The Ashikaga military government’s enormous interest in Sino-Japanese trade and the founding of the new Ming dynasty on the continent in 1368 led to the restoration of tribute relations. When the Ashikaga bakufu ignored domestic critics and accepted an inferior position as a tributary to the Ming court, it did so to regain the opportunity to trade with China. Formal tribute trade resumed for the first time since Ennin’s day. However, the nearly six centuries preceding had left their mark: religion maintained its important position in official trade. Monks frequently traveled on trade missions and assumed the position of ambassador or vice ambassador. And the Ashikaga bakufu was not the only participant nor the only beneficiary in the resumed tribute trade: prestigious monasteries had their own ships in the tribute delegations.

This chapter examines the construction and representation of borders in China under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It considers the spatial dimensions of the Mongol empire, which was the Ming dynasty’s immediate predecessor. It examines the Ming court’s efforts to conquer or coopt Mongol power-holders and their territories, its plans to establish lasting control over those regions and their peoples, and its discursive and administrative strategies to describe and regulate issues of diversity and distance. The chapter reviews changes in the Ming dynasty’s geopolitical engagement in eastern Eurasia, tracing the dynasty’s loss of territory and influence along the northern and western borders and simultaneously a steady expansion of state institutions into the southwestern frontier. The essay concludes with developments during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including responses to early Western European agents of empire in East Asia and, more broadly, the expansion of Chinese interest into maritime Asia.

Zhu Di’s experience as imperial prince shaped his rule’s style and substance. He interacted with Mongolian men as subordinates, advisers, allies, negotiating partners, rivals, and traitors. He was known among them as Lord of Yan. Breaking with his father’s example, Zhu Di repeatedly campaigned in person on the steppe as emperor. There he met with steppe leaders, hosted banquets, conducted grand hunts, and organized vast military reviews. He spoke openly of his motives and objectives on the steppe, not just to audiences at home but also with Korean, Jurchen, Mongol, Moghul, and Timurid leaders. He inserted himself into a Chinggisid world as east Eurasia’s premier ruler and patron.

Chapter 8, “South of the Clouds,” moves from the Mongolian steppe to Yunnan, the southwestern kingdom of the Prince of Liang, a Chinggisid noble and Great Yuan supporter. In the mid-thirteenth century, the Mongols conquered Yunnan, a previously independent kingdom (Nanzhao), as part of its broader war against the mighty Song dynasty in China. Mongol governance in Yunnan shaped power sharing among local elites in ways that influenced their response to Daidu’s fall in 1368, the Great Yuan’s diminished power, and the Ming court’s efforts to win recognition. This chapter charts Zhu Yuanzhang’s diplomatic and military offensives in Yunnan with particular attention to his attempts to turn local experience of Mongol rule to his advantage.

Chapter 6, “A Precarious Tale” explores the role of war, military men, and court drama in the early Ming’s rivalry with the Great Yuan. It also addresses the precarious nature of the early Ming court’s Chinggisid narrative. All contemporaries understood that military force was essential for political legitimacy. Field commanders defeated Great Yuan armies, conquered its lands, captured Chinggisid nobles, and seized key political emblems such as seals of state. Thus, military commanders also figured in the story that the early Ming court told of the Great Yuan.The Ming court widely disseminated news of high political theater, for instance the reception of Chinggisid nobles in Nanjing. However, both court drama and military commanders repeatedly disrupted the Ming court’s carefully scripted stories about inescapable Yuan defeat and inevitable Ming triumph. Commanders lost battles. Some were declared traitors. Political theater failed to go according to plan; on occasion it was dramatically undone by senior figures in the Ming court.

Chapter 3, “Changing Fortunes,” explores the Yuan court's effort to regain ascendance in eastern Eurasia through military campaigns and diplomatic initiatives. Drawing upon spiritual, military, and political resources, the Great Yuan court pursued its claims to legitimacy and power in Eurasia, fielding powerful armies that clashed with the forces of the newly ascendant Ming court. If the Yuan court suffered defeats, until the late 1380s, it could also claim major triumphs. After the assassination of the Yuan's Great Khan in 1388, however, more Mongol commanders confronted the choice of remaining loyal to the Chinggisids or offering their allegiance to the Ming throne.

Chapter 9, “The Chinggisid Fold,” explores Zhu Yuanzhang’s correspondence with two other groups with deep ties to the Chinggisid imperial enterprise.The first were senior Great Yuan military commanders and Mongol nobles, primarily those based in today’s Liaoning and Jilin provinces to the northeast, the southern Mongolian steppe, and in Gansu and eastern Xinjiang.The second group consists of the Moghul khanate and the Timurid dynasty in Central Asia.Memory of Chinggis Khan and the institutional arrangements of the Mongol empire (including hereditary relations of leadership) were defining elements of both groups. This chapter argues that Zhu Yuanzhang worked hard to win the first group’s allegiance through a combination of military pressure, economic incentives, and argumentation. If he failed to sway the Great Khans and the Prince of Liang, the Ming founder did have some success among this critical group of Chinggisid supporters. Zhu Yuanzhang and his advisors invoked the Mongol empire’s inheritance in communications with the Timurid and Moghul polities. However, the early Ming court’s Chinggisid narrative was not compelling to them.

Chapter 7, “Letters to the Great Khan,” examines correspondences that Zhu Yuanzhang wrote to three successive Great Khans between 1368 and 1388. These missives examine Chinggis’ origins as a humble man of the people chosen by Heaven to unite the steppe and then subjugate much of Eurasia. They praise the glories of Qubilai, who united long-divided Chinese territory and ushered in a sparkling age of prosperity. They also chronicle the collapse of effective Yuan governance, which led to the rise of regional warlords, the spread of human suffering, and the disintegration of moral order. Perhaps most striking is the way Zhu Yuanzhang speaks as one ruler to another in these letters. He spends much time walking the Great Khans through the new reality of the day and their choices for the future. Zhu Yuanzhang’s correspondence did not alter the Great Khans’ views, but it does conform to what we know about the Ming founder’s insistence that people not merely obey his orders but also accept his views.

Chapter 5, “Telling Stories and Selling Rulership,” examines how Zhu Yuanzhang and his ministers created a story of the rise, glory, and irreversible fall of the Chinggisids for audiences at home. Primary audiences included not just educated Chinese men but also Mongols, Turks, Kitans, and Jurchens.Many felt a sense of loyalty to the Great Yuan. The early Ming court’s Chinggisid narrative highlighted such themes as the end of the Chinggisids’ allotted span of rule, Chinese renewal, the physical and political marginality of the post-1368 Yuan court, and the deficiencies of contemporary Chinggisid leadership. Emphasizing the superiority of Ming rulership, such a discursive strategy was intended to persuade contemporary audiences to forsake the Great Yuan and pledge loyalty to the Great Ming. Zhu Yuanzhang and his advisors worked hard to create a version of the past that served the needs of the present.

Moving beyond Ming territory and the Chinggisid world, Chapter 10 looks at how the early Ming court invoked the story of the Mongol empire in its relations with the kingdoms of Koryŏ, Japan, and the Great Việt (Đại Việt or most of the northern part of today’s Vietnam), which today are commonly lumped together as East Asia. The chapter reviews these three kingdoms’ markedly different experiences of the Mongol empire.It argues that the early Ming court tried, with uneven success, to exploit divergent memory of the Mongol empire to pursue pressing contemporary issues of diplomatic recognition, border populations, and coastal security. It also considers how the early Ming court gathered information on events in of Koryŏ, Japan, and the Great Việt, and how, on the basis of such intelligence, it tailored its Chinggisid narrative for different audiences.

Chapter 2, “Daidu’s Fall,” traces the fate of Mongol political and military power in eastern Eurasia during the decades following the Yuan ruling house’s flight to the steppe in 1368. This chapter examines the Yuan court’s efforts to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of former subjects and allies, which included Chinese, Mongol, Turkic, Jurchen, Korean, and Central Asian populations, by drawing on political emblems developed during the empire’s glory years. This chapter also explains the Yuan’s military and administrative strategies to come to terms with its new position in eastern Eurasia. After 1368, the Great Yuan court remained a powerful actor on the international stage; the Ming court was never the sole political patron available to ambitious individuals and communities.