The Ming dynasty, also called the Empire of the Great Ming, is the ruling dynasty of China for two hundred and seventy-six years (1368–1644) following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

The Ming is the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese.

Although the primary capital of Beijing falls in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who establishes the Shun dynasty, soon replaced by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty), regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – will survive until 1662.The Hongwu Emperor (ruled 1368–98) attempts to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that will guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty the empire's standing army exceeds one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing are the largest in the world.

He also takes great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang Ming Zu Xun, a set of published dynastic instructions.

This fails spectacularly when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attemps to curtail his uncles' power, prompting the Jingnan Campaign, an uprising that places the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402.

The Yongle Emperor establishes Yan as a secondary capital and renames it Beijing, constructs the Forbidden City, and restores the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments.

He rewards his eunuch supporters and employs them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats.

One, Zheng He, leads seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa.