Historians have always had several different views on the rise and fall of the Ming Dynasty. The sixth volume of China Historical Draft, edited by Guo Moruo, simply divides the history of Ming Dynasty into two periods, with the first year of Jiajing (1522) as the boundary. Ming history expert Lou Zengquan is waiting for a Ming history story. He divided the history of the Ming Dynasty into four stages: establishment and consolidation, middle decline, decline and extinction. The first stage is from Hongwu to Xuande, the second stage is from orthodoxy to Jiajing, the third stage is from Wanli to Apocalypse, and the fourth stage is Chongzhen once. The history of the Ming Dynasty in China is divided into eight periods in Cambridge and nine periods in Nanming. The above quotation comes from the book Tucheng Collection, co-authored by Zang Rong and Zhou Ruixiang, Planet Map Publishing House, 2005, with pages 264-270, an overview of the history of capital cities and courts in Ming and Qing Dynasties. From the quotation, we can understand the general situation of the historical development of the Ming Dynasty, understand the history of the rise and fall of the Ming Dynasty, and prove that the buildings of the Ming Tombs in this paper are "the epitome of the rise and fall of the Ming Dynasty".

The relevant description of the text is as follows:

Ming Dynasty, from 1368 to 1644, * * 276 ... The history of sixteen emperors in Ming Dynasty was divided into three periods: before, during and after ... from the establishment of Zhu Yuanzhang 1368 to the death of Emperor Xuande 1435 in the early Ming Dynasty, * * was about. During this period, the history of the Ming Dynasty was characterized by creation and prosperity (1) ... from the sixth emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Yingzong, to the middle of the Ming Dynasty. This period is relatively long, from the first year of orthodoxy (1436) to the sixth year of Qin Long (1572) when Ming Muzong died, * * about 135. At this stage, there were frequent internal troubles and foreign invasions in the Ming Dynasty, including the invasion of Vala in the north and the peasant uprising. (2) ..... After Wanli in Ming Shenzong, the Ming Dynasty entered the later period of its rule, and it went through Wanli, Taichang, Apocalypse and Chongzhen, from 1573 (the first year of Wanli) to 1644 (the seventeenth year of Chongzhen), * * * about 7 1 year. ③……