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The Tumu Crisis of 1449 was consequential for the developmental trajectory of the Ming court in almost every domain. Studies have shown that militarily, the Ming actively pursued defensive retrenchment thereafter; politically, Tumu provided incontrovertible evidence that martial modes of rulership were no longer legitimate. This article is interested in a domain of life in the Ming court that Tumu shaped, but which has received less attention: rhetoric. It offers a close study of invocations of the Tumu Crisis in early 16th century Ming political discourse, specifically in the years 1517–1518, when the peripatetic Zhengde emperor (r. 1506–1521) embarked on several controversial tours of the northern frontier. The article argues that Ming officials leveraged the memory of Tumu in an attempt to persuade Zhengde to conform to post-1449 modes of Ming rulership and, further, that Tumu should not only be viewed as a traumatic artifact of history but also as a rhetorical device. It concludes by positioning the Tumu Crisis as an integral part of Ming political culture more broadly.

1449 Resurrected Invocations of the Tumu Crisis in Ming Political Discourse, 1517–1518