The Mythistorical Chinese Scholar-Rebel-Advisor Li Yan: A Global Perspective, 1606-2018

Product Description


This book uses a genealogical manuscript discovered in 2004 to argue for the historicity of the scholar-rebel-advisor Li Yan who helped overthrow the Ming polity in 1644. It invokes a spiral theory to elucidate his significance in Chinese and world history.


About the Author


Roger Des Forges (Ph.D. Yale, 1971) is Professor of History Emeritus, University at Buffalo (SUNY). Among many other publications, he authored
Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History: Northeast Henan in the Fall of the Ming(Stanford, 2003) and co-edited
Representing Lives in China: Forms of Biography in the Ming-Qing Period (1368-1911) (Cornell, 2018).