Boundless Winds of Empire

This is a book I have been waiting for. Wang argues that historically Korea was not the compliant vassal that Chinese imagined it to be, but a canny role-player manipulating China’s imperial myth so as to constrain its capacity to dominate. An eloquent revision of what we thought we knew. -- Timothy Brook, coeditor of <i>Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations Since Chinggis Khan</i> Sixiang Wang’s Boundless Winds of Empire is destined to be a classic. Wang provides a new lens to study the historical relations between Ming and Chosŏn. His emphasis on ritual and rhetoric as frames of reference and the extensive use of Chinese and Korean sources make a tremendous contribution to numerous fields. -- David C. Kang, author of <i>American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the Twenty-First Century</i> Generations of scholars have stripped down the relationship of Chosŏn Korea and Ming China into an abstract model of the ‘tribute system.’ With sensitive readings of poetry, apocryphal inscriptions, and other sources rarely considered by the model builders, Sixiang Wang brilliantly restores the idiosyncratic texture of Korean-Ming relations. -- Christopher P. Atwood, author of <i>The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources</i> Boundless Winds of Empire sets a new standard for Anglophone scholarship on Chosŏn Korea. -- Eugene Y. Park, author of <i>Korea: A History</i>