Empire's Shadow: Understanding Eurasia after the Mongol Empire

FAIN: FT-56227-08

David Robinson
Colgate University (Hamilton, NY 13346-1338)

The Mongols created the greatest land empire known to Asia and left a complex legacy to their various successor polities. This project considers the court of the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368-1644) in wider Eurasia after the Mongols fell. It focuses on the court's engagement with the Mongol legacy, an element of Chinese history absent from the extant documentary records, which were compiled by elite literati-officials whose perspective often diverged sharply from both the imperial family and most commoners. I request support for research in China and writing a key chapter on princely funerary art and artifacts, which offer insight into the imperial family's identity and self-perceptions. Princely tombs were to reproduce the status and privilege of their inhabitants in the next world. Nearly all princely tombs from the 14th to 16th centuries contain honor guards dressed in Mongolian garb, revealing concern with the Mongol Yuan.