The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties

The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (History of Imperial China)

The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empireâ‚¬â€¢a millennium and a half in the makingâ‚¬â€¢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 backgroundâ‚¬â€¢the first coherent ecological history of China in this periodâ‚¬â€¢Timothy Brook explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to Chinaâ‚¬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.
Country USA
Brand Belknap Press
Manufacturer Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780674072534
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780674072534
ReleaseDate 2013-03-11

Country	USA
Brand	Belknap Press
Manufacturer	Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780674072534
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780674072534
ReleaseDate	2013-03-11

The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (History of Imperial China)

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