A Brief History of the Ming Dynasty: Complete Edition

Wu Han was a renowned expert in Ming history. He wrote two works on the subject: Ming History and An Outline of Ming History. Both are included in this book, arranged in two parts, making it a complete collection of Wu Han's writing on Ming history.

Ming History was written in the 1940s and originally consisted of four chapters. The first, third, and fifth chapters are included in the first part of this book, Ming History, while the chapter titled "The Army and the Soldiers" was omitted.

This edition adds five chapters: "Zhu Yuanzhang's Art of Rule," "The Terror of the Early Ming," "The Military and Soldiers of the Ming Dynasty," "The New Official Class of the Ming Dynasty," and "The Social Economy of the Ming Dynasty." Together with the first three chapters, these additions form a nearly complete history of the Ming dynasty.

The second part, An Outline of Ming History, is a transcript of lectures Wu Han gave at the Central Advanced Party School in 1962. It concisely discusses several of the most fundamental and important topics in Ming history: the founding of the dynasty by the Hongwu Emperor, the Yongle Emperor's move of the capital to Beijing, northern Mongol incursions and Japanese pirate raids in the south, the Donglin faction struggle, the Jianzhou Jurchens, Zheng He's voyages to the Western Ocean, and the emergence of capitalism.