The Ashikaga military government’s enormous interest in Sino-Japanese trade and the founding of the new Ming dynasty on the continent in 1368 led to the restoration of tribute relations. When the Ashikaga bakufu ignored domestic critics and accepted an inferior position as a tributary to the Ming court, it did so to regain the opportunity to trade with China. Formal tribute trade resumed for the first time since Ennin’s day. However, the nearly six centuries preceding had left their mark: religion maintained its important position in official trade. Monks frequently traveled on trade missions and assumed the position of ambassador or vice ambassador. And the Ashikaga bakufu was not the only participant nor the only beneficiary in the resumed tribute trade: prestigious monasteries had their own ships in the tribute delegations.

Chapter 3 surveys Chinese fiscal institutions prior to the Qing, focusing on reforms implemented in the mid to late Ming. It makes two basic claims: First, the Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming all taxed much more aggressively than the Qing, and, in the Song and Yuan cases, dramatically so. Moreover, the Tang, Song, and Ming all implemented major reforms to their fiscal institutions around mid-dynasty, which generally led to substantial increases in the total volume of government income. Second, fiscal conservatives relied heavily on deontological moral arguments to combat these expansionist policies, but had limited success in doing so. In, for example, the later Ming, although moral condemnations of “pursuing profit” were visibly influential in court politics, they were largely ineffective in stemming the tide of fiscal reform. This was, at least in part, because fiscal conservatives were unable to clearly and powerfully predict the socioeconomic consequences of fiscal expansion, which limited their political persuasiveness until the final years of the dynasty.

Focusing on the deployment of Goryeo troops to China in 1354, this chapter begins by tracing contemporary developments within the Yuan, which shaped the broader geopolitical environment in which the Goryeo regime operated. It then examines the choices Wang Gi and his court made when confronted with the largest military mobilization in East Asia in decades. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what the Yuan dynasty’s southern campaign likely revealed to Wang Gi and his advisers about military and political dynamics within the Great Khan’s realm and what they meant for the Goryeo court. This chapter’s narrative details convey a sense of dynamics within the Great Khan’s regime, which in turn sheds light on the Goryeo–Yuan alliance and Wang Gi’s place in the world.

As a boy, what was Wang Gi's experience of the Mongol empire? How did he and the people around him understand the ties between his family and the Chinggisids, between the Goryeo and Yuan polities? Wang Gi left no memoir of his childhood, and detailed – in fact any – accounts of his first years are vanishingly rare. What follows is a reconstruction of some key structural elements that would shape Wang Gi’s life – his family’s relationship with the Chinggisid ruling house, the broad network of personal relationships between the Goryeo and Mongol courts, and the place of the Goryeo dynasty in the wider Mongol empire.

This chapter is organized into four sections. The first traces Zhu Yuanzhang’s rise, including his consolidation of power over regional polities and his military campaigns against the Yuan court. The second section examines Wang Gi’s relationship with the new master of China, and the third section explores Wang Gi’s ties to the Yuan court after its relocation to the steppe. The final section considers Wang Gi’s 1370 military strikes into Liaodong, a region strategically vital to the Yuan, Ming, and Goryeo courts, in a time of rapidly shifting alliances.

The Chinggisids’ retreat northward from Daidu in 1368, the loss of nearly all their Chinese territory, and Zhu Yuanzhang’s rise to dominance posed monumental choices for Wang Gi. What would he do about his family’s century-old alliance with the Chinggisid ruling house? If Wang Gi remained true to Toghan-Temür, what – if any – alterations would he make to the Goryeo–Yuan alliance? If he abandoned his family’s long-standing ally and lord, how would he justify his action at home and abroad? If he offered his allegiance to Zhu Yuanzhang’s fledgling Ming dynasty, what would be the terms of the relationship?

This chapter looks at the Yuan dynasty in a time of growing chaos. It undertook distant military campaigns, major relief efforts, ambitious river projects, a new legal code, and massive dynastic historical compilations. Envoys like Marignolli came to the Yuan court from the other side of world, a clear reminder of the Great Yuan’s international standing and ties to other lands. If all this evidenced formidable state capacity, Korean observers also saw acute problems: widespread drought and flooding that led to famine and occasionally even cannibalism, virulent banditry that blurred readily into revolt, and court intrigue that shook vast political patronage networks and threw dynastic policy into tumult.

In times of crisis and change, what becomes of the vast and complex network of alliances that undergird all empires? Rather than focus on the major powers or “Great States,” the most common way to think about the rise and fall of empires, here is the story of “the little guy” or the lesser power, the experiences of the Wang Gi and his court as ally first to the Mongols and later to the Ming dynasty of China. The unsettled times threw up both danger and opportunity, and far from passively reacting to the actions of the Great Khan and the Ming emperor, Wang Gi and his advisers actively pursued their interests through diplomacy, military action, and domestic reform. Their efforts failed as often as they succeeded, and if their story reveals the underappreciated initiative and influence of alliances’ junior partners, it also makes clear that stark imbalances of power cannot be waved away by invoking the agency of lesser states.

This chapter analyzes political developments at the Goryeo court during the 1340s, the decade before Wang Gi took the throne. It pays particular attention to how connections to the Yuan dynasty figured in Goryeo politial dynamics and how the young Wang Gi may have understood contemporary events.

This chapter revisits Wang Gi’s measures in the summer of 1356 with attention to two points. First, what do they reveal about the Goryeo–Yuan alliance? Second, and inversely, how does attention to the broader developments of Chinggisid rule in East Asia offer insight into Wang Gi’s actions? As was true in previous chapters, this chapter argues that only through close attention to developments in the Yuan dynasty is it possible to fully appreciate the perceptions, motivations, and strategies of Wang Gi and Toghan-Temür. For this reason, the chapter includes more detail of local events in Yuan territories than is commonly found in histories of Goryeo–Yuan relations.

In the decade from 1357 to 1367, the Goryeo–Yuan alliance reached an inflection point, as mounting instability in the Yuan dynasty meant both steepening costs and broadening opportunities for the Goryeo dynasty. This chapter traces three developments: (a) the Red Turban invasions of Goryeo from 1359 to 1362, (b) the Yuan court’s abortive effort in 1362–1363 to depose Wang Gi, and (c) the rapid expansion of relations between Wang Gi’s court and regional powerholders emerging out of the tottering Yuan realm.

This chapter looks at the earliest years of Wang Gi’s rule, circa 1351–1353, and pursues two interrelated questions. First, what was Wang Gi’s experience as a Yuan ally in a time of increasing chaos? Second, how did Wang Gi’s place in the empire influence his rule at home? These two questions in fact run through the next several chapters. Rather than attempt an exhaustive account of the 1351–1353 period, this chapter focuses on two moments. The first is Wang Gi’s first year on the throne, when the fledgling king strove to eliminate potential rivals and secure legitimacy within Goryeo. The second is a puzzling, abortive coup in 1352 by one of Wang Gi’s close advisers who had attended him in Daidu.

This chapter begins by quickly reviewing conditions at the Ming and Yuan courts circa 1370–1374, moves on to Wang Gi’s relationships with each court, and concludes with a look at Wang Gi’s efforts to project royal influence in the near abroad, Liaodong and Tamna, in a time of tectonic geopolitical change.

East Asian religions are marked by diffuse spirituality and close ties to the state (e.g. Confucianism). When the state was weak, however, independent sects gained an appeal, which created a niche for Christianity. On the other hand, a resurgent state brought repression of these groups. Early modern Japan is the most vivid example, but also in China at the same time in milder form. The Taiping rebellion is a nineteenth-century example. Missionary incursion sparked resistance (the Boxer rebellion) but also acculturation (Western education). Japanese nationalism coopted Christianity through WW II, but its appeal has been limited since. Korea exemplifies how persecution of Christianity, first by its Confucian monarchs, then by the Japanese and then the communists, only strengthened its appeal.

This chapter examines the construction and representation of borders in China under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It considers the spatial dimensions of the Mongol empire, which was the Ming dynasty’s immediate predecessor. It examines the Ming court’s efforts to conquer or coopt Mongol power-holders and their territories, its plans to establish lasting control over those regions and their peoples, and its discursive and administrative strategies to describe and regulate issues of diversity and distance. The chapter reviews changes in the Ming dynasty’s geopolitical engagement in eastern Eurasia, tracing the dynasty’s loss of territory and influence along the northern and western borders and simultaneously a steady expansion of state institutions into the southwestern frontier. The essay concludes with developments during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including responses to early Western European agents of empire in East Asia and, more broadly, the expansion of Chinese interest into maritime Asia.

This chapter looks at the grand strategic implications of the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s, which was successfully thwarted by a Sino-Korean alliance that emerged out of China’s obligations to Korea as part of the so-called tributary system of foreign relations. The Great East Asian War of 1592–1598, known to Koreans as the Imjin War, was the largest conflict on the globe in the sixteenth century yet it is still barely known outside of East Asia. The chapter will offer an overview of how the war fit into the ongoing grand strategy of Ming-dynasty China as it sought to preserve its hegemonic position in East Asia. It will also examine the motivations and strategic calculations of the Japanese hegemon, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), who sought to overturn the longstanding Ming order and create a new international system that could have fundamentally altered the course of Asian, if not world, history had it succeeded. In the end, the defeat of Hideyoshi’s ambitions preserved the East Asian world order and China’s hegemonic position therein for another 250 years. In addition to examining the motivations and ramifications of the war through primary research, this chapter touches upon some of the recent historical and political science literature concerning the war and its broader implications for the study of international relations and power politics in the early modern East Asian context.

The Tang dynasty (618–907) went into steep decline as a result of the Huang Chao Rebellion (874–84). The imperial government and the emperor himself became the tools of regional warlords, each maneuvering for his own power in an increasingly uncertain political and military milieu. These struggles were played out in the final decades of the Tang dynasty and beyond, lasting until the mid-point of the tenth century, when the various factions and power groupings of the late Tang had become so enervated by constant warfare and the deaths of the principal players that a new generation of ambitious power-seekers rose to the top. Steppe influence remained important in these conflicts and indeed, from the retrospective standpoint of the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and then the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1272–1368), the intervening control of north China by the Chinese Song dynasty (960–1279) almost seems to be the exception rather than the rule.