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"This book explores the experiences of one East Asian ruler--Wang Gi, King of Goryeo--as he navigated the upheavals of the mid-fourteenth century. The details of his tale not only yield a more nuanced appreciation of Korean, Mongolian, and Chinese history but also sharpen understanding of alliances across Eurasia. The Mongol empire was unprecedentedly large, and its deterioration directly touched most of Eurasia, from today's Eastern Europe, Turkey, Russia, Iran, Iraq, across today's Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Vietnam and indirectly exercised an even broader influence. For a generation and more, polities and peoples in West, Central, and East Asia created, with many false starts, much uncertainty, and repeated clashes, a series of new alliances in the wake of the Mongol empire's eclipse. The fortunes of the great powers - the Ming dynasty, Muscovite Russia, the Ottoman Empire, among others - during that anarchic age have been recounted often and ably, but the fate of their smaller allies is much less known and far too underappreciated. Here for the first time ever in English is the story of Wang Gi and his struggle for allies in chaos"--
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Child of Empire: 1330-1341; 2. Decade at the Yuan Court: 1341-1351; 3. The Goryeo Dynasty on the Eve of Wang Gi's Enthronement: 1341-1351; 4. Becoming the Goryeo King: 1351-1353; 5. Ally in Collapse: 1354-1355; 6. Redefining Allegiance: The Summer of 1356; 7. A Tipping Point: 1357-1367; 8. Choosing a New Lord: 1368-1370; 9. A New Age: 1370-1374; Conclusion.
About the author
David Robinson is Professor of Asian Studies and History at Colgate University.
