The ''Ming Veritable Records'' or ''Ming Shilu'' (), contains the imperial annals of the emperors of the

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

(1368–1644). It is the single largest historical source of information on the dynasty. According to modern historians, it "plays an extremely important role in the historical reconstruction of Ming society and politics." After the fall of the Ming dynasty, the ''Ming Veritable Records'' was used as a primary source for the compilation of the ''

History of Ming The ''History of Ming'' is the final official Chinese history included in the '' Twenty-Four Histories''. It consists of 332 volumes and covers the history of the Ming dynasty from 1368 to 1644. It was written by a number of officials commissio ...

'' by the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

Historical sources

The

Veritable Records Veritable Records are historical records compiled by government (court) historians of Chinese dynasties since the 6th century, and later in Korea, Japan and Vietnam which adopted the Chinese bureaucratic system and the writing system of Classical ...

(''shilu'') for each emperor was composed after the emperor's death by a History Office appointed by the

Grand Secretariat The Grand Secretariat, or the Cabinet (), was nominally a coordinating agency but ''de facto'' the highest institution in the imperial government of the Chinese Ming dynasty. It first took shape after the Hongwu Emperor abolished the office of Ch ...

using different types of historical sources such as: # "The Qiju zhu (), or 'Diaries of Activity and Repose'. These were daily records of the actions and words of the Emperor in court." # "The 'Daily Records' (). These records, established precisely as a source for the compilation of the Veritable Records, were compiled by a committee on the basis of the diaries and other written sources." # Other sources such as materials collected from provincial centres and "culled from other official sources such as memorials, ministerial papers and the Metropolitan Gazette."

List of books

References

Citations

Sources

; Works cited * * provides detailed and extensive background information on how the Ming Shi-lu was composed and the rhetoric that it uses.

External links

* * * Interactive scholarly edition, with critical English translation and multimodal resources mashup (publications, images, videos
Engineering Historical Memory
{{Ming dynasty topics Chinese history texts Ming dynasty literature History books about the Ming dynasty