The invasion of Korea by Japanese troops in May of 1592 was no ordinary military expedition: it was one of the decisive events in Asian history and the most tragic for the Korean peninsula until the mid-twentieth century. Japanese overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi envisioned conquering Korea, Ming China, and eventually all of Asia; but Korea s appeal to China s Emperor Wanli for assistance triggered a six-year war involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers and encompassing the whole region. For Japan, the war was a dragon s head followed by a serpent s tail: an impressive beginning with no real...

This book examines the military collapse of China s Ming Dynasty to a combination of foreign and domestic foes. The Ming s defeat was a highly surprising development, not least because as recently as in the 1590s the Ming had managed to defeat a Japanese force considered to be perhaps the most formidable of its day when the latter attempted to subjugate Korea en-route to a planned invasion of China. In contrast to conventional explanations for the Ming s collapse, which focus upon political and socio-economic factors, this book shows how the military collapse of the Ming state was...