| Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty which replaced the Yuan dynasty founded by nomadic Mongolians, recovered the traditional Chinese eudalism characterized by culture and ruling from Han Nationality. After he gained the throne, Zhu began to enforce the absolute monarchy intensively and hold jealous, contemptuous and ruthless attitude towards the scholars of his time. Under such circumstances, the ideology, plight and mentality of these scholars were inevitably different from those of scholars in other times. This dissertation makes a tentative exploration at these matters.The author divides the dissertation into six parts. The first part is the introduction, explaining briefly the social and ideological backgrounds of the scholars in the early Ming Dynasty. The main body of the dissertation is from the second part to the fifth part. The second part divides the scholar-bureaucrat in the early Ming Dynasty into 6 groups: the surviving adherents of the Yuan Dynasty, scholars who supported Zhu Yuanzhang in his effort to gain the throne, peerless scholars in the late Yuan Dynasty, renegade officials, recluses and young scholars and also discusses on the conditions and plights of these different groups in the early Ming Dynasty. The third part states the economic condition and culture life of these scholars. The fourth part studies two arresting problems: one is the general idea among the scholars that political loyalty to the throne was superior to the loyalty to one's ethnic group; the other is that the heterogeneous ideologies of the scholar-bureaucrat came to consistency with the enforcement of ideological monarchy in the early Ming Dynasty. The fifth part, mainly analyzing the psychology of the scholars, points out the mental changes of the scholars.The last part makes a conclusion of previous statements: it is unusually hard for the scholar-bureaucrat to survive in the early Ming Dynasty and the slaughter of scholars by Zhu Yuanzhang had a very execrable influence.
|
PDF Full Text Request