圮而不修:明代中都修城与地方政治

The Falling Wall: A Study of City Wall Reconstruction and Local Governance in Zhongdu during Ming Dynasty

明代凤阳贵为中都却城池久废，后人多将原因归结为修城有碍风水，事实上资金短缺才是阻碍中都城墙修筑的核心问题。中都城墙规模宏大，修缮所需资金浩繁，凤阳地方无力筹措经费，完全寄希望于朝廷，朝廷认可修缮城墙的动议，但不愿拨发资金。由于资金问题始终未能得到解决，中都修城虽讨论百余年却始终未曾开工，最终酿成“凤阳之变”。地方官府本应有积极主动的修城作为，但朝廷的财政控制削弱了府、县官府的施政能力，卫所的存在又进一步瓜分了地方官的权力，限制了其行政作为的空间，使地方官员既难以有所作为，也不愿冒险行动，呈现一派行政怠惰景象。

This paper shows that fiscal difficulties was the most important reason for why city wall in Fengyang,the central capital during Ming dynasty was lack of maintenances. Due to the huge budget, local government put all their hope in central government’s help,but was in vain,so the repairing works never started in nearly two hundred years. Because of no wall to defense,peasant army captured Fengyang easily in late of Ming dynasty, which caused a disaster. Through analyzing all the relative issues, we can find that administrators’ power in Fengyang was deeply decreased due to central government ’s financial control,plus weiss’ decentralization, as the result, the Ming court played a pivotal role in local politics related to city wall reconstruction.