Seunghyun Han. After the Prosperous Age: State and Elites in Early Nineteenth-Century Suzhou.

Abstract

After the Prosperous Age contributes to the understanding of early-nineteenth-century Chinese state-local elite relations through a case study of Suzhou elites’ roles in local public works, their symbolic recognition by the state, and the degree to which local elites expressed views distinctive from those of people in positions of official authority over them. Seunghyun Han argues strongly for the thesis that elite activism substituting for state action was not a phenomenon developing alongside and following the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) but rather a clear set of developments beginning in the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, he stresses that these developments were no simple extension of trends begun in the late eighteenth century. His work joins recent publications such as Wensheng Wang’s White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire (2014) to argue for a clear set of characteristics particular to turn-of-the-century political and social practices that distinguishes the period from what came before and prepares us for later-nineteenth-century developments. Such moves reorient our focus from the highly visible European participation in modern Chinese history to an enriched view of shifting domestic political priorities and practices.