Politics And Industrialization In Late Imperial China

Uses the early phase of Chinese industrial efforts to demonstrate that Chinese political values significantly and assuredly affected the way modern industry was promoted and developed. Both values and environment can change, and it is their interaction that determines some specific ideological content and thrust.

Despite efforts to attain a more balanced approach, Western historians have largely interpreted China's modern period in terms of China's 'response to the West.' This book, by a scholar who is neither Chinese nor Western, goes far to set the balance right. Min Tu-ki, Korea's leading Sinologist, shows how China's own internal agenda has conditioned Chinese political life during the transition to modernity.

First Published in 1984 Province and Politics in Late Imperial China presents analysis of one of the regional governments of China, the administration of the Szechwan governor-general from its apogee at the end of the nineteenth century to its nadir in the revolution of 1911. The Szechwan governor – general not only ruled the one province of Szechwan, but also exercised significant powers in Kweichow, the Tibetan borderlands, and parts of Yunnan and Hupei, as well as playing a major role in imperial politics. He was therefore a regional and not simply a provincial figure, while Szechwan was characteristic of the system of Chinese regions. This book seeks to show that the main threat to the dominance of the Szechwan governors – general came from their own modernizing activities; viceregal government broke down in the attempt to use traditional means to modern ends. In microcosm, therefore, Szechwan displays the pattern in both politics and ecology that was one of disruptive modernization in China. This book is an interesting read for scholars of Chinese history.

An innovative look at how families in Ming dynasty China negotiated military and political obligations to the state How did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) deal with the demands of the state? In The Art of Being Governed, Michael Szonyi explores the myriad ways that families fulfilled their obligations to provide a soldier to the army. The complex strategies they developed to manage their responsibilities suggest a new interpretation of an important period in China’s history as well as a broader theory of politics. Using previously untapped sources, including lineage genealogies and internal family documents, Szonyi examines how soldiers and their families living on China’s southeast coast minimized the costs and maximized the benefits of meeting government demands for manpower. Families that had to provide a soldier for the army set up elaborate rules to ensure their obligation was fulfilled, and to provide incentives for the soldier not to desert his post. People in the system found ways to gain advantages for themselves and their families. For example, naval officers used the military’s protection to engage in the very piracy and smuggling they were supposed to suppress. Szonyi demonstrates through firsthand accounts how subjects of the Ming state operated in a space between defiance and compliance, and how paying attention to this middle ground can help us better understand not only Ming China but also other periods and places. Combining traditional scholarship with innovative fieldwork in the villages where descendants of Ming subjects still live, The Art of Being Governed illustrates the ways that arrangements between communities and the state hundreds of years ago have consequences and relevance for how we look at diverse cultures and societies, even today.

In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), China experienced far greater access to political information than suggested by the blunt measures of control and censorship employed by modern Chinese regimes. A tenuous partnership between the court and the dynamic commercial publishing enterprises of late imperial China enabled the publication of gazettes in a wide range of print and manuscript formats. For both domestic and foreign readers these official gazettes offered vital information about the Qing state and its activities, transmitting state news across a vast empire and beyond. And the most essential window onto Qing politics was the Peking Gazette, a genre that circulated globally over the course of the dynasty. This illuminating study presents a comprehensive history of the Peking Gazette and frames it as the cornerstone of a Qing information policy that, paradoxically, prized both transparency and secrecy. Gazettes gave readers a glimpse into the state’s inner workings but also served as a carefully curated form of public relations. Historian Emily Mokros draws from international archives to reconstruct who read the gazette and how they used it to guide their interactions with the Chinese state. Her research into the Peking Gazette’s evolution over more than two centuries is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between media, information, and state power.