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Wan-li: Year 11, Month 5, Day 3

22 Jun 1583

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The Nan-jing Supervising Secretary Feng Jing-long memorialized: "Recently, some officials have been venal and when there has been inheritance of posts in the native offices, the native offices have had to pay large amounts of goods as bribes. The Mang chieftain is familiar with this situation and he has allowed the heirs in these places to inherit the posts. Thus, at present, the native offices do not know that there is a Court. Now we should open an avenue by which they can begin anew, so that they again become loyal and return to the ways of right. We should also post rewards so that they can realize achievements by attacking the Mang chieftain. Thus, the Mang chieftain's gang will be left isolated. The reason we could not achieve victory in the use of troops was that we were solely using native troops and there are no Han troops to supervise and lead them. In Zhe-jiang, Fu-jian and Guang-dong, there are well-trained troops and no troubles locally. By transferring some of them to Yun-nan we will be achieving two things with one action. The newly-appointed Mobile Corps Commander Liu Ting has been permitted to select and recruit valiant fighters. However, there are no funds for their grain. Also, the warrants for transporting the firearms have not yet been issued. The ranks of the mobile corps commander and the assistant regional commander are insufficiently differentiated. They should coordinate in handling matters and the mobile corps commander should be subject to the command of the assistant regional commander." The memorial was sent to the Ministry of War. The Ministry of War then re-submitted the memorial noting: "The long-distance deployment of Han troops will not allow swift assistance. At present, Liu Ting should be permitted to proceed with his servants, regardless of their number. Their grain en route and the porters for the firearms should be provided by the locality. The other matters should be handled as proposed."

Shen-zong: juan 137.1b

Zhong-yang Yan-jiu yuan Ming Shi-lu, volume 102, page 2550

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Preferred form of citation for this entry:

Geoff Wade, translator, Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/wan-li/year-11-month-5-day-3, accessed January 22, 2019