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China – Southern Ming Dynasty (1644-1682 A.D.)
Prince Yongming – Rebel: 1646-1659
Bronze Yong Li Tong Bao 10 Cash Token 36mm, Struck 1646-59
Reference: H 21.79 X3
Chinese symbols.
Yi, Fen (= 1 Fen of Silver)
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
The Yongli Emperor (simplified Chinese: 永历帝;
traditional Chinese: 永曆帝; pinyin: Yǒnglì Dì;
1623–1662; reigned 18 November 1646 – 1 June
1662), personal name Zhu Youlang, was the fourth
and last emperor of the Southern Ming. His era
name means “perpetual calendar”.
Zhu Youlang was the son of Zhu Changying
(朱常瀛), the seventh son of the Wanli Emperor, and
Empress Dowager Ma. He inherited the title
Prince of Gui (桂王) from his brother and lived an
obscure life as a minor member of the extremely
large imperial family until the fall of Beijing
and the suicide of Chongzhen, the last Ming
emperor, in 1644 due to the rebellion of Li
Zicheng’s Shun dynasty and Zhang Xianzhong after
Li Zicheng took Beijing. The true beneficiaries
of the collapse of the Ming were the Qing
dynasty which was founded by the northeastern
Manchu Aisin Gioro family that rapidly conquered
northern China, the Lower Yangtze valley, and
Central China after mass defection from Ming
remnants including Wu Sangui who let the Qing
through the Great Wall to fight Li Zicheng.
Descendants of the Ming continued to hang on in
the south, and Youlang ascended the throne as
the fourth Southern Ming emperor, with the
reign-title Yongli in November 1646. By 1661,
pressed back into Yunnan province, he fled to
Burma. A Qing Han Banner army led by Wu Sangui
followed and captured him there, and he was
executed in June 1662.
The Southern Ming was a loyalist rump state that existed in southern China following the Ming dynasty’s collapse in 1644. The Ming were overthrown when peasant rebels captured Beijing. Ming general Wu Sangui then opened the gates of the Great Wall to the nomadic Manchu horde, in hope of using them to annihilate rebel force. Loyalists fled to Nanjing, where they enthroned the Zhu Yousong, Prince of Fu. The Nanjing regime lasted until 1645, when the Qing captured Nanjing. Later, a series of pretenders held court in various southern Chinese cities.
The Nanjing regime lacked the resources to pay and supply its soldiers, who were left to live off the land and pillaged the countryside. The soldiers’ behavior was so notorious that they were refused entry by those cities in a position to do so. Court official Shi Kefa obtained modern cannons and organized resistance at Yangzhou. The cannons mowed down a large number of Qing soldiers, but this only enraged those who survived. After the Yangzhou city fell in May 1645, the Qing slaughtered as many as 800,000 inhabitants in a notorious massacre. Nanjing captured promptly by Qing on June 6 and the Prince of Fu was taken to Beijing and executed in 1646.
The literati in the provinces responded to the news from Yangzhou and Nanjing with an outpouring of emotion. Some recruited their own militia and became resistance leaders. Shi was lionized and there was a wave of hopeless sacrifice by loyalists who vowed to erase the shame of Nanjing. By late 1646, the heroics had petered out and the Qing advance had resumed. Notable Ming pretenders held court in Fuzhou (1645-1646), Guangzhou (1646-1647), and Anlong (1652-1659). The Prince of Ningjing maintained a palace in the Kingdom of Tungning (based in modern-day Tainan, Taiwan) until 1683.
The end of the Ming and the subsequent Nanjing regime are depicted in Peach Blossom Fan, a classic of Chinese literature. The upheaval of this period, sometimes referred to as the Ming-Qing cataclysm, has been linked to a decline in global temperature known as the Little Ice Age. With agriculture devastated by a severe drought, there was manpower available for numerous rebel armies.
Cash was a type of coin of China and East Asia, used from the 4th century BC until the 20th century AD. Originally cast during the Warring States period, these coins continued to be used for the entirety of Imperial China as well as under Mongol, and Manchu rule. The last Chinese cash coins were cast in the first year of the Republic of China. Generally most cash coins were made from copper or bronze alloys, with iron, lead, and zinc coins occasionally used less often throughout Chinese history. Rare silver and gold cash coins were also produced. During most of their production, cash coins were cast but, during the late Qing dynasty, machine-struck cash coins began to be made. As the cash coins produced over Chinese history were similar, thousand year old cash coins produced during the Northern Song dynasty continued to circulate as valid currency well into the early twentieth century.
In the modern era, these coins are considered to be Chinese “good luck coins”; they are hung on strings and round the necks of children, or over the beds of sick people. They hold a place in various superstitions, as well as Traditional Chinese medicine, and Feng shui. Currencies based on the Chinese cash coins include the Japanese mon, Korean mun, Ryukyuan mon, and Vietnamese văn.
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