92 Views
China and Inner Asia
Organized Panel Session
In the Late Ming Dynasty, lots of military books had been compiled and published with the aim of improving the military strength of the state in a time of decline. The content of these books was related to military affairs on an empire-wide central level and was believed to be useful in the eyes of their compilers. The scholar-officers who compiled these books, however, did not have rich military experience, and some lacked high level administrative experience as a bureaucrat. So, did these military books focusing on the empire’s defense have significance as practical guides? What kind of knowledge did the compilers base their writings on? How did they raise this knowledge to the central level from the local level and did the knowledge at these two different levels manifest a kind of gap?
With these questions in mind, this paper studies the military theorist Xu Rijiu of the late Ming in order to discuss the formation of his military knowledge. The research involves three issues: firstly, the purpose and foundation of his compilation Code for Five Frontiers 五边典则 and its relationship with his knowledge of Neo-Confucianism; secondly, the way in which Xu faced the superficial changes his local knowledge of Zhejiang Province underwent when it became military knowledge at the central level; thirdly, the real influence of Xu’s military book from the perspective of reading history.
Yang Xie
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China