Profits, Power, and Legitimacy: The Zheng Maritime Empire in Seventeenth-Century Maritime East Asia.

• Author: Rodell, Paul A.
• Position: ASIA - Book review

Hang, Xing. Profits, Power, and Legitimacy: The Zheng Maritime Empire in Seventeenth-Century Maritime East Asia. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 2016.

This slim volume is the sixth in the series "Regions and Regionalisms in the Modern World" issued by the American Historical Association. Each tome is similarly short and all are distillations of previous works by noted authors in their fields. In their series introduction, coeditors Sebastian Conrad and Prasenjit Duara note that under the dominant narrative of modern nationalism, regionalism has been obscured. Ironically, however, even in this age of rapid globalization, there seems to be a rediscovery of regionalism as an active dynamic that can shape local relationships of trade, cultural exchanges and conflict. The series, therefore, intends to explore the interrelationship between the global, regional and national. It also seeks to define what creates and characterizes a region beyond the geographic obvious.

Xing Hang, assistant professor of history at Brandeis University, brings his knowledge and insights to produce a short work that nonspecialists can utilize for their own projects and, perhaps, additional insights...