Yang Tinghe: A Political Life in the Mid-Ming Court

Download or read book Yang Tinghe: A Political Life in the Mid-Ming Court written by Aaron Throness and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who was Yang Tinghe? Despite being one of Ming China’s most eminent officials, Yang and his career have long eluded scholarly study in the West. In this volume, Aaron Throness engages a trove of untapped Ming sources and secondary scholarship to recount Yang Tinghe’s political life, and in unprecedented detail. Throness explores how Yang, a pragmatic politician and conservative Confucian, rose through the bureaucracy and responded to dire threats to the Ming court from within and without. He also traces Yang’s meteoric rise to power, the clashes that occasioned his downfall, and his apotheosis as dynastic savior. Through Yang Tinghe’s successes, struggles, and failures this political biography offers a critical appraisal of both the man and his times.