The indomitable Yongle has been lionized as the best of imperial China because he was a tireless and restless monarch who laid the agenda not only for fifteenth-century China but for most of Asia during the early modern era. At the same time, he has been criticized as the worst of imperial China because he committed an act of lèse-majesté by savaging his nephew, the incumbent emperor, and because, by keeping a large part of the population under severe strain for more than twenty years, he personified imperial tyranny. It could well be that he was by nature a fractious man who could readily discard sentimentality and loyalty in favor of ruthlessness and brutality. Or, perhaps because he was not the first son born to his parents—Yongle was the fourth of the dynastic founder’s twenty-six sons—he may have been predestined by fate and nurtured by circumstances to challenge authority and the establishment. Although he was not the favorite child, he proved himself to be strong, intelligent, and the most capable. He had a deep self-knowledge and a highly sensitive disposition; the slightest affront would cause intense feelings of rejection and anger. After the death of his redoubtable father, it was Yongle who energetically took command of his brothers and nephews and emerged as astute and masterful. By the end of his reign in 1424, he was not just the son of the dynastic founder but the father of a nation that had developed the basic characteristics of what was to become modern China.

These outstanding traits and his bifurcated historical personality make Yongle one of the most inviting Chinese monarchs ever to sit for a biography. The important biographical questions involve both the cunning of the man and the cunning of history. Was Yongle truly prepared for something so politically and emotionally fraught as “rebellion” and “usurpation,” which challenged him at the age of thirty-nine? Was he a cynical manipulator, or did he achieve greatness by being forced to deal with crises of enormous scale? Without crises, would he have remained in the league of those who risked little and achieved nothing notable? How did he reconcile his brand of absolutism with the political philosophy of traditional China? More importantly, did Yongle succeed in transforming the lives and dreams of millions of his subjects and, ultimately, the character of the Ming state and of society?

The effort of will, as with many domineering rulers, had its price on his mental health. Yongle was no misanthrope, but rather a tormented man, a victim of severe, recurring depression. He frequently complained about acute headaches and insomnia, and his stomach registered with pains that were symptoms of deeply repressed anxiety. But the steepest price he had to pay was his inability to avoid being recorded in history as an alleged murderer and usurper, for the ghost of his nephew Jianwen (1377–1402) continued to haunt him, notwithstanding the raft of his lifetime achievements. It is certain, however, that after winning the bloody and devastating civil war of 1399–1402, he drove himself even harder. His active and risk-taking leadership leavened a successful, complacent nation with a ferment for change from the top and created a glittering era of unblemished prosperity, military expansion, and brilliant diplomacy. During his reign of twenty-three years (1402–24), China became outward-looking and enjoyed stratospheric prestige throughout the entire Asian world. Peace reigned at home and the economy hummed as Yongle did everything possible to bridge political chasms in his war-torn country as well as to hone a “sage-king” image for posterity. The many policies he adopted and the several offices he either inherited from his father or established on his own encompassed a significant and formative period in which the newly reconstituted imperial China was consolidated. Consequently, one of the factors contributing to China’s political absolutism lay in the institutional growth engendered during Yongle’s father’s reign and his own. His father was the embryo, but Yongle was the birth of Ming absolutism.

A powerfully built man with a strong personality, Yongle was a brilliant, hardworking autocrat and a demanding emperor who personified the idea of active government. He had an enormous penchant for controlling events, and through the display of his burning energy, we learn of his political animal instincts. He also had a knack for calming the fears of others with his own fearlessness. For Yongle, life meant risk and battle, often against staggering odds. From him we learn the secrets of a master manipulator of power, intrigue, malice, and roguery. This book, then, is about the passions, prejudices, depression, and vision of an early modern Chinese autocrat. It is about the stories of struggle and redemption of a great and potent prince, and it is an attempt to understand the role of birth, education, and tradition in molding the personality, values, and moral sense of one of the greatest figures in Chinese history. It is also concerned with one man’s relentless pursuit of expansion into Mongolia, Manchuria, and Vietnam, as well as his constant quest for prestige in Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and elsewhere in the Asian world. Pursuit was Yongle’s ideology, and with it he pioneered a new imperial politics. Through this study I hope to illustrate the intertwining of early Ming personalities and events and to delineate the patterns of China’s imperial authority and the evolving nature of Ming absolutism.