Ming Military System And The Pay

During the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the government promoted a system of land reclamation by soldiers to solve the problem of the army's food supply. When this way can not meet the need of military expenditure, they used another way called KaiZhong (order merchant transport grain to the border area, then the government give them the right of sale salt .)Under the functions of these two ways, the government solved the problem of the army's food supply basically.But, as the time goes by, the way of land reclamation by soldiers and the way of KaiZhong were wrecked. And the military system was destroyed too. The government has to replace the system of the WeiSuo with the system of recruit. The system of the military supply has to transform to adapt to the need of the new system of military. The government had to appropriated funds form national treasure to remedy the troop's food supply .This is a new financial burden.As the scale of the troop recruit become more and more widen, the military expenditure increases day by day. The government had to add farm tax to meet the need of the military expenditure. Yet the larger the government's income was, the greater its expenditure seemed to grow. When oppression and the extortion become unbearable, the peasants had no choice but to stage armed uprisings, which in turn compelled the government to increase military expenditures. Financial crisis and the increasingly large scales of peasant revolts underscored the decline of the Ming Dynasty.The author is try to search the internal cause through analysis the relations between the system of military and the system of military expenditures.