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Dardess, John W. A Political Life in Ming China: A Grand Secretary and His Times. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. xii + 207 pp. Hardback, $ 75.00. ISBN 978-1-4422- 2377-6. - Review by Hang Lin.
John W. Dardess's new book on the Ming political figure Xu Jie ... (1503-83) follows many years of work on the political and cultural milieu of Ming China.1 Although Xu Jie remained to many people, even those in the field of Chinese history, as a rather obscure character, there are several reasons that he "needs to come out of the shadows and bask in a bit of the limelight" (p. vii). This is not only because Xu Jie was at the highest level of Ming China's administration for almost twenty years in the mid-sixteenth century, a time that witnessed great military threats and social turmoil, but also because his career vividly displays how politics and power games served as the dirty underside of administration in imperial China, being characterized by interpersonal and factional fighting, bribery, sly maneuvering, and lethal rivalries. Taken up with these considerations, Dardess employs a wide range of little-used primary sources (personal letters, private diaries, memorials and imperial edicts) to provide a remarkably detailed narrative of the life of Xu Jie and of this dramatic period as a whole.
Dardess wisely traces the arc of Xu Jie's trajectory in a broad chronological order, inviting readers to accompany Xu Jie on his long and exceptional career through five stages: his education and entry into the world of government (chap. 1), his eager participation in the national crisis and his engagement in "study discussing" (jiangxue ...) (chap. 2 and 3), his minor revolution in Ming politic conduction during his tenure as the chief grand secretary (chap. 4), and finally his retirement into old age, during which time he still retained a sustained interest...