This volume in The Cambridge History of China is devoted to the history of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), with some account of the three decades before the dynasty's formal establishment, and for the Ming courts that survived in South China for a generation after 1644. Volume 7 deals primarily with the political developments of the period, but it also incorporates background in social, economic, and cultural history where this is relevant to the course of events. The Ming period is the only segment of later imperial history during which all of China proper was ruled by a native, or Han, dynasty. The volume provides the largest and most detailed account of the Ming period in any language. Summarizing all modern research, both in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages, the authors have gone far beyond a summary of the state of the field, but have incorporated original research on subjects that have never before been described in detail.