The Ming Dynasty: A History of China

The Ming dynasty entered the fifteenth century as one of the great powers of East Asia. Then a young Emperor Yingzong, Zhu Qizhen, marched north-and the political world around the Ming throne began to change.

Beginning with the Tumu Crisis of 1449 and moving through the reigns of Chenghua, Hongzhi, Zhengde, Jiajing, Longqing, and Wanli, The Ming Dynasty: A History of China, Part Two follows the people and conflicts that shaped the dynastys middle and later centuries.

The story moves from Yu Qian and the defense of Beijing to the rise of powerful eunuchs such as Wang Zhen and Liu Jin; from the Great Rites Controversy and the strange court of the Jiajing Emperor to Hai Rui, Wang Yangming, Qi Jiguang, and the wars against the wokou. It then widens across East Asia, following Toyotomi Hideyoshis invasion of Korea, Ming intervention in the Imjin War, Li Rusong, Admiral Yi Sun-sin, and finally the Wanli campaigns and the struggle for Bozhou and Hailongtun.

Court intrigue, frontier warfare, piracy, rebellion, military reform, imperial obsession, and ordinary human vanity all have their place here.

Written as accessible narrative history for general readers, this volume explains complicated politics without turning them into a lecture-and keeps the people behind the institutions firmly in view.