The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties

Description:

Blue paper over boards with navy cloth spine; gilt spine lettering; color illustrated dust jacket with mylar cover; 329 pp; illustrated in bw throughout. This volume explores the history of China between the Mongol reunification of China in 1279 under the Yuan dynasty and the Manchu invasion four centuries later, explaining how climate changes profoundly affected the empire during this period. The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empire, a millennium and a half in the making, was 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. VG/VG (ex-library with labels and stamps on spine, block, inside front and rear covers and title page verso. Book is otherwise very clean and clear.). Seller Inventory # 184349

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Synopsis: The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empire―a millennium and a half in the making―was 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 background―the first coherent ecological history of China in this period―Timothy Brook explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to China’s 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.

About the Author: Timothy Brook is Professor of History and Republic of China Chair at the University of British Columbia.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and ...
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass
Publication Date: 2010
Binding: Hardcover