Tristan G. Brown, teaching MIT's course 21H.151 Dynastic China, examines the Ming dynasty in the sixteenth century and asks whether it makes sense to call this period of Chinese history early modern. The lecture traces the dynasty's establishment and its administrative and social structures, then weighs Ming China against European periodization frameworks that historians often import without much scrutiny. Brown works through the evidence for commercial expansion, print culture, and bureaucratic change that scholars have cited as markers of an early modern transition, testing how well those categories actually fit the Chinese case. Running eighty minutes, the lecture is part of a semester-long survey of dynastic China and assumes some prior grounding in the course's earlier sessions on the Ming founding. It stays focused on historiographical method as much as narrative, asking what periodization does and does not explain about a specific society.