How do states sustain authority when bureaucratic institutions become strained, legal hierarchies grow unwieldy, and ethnic and regional differences challenge central control? What happens when power shifts from centralized offices to decentralized domains, whether through law, logistics, or personal networks? This panel explores how fiscal limitations, administration of other ethnicities, legal specialization, and print culture shaped state power, offering comparative insights into the limits and adaptability of early modern governance.

Across different global contexts, early modern states grappled with the logistical and ideological challenges of governing expanding populations, managing central-local relations, and sustaining elite privileges. This panel examines these challenges during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), revealing striking parallels with other early modern polities. We highlight three key themes: the limits of bureaucratic knowledge in resolving structural crises, the transformation of state power through intermediaries, and the role of information technologies in shifting political authority.

Firstly, this panel interrogates how early modern states confronted the limits of their fiscal and administrative frameworks. We delve into the influence of royal clansmen, ethnic leaders, retired scholar-officials, and legal practitioners who often wielded greater practical power than their official positions suggested. For instance, Ming China’s struggle to maintain the princely stipend system illustrates how financial institutions intended to uphold imperial legitimacy often created burdens that became progressively unmanageable.

Secondly, we examine Ming China's approach to indirect rule among other early modern experiments. We discuss how bureaucratic knowledge was mediated through local administrators, specialists, clerks, and frontier officials who operated within distinct and often conflicting frameworks. The cases of Ming aboriginal officers and litigation specialists highlight a broader phenomenon in early modern governance: the rise of professional intermediaries who possessed legal or administrative expertise yet existed outside the normative hierarchy. The imperial system's attempts to adapt to the realities of Chinese and non-Chinese societies on the ground reveal a common tension between the early modern state’s desire for procedural control and the realities of bureaucratic delegation.

Thirdly, this panel explores how early modern states attempted—and often failed—to manage the transmission of knowledge through print and other media. The proliferation of legal manuals and the strategic use of print media to expand personal influence beyond official careers in Ming China reflect a broader moment in global history when new information technologies transformed political and social authority. Data, narratives, and specialized knowledge were actively mobilized by multiple social strata, which not only reconfigured power structures but also introduced unforeseen complexities beyond state control.

The strategies of early modern governance were often shared across different contexts; well-known examples include the fiscal reforms of Europe’s monarchies, pluralistic institutions in the Spanish colonial world, and the administrative innovations of the Ottoman and Mughal Empires. By bringing Ming China into the conversation, this panel explores the interrelationship among state power, bureaucratic adaptation, and knowledge production. In doing so, we interrogate the framework of “early modernity” in a Chinese context while contributing to a more robust comparative and global history of political institutions and authority.