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.
Introduction; Part One: Institutions; Chapter One: Mapping the Background: The Uncertain Influence of the Ming State and Imperial Leadership by Thomas Nimick; Chapter Two: Nanjing's Longjiang Shipyard Treatise and Our Knowledge of Ming Ships by Sally Church; Chapter Three: How Yongle Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gun: Perspectives on Early Ming Military History by Tonio Andrade; Chapter Four: The Paradoxical Effect of Autocracy: Collective Deliberation in the Ming Official Merit-Evaluation System by Yang Wei; Chapter Five: Deserts and Islands: Politics and Border Control, 1547-49 by Roland Higgins; Part Two: Ideas; Chapter Six: Cartography in the Ming by Ken Hammond; Chapter Seven: Gender & Religion in the Ming by Ann Waltner; Chapter Eight: Adopting an Orphan: Theater and Urban Culture in Ming China by Yuming He; Chapter Nine: Theater and Society in the Ming World by Hsiao Li-ling; Part Three: Identities; Chapter Ten: The Han-ness of Ming China by Leo Shin; Chapter Eleven: The Hall of Supreme Harmony as Simulacrum of Ming Dynasty Construction by Aurelia Campbell; Chapter Twelve: The Confucian Ideal Friend by Ying Zhang; Chapter Thirteen: The Lineage Organization in Ming China: A Case Study of Haining by Ivy Lim; Chapter Fourteen: Soaring Dragon Amid Dynastic Transition: Dates and Legitimacy among the Post-Ming Chinese Diaspora by Xing Hang; Part Four: Individuals; Chapter Fifteen: The Legend of Tang Saier by Kenneth M. Swope; Chapter Sixteen: Wang Yangming in Chuzhou and Nanjing, 1513-1516: "I Have only two words to say: "Be Truthful!"’ by Larry Israel; Chapter Seventeen: Zhang Dai’s Musical Life by Joseph Lam; Chapter Eighteen: The Making of an Empress in Life and Death: Empresses Xiaoduan’s and Xiaojing’s Burial Goods in the Ding Mausoleum by Yu-ping Luk; Chapter Nineteen: From Peasant Rebel to Loyalist: The Career of Li Dingguo by Kenneth M. Swope; Part Five: Interactions; Chapter Twenty: The Ming as a Eurasian Power by Edward L. Farmer; Chapter Twenty-one: Contested Histories of Ming Agency in the Java Sea, Straits of Melaka and Bay of Bengal Region by Kenneth R. Hall; Chapter Twenty-two: Dai Viet & The Ming World by John K. Whitmore; Chapter Twenty-three: Korean Eunuchs as Imperial Envoys: Relations with Chosôn Through the Zhengde Reign by Wang Sixiang; Chapter Twenty-four: War and Commerce in the Sino-Korean Borderland of the Late Sixteenth Century by Masato Hasegawa; Selected Chinese Character Glossary; Bibliography; Index
Biography
Kenneth M. Swope is Professor of History and Senior Fellow of the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is also a board member of the Chinese Military History Society and the book review editor for The Journal of Chinese Military History. His publications include A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592-1598; The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-1644; On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma and Social Dislocation in Southwest China During the Ming-Qing Transition.
