Dynastic Transition Research Articles

Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China and Inner Asia

Abstract Portentous clusters of the five visible planets are repeatedly implicated in historical sources in connection with dynastic transitions in early China. In the medieval period, which is the focus of this investigation, the History of the Three Kingdoms records how timely planetary portents during the decline of the Later Han dynasty (184–220 CE) were exploited as the celestial signs justifying usurpation and the founding of the (Cao-)Wei 曹魏 dynasty by Cao Pi 曹丕 (ca. 187–226). Half a millennium later, in mid-Tang 唐 dynasty, the impetus for the devastating rebellion of An Lushan 安祿山 (703–757) that nearly brought down the Tang can likewise be shown to have been strongly influenced by the historical precedents, and more immediately by a conjunction of all five visible planets that occurred in 750. That ominous astral omen, coupled with portentological speculations based on Han dynasty apocryphal texts, together with the parallels between An Lushan’s and Cao Cao’s 曹操 (155–220) careers, played a role in prompting An Lushan to attempt to overthrow the Tang. In Inner Asia, the founding of the Sasanian Empire in 224 CE in parallel with the Cao-Wei, and the emergence of a political astrology based on the periodicity of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions suggested the possibility of mutual influences in planetary astrology. However, incompatibility between the two astrological traditions may have militated against mutual influence on a theoretical level. In the absence of detailed information concerning the foundations of Sasanian planetary astrology, to all appearances, and notwithstanding extensive cultural contact, the imperial political astrologies of China and Inner Asia in the medieval period remained resistant to infiltration in either direction.

Remembering the Past through Music


 
 
 In the late seventeenth century, a Chinese Buddhist priest named Donggao Xinyue 東皋心越 (1639–1695) introduced a selection of qin 琴 songs (songs accompanied on the qin zither) to Japan. Over the following centuries, Japanese qin players continued to sing these songs in Chinese. This paper looks into this cross-cultural interaction from both Donggao’s and the Japanese perspectives, against the historical background of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition and the breakdown of the Sinocentric world order in East Asia. I argue that Donggao and Japanese literati understood the significance of these songs differently as they both connected the songs to their own cultural past. Nonetheless, they were brought together by the shared belief that the performance of qin songs would bridge the past and the present and hence realize their vision of the ideal civilization. Meanwhile, neither Donggao nor the Japanese literati regarded the qin—as well as the ideal society it symbolized—to be exclusively Chinese or Japanese. My analysis shows how the idea of being Chinese/Japanese was intertwined with the changing understandings of the hua–yi/ka-i 華夷 worldview during this period, and how it was negotiated through the cultural memories that shaped and reshaped the past. This particular case also explains how qin songs as a medium for cultural memory differed from other musical and non-musical forms.
 
 

A Genealogy of Dissent: The Progeny of Fallen Royals in Chosŏn by Eugene Y. Park

Reviewed by: A Genealogy of Dissent: The Progeny of Fallen Royals in Chosŏn by Eugene Y. Park Carl Young Park, Eugene Y. – A Genealogy of Dissent: The Progeny of Fallen Royals in Chosŏn Korea. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. Pp. 270. What happens to the descendants of a royal family when it is overthrown? This is the question that Eugene Park tackles in his new book, A Genealogy of Dissent. Park investigates the case of the descendants of the fallen Kaesŏng Wang clan in Korea after their Koryŏ kingdom was overthrown by the new Chosŏn kingdom in the late 1300s. By drawing on family histories, government records, and royal chronicles, Park pieces together what happened to different lineages in the Wang clan for several centuries up to the present day and their fate through the oftenturbulent course of Korean history. Park presents several case studies that reveal these lineages' relations with the new dynasty and how Neo-Confucian ideas of family structures and rituals manifested themselves in the history of the Wang clan. The result is an interesting insight into an East Asian society's political, social, and familial structures and how it marked dynastic transition. In the first decades after the overthrow of the Wang family and the establishment of the new Chosŏn kingdom, most of the direct royal line was massacred and the rest of the clan scattered and went into hiding. The killing of the old ruler and heirs did cause some discomfort among the Chosŏn ruling elite (many of whom had roots in the previous dynasty's elite families) and rumours began questioning [End Page 707] the parentage and legitimacy of the last rulers of Koryŏ to better justify their murders. The new Chosŏn ruling house also relied on the Confucian discourse on the "Mandate of Heaven," emphasizing that the old regime was chaotic and corrupt and that Heaven therefore mandated a new ruling house to bring peace and order to the country. However, another element of Confucian discourse emphasized that part of the success of a new dynasty depended on properly treating both the ancestral spirits and the descendants of the old dynasty. Buddhist services were periodically performed for the souls of the old monarchs, but as Confucianism was becoming increasingly important in Korea as the official ideology of the Chosŏn dynasty, Confucian shrines were constructed in places associated with the Koryŏ royal family to perform the ancestral memorial services in their honour. After searching to destroy the Koryŏ royal family, the Chosŏn ruling house now embarked to find members of the Wang clan closest to the royal line to be the stewards of these new shrines and perform the ceremonies for their ancestors to assure the peace and success of the new kingdom. There was also a search to give special access to office for the descendants of the old royal house. This proved to be a difficult task, however, since the purges had proven to be all too successful. Nevertheless, certain lineages did emerge, distantly descended from one or another of the Koryŏ kings, to take on these new offices. Much of the book is dedicated to the search of the Chosŏn government for these officers, which was often a difficult task because of the paucity of descendants and doubts as to their real connections to the royal house. Success in the Chosŏn power structure strongly depended on successfully passing the civil service examinations based on Confucian learning. In general, in spite of their illustrious ancestry and the government's attempts to facilitate their access to government positions, only a few members of the Kaesŏng Wang clan passed the highest examinations and obtained central government posts during the 500 years of the Chosŏn kingdom's existence up to the early twentieth century. The Wangs were mainly low key, with some lineages being the guardians of the shrines and others gaining prominence in their localities. This is where the title "a genealogy of dissent" is a bit of a misnomer. Members of the Wang clan did not lead dissident movements or rebellions (there was no Korean "Bonnie Prince Charlie...

Loss, Nostalgia, and Hope: the Ming-Qing Transition in the Fiction of “the Hazy Crossing Ferryman of Xiaoxiang”

Abstract This paper examines the reactions to the trauma of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition in the novellas of a writer known only as “Xiaoxiang mijinduzhe” (The Hazy Crossing Ferryman of Xiaoxiang). His works provide an informative contrast to the more celebrated loyalist literature of the same era: they express unease at foreign rule but do not show an idealistic loyalism to the Ming. Though the Yongle period (1402–1424) of the Ming is held up as a lost golden age, the post-Yongle Ming dynasty is portrayed as an era of corruption and chaos, presided over by incompetent and/or dissolute emperors. The novellas also reflect on the lessons of the transition on a deeper level, questioning the long-standing cultural preference for the civil arts over the martial arts. While the novellas acknowledge the poignancy of the passing of an era, they also strike hopeful notes for the future under the Qing.

Temperature fluctuations during the Common Era in subtropical southwestern China inferred from brGDGTs in a remote alpine lake

Documenting climate change over the past 2000 years, or the Common Era, is critical to understand how the climate system evolved from one controlled by natural forcings alone to one influenced by anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing. However, global and regional temperature changes during this interval are still poorly understood, largely due to the limited geographical coverage and scarcity of data. Here we report a well-dated, quantitative, mean annual air temperature (MAAT) record with ∼10-yr resolution for the Common Era derived from a sediment core collected at a small alpine lake in remote subtropical southwestern China, and based on a site-specific temporal calibration between down-core analyses of brGDGTs and instrumental data for the interval 1959–2015 AD. The record reveals distinct multicentennial-scale temperature fluctuations, including a relatively cold interval from 0–800 AD, followed by warmer temperatures during the so-called Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA; 800–1400 AD), cooling during the Little Ice Age (LIA; 1400–1900 AD), and abrupt and rapid warming into the late-20th-century after 1900 AD. Superimposed on these large-scale features are three short-term cold events, centered on 250–310 AD (∼0.06°C), 570–650 AD (∼0.87°C), and 1800–1823 AD (∼0.83°C), respectively. The temperature variations captured in the record are supported by historical documents and existing regional and global paleoclimate records, and correspond in time to a number of the major Chinese dynastic transitions. Importantly, the record captures large-magnitude (up to 4°C) centennial-scale temperature fluctuations, documents cold conditions during the first millennium AD, and demonstrates that the post-1989 AD warmth is greater than any other time during the past 2000 years. The results suggest that high-elevation areas have been more sensitive than low-elevation regions to climate variations during the Common Era.

The Spiritual and the Homosocial: Supernatural Impacts on Dynastic Transition in Macbeth

The Spiritual and the Homosocial: Supernatural Impacts on Dynastic Transition in Macbeth

In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200–1600 by Jinping Wang

Reviewed by: In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200–1600 by Jinping Wang Carl Déry (bio) Jinping Wang. In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200–1600. Harvard University Press, 2018. xxii, 336 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 978-0-674-98715-9. This book tells a story that brings us into the aftermath of the devastating Mongol conquest of China. With an emphasis on the social elites of the Shanxi province, the objective is to illustrate "how northern Chinese men and women resiliently adapted . . . and created a radically new social order under the leadership of Daoists and Buddhists" (p. 4). While traditional historiography of social elites in China concentrates more on a Southern based narrative, underlying the dominant role of the Confucian literati culture, the author argues that this interpretative model does not apply to the Northern distinctive society in which "elite families had to rely on powerful religious institutions to help create and strengthen community solidarity" (p. 20). The author draws on unpublished and rarely or never studied stele inscriptions to better grasp the social transformations of the time revealed by interactions among rural communities. Aside from these steles which "were the most common way for northern individuals and institutions to express their social power" (p. 25), the author also relies on other sources like local gazetteers and literary anthologies. With a strong focus on the elites and on the institutions that dominated local society, the book reveals how religious institutions and clergy members all played important roles in social reorganization caused by dynastic transition, political reform, and natural disasters. [End Page 236] The book is divided into five chapters structured by time period and topics. The first chapter helps to provide the baseline for Northern Chinese degree-holder society before the Mongol conquest, presenting the changing life of a well known scholar during the Jin Dynasty, Yuan Haowen 元好問 (190–1257). The next three chapters present the social, political, and economic dimension of religious institutions that created the distinctive social order in North China during the transformative era of the Mongol rule. While chapter two presents the Quanzhen Daoist order, chapter three deals with the Buddhist order at Mount Wutai and chapter four discusses the implication of these communities in developing local irrigation projects. As another measure of transformation, chapter five presents the Ming dynasty and how it also changed the recently developed socio-economic model and brought back literati culture to a central role. The story of Yuan Haowen illustrates "the functioning of the typical Chinese examination based society" (p. 28). His life depicts the Jin-Yuan transition and his writings are a testimony of the transformation following the destructive Mongol invasion, marking "the disappearance of critical institutions that had sustained the Jin degree-holder society" (p. 49). After having lost all their property and being plunged into poverty, numerous scholars had to become peasants, and this generated "a new type of literati-peasant connection [and it gave] literati awareness of social problems and perspectives on social customs that differed from what they had been used to learning from texts" (p. 53). In these troubled times, the Quanzhen Daoist order, established between 1153–1160, offered a teaching "that particularly appealed to powerless people because of its religious simplicity, economic self-reliance, and charitable practices" (p. 63). Imperial patronage also played a crucial role in the development of the institution, and it help the devotees "to survive the chaos of their times" (p. 66). After having won great popularity among local people because of his relief work, Qiu Chuji 丘處機 (1148-1227), a religious leader from the Shandong province, was recognized as the leader of all Daoists by Chinggis Khan in 1220–1222, who then issued two edicts "exempting his disciples from taxes and the duty of labor service" (p. 67). Preoccupied by conquest, the Mongols conferred a great deal of autonomy and administrative responsibility to local group organizations that they felt were competent and reliable. The prominent position of the Quanzhen Daoist order helped the literati who suffered from the hardships of the time, especially after the suppression...

The Plague and Immunity in Othello

The Plague and Immunity in Othello Jaecheol Kim (bio) Amiasma of plague hangs around Shakespeare's dramatic corpus, and Othello is a topical response to its occasional outbreak in 1603. Inevitably, its textual body is not only a palimpsest of traces recording epidemic outbreaks, but it is also a field of politico-clinical discourses that attempt to govern, quarantine, and direct the disease toward certain controllable ways. In other words, Othello is a representation of the rise of modern medical science. We know that as a medical term "Othello Syndrome" indicates a pathological and delusional jealousy, which is not primarily, however, the clinical subtext of the play that interests me; rather, the play's metaphoric depictions of the plague-stricken corpus politicum and its safety measure that is encapsulated by the word "immunization" fascinates me.1 The reason I would like to read Othello as a plague narrative by focusing on its representation of an immunitary crisis is not just because the play's semantic features obsessively revolve around words such as "plague," "infection," "pestilence," and "contamination."2 It is also because the play was produced in the heavy referential web of the plague visit in (and around) 1603—the year that Thomas Dekker called "The Wonderfull Yeare" when the Tudor-Stuart dynastic shift occurred.3 It is a truism to say that the history of English Renaissance is also the history of the plague, and inevitably literature produced between Shakespeare's birth and Milton's death provides records of pandemic outbreaks. It is quite intriguing, however, to remember that, as Richelle Munkhoff points out, the dynastic transitions in early modern England accompanied massive outbreaks—from Elizabeth to James in 1603 and from James to Charles in 1625.4 In particular, around the time of Elizabeth's death and James's accession, England had a severe outbreak, and James's passage through [End Page 23] London did not happen until March 1604 because he remained in the north by ordering the Privy Council to bury Elizabeth without him.5 Thus the situation was very much as though, as Rebecca Totaro puts it, "the plague itself took the throne in the interim."6 The plague, which people simply called "death," was not just an unwelcome visitor in the suburbs and the ghettos of the metropolitan margins; rather, in popular imagination, even though Elizabeth's own death was not directly related to the plague, it was vested with regicidal power. Its presence is vicinal with the rise and fall of the nation's body politic. Othello was produced during such a period, and the apocalyptic circumstance created by the dynastic shift along with the lingering sense of fin de siècle defines the general tenor of the play. Othello remarks, "Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse / Of sun and moon, and that th'affrighted globe / Should yawn at alteration"(5.2.108–9). These metatheatrical comments wittingly evoke the reactions of the audience watching a spectacular scene of uxoricidal slaughter. Yet we need to remember that the "huge eclipse" that backdrops Othello's final scene is repeated in both King Lear and Macbeth—two of Shakespeare's regicidal tragedies written in the time of the dynastic shift and plague; in other words, the total disintegration of the social bond effected by the "huge eclipse" accompanies the "deconsecration of sovereignty."7 The political "alteration" created right after Elizabeth's death and James's accession includes the effect of the plague. For early modern minds, a pandemic outbreak was usually considered an expression of divine disfavor and punishment.8 Insofar as the plague was the will of the Sovereign and the kingship was considered His earthly deputy, to properly control or quarantine it was the work of the crown; consequently, proclaiming the "plague orders" was an expression of the queen's and king's sovereign immunity.9 Yet there are some inevitable differences between Elizabethan and Jacobean plague politics as, during his accession, English society understood James I, a Scottish monarch, as a foreign body visiting with the plague.10 Of course, by reading this full-fledged Jacobean tragedy in terms of sovereign immunity, I am not tempted to identify Othello, a...

Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule by Norman A. Kutcher

Reviewed by: Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule by Norman A. Kutcher Carl Déry (bio) Norman A. Kutcher. Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. xxv, 317 pp. Hardcover $75.00, ISBN 978-0-520-29752-4. This book is about eunuchs' relations with Qing emperors during the first half of the dynasty, from Shunzhi to Qianlong. Eunuchs have always been tainted with mysteries and our knowledge of their lives has always been limited due to the nature of the sources available. While a consensual master narrative mostly emphasized the destructive role played by eunuch during Ming dynasty and the efforts made by Qing emperors to control and limit their influence within the government, this groundbreaking book presents a quite different picture, as the author deals with crucial aspects about the lives of a myriad of individuals that unveil the necessary relations happening behind the curtain of institutions like the Imperial Household Department. The author draws on case reports of crimes and transgressions committed by eunuchs as he tries to go beyond usual stereotypes. These reports include a considerable amount of details related to investigations, confessions, and disposition, and thus provide a "genuine insight into the lives of Qing eunuchs" (p. 8). The author also relies on official documents from the Veritable Records and the Collected Qing Regulations, unpublished archival sources, as well as a critical assessment of A History of Our Dynasty's Palace (Guochao gong shi, 國 朝 宮 史). Starting with the negative perception toward eunuchs during the late Ming and its influence on Qing emperors' policies, the author notices a recurrent gap between official imperial rhetoric against eunuchs' power and day-to-day practices of eunuch management, as he tells how eunuchs responded to the changing policies of different emperors and how they found their ways in and around the palace for new opportunities. The book follows a chronological frame. Chapter one presents the consensus behind the master narrative on eunuch power during the Ming, and chapter two deals with the dynastic transition and the adaptation of this heritage during the [End Page 313] period of the Shunzhi emperor. Chapters three and four both deal with the reign of Kangxi, while chapters five and six both present some innovative reforms of the Yongzheng emperor, revealing the impact of the succession crisis. Chapters seven, eight, and nine all deal with the reign of Qianlong, underlying both the official regulations and the opportunities afforded to eunuchs. The writings of a few Ming scholars "articulated important benchmarks for eunuch management that would be meaningful for Qing rulers [referred to as] the gold standard for eunuch management" (p. 27). For example, Wang Fuzhi discusses the psychology of eunuchs and their "yin nature," as he sees their lack of "yang" as a cause for treachery and devotion. According to his lecture, every time eunuch and women were directly involved with power, the effect was to unbalance the yin and yang of the State and resulted in disasters for the whole country. He therefore concludes that problems began when emperors relied on eunuchs rather than scholars. Aside from the "yin essence" of eunuch, Huang Zongzi discusses their number: "the evil caused by Ming eunuchs came in direct proportion to the number of them that were in the palace" (p. 34). This led him to criticize the morality of the imperial taste for luxury that was detrimental to dealing with the affairs of the country. So, "if a ruler wanted to avoid eunuch problems, he should reduce his desire for pleasure" (p. 35). Gu Yanwu agreed with both of them, but he also condemned eunuch literacy, since it "represented the main pathway to eunuch interference in government" (p. 39). The texts of these three scholars represented "a synthesis of collective wisdom on the subject of eunuchs, and an articulation of a set of principles for their governance that would endure through the rest of the Qing" (p. 41). Despite the fact that Qing emperors mostly adhered to these core principles, since the beginning of the dynasty, one can notice the emergence of a pattern of "imperial rhetoric deviating from practice" (p. 43). For...

Correlation between climate and grain harvest fluctuations and the dynastic transitions and prosperity in China over the past two millennia

The social impacts of climate change constitute an important field within the study of global change. The impacts of historical climate change on dynastic transitions and prosperity in China from a food safety perspective is a helpful research topic that contributes to a better understanding of the impacts, process, and mechanism of climate change, as well as a reference for projecting the impacts of climate change in the future. This study defined the periods of dynastic transitions and prosperity in China from 210 BC to AD 1910 and analyzed the relationships among dynastic transition or dynastic prosperity, climate change, and grain harvests. From 210 BC to AD 1910, dynastic transitions mostly coincided with cold ages or the periods that changed from warm to cold and dry or wet-to-dry periods when there was relatively poor harvest. In contrast, dynastic prosperity mostly coincided with warm ages or the periods that changed from cold to warm and wet or dry-to-wet periods when there was relatively bumper harvest. Meanwhile, the dynastic transitions from a divisive dynasty to a unified dynasty often came with a progressively warm phase on the century scale when grain harvests increased. Interestingly, the division of a unified dynasty often came with a progressively cold phase and poor harvests. Furthermore, changes in temperature and agricultural production may be one of the most important factors leading to the collapse of Tang Dynasty. In conclusion, the fluctuation of grain harvests and climate change correspond with the transitions between a tumultuous society and an ordered one, which reveals that the social sensitivity periods were often a result of a change to a colder climate on the century scale.

Performance and Historicity in Racine's Mithridate: On the Dynamics of Temporal Order in the Seventeenth Century

This essay considers afresh the seventeenth-century ‘regime of historicity’ and thereby challenges a long critical tradition that has both identified in Racine's drama a systematically repetitive temporality and classified the so-called Grand Siècle as a century of stasis immobilised in a fantasy of eternity. The conflicting representations of time that subtend the dramaturgy of Racine's Mithridate enable a reflection on the historical nature of heroic models and political institutions. By closing with the spectacle of a bloody king dying amidst the admiration and tears of his relatives, Racine's play suggests that there is no better lieu de mémoire than a tragic performance. Dynastic transition becomes a ‘liminal’ turning point that combines the perpetuation of past practices with the incorporation of new affective qualities. Mithridate exemplifies the way in which theatre as a stage performing art complicates the theory of the king's two bodies, by temporalizing the frozen time of absolutist discourses. Within the overlapping contexts of the image-making of Louis XIV, the developing culture of galanterie, and the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, Mithridate promotes a new temporal paradigm in which the passage of time is not perceived as a deterioration but as an essential resource for the preservation and renewal of political and cultural values.

The issues of islands governing in early Ming Dynasty

Abstract Ming Dynasty is a key transitional period in China’s maritime history. It marks the shift from outward expansion to passive defense, whereas underground marine trades were rampant and China had to face the rising Western powers. It deserves to examine Ming’s maritime management by different perspectives including the coastal islands. This research focuses on Veritable Records of the Ming (明實錄) and explores key terms such as ‘island’(島) and ‘isle’(嶼) via the approach of ‘Digital Humanities’ to sum up the main issues of islands governing in early Ming Dynasty: 1. To subjugate political rivals on the sea and to defeat remnant Mongolian militaries. 2. To surrender rebels and appease refugees on the coastal islands. 3. To suppress and defend against Japanese pirates. 4. Diplomatic relations with neighboring countries. These issues reflected that Chinese dynastic regime transition from Yuan to Ming not only drastically altered the order of the East Asia seas after 14th c., but was also the key factor for the island governing policies in the early Ming period. This article investigates the issues of islands governing to discuss how the internal and external situation and the characteristic oceanic consciousness influenced the marine affair policy decision in early Ming Dynasty.

Ancestors, Spouses, and Descendants: The Transformation of Epitaph Writing in Song Luzhou

Ancestors, Spouses, and Descendants:The Transformation of Epitaph Writing in Song Luzhou Man Xu Introduction In contrast to the abundant scholarship on local society and local elites in South China during the Song dynasty, corresponding studies on North China have been largely unavailable because of the shortage of relevant sources. In recent years, 101 newly-discovered epitaphs from Luzhou 潞州,1 a peripheral region in north China, have begun to change our understanding of the composition and strategies of Song local elites, which has been based on models from South China. Ranging over 162 years, from 960 to 1122, sixty-one of these epitaphs (60%) were written during the first forty-six years of the Northern Song (960–1006), seventy-eight (77%) were written within the dynasty's first hundred years (960–1059), and twenty-three additional epitaphs (23%) were written after 1069.2 While they vary in length, roughly between 200 to 1,000 characters, most [End Page 119] of them are elaborate and include approximately 500 characters.3 Unlike the more developed regions of South China where scholar-official (shi 士) elites were prevalent and active, Luzhou's economic disadvantages produced a local upper class comprised of low-end elites. Furthermore, in contrast to contemporary epitaphs from South China, Luzhou epitaphs, until the mid-eleventh century, were considerably more formulaic in presenting the information of ancestors and spouses and placed great emphasis on descendants. Luzhou was located at the halfway point between Luoyang and Taiyuan, and was closely linked to Chang'an and Luoyang via water and land transportation, so that it was connected with the Tang Empire's economic core and its elites were deeply embedded in an empire-wide aristocratic culture. The turmoil and decline that Luzhou experienced during the Tang-Song transition were not uncommon among northern prefectures, and were common to other prefectures in the northern periphery of the North China macroregion. Luzhou experienced systemic economic and demographic decline during the first 150 years of the Tang and maintained equilibrium for approximately 800 years before rapid development finally occurred in the mid-sixteenth century.4 Accompanying the collapse of the Tang Empire in the ninth century, the metropolitan aristocracy based in the Chang'an-Luoyang capital corridor diminished.5 Yet, in spite of the continuous warfare of the late Tang and the Five Dynasties, Luzhou elites demonstrated astonishing consistency—whether measured in terms of composition, demography, socio-economic strategies, and cultural orientations—from the mid-eighth through mid-eleventh centuries. Although the peace brought by the founding of the Song helped stabilize local population levels in Luzhou, its elites never regained their past social, [End Page 120] cultural, and political achievements. A few local military men established themselves as a "founding elite" of the new empire and transformed themselves into national elites, but severed their connections with the local community when they relocated to the capital region.6 During the Northern Song, Luzhou as a whole lagged behind other prefectures across the empire in producing members of the scholar-official class. Even though it was only about 200 miles away from the capital, Kaifeng, Luzhou declined into a typical underdeveloped prefecture in North China during the Northern Song.7 Since its downward economic and demographic trajectory made its elites less powerful and prominent at the empire's political center, Luzhou gave rise to a low-end elite culture. Not only were Luzhou elites less cosmopolitan, educated, and well-networked than the Song national elite, they also preserved an old Tang aristocratic heritage that Song historians have rarely seen in South China.8 The standard scholar-official characteristics that historians have attributed to local elites of the Song, do not apply to Luzhou, a peripheral prefecture that lacked economic and cultural resources. Its elites did not participate in the broader cultural dynamics of Northern Song elites, so that a man's—and his family's—elite status in Luzhou society continued to be substantially dependent upon maintaining wealth. While the Tang-Song dynastic transition had a greater impact on national elites than it did on Luzhou elites, the New Policies (xinfa 新法) largely modified their composition and orientation. In the second half of the eleventh century, the court...

WAR AND “WAR EFFECTS”: THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CHOSŎN ECONOMY AFTER THE IMJIN WAR OF 1592

The Imjin War (1592–1598), which was one of the largest scale wars in East Asia engaged in by all three major East Asian Countries (Korea, China, and Japan), plunged the Chosŏn dynasty into its worst crisis. Unlike China and Japan, which saw extremely radical changes such as dynastic transition and shifts in political power in the wake of the war, Chosŏn remained unscathed by the political turmoil. It is a historical irony that Chosŏn could remain free from the impact of the war, in spite of the fact that it sustained the heaviest damage from the war. To understand this irony, it is necessary to note that those in the royal court, the ruling class and King Sŏnjo sincerely repented of their pre-war misdeeds, demonstrated their strong will to reform the government and sustained reform measures for a sufficient length of time. The post-war restoration effort the dynasty carried out was the so-called Yŏmin hyusik (Rest with the people) policy and was modeled after the Yumin xiuxi 與民休息 policy that Emperors Wendi 文帝 and Jingdi 景帝 implemented in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty of China. As in the Chinese case, the Yŏmin hyusik policy increased agricultural productivity and the population as well as stabilizing Chosŏn society. Thanks to the reform measures, which were maintained for sixty years, the dynasty could recover without undergoing the political upheavals that took place in China and Japan. It was due to this politico-economic background that the dynasty could survive for 300 more years after the war.

Voices from the Crimson Clouds Library: Reading Liu Rushi's (1618–1664)Misty Willows by Moonlit Dike

Misty Willows by Moonlit Dike , painted in 1643 by the celebrated courtesan-turned-gentry-lady Liu Yin (1618–1664, better known as Liu Rushi), and documented by the literary talent Qian Qianyi (1582–1664), serves as the definitive statement on the romantic and artistic union of this eminent pair of cultural figures precisely a year before the fall of the Ming dynasty. It also reflects upon a complex gender dimension in the expression of reclusion entangled with the trauma of dynastic transition. This is revealed, in part, by two additions to the scroll: a small landscape painting of eight years later dedicated to Liu by her close female associate, Huang Jieling (ca. 1620-ca. 1669), and a long commemorative preface that Qian Qianyi wrote for Huang in 1651 reminiscing on bygone glory through the topos of their beloved Jianyun Library that tragically burnt down in 1650. Through a close reading of Liu’s and Huang’s paintings and Qian’s inscriptions on the scroll, this article aims to explore the macrocultural milieu of the time by examining, on the one hand, these two female paradigms of reclusion, and on the other the collective sentiment and memory of the catastrophe of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition as voiced through words and images in their paintings, calligraphy, and the iconography of the willow.

Positions of Sinophone Representation in Jin's (金庸) Chivalric Topography

In his article "Positions of Sinophone Representation in Jin's (金庸) Chivalric Topography" Weijie Song examines Yong Jin's post-1949 Hong Kong chivalric imagination of imperial Beijing and beyond during the Ming-Qing Dynastic transition and the dialects of inclusive exclusion and exclusive inclusion. In Cold War Hong Kong, Jin charted a wide range of chivalric activities: intruding into the political center embodied by the Forbidden City (the "Great Within") and fleeing to peripheral regions such as Xinjiang's Islamic community, the overseas kingdom in Brunei in Southeast Asia, and an unknown place somewhere inside Yangzhou. Song argues that Jin's literary topography suggests a frustrated yet flexible identity and a supplementary yet self-sufficient "republic of letters" in his remapping of China's past for the possible positions of contemporary Sinophone representations.

Cashing in on land and privilege for the welfare of the shah: Monetisation oftiyūlin early Safavid Iran and eastern Anatolia

The assignment of land as tiyūl to early Safavid military and bureaucratic elites was conditional on their emoluments being subjected to direct taxation on annual basis. Between 914 and 918/1508 and 1512, the money-based disposal of tiyūl land assignments boosted Shah Ismā‘īl’s control over fiscal resources in Iran. In the province of Diyarbakir, however, the Safavid practice of tiyūl expedited dynastic transition, enabling the new regime to uproot the regional allies and partners of the Aqquyunlu. A glimpse at monetisation of tiyūl brings necessary torch into the dynamics of bureaucratic centralisation and its political implications in this early phase of territorial expansion and political absolutism in the Safavid history. The principal primary source this study explores is an unpublished fiscal statement, kept as document E. 1071 at the Topkapi Palace Museum Archives in Istanbul, that details the taxes paid to central treasury by early Safavid tiyūl-holders in Iran and eastern Anatolia over the course...

Historiography and transformation of ethnic identity in the Mongol Empire: the Öng’üt case

Throughout their history, Inner Asian empires used familiar imperial institutions to rapidly impose new ethnic designations and their attendant languages, such as ‘Türk’ or ‘Mongol’, on their subjects. The swiftness of this integration into new ethnic designations should not be taken to mean that this integration was painless, however. In the well-documented Mongol empire, for example, this incorporation was extremely traumatic for many Inner Asian ethnic groups, even where the subordinate local elites achieved high status in the new regime. This may be seen in the case of the Öng’üt, a Christian Turkic-speaking people of Inner Mongolia whose rulers then became key marriage partners of the Mongol aristocracy. Successive iterations of the origin story of the Öng’üt rulers show how these histories went through vast changes as they were forcibly incorporated into the new empire, and dealt with the internal conflicts sparked by that incorporation. Previously central parts of their historic past, such as Christianity and service as border guards to the previous Jin dynasty, had to be marginalized and a new historical past had to be created. Historiography thus reflected and shaped changes in ethnic identity in a traumatic dynastic transition.

Rapid environmental change during dynastic transitions in Yunnan Province, China

Pollution and eutrophication of Chinese lakes are widely perceived to be 20th century phenomena. However, China has a long history of deforestation, agriculture, mineral resource extraction, and other anthropogenic activities that impact the environment. Here, we present a sediment record from Xing Yun Lake in the Yunnan Province of China that reveals significant alterations to the lake, its ecosystem, and its watershed beginning as early as 500 AD. A comprehensive suite of biogeochemical and isotopic proxies reveal several rapid transitions related to changes in agriculture and lake-level management that coincides with cultural and dynastic transitions. The deterioration of contemporary environmental conditions at Xing Yun arises from a long history of anthropogenic manipulation, eutrophication, and pollution of the lake and its watershed. This study highlights the importance of using historical records of industrial and agricultural activities, including landscape modification, in conjunction with records of climate change, to place present day environmental concerns into a long-term context.

The Politics and Practice of Moral Rectitude in the Late Ming: The Case of Huang Daozhou (1585–1646)

This study investigates the employment of zhongxiao (lit.: loyalty-filial piety) in lateMing politics by examining the life and career of Huang Daozhou, a famous scholar-official during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. This close examination of Huang’s intellectual work, political activities, and social life, as well as his interaction with colleagues and the emperor, illustrates the many ways in which zhongxiao ethics operated in lateMing politics, as an intellectual question, an important measure of moral cultivation and means of image-making, a weapon in political attacks and counterattacks, a vocabulary for political communication, and a language that helped perpetuate the Confucian moral-political ideals in the construction of the historical narrative of a dynastic transition. These uses of zhongxiao exemplify not only late Ming literati’s intensive and creative engagement with traditional ideals and practices but also the significance of moral rectitude in late Ming politics and in the historiography of the Ming-Qing transition.