Study On The Regional Military Forces In Guangdong During The Ming-qing Period

During the Ming-Qing period,the social situation was extremely complicated in Guangdong.Neither Southern Ming nor Qing dynasty can establish effective system of local administration.In the troubled time,the regional military forces took advantage of the chaos to rise and governed their own region,which made the local society divided by fragmented and varied regional military forces.This paper focused on the development of regional military forces during 1644 when “Jiashen extent” happened to 1662 when Yong Li emperor was killed.And this paper would analyze the regional military forces from their background,geographical distribution,genre,organization and so on.On this basis,this paper studied coping approaches and rules of survival of the regional military forces to face the regime changing Ming-Qing period;and take deeply thinking of Guangdong people's attitude to the dynasty change.Southern Ming and Qing dynasty had confronted each other in Guangdong for long time,which was related to sea and land military forces all over Guangdong.These military forces were involved in the struggle between the Ming and Qing regimes proactively or passively.The strong annexed the weak,and the weak ones united to revolt against the strong.At the same time,Zheng clan's military bloc and Daxi peasants' army also got involved in the war situation of Guangdong.In this context,the administrative power of Guangdong had been changed several times,so that the local society fell into chaos in the melees of various military forces and the local society presented obvious regional characteristics.The regional military forces,existed throughout Guangdong and kept to their own territory,not only had a certain scale,but also formed hierarchical order took the leader as score.The organizational structure had taken shape.Because of the intereses related to life and death,the relationship among the regional military forces in Guangdong and between foreign military forces and regional military forces were deeply complicated and varied.When they had the same interests and goals,regional military forces cooperated with each other.If their interests and goals were jeopardized,the cooperation between the regional military forces would be ended at any time,and even they would battle with former partners.The Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty vied with each other to draw the regional military forces over to their side.As Southern Ming was weaker than Qing dynasty,it always appeased and used regional military forces to strengthen.While the Qing dynasty not only appeased regional military forces but also fight with them.In other words,the Qing dynasty took use of the regional military forces to suppress the rebellion,at the same time paid attention to balance the strength in order to prevent the forces were so powerful that Qing dynasty could not command.In the confrontation between Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty,Guangdong regional military forces were eliminated by begime struggle or strengthened rapidly by taking advatage of changing situation.In this process,the local society paid allegiance to Qing dynasty or Ming dynasty not all depended on the value of “orthodoxy” but more depended on own interests.In a word,the attitude to dynasties changed of local society,like regional military forces,was more determined by vital interests.