Dan Snow
speaker
15,041 appearances
104 recordings
11 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard today
Dan Snow’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 101 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 24.
Appearances
The Ming take Da Du under their control with ease, but they then decide to establish their own capital in the southern city of Nanjing.
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The Ming era has begun.
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Is there a moment when he turns from a sort of
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a rebel, local warlord, into a a figure who is who looks like an alternative centre of political power, starts doing things with bureaucracy.
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How's that transition going?
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He claims the mandate of heaven, which what's that gonna mean?
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He just he says, I'm the Empire, I am now the interlocutor between the heavens and and humanity.
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It's funny because he's the it's the most radical thing imaginable, an emperor emerging from the peasant classes.
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And yet once he's in power, he sounds like he's been quite conservative.
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He's keen to identify as a traditionist, he's bringing back these more ancient orders.
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The Hongwu Emperor ruled for three decades from Nanjing in the south until 1398.
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On his death, the Ming dynasty was secure, but the succession well, that was up for grabs.
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His chosen heir was his young grandson, Jiang Wen.
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Which didn't get on particularly well with his surviving sons, who were scattered across the empire.
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They were powerful princes of policing the empire with their own private armies.
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Now the most formidable of those sons was Prince Zhu Di.
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He was stationed in the north, in Beijing, guarding the frontier against the Mongols, as you can imagine, a pretty important job.
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He was furious when he discovered he'd been skipped in the line of succession.
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So he sent his own army to, as he put it, rectify the court, to rescue the dynasty from corrupt advisers.
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For three brutal years, uncle and nephew clashed in a bloody civil war.
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Showing 101–120 of 15,041 · page 6 of 753
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