ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the military garrisons of the Ming dynasty in the international context of North-East Asia. It focuses on Liaodong, a broad region located at the intersection of Chinese, Korean, Jurchen and Mongolian polities, with particular focus on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It explores how the winner in that scramble, the Ming dynasty, used the Liaodong garrisons to secure horses, military labour and intelligence on the international market of North-East Asia. Ming interest in Liaodong grew directly from the geopolitical conditions created by the Chinggisid polity, known in east Eurasia as the Great Yuan ulus or the Yuan dynasty. The state used the garrisons as an administrative vehicle to organize, monitor and exploit the people and resources of Liaodong. Liaodong illustrates the centrality of military institutions to the Ming state with unusual clarity, but the importance of the military to trade, demographic and diplomacy holds true for the rest of Ming territory.
