The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy

Historians have long been perplexed by the complete disappearance of the medieval Chinese aristocracy by the tenth century—the “great clans” that had dominated China for centuries. In this book, Nicolas Tackett resolves the enigma of their disappearance, using new, digital methodologies to analyze a dazzling array of sources.

Tackett systematically mines thousands of funerary biographies excavated in recent decades—most of them never before examined by scholars—while taking full advantage of...