Book Review: 1587, a Year of No Significance

In the late 1980s while at college, this wonderful book was assigned as part of a history of dynastic China, which followed a reliable pattern for thousands of years: strong founder (often a military leader), establishment of an imperial and military bureaucracy capable of managing crises and expansion, then ossification and failure owing to weak leadership and various internal and external threats.

While the model of a weak/incompetent emperor late in the dynasty was well known, few studies attempted to answer the why as Huang did with his book. He told it as a very readable and interesting story and struggle of personality amidst a backdrop of intrigue and crises.

It’s actually unfair to call the Wanli emperor incompetent; as Huang so beautifully illustrated in his book, he was a product and victim of the system. He protested in one of the few ways he could: doing nothing. By withdrawing from his responsibility, he created a vacuum which other forces were able to take advantage of, hastening the decline of the Ming dynasty.

I still have my copy of 1587, and re-read it every 5 or 10 years. If you can’t find or don’t have time for the book, check out the excellent film Fall of Ming (大明劫) set later in the dynasty.

Funnily enough, I first heard of this book from the late John J. Reilly, who wrote among other things, what a future world government might look like:

> The function of emperors is to read their mail. That, at least, is the conclusion reached by Fergus Millar is his exhaustive study, "The Emperor in the Roman World." Most of the time, emperors waited for problems to come to them. They answered queries from their governors and they sat as the court of last resort in certain legal disputes. They answered a remarkable number of written petitions from private persons, even from slaves. However, except in extraordinary situations, and those mostly concerned military emergencies, they did not plan vast reforming "programs" for their reigns. They scarcely had "policies." Their policy was to keep the great barge of empire floating along with as little disruption as possible. They could act decisively to aid or punish individuals, even whole cities, but their capacity to affect life in the empire as a whole was limited.

> Something like this also seems to have been true in China, to judge from Ray Huang's snapshot history of the Ming Dynasty, "1587: A Year of No Significance." In that case, the right of petition was rather more limited. It extended to local magistrates, who did not hesitate to pepper the imperial secretariat with memorials containing their bright ideas. The emperor exercised "government" by writing "approved" on the memorials he like or "acknowledged" on the ones he didn't. Except for a few large, continuing government functions, such as guarding the northern frontier and maintaining the dikes on the Yangtsee, that was the extent of administrative control that the central government would exert itself to exercise.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120416115756/http://www.johnre...

No significance!! 1587 is the year Kit Marlowe wrote Tamerlane and Thomas Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy. Those two plays revolutionized English drama and started off the Elizabethan literary renaissance.

Reading this reminds me of Faulkner’s line: "The past is never dead. It's not even past"

The Ming was heavily influenced by the Han Empire which was more than a thousand years in the past.

Even today, there seems to be a current of rejection of the 20th century (and even before) and a strong push for something before that.

Xi in China seems more like a Ming Grand Secretary, than really anything Communist.

Modi in India calls forth the Hindu Empires of the Middle Ages and before than he does Nehru or Gandhi.

Erodogan is more Ottoman in outlook than Kemalist

Putin can best be understood through a Tsarist lens and his perception of himself as another Peter the Great.

Even the right wing in the US looks back more to Medieval European state sponsored Christianity than the Enlightenment influence of the US founding.

Apparently this blog (Astral Codex Ten) is the successor to Slate Star Codex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex

Chineses version ，万历十五年，very famous in China. I recommend anther book called Macro History of China, also written by Huang.

Reminds me of 1185 by Ihor Mozheiko that is still waiting for an English translation.

One of my most favorite book.

The author, Ray Huang, got his bachelor’s degree in USA at age 36.

The descriptions of the childe empower in the Forbidden City and scheming civil servants remind me very much of “Titus Groan” and “Gormenghast”. I need to check this book out.

Fascinating.

can someone tldr what made this year special or why this year was chosen

How does this book compare to Guns, Germs and Steel?