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Cowles Library

FYS 10 - Power of Tradition, Forces of Change

Databases discussed in the library session

Cambridge Histories Online This link opens in a new window
Includes all 15 volumes of The Cambridge History of China. Volume 8 will be of particular interest to this course (hint, hint).
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Search thousands of academic journals and books, and over 1 million images, letters, and other primary sources.

Books (in the Library and/or online)

1587, a Year of No Significance by Ray Huang
Call Number: DS753 .H79813
ISBN: 0300028849
Publication Date: 1982
In 1587, the Year of the Pig, nothing very special happened in China. Yet in the seemingly unspectacular events of this ordinary year, Ray Huang finds exemplified the roots of China's perennial inability to adapt to change. With fascinating accounts of the lives of seven prominent officials, he fashions a remarkably vivid portrayal of the court and the ruling class of late imperial China. In revealing the subtle but inexorable forces that brought about the paralysis and final collapse of the Ming dynasty, Huang offers the reader perspective into the problems China has faced through the centuries.
A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail: Ming China and the first Great East Asian War by Kenneth M. Swope
Call Number: DS913.43 .S93 2009
ISBN: 9780806140568
Publication Date: 2009
The invasion of Korea by Japanese troops in May of 1592 was no ordinary military expedition: it was one of the decisive events in Asian history and the most tragic for the Korean peninsula until the mid-twentieth century. Japanese overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi envisioned conquering Korea, Ming China, and eventually all of Asia; but Korea's appeal to China's Emperor Wanli for assistance triggered a six-year war involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers and encompassing the whole region. For Japan, the war was "a dragon's head followed by a serpent's tail": an impressive beginning with no real ending.
The Confusions of Pleasure: commerce and culture in Ming China by Timothy Brook
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 052092407X
Publication Date: 1998
The Ming dynasty was the last great Chinese dynasty before the Manchu conquest in 1644. During that time, China, not Europe, was the center of the world: the European voyages of exploration were searching not just for new lands but also for new trade routes to the Far East. In this book, Timothy Brook narrates the changing landscape of life over the three centuries of the Ming (1368-1644), when China was transformed from a closely administered agrarian realm into a place of commercial profits and intense competition for status. Rather than recounting the Ming dynasty in a series of political events and philosophical achievements, the book narrates this longue durée in terms of the habits and strains of everyday life. Peppered with stories of real people and their negotiations of a rapidly changing world, this book provides a new way of seeing the Ming dynasty that not only contributes to the scholarly understanding of the period but also provides an entertaining and accessible introduction to Chinese history for anyone.
The Glory and Fall of the Ming Dynasty by Albert S. Chan
Call Number: DS753 .C4825
ISBN: 9780806117416
Publication Date: 1982
Describes the government, economy, social structure, and history of the Ming dynasty, and offers a picture of what life was like in China between 1368 and 1644.
Ming China, 1368 1644: a Concise History of a Resilient Empire by John W. Dardess
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 1283302624
Publication Date: 2012
This book provides the a 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.

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