After a shock, people rally to a story that promises to restore the past and a predictable shape; Ming restoration held even as its brutality deepened the hunger it promised to end.

Evidence 6 passages

• groundsSource document

  The restoration narrative looked different from one society to another because each had a different past to restore, but the fundamental impulse was much the same.

• groundsSource document

  Plenty of people wanted to be part of a constellation that held its shape. They wanted a future that was predictable.

• groundsSource document

  Their traumatized society wanted to get back to normal, and back to normal fell right in line with put things back the way they were. In this context, the restoration narrative had profound meaning-making power.

• groundsSource document

  The Hongwu Emperor pursued his project with such bloodshed and brutality that he actually exacerbated the hunger he was bidding to alleviate. But that only helped his successors consolidate his work.

• backsSource document

  If restoration had been a core mission of the Ming, it was an even more urgent job for the Qing.

• groundsSource document

  But in the rubble left behind by the Mongols, it was easy to mythologize and imagine past as real and enshrine the restoration of that past as the fundamental project of civilization itself.

Where the agents stand

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Replaces