NEWLY DISCOVERED MING DYNASTY GUARD REGISTERS

Recently there has been an increasing effort in studies on the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to penetrate the mists obscuring local Ming government and society. In my own research on Ming military institutions I began reading through local Ming gazetteers in the hope of finding important details on changes in the Guard (wei-so) system. During this process I happened upon thirteen volumes of Ming dynasty Guard registers never before utilized by modern historians. I shall first discuss briefly military registers as a class of Ming documents and then describe the content, reliability, and significance of these thirteen compendia.