"This astute and powerful blend of micro- and macrohistory pursued over the longue durée explores how resistance infuses apparent compliance. The magnifying lens of this book focuses on conscription throughout the Ming Dynasty, but the intellectual quarry is nothing less than the illumination of the strategic maneuvering between subject and state."--James C. Scott, Yale University
"This is state-of-the-art Sinology: a work that combines the old-school erudition needed to sift through thousands of pages of documents and decipher obscure stele, with the ability to sit down and talk to people in a remote part of China, listen to their stories, and triangulate this oral history with the written record. Szonyi gives us not only an absorbing new take on Ming military history, but also a parable for how the Chinese have dealt with the state for centuries--through negotiation."--Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Souls of China
"In this pioneering book on military service during the Ming dynasty, Szonyi opens a window on life during imperial China, revealing a fascinating world where families creatively bent the government's rules in order to survive. This ground-up view of how the Chinese coped constitutes an enormously significant and relevant contribution to the field."--John Pomfret, author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
"The Art of Being Governed looks at the relationship between the military households of southeastern China and the Ming state, with an emphasis on how individuals negotiated their obligations to the government. With a brilliant use of sources, this illuminating book links the past to the present in creative ways and is one of the most sophisticated and vivid descriptions of social relations in late imperial China published in recent years."--Peter C. Perdue, Yale University
"This ambitious book probes the ways in which military households engaged the state. Szonyi shows how people registered in these households used their status to take advantage of differing regulatory schemes in Ming China, and how these efforts shaped social relations, politics, and culture--in some cases even down to the present. Based on extensive fieldwork, primary sources, and engaging scholarship, this is a major contribution to the field."--Joe Dennis, University of Wisconsin-Madison