The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties by Timothy Brook (review)

Dynastic histories have been the standard time frames with which Chinese historians work, explaining the rise and fall of dynasties and noteworthy events that took place in between the founding and collapse. In the field of late imperial China, it is also not uncommon to conceptualize the Ming and Qing as a meaningful period that crossed dynastic time lines. Most of the time, the Yuan was not in the picture. To many, it was a century of rupture and foreign conquest stashed aside, lest it destabilize a relatively neat narrative of China’s quest for modernity in the last six centuries of imperial order. There are, of course, a few notable exceptions. For example, the many chapters in the edited volume of The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History by Paul Smith and Richard von Glahn (2003) have effectively brought forward the important role of the Yuan in the development of Chinese history during its middle period; the Ming was divorced from the Qing and joined the earlier dynasties in this new conceptualization. Brook’s new book took a different path. Inspired by our new awareness of climate and environment since the late twentieth century, the field of climate history has caught the attention of many colleagues. Although climatic changes and the challenges they brought about should not be the universal explanation for the fortunes of dynasties, their impact should not be overlooked either. Brook is grouping the Yuan and Ming together because the two dynasties formed “a single era that coincided with what climate historians working on other parts of the world have called the Little Ice Age” (p. 2).

Brook is right to point out that eyewitnesses who experience climate changes “rarely see the bigger picture” (p. 3). In order to tell the story of this bigger picture, the book is divided into ten chapters, in addition to an introduction and conclusion, and covers a wide spectrum of topics. The first chapter, “Dragon Spotting,” is a very interesting way to start the stories. Brook presented the peculiar world of dragons to the modern readers and restrained from judging the informants. The dragon is thick with meaning in Chinese culture. On one layer, it is the symbol of imperial power. On another layer, it is closely associated with the weather. The main duty of dragons is to bring rain, and on many occasions, it is also responsible for destruction caused by nature. There seems a link between the fortune of the dynasty and the legitimacy of the emperor and the dutiful or willful display of the dragons’ power. The eyewitnesses did not see that link, but Brook is clearly pointing in that direction.

The second chapter brought the readers from the mythical world of flying dragons down back to earth. Chapter 2, “Scale,” introduces China to general readers. Before further meaningful discussion on the various issues, it is no doubt constructive for readers to have an idea about the transportation system, geography, administrative framework, population, migration, and administrative matrix of the two dynasties that have both claimed to have united all under heaven. One noteworthy point is the difference between North and South China. After all, “Chinese culture might still look northward for its origin, but since the Song dynasty the rise of the south had been the motor of economic growth and the setter of cultural trends” (p. 35). Highlighting this point for the general reader or any student interested in the study of late imperial China is extremely thoughtful.

Chapter 3, “The Nine Sloughs,” is the main chapter, which presents the influences of climate history. Brook argued that although “the Little Ice Age has been reconstructed largely on the basis of data from outside Asia,” we can still turn to “indicators of weather extremes in the dynastic histories and local gazetteers” (p. 53). Brook further proposed that “it is tempting to align the political fortunes...