ABSTRACT
The Ming World draws together scholars from all over the world to bring China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1662) to life, exploring recent scholarly trends and academic debates that highlight the dynamism of the Ming and its key place in the early modern world.
The book is designed to replicate the structure of popular Ming-era unofficial histories that gathered information and gossip from a wide variety of fields and disciplines. Engaging with a broad array of primary and secondary sources, the authors build upon earlier scholarship while extending the field to embrace new theories, methodologies, and interpretive frameworks. It is divided into five thematically linked sections: Institutions, Ideas, Identities, Individuals, and Interactions.
Unique in its breadth and scope, The Ming World is essential reading for scholars and postgraduates of early modern China, the history of East Asia and anyone interested in gaining a broader picture of the colorful Ming world and its inhabitants.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|113 pages
Institutions
chapter 1|17 pages
Mapping the background
chapter 3|17 pages
How Yongle learned to stop worrying and love the gun
chapter 4|14 pages
The paradoxical effect of autocracy
part II|76 pages
Ideas
part III|103 pages
Identities
chapter 13|21 pages
The lineage organization in Ming China
chapter 14|25 pages
Soaring dragon amid dynastic transition
part IV|97 pages
Individuals
chapter 16|21 pages
Wang Yangming in Chuzhou and Nanjing, 1513–1516
chapter 18|19 pages
The making of an empress in life and death
part V|97 pages
Interactions
