Description
Ability and Difference in Early Modern China offers a groundbreaking examination of a Mongol family’s experience at the Ming Court during a transformative period in Chinese history. David Robinson combines meticulous archival research with innovative analytical frameworks to explore how individuals with varying physical and cognitive abilities were understood, valued, and integrated into imperial hierarchies.
The book challenges conventional narratives of Ming China by centering the experiences of those whose differences marked them as outsiders. Through the lens of this single family, Robinson illuminates broader questions about disability, ethnicity, and social mobility in early modern China. The work demonstrates how the Ming Court, despite its rigid hierarchies, created spaces for individuals who might otherwise have been marginalized.
This interdisciplinary study bridges disability history, social history, and East Asian studies, making it essential reading for scholars and students interested in Ming China, cultural history, and the social construction of difference.
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