[HN Gopher] Book Review: 1587, a Year of No Significance
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Book Review: 1587, a Year of No Significance
Author : Michelangelo11
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-08-20 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (astralcodexten.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (astralcodexten.substack.com)
| codetrotter wrote:
| Apparently this blog (Astral Codex Ten) is the successor to Slate
| Star Codex.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| With the improvement that the new name is a more proper anagram
| of "Scott Alexander". The old name was almost an anagram of
| "Scott S Alexander", with the blemish of missing an N. [1]
|
| [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/12/youre-probably-
| wonderi...
| mrec wrote:
| Although for some reason its RSS feed seems to get consistently
| ignored by my reader (Feedreader). Never had that problem with
| SSC.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Reading this reminds me of Faulkner's line: "The past is never
| dead. It's not even past"
|
| The Ming was heavily influenced by the Han Empire which was more
| than a thousand years in the past.
|
| Even today, there seems to be a current of rejection of the 20th
| century (and even before) and a strong push for something before
| that.
|
| Xi in China seems more like a Ming Grand Secretary, than really
| anything Communist.
|
| Modi in India calls forth the Hindu Empires of the Middle Ages
| and before than he does Nehru or Gandhi.
|
| Erodogan is more Ottoman in outlook than Kemalist
|
| Putin can best be understood through a Tsarist lens and his
| perception of himself as another Peter the Great.
|
| Even the right wing in the US looks back more to Medieval
| European state sponsored Christianity than the Enlightenment
| influence of the US founding.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yeah - I like this one.. but for another angle, sometimes a
| military will go to war despite its people, not for them.
| Corollary - military leaders have to ride their own ranks,
| which can look overly aggressive, foolish, inept or scared from
| the outside, since all the talks are war council secret within.
| ilamont wrote:
| In the late 1980s while at college, this wonderful book was
| assigned as part of a history of dynastic China, which followed a
| reliable pattern for thousands of years: strong founder (often a
| military leader), establishment of an imperial and military
| bureaucracy capable of managing crises and expansion, then
| ossification and failure owing to weak leadership and various
| internal and external threats.
|
| While the model of a weak/incompetent emperor late in the dynasty
| was well known, few studies attempted to answer the _why_ as
| Huang did with his book. He told it as a very readable and
| interesting story and struggle of personality amidst a backdrop
| of intrigue and crises.
|
| It's actually unfair to call the Wanli emperor incompetent; as
| Huang so beautifully illustrated in his book, he was a product
| and victim of the system. He protested in one of the few ways he
| could: doing nothing. By withdrawing from his responsibility, he
| created a vacuum which other forces were able to take advantage
| of, hastening the decline of the Ming dynasty.
|
| I still have my copy of _1587_ , and re-read it every 5 or 10
| years. If you can't find or don't have time for the book, check
| out the excellent film _Fall of Ming_ (Da Ming Jie ) set later in
| the dynasty.
| jmeister wrote:
| Here is that pattern in meme form:
|
| _Hard times create strong men.
|
| Strong men create autocratic dynasties.
|
| Autocratic dynasties create supernumerary bureaucracies.
|
| Supernumerary bureaucracies create eunuch castes.
|
| Eunuch castes create drama.
|
| Drama creates Heavenly displeasure.
|
| Heavenly displeasure creates hard times._
|
| https://twitter.com/thocpodcast/status/1471276360106582016
| Tomte wrote:
| Also see https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-
| fremen-mirage-...
| JackFr wrote:
| The descriptions of the childe empower in the Forbidden City and
| scheming civil servants remind me very much of "Titus Groan" and
| "Gormenghast". I need to check this book out.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| How does this book compare to Guns, Germs and Steel?
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| What makes you think they are related?
| meq1986 wrote:
| Chineses version ,Mo Li Shi Wu Nian ,very famous in China. I
| recommend anther book called Macro History of China, also written
| by Huang.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Reminds me of 1185 by Ihor Mozheiko that is still waiting for an
| English translation.
| bodhiandphysics wrote:
| No significance!! 1587 is the year Kit Marlowe wrote Tamerlane
| and Thomas Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy. Those two plays
| revolutionized English drama and started off the Elizabethan
| literary renaissance.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Your response made me laugh, but the book is actually more
| narrow than the post title suggests
|
| > 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
| hamiltonians wrote:
| can someone tldr what made this year special or why this year was
| chosen
| j4nt4b wrote:
| It's in the title - nothing special happens in this year. It is
| just another year in the late Ming dynasty, still a long way
| off from its eventual demise. But the author uses this moment
| as a springboard to describe what the principals did in the
| past and what they would end up doing in the future.
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