Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China: The Impact o ...

the first supreme commander, Zhang Jing, paid for ineffectual stewardship with his life.⁶⁰

In contrast, Zhang Jing’s successor, Hu Zongxian (1511–1565, js. 1537), led his cohort of military officers to success in a very well documented anti-wokou campaign.⁶¹ Using a variety of strategies, including the mobilization of armed forces and stratagems and ruses that sowed dissension among the pirate chiefs, Hu Zongxian had become the pivotal figure in the suppression of the wokou in the Jiangnan region by 1560. However, his close association with Zhao Wenhua, a Zhejiang native and one of the power brokers at the court in Beijing connected to the grand secretary Yan Song, eventually led to his death under a cloud of suspicion for corruption. Hu’s reputation was subsequently eclipsed by his former subordinate Qi Jiguang (1528–1588), who became renowned for fighting the wokou in Zhejiang and Fujian as well as for his later work in reinforcing the Great Wall of China.⁶²

Some aspects of Hu Zongxian’s administration remain obscure. For instance, given the complicated state of Ming fiscal management, the question of how he funded the anti-wokou campaign, with its massive logistics, looms large. Merrilyn Fitzpatrick, in her study of Hu’s private administration (mufu; literally, “guest advisors”), suggested that perhaps Hu Zongxian’s pockets (or at least those of his close associates, such as Mao Kun or Hu’s fellow Huizhou-native merchants) were deep enough to have paid for the services of some of his advisors.⁶³ His was an ad hoc position, and he had to rely on the cooperation of provincial administrations, military commissioners, and surveillance officers to ensure success; these facts suggest that there was much more to the man than his official biographies record. Private accounts of Hu Zongxian’s life and achievements indicate that he was indeed in a very complicated position; it is the measure of the man that he did not fail in his assigned tasks.

Additionally, Hu Zongxian’s campaign brought to Zhejiang a motley assortment of troops—imperial forces, bands of mercenaries, salt smugglers, fighter monks, private militias, and aboriginal fighters— who were, on the whole, ill disciplined and unruly, apt to fight among themselves for rewards and just as likely to collaborate with the wokou