| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

David Robinson. Bandits, Eunuchs and the Son of Heaven: Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2001. Pp. ix, 283. $40.00.

David Robinson's book is a succinct and incisive analysis of the "economy of violence" in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) based on an in-depth study of the Rebellion of 1510. Robinson lays out his thesis and the organization of the book in a opening chapter that surveys a broad range of literature in the field of late imperial Chinese studies as well as European history. He also addresses many of the most important issues that confront historians of late imperial China, including the need to overcome longstanding inherited biases from Chinese elite scholarship and the growing trend toward placing late imperial Chinese history in more equitably balanced, less Western-centered, comparative perspective. Robinson defines the economy of violence as "the administration or management of concerns and resource related to violence in society—when and why people resort to violence, licit or illicit, and how such actions are perceived" (p. 2). Specifically, he examines a "constellation of issues" related to banditry and rebellion in the capital region from about 1450 to 1525, a period bounded by the tumult of the dynasty's formation and the onset of serious dynastic decline. In Robinson's hands, the concept of the economy of violence proves to be a very powerful tool for analyzing the much-neglected topic of violence and coercion in late imperial China. Perhaps most significantly, in contrast to James W. Tong's Disorder under Heavens: Collective Violence in the Ming Dynasty (1991), this study demonstrates that "violence was fully integrated into Ming life, during good times and bad" (p. 5). . . .

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