If this were an online response, I would click on “like,” because this book is a gem. On the basis of sound historical detective work, Ivy Maria Lim has produced a creative, interesting, and carefully researched study that juxtaposes an underworld crisis, imperial court policy, and local response to provide a new perspective on the wokou (Japanese pirate) crisis of the mid-sixteenth century, portraying it as the catalyst for lineage formation in southeast China.
The focus of the book is the transformation (or evolution) of local society from the lijia household registration system to lineage as the primary form of social organization, in the town of Yuanhua in Haining County, Zhejiang Province, during the sixteenth century. This change, according to the author, was intensified by, even if not necessarily caused by, the wokou crisis. Drawing on the rich holdings of family genealogies in the Shanghai Municipal Library for the four...
