15. The Consequences of the Tianqi Explosion Went far Beyond the Immediate Loss of Life and Property
The Great Tianqi Explosion’s consequences went far beyond the immediate devastation and loss of life. Terrible as those were, they were only the tip of an iceberg of calamities that befell China and its ruling Ming Dynasty. The Wanggongchang Armory that had just gone up was one of China’s biggest weapons factories, and it held the country’s biggest arms and ammunition stockpile. The Ming military, already under increasing pressure from the Manchus, never recovered from the loss of weapons and munitions, or the loss of the manufacturing capacity to make more.
The catastrophe came at a time when Ming China was also struggling with domestic crises caused by widespread corruption, internal conflicts, and a series of natural disasters that triggered peasant rebellions. The dramatic Tianqi Explosion eclipsed those. In a superstitious era, it was seen as a sign of Heaven’s displeasure with the ruling Mings, and divine punishment for the emperor’s incompetence. All those factors came together to speed up the Ming decline and cause the dynasty’s collapse just eighteen years later when it was defeated and replaced by the Manchu, or Qing Dynasty. That chain of events began with the bad idea to build a dangerous factory in the heart of a capital city.