The Cambridge History of China volume 10 late chin (original) (raw)
Related papers
Chinese History Paper #2 (2).docx
Final Paper for East Asian Civilization: China, wherein I discuss the cultural and ethnic evolution of dynastic China between the Song and Qing dynasties.
How did the Chinese state become what it was before 1949? How did China maintain continuities in its territorial, demographic, and administrative patterns throughout the Qing, Republican, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) eras? Addressing all these questions, Huaiyin Li's The Making of the Modern Chinese State: 1600-1950 offers a systematic account of the making of the modern Chinese state from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Drawing on studies of late imperial and modern China, as well as archival records, memoirs, and officials' works, Li traces the mechanics of the Chinese state's geopolitical setting, fiscal constitution, and identity building. He argues that the distinctive formation of the Qing state was essential to the continuity of China's territoriality and ethnic composition. Challenging the perception that China's transformation from the Qing to the Republican era was a disruptive transition from an empire to a nation-state, Li contends that this painstaking process should be viewed as a transformation from a territorial state into a sovereign state (pp. xi, 48-50). The Qing, to Li, was not an "empire" because it was "neither a typical expansionist empire nor an emerging fiscal-military state resembling its counterparts in early modern Europe and beyond." Instead, it was an "early-modern territorial state," as it "had stable frontiers and effectively controlled its territory that had fixed borders clearly demarcated with the neighboring states" (p. 11). While the Qing departed from the preceding Chinese dynasties by creating a large state encompassing both the Han population and the frontiers of the Inner Asian nomads, its military expeditions beginning in the late seventeenth century were primarily defensive, and its geopolitical goal was to safeguard its strategic security instead of demanding taxes or tributes from the frontiers (p. 9-10). Chapter 2 analyzes the dynamics and limits of the Qing's territorial expansion. As Li demonstrates, it was driven primarily by the imperial rulers' pursuit of geopolitical security (pp. 23-29). The Qing rulers considered the ideological, social, and geopolitical contexts of both the frontier and interior regions and developed different policies and strategies to govern the diverse populations (pp. 31-44). Chapter 3 further reveals how the Qing's "low-level equilibrium"-a static and rigid structure of regular revenues and routine expenditures-helped fulfill the state's geopolitical goals and maintain its military operation. Yet, as Li argues, when this equilibrium lost balance and became increasingly unfavorable to the state in the late eighteenth century, it also determined the limits of the Qing's war efforts and caused a decrease in the government's capacity of handling interior and frontier crisis (pp. 53-69, 77-79). Chapter 4 examines how the Qing managed to survive the devastating wars and even doubled its officially reported revenues in the three decades following the Taiping
IN AND OUT OF THE WEST: ON THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF CHINESE HISTORICAL THEORY
In ancient China, dissatisfaction with the official compilation of histories gave rise, in time, to reflections on what makes a good historian, as well as on such issues as the factuality and objectivity of history-writing, the relationship between rhetoric and reality, and the value of historians' subjectivity. From these reflections arose a unique set of historiographical concepts. With the coming of modern times, the urgent task of building a nationstate forced Chinese historians to borrow heavily from Western historical theories in their effort to construct a new history compatible with modernity. A tension thus arose between Western theory and Chinese history. The newly founded People's Republic embraced the materialist conception of history as the authoritative guideline for historical studies, which increased the tension. The decline of the materialist conception of history in the period since China's reform and opening up in the late 1970s and, with this development, the increasing plurality of theories, have not exactly lessened Chinese historians' keenly felt anxiety when they confront Western theories. For Chinese historians, the current state of affairs with respect to theory is not exactly an extension of Western theories, nor is it a regression to the particularity of Chinese history completely outside the Western compass. Rather, a certain hybridity with respect to theory provides to Chinese historians a way to move both in and out of the West, as well as an opportunity for them to make their own contributions to Western history on the basis of borrowed Western theories.
Patterns of Modern Chinese History
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2016
Patterns of Modern Chinese History Charles A. Desnoyers Patterns of Modern Chinese History offers a broad narrative of the period starting with the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) to the present. Providing in-depth coverage of modern Chinese history, this introductory text combines proven pedagogical features, a fluid narrative, and the latest scholarship to examine large patterns and their origins, interactions, and adaptations. Its versatile organization accommodates both chronological and thematic approaches, as well as different curricula. The narrative begins with an introductory Part that examines the origins and development of imperial China through the end of the Ming dynasty. Beginning at the height of imperial China's wealth and power, the second Part traces it through its downward spiral and ultimate demise, and following its revolutions, civil wars, invasions, radical political interlude, and rise once again to world prominence.