ABSTRACT
As the last indigenous house to rule over the Han homeland the Ming Dynasty’s position in the long duration of Chinese imperial history is both clear and distinct. The Ming’s place in world history is far less so. The Chinese historiographical tradition that began with Sima Qian in the Han Dynasty created a sequential formula into which the histories of subsequent states and empires could be fitted. When Zhu Yuanzhang claimed the Mandate of Heaven, he assumed that his dynasty would be added to the long column of dynasties that had preceded it. He saw himself and his new state as the latest exemplars, the culmination even, of an age-old Chinese civilization. As soon as the Manchu Qing succeeded the Ming in 1644 they undertook to compile a conventional dynastic history that confirmed the Ming’s place in the long column, while at the same time ensuring that the Ming was gone and could pose no threat to their own claim to the next position in line, though it is worth noting that the struggle to defeat the Ming remnants lasted some forty years and it took nearly a century to complete the official Ming history. World history has no such formula to offer us. To situate the Ming in a world history context we need to think of larger global patterns independent of the dynastic succession in China. We need to think especially about the centrality of Eurasia and the connections between its various divisions.
