of miscellaneous duties like guarding governmental offices, gates, and warehouses as well as attendants of military officers. Due to the abuses of military officers who used the service-men for private services regardless of the original participant quota or the rotation methods in the miscellaneous duties, men engaged in these duties increased tremendously and gradually became a regular branch of military forces.

    While the military service of the Guards varied in different areas, this essay uses Chiang-hsi as an example to study the changes in the military service, and also to illustrate the implementation of the Single-assessment taxation method at the Guards in Chiang-hsi headed by the Nan-ch'ang Guard during 1573-1620, in the hope that the functions of inland Guards represented by Chiang-hsi could be clarified.