Why does the mere mention of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern and Western Depots make people shudder?
What kind of mysterious organizations were the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern and Western Depots?
What dirty business did they conduct in the shadows?
Why do some say the Ming dynasty fell because of the poison spread by the Depots and the Guard?
What role did they play in the rise and fall of the Ming dynasty?
To help readers gain a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the Ming dynasty's system of secret police, we have compiled this book, The Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern and Western Depots of the Ming Dynasty. It includes most of Mr. Wu Han's works on the subject, with chapters arranged around the system's origins, its beginnings, its heyday, and its decline. It offers a systematic and detailed account of the history, characteristics, functions, and harms of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Eastern and Western Depots, and other secret-police agencies, giving you a thorough understanding of the Ming dynasty's system of secret police in a single volume!
To make the book easier to read, we have carefully proofread quotations from classical texts and added explanations for some rare words and phrases, so that this master's work can be presented to readers as faithfully as possible.
This book explains the Jinyiwei and the East-West Factory of the Ming Dynasty in an easy-to-understand way, giving me a clearer understanding of that period of history. The book systematically sorts out the rise and fall of the factory guard system, and also quotes some famous quotes and wonderful descriptions, such as "The success of the imperial guards in prison can frighten the ministers and make the traitors succeed", which vividly shows the harm of factory guards. Moreover, the editor also made corrections and annotations, which made it very convenient to read and I felt that I benefited a lot from it!