The Mandate of Heaven and The Great Ming Code (Asian Law)

This companion to Jiang Yonglin's translation of The Great Ming Code analyzes the code's underlying thought in terms of the spiritual and social agenda articulated by the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Zhu Yuanzhang. Jiang challenges the conventional assumption that law in premodern China was used merely to exercise naked state power and argues that The Great Ming Code represented a powerful religious effort for social transformation.

Jiang Yonglin is associate professor of East Asian studies at Bryn Mawr College.

"A necessary correction to the conventional views." --Ziaoqun Xu, author of Frontier of History in China

"Arguing against a scholarly tradition that sees Chinese law as a purely secular instrument of despotic power, Jiang Yonglin seeks to place that tradition in the context of a China-centered Chinese history. . . . A learned and thoughtful work." --Michael Marme, Journal of Asian Studies