Records of Court and Countryside in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

China's imperial system reached its zenith under the Ming and Qing dynasties, and ended with them as well.

The Ming abolished the chancellor, governing the realm through cabinet memorial drafts and the Directorate of Ceremonial's vermilion endorsements. The Qing inherited the Ming system, added the Council of Princes and Ministers, then established the Grand Council, bringing centralized imperial power to its peak. At court, grand secretaries, court scholars, eunuchs, banner princes, and grand councilors maneuvered against one another. Across the realm, land seizures, famines and refugees, coastal warfare, and ethnic strife intertwined in layer upon layer of cause and effect.

Ordinary histories tend to center on imperial biographies, sketching the rise and fall of dynasties in broad strokes. This collection avoids a single imperial perspective, instead following eleven people of widely differing stations: a chief grand secretary, a eunuch holding the seal of the Directorate of Ceremonial, a banished Hanlin academician, a famed frontier general, a postal courier turned bandit, a frontier governor in Liaodong, a Manchu regent, a leader of resistance to the Qing at sea, a secretary of the Grand Council, a Huai River salt merchant, and the ruler beyond the passes who founded the Qing among the White Mountains and Black Waters. From their different positions in society, each sees a completely different "realm."