Rereading Modern Chinese History is a collection of short essays on aspects of the history of the Qing dynasty, a regime dominated by Manchus that ruled China from 1644 to 1911. Using sources from that period and earlier it addresses key themes on the nature of Qing rule. These include the defeat by the British in the Opium Wars, the twin-track administration of Manchus and Han Chinese, the rise of Chinese military leaders in southern China, the purchase of office and endemic corruption, the challenge of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the failure of political reform. There are new insights on all the Qing emperors and the Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled China between 1861 and 1908.

The history of East Asia can be most productively studied through a transnational, translingual, and transcultural approach to the region. In The Sinosphere and Beyond, twenty-six leading and emerging scholars use such approaches in rich clusters of essays on Historiography, Sino-Japanese Encounters, Law and Justice, Politics, Art, Literature, and Translation. Each essay builds on the legacy of Joshua Fogel, whose scholarship defined the contours of the Sinosphere in the Western world and beyond. The collection will be of interest to scholars and students with specific research concerns within these broader rubrics: from the towering progenitors of Japanese Sinology to gendered, diplomatic, and cultural dimensions of Sino-Japanese encounters; from Sinitic poetry to legal culture and revolutionary life; from art commerce and levels of literary expression to the quandaries of translation. In addition to offering a broad range of case studies, the volume is testimony to the methodological importance of a dynamic intra- and transregional approach for an understanding of the layered history of East Asia.

A thousand-year history of how China’s obsession with silver influenced the country’s financial well-being, global standing, and political stability "A wonderful book for understanding one thousand years of Chinese monetary history."--Debin Ma, Hitotsubashi University This revelatory account of the ways in which silver shaped Chinese history shows how an obsession with “white metal” held China back from financial modernization. First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to China’s economic framework and was officially monetized in the middle of the Ming dynasty during the sixteenth century. However, due to the early adoption of paper money in China, silver was not formed into coins but became a cumbersome “weighing currency,” for which ingots had to be constantly examined for weight and purity—an unwieldy practice that lasted for centuries. Jin Xu argues that even as China’s interest in silver spurred new avenues of trade and helped increase the country’s global economic footprint, in the long run silver played a key role in the struggles and entanglements that led to the decline of the Chinese empire.

A modernist icon, an object of forbidden desire, a symbol of loss and suffering, and an incorrigible survivor - the mother takes all of these forms in Chinese literature from the 1920s and 1930s. In an innovative analysis, Sally Taylor Lieberman explores the meanings the maternal figure acquired at a particular place and time and then engages those meanings in a feminist rereading of the master narratives of modern Chinese intellectual and literary history. Drawing on feminist literary criticism and the theories of Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein, and Sigmund Freud, Lieberman breaks traditional analytical boundaries as she explores the place of the mother in the ideological struggles through which the modern Chinese canon attained its present shape.

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.

Literature, from the Chinese perspective, makes manifest the cosmic patterns that shape and complete the world—a process of “worlding” that is much more than mere representation. In that spirit, A New Literary History of Modern China looks beyond state-sanctioned works and official narratives to reveal China as it has seldom been seen before, through a rich spectrum of writings covering Chinese literature from the late-seventeenth century to the present. Featuring over 140 Chinese and non-Chinese contributors from throughout the world, this landmark volume explores unconventional forms as well as traditional genres—pop song lyrics and presidential speeches, political treatises and prison-house jottings, to name just a few. Major figures such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Eileen Chang, and Mo Yan appear in a new light, while lesser-known works illuminate turning points in recent history with unexpected clarity and force. Many essays emphasize Chinese authors’ influence on foreign writers as well as China’s receptivity to outside literary influences. Contemporary works that engage with ethnic minorities and environmental issues take their place in the critical discussion, alongside writers who embraced Chinese traditions and others who resisted. Writers’ assessments of the popularity of translated foreign-language classics and avant-garde subjects refute the notion of China as an insular and inward-looking culture. A vibrant collection of contrasting voices and points of view, A New Literary History of Modern China is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of China’s literary and cultural legacy.

Volume Three translates in full Lin Zexu's two letters to the emperor describing his unique process for disposing of the confiscated opium as well as previous edicts and letters that explain his actions.

This book provides a concise introduction to the intellectual trends in contemporary Chinese literature from the 1950s to the 1990s and the influence of overseas Sinology. The turbulent period of the second half of the 20th century in China witnessed a significant societal shift from a revolutionary to an economic focus. This transformation introduced and stimulated various ideas, reshaping public thought and reconstructing the historical landscape of contemporary Chinese literature. This book explores the response and self-exploration of domestic literary studies of the period, which were heavily influenced by the Western academic tradition and overseas Sinology studies. It examines critical phenomena, figures, and events in this context. The author's narrative vividly illustrates the interplay and dialogue of factors such as revolution, reform and opening up, and the rise of literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Combining the methodologies of literary and social history, and integrating personal historical experience with rigorous academic methods, this book provides a unique research framework for revisiting the cultural scene of the period. The title will appeal to scholars and students of contemporary Chinese literature and history. It will also attract general readers interested in Chinese culture and society in the 1980s and 1990s.

Rereading Travellers to the East aim to offer a new perspective on travel literature, the question of nation-building and the history of orientalism. Rereading Travellers focuses on the rereadings to which early modern travel literature about Asia has been subjected by different actors involved in the political, economic, cultural and intellectual life of post-unification Italy. The authors highlight how this literature has been reinterpreted and reused for political and ideological purposes in the context of the formation and reformation of collective identities, from the Risorgimento to the Fascist regime and the early republic. By showing the potential of the notion of rereading, the volume outlines a history of the political and cultural legacy of travel literature which goes well beyond Italy.

Lesser Dragons is a timely introduction to the fascinating, complex, and vital world of China’s national minorities. Drawing on firsthand fieldwork in several minority areas, Michael Dillon introduces us to the major non-Han peoples of China, including the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Uyghur of Xinjiang, and the Manchus, and traces the evolution of their relationship with the Han Chinese majority. With chapters devoted to each of the most important minority groups and an additional chapter exploring the parallel but very different world of inter-ethnic relations in Taiwan, Lesser Dragons will interest anyone eager to understand the reality behind regional conflicts increasingly covered by global media. From the tense security situation in Xinjiang to China’s attitude toward Tibet and the Dalai Lama, to the resistance efforts of Mongolian herders losing traditional grasslands, Dillon’s book both examines clichés—such as those found in the Chinese press, which often portrays ethnic minorities as colorful but marginal people—and defies expectations. He shows us how these minority peoples’ religions, cultures, and above all languages mark these groups as distinct from the Chinese majority—distinct, yet endangered by the systemic forces of integration.