Description

The near universality of armies in states makes the military a productive site to explore the interaction of states and their subjects. The hereditary military households of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) have left us records of their elaborate strategies to optimize their obligations to provide manpower to the army. Though the men of these households were charged with preventing illegal overseas trade and piracy, many of them engaged in the very activities they were supposed to suppress. The key to resolving this apparent paradox lies in seeing the state institution not simply as a response to illegal activities but the two as mutually constitutive of one another. By looking at the range of strategies pursued by hereditary military households to deal with the institutions that shaped but did not determine their lives, this lecture will aim to develop a theory of everyday politics in the Ming, and beyond.

Michael Szonyi is Professor of Chinese History and Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. His books include Practicing Kinship: Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China, Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Frontline, and the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese History.