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In the first study of Two Studies on Ming History, Charles O. Hucker presents an account of a military campaign that provides insight into the nature of civil officials’ authority, decision-making, and relationship with the Ming court. In the spring and summer of 1556, a Chinese renegade named Hsü Hai led an invading group of Japanese and Chinese soldiers on a plundering foray through the northeastern sector of Chekiang province. Opposing them was a military establishment that for years past had been battered by coastal raiders, now under the control of an ambitious and clever official named Hu Tsung-hsien. The campaign was not one of the most consequential in China’s military history, even during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). But it was famous and well reported in its time, and it illustrates some of the unusual ways in which the Chinese of the imperial age coped with the often unusual military problems they faced. In the second part of Two Studies, Hucker presents a translation of K’ai-tu ch’uan-hsin, a popular narrative of a spontaneous demonstration in which literati and commoners alike rose up to defend an austere and incorruptible adherent to Confucian morality who had been doomed to die because of his defiance of the ruthless and heterodox clique that had usurped imperial power. In 1626, Chinese political morality was at one of its lowest ebbs. On the throne at Peking was an incompetent twenty-one-year-old emperor who was much too occupied with puttering at carpentry to pay attention to the government. Into the vacuum stepped Wei Chung-hsien, the favorite of the emperor’s governess. Wei used brutal terror to make himself undisputed master of the vast bureaucratic mechanism that administered China. One of Wei’s many victims was Chou Shun-ch’ang, a member of the official class who was said to have hated evil as a personal enemy. Chou became critical of Wei, an order was put out for Chou’s arrest, and a popular uprising occurred in protest.
In the latter half of the fourteenth century, at one end of the Eurasian continent, the stage was not yet set for the emergence of modern nation-states. At the other end, the Chinese drove out their Mongol overlords, inaugurated a new native dynasty called Ming (1368–1644), and reasserted the mastery of their national destiny. It was a dramatic era of change, the full significance of which can only be perceived retrospectively. With the establishment of the Ming dynasty, a major historical tension rose into prominence between more absolutist and less absolutist modes of rulership. This produced a distinctive style of rule that modern students have come to call Ming despotism. It proved a capriciously absolutist pattern for Chinese government into our own time. [1, 2 ,3]
This engaging, deeply informed book provides the first concise history of one of China's most important eras. Leading scholar John W. Dardess offers a thematically organized political, social, and economic exploration of China from 1368 to 1644. He examines how the Ming dynasty was able to endure for 276 years, illuminating Ming foreign relations and border control, the lives and careers of its sixteen emperors, its system of governance and the kinds of people who served it, its great class of literati, and finally the mass outlawry that, in unhappy conjunction with the Manchu invasions from outside, ended the once-mighty dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. The Ming witnessed the beginning of China's contact with the West, and its story will fascinate all readers interested in global as well as Asian history.
A commoner's presentation to the emperor of a lucky omen from his garden, the repercussions for his family, and several retellings of the incident provide the background for an engaging introduction to Ming society, culture, and politics, including discussions of the founding of the Ming dynasty; the character of the first emperor; the role of omens in court politics; how the central and local governments were structured, including the civil service examination system; the power of local elite families; the roles of women; filial piety; and the concept of ling or efficacy in Chinese religion.
Thomas G. Nimick, a leading authority on Ming government, draws on Chinese sources to provide the most detailed account of local Ming government available in English. Rational bureaucratic administration is one of China's greatest contributions to the art of governance. After centuries of evolution, the Chinese civil service system reached new heights during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Local Administration in Ming China traces the origins and evolution of the lowest level of administrative offices over the course of the dynasty. It starts with the Ming founder's experiments with using members of the local elite to collect taxes and goes on to the increased reliance on magistrates and prefects sent out from the center. The story concludes with the fiscal problems at the end of the dynasty. This work includes the following contents: Introduction, Local Government in Early Ming, Changes in Local Government int he Fifteenth Century, From Specially Selected Officials to Province and Magistrate, Fiscal Pressures and Operational Changes, Continued Possibility of Structural Changes and the Climax of Fiscal Troubles, Conclusion, and Annotated Bibliography
Explores the Ming Dynasty's foreign relations with neighboring sovereigns, placing China in a wider global context.
Like most empires, the Ming court sponsored grand displays of dynastic strength and military prowess. Covering the first two centuries of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court explores how the royal hunt, polo matches, archery contests, equestrian demonstrations, and the imperial menagerie were represented in poetry, prose, and portraiture. This study reveals that martial spectacles were highly charged sites of contestation, where Ming emperors and senior court ministers staked claims about rulership, ruler-minister relations, and the role of the military in the polity. Simultaneously colorful entertainment, prestigious social events, and statements of power, martial spectacles were intended to make manifest the ruler’s personal generosity, keen discernment, and respect for family tradition. They were, however, subject to competing interpretations that were often beyond the emperor’s control or even knowledge. By situating Ming martial spectacles in the wider context of Eurasia, David Robinson brings to light the commensurability of the Ming court with both the Mongols and Manchus but more broadly with other early modern courts such as the Timurids, the Mughals, and the Ottomans.
The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empireÑa millennium and a half in the makingÑwas suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer what it would be in the future. Four centuries later, another wave of steppe invaders would replace the Ming dynasty with yet another foreign occupation. The Troubled Empire explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions. If anything defined the complex dynamics of this period, it was changes in the weather. Asia, like Europe, experienced a Little Ice Age, and as temperatures fell in the thirteenth century, Kublai Khan moved south into China. His Yuan dynasty collapsed in less than a century, but Mongol values lived on in Ming institutions. A second blast of cold in the 1630s, combined with drought, was more than the dynasty could stand, and the Ming fell to Manchu invaders. Against this backgroundÑthe first coherent ecological history of China in this periodÑTimothy Brook explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to ChinaÕs incorporation into the larger South China Sea economy. These changes not only shaped what China would become but contributed to the formation of the early modern world.
"This collection of essays reveals the Ming court as an arena of competition and negotiation, where a large cast of actors pursued individual and corporate ends, personal agency shaped protocol and style, and diverse people, goods, and tastes converged. Rather than observing an immutable set of traditions, court culture underwent frequent reinterpretation and rearticulation, processes driven by immediate personal imperatives, mediated through social, political, and cultural interaction. The essays address several common themes. First, they rethink previous notions of imperial isolation, instead stressing the court’s myriad ties both to local Beijing society and to the empire as a whole. Second, the court was far from monolithic or static. Palace women, monks, craftsmen, educators, moralists, warriors, eunuchs, foreign envoys, and others strove to advance their interests and forge advantageous relations with the emperor and one another. Finally, these case studies illustrate the importance of individual agency. The founder’s legacy may have formed the warp of court practices and tastes, but the weft varied considerably. Reflecting the complexity of the court, the essays represent a variety of perspectives and disciplines—from intellectual, cultural, military, and political to art history and musicology."
The Ming period of Chinese history is often depicted as one of cultural aridity, political despotism, and social stasis. Recent studies have shown that the arts continued to flourish, government remained effective, people enjoyed considerable mobility, and China served as a center of the global economy. This study goes further to argue that China’s perennial quest for cultural centrality resulted in periodic political changes that permitted the Chinese people to retain control over social and economic developments. The study focuses on two and a half million people in three prefectures of northeast Henan, the central province in the heart of the "central plain”--a common synecdoche for China. The author argues that this population may have been more representative of the Chinese people at large than were the residents of more prosperous regions. Many diverse individuals in northeast Henan invoked historical models to deal with the present and shape the future. Though they differed in the lessons they drew, they shared the view that the Han dynasty was particularly relevant to their own time. Han and Ming politics were integral parts of a pattern of Chinese historical development that has lasted to the present.