| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Shih-shan Henry Tsai. Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2001. Pp. xv, 270. $32.50.

Emperors of China who ruled before the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) are difficult figures to approach as people. The mystique of the office they held, their disinclination to reveal themselves on paper, and their want of friends and social contacts (aside from eunuchs and palace women, who did not or could not write) make extremely scarce the intimate documentation that supports the detailed and vivid biographies that have been written about so many European monarchs. In those very few pre-Qing imperial biographies that have been published thus far, what perforce substitutes for biography is a survey of the reign, with inferences about personal character mainly drawn from the edicts and other official acts as registered in the standard dynastic historical sources. Morris Rossabi's Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (1988) and Charles P. Fitzgerald's The Empress Wu (1955) are two well-received examples of the genre. The present account of the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–1424) now joins this select club. "Perpetual happiness" translates the reign-title "Yongle." . . .

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