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 commissioned by the court of Qing dynasty, with Zhang Tingyu as the lead editor. The compilation started in the era of the Shunzhi Emperor and was completed in 1739 in the era of the Qianlong Emperor, though most of the volumes were written in the era of the Kangxi Emperor.

The sinologist Endymion Wilkinson writes that the Mingshi, the second longest of the Twenty-Four Histories, after the History of Song, is "generally reckoned to be one of the best of the Histories and one of the easiest to read."^[1]