Court History of the Yuan Dynasty

This book is a historical monograph on the Yuan dynasty court. Centering on imperial succession, major historical events, and key figures, it sketches the contours of Yuan court politics as a whole while also touching on economic, cultural, and everyday life. As the first unified dynasty in China founded by an ethnic minority, the Yuan had a court politics marked by a distinctive feature: its court history was to a considerable extent a history of strife. A key reason lies in the Yuan's substantial preservation of the enfeoffment system and the principle of shared authority within the Golden Family, which made imperial succession highly uncertain. Especially in the late Yuan, powerful ministers played an increasingly prominent role in imperial succession, and repeatedly monopolized state power—itself a product of the court's reform of old institutions and its effort to strengthen Han-style centralization. Proceeding from this understanding, the book systematically sorts through Yuan court politics and strife, links them to a range of political and cultural phenomena, and thereby grasps more accurately and deeply the threads of Yuan historical development, while offering key insights into certain deeper issues of its history and culture. As a monograph of solid scholarly value and a must-read reference in Yuan studies, the book is of considerable help both to specialists conducting in-depth research and to history enthusiasts seeking to understand the Yuan. The Yuan Dynasty Court History was published by our press in 2008; in this new edition, the author has made careful revisions and a small number of additions throughout the chapters based on historical sources discovered over the past fifteen years. The format has also changed: first, the interior layout has been redesigned, with more open spacing; second, several Yuan and Ming paintings and portraits have been added as illustrations.