Imperial China Research Articles

Sino-Muslims, Networking, and Identity in Late Imperial China: Longstanding Natives and Dispersed Minorities

Sino-Muslims, Networking, and Identity in Late Imperial China: Longstanding Natives and Dispersed Minorities

Concretising the Legal Professional Community in Late Imperial China, c. 1700–1900

Concretising the Legal Professional Community in Late Imperial China, c. 1700–1900

Sinicization characteristics of American periodical The Child’s Paper and its effects in Late Imperial China

ABSTRACT In the 19th century, the American Tract Society (ATS) published The Child’s Paper (1852–1871) in the United States. Amid the noteworthy Eastward Transmission of Western Learning movement three eponymous Xiaohai Yuebao(hereinafter referred to as TheXHYB）were published in Late Imperial China with the Eastward Spread of Western Learning. By exploring the relationship between the American periodical The Child’s Paper and three editions of The XHYB in the course of Late Imperial China, this study attempts to shed light on the Sinicization characteristics of The XHYB and its effects in Late Imperial China. The study has found that there existed transplantation and translation by tracing back to their historical origins and XHYB in Late Imperial China. In the process of transplanting, translating, and dissemination of ATS’s The Child’s Paper in Late Imperial China, it highlights the Sinicization characteristics: waning of religious indoctrination, nativization of the periodical management, localization of language selection and secularization of illustrated narrative, which had deep effects on children’s education, thoughts andviews on children and children’s literature in Late Imperial China.

Comparative Analysis of Historical and Cultural Trajectories: Imperial China and the Indian Subcontinent

Comparative Analysis of Historical and Cultural Trajectories: Imperial China and the Indian Subcontinent

Cost of resilience to climate change: migration, conflicts, and epidemics in imperial China

Abstract A growing scholarship is focusing on the cost of social resilience to climate change in the past. Among different resilience strategies, migration could be effective for nomadic societies despite the potential consequences of conflicts and epidemics. Thus, this study utilizes historical records to statistically investigate the linkages among nomadic migrations, nomad–farmer conflicts, and epidemics under climate change and population pressure in imperial China (200 BCE–1840 CE) on the national and provincial scales. The current study will first attempt to empirically identify and analyze the cost of resilience to climate change mainly in the direction from nomadic societies to agrarian societies in historical China. In particular, we show the cost of nomadic migration passed in a chain mechanism as ‘climate change → nomadic migration → nomad–farmer conflicts → epidemics.’ Nomad–farmer conflicts were one direct effect of nomadic migration, while epidemics were an indirect one. Spatially, more provinces were affected under the direct effect than under the indirect effect. Furthermore, the first level of chain ‘nomadic migration → nomad–farmer conflicts’ covers more provinces than the second level ‘nomad–farmer conflicts → epidemics’. These empirical results remind us to identify and avoid the cost of resilience as early as possible before the cost may transmit further in a chain manner. However, the provinces outside the concentrated nomad–farmer conflicts did not demonstrate significant linkages between conflicts and epidemics, which highlights the importance of peaceful cross-civilizational and inter-societal interactions against common challenges of climate change. This study with a cross-scale perspective in geography provides a theoretical implication to improve the current understanding on climate justice and have a practical value to avoid or minimize the cost of resilience.

Re-cloistered Feminine Space: Chinese Women’s Prison in Shanghai, 1888–1912

Abstract This article examines China’s first women’s prison in the context of diplomatic disputes, legal reforms, and gender order at the turn of the twentieth century. It shows that the custody of female offenders in the Shanghai International Settlement became a battleground in which the interests and perceptions of late imperial China and the Western authorities clashed. Under pressure from the Western authorities, the first Chinese women’s prison was established in 1907, even prior to the formal introduction of custodial sentences into China’s criminal code. Notably, the Chinese officials did not embrace prison as a more benevolent punitive institution; rather, they saw it more as a tool to consolidate its judicial sovereignty and preserve gender norms. For Chinese women, the prison, functioning as a re-cloistered feminine space, further entrenched the confinement of their bodies, thereby perpetuating rather than changing orthodox values of female chastity. This article questions the universal modernity of European penalties by pointing out that the introduction of imprisonment as a supposedly more civilized and humane form of punishment may have placed Chinese women at a greater disadvantage.

Exam Cheating Then and Now: A Comparison of Academic Dishonesty in the World’s Oldest Testing System and Present-day Academia

In recent years, cheating in exams has been reported to be a serious issue in many countries. Some believe the problem to be more severe, due to the development of modern technologies. But academic dishonesty is not a new phenomenon. This article is going to look into the cheating methods used in the world’s first examination system in Imperial China and the means devised to prevent these malpractices. These are compared with examples of exam cheating observed in contemporary societies and the measures that institutions take to safeguard test and certificate validity. Cheating practices in Imperial exams are described on the basis of the available literature and the preserved artefacts. The state of the problem of cheating by contemporary students has been assembled, based on research articles. Despite all the changes that have occurred in educational systems over the years, cheating methods have not in essence changed significantly.

Legitimacy and Hegemony in Late Imperial China

Canonical international relations research treats international orders as systemic, long-term projects of hegemons. However, orders can also provide valuable domestic political capital for leaders. Hegemonic leaders have stronger incentives to invest in hegemony when doing so potentially enhances their political legitimacy. Using a new dataset of over 8,000 Ming and Qing dynasty tribute exchanges between 1368 and 1895, I assess whether emperor legitimacy needs help explain China’s engagement in tribute diplomacy, a central institution of Chinese hegemony. The findings show that new emperors, particularly those following “irregular” entry into power, invested heavily in tribute to pursue legitimacy among internal and external audiences. This behavior was most common with “high-value” counterparts. An illustrative case documents how the Yongle Emperor deployed tribute to legitimize his right to rule. The findings demonstrate the importance of domestic politics and leader legitimacy for understanding the nature and persistence of hegemonic order in early modern Asia.

Rens Krijgsman: <i>Early Chinese Manuscript Collections: Sayings, Memory, Verse, and Knowledge. Studies in the History of Chinese Texts</i>

The book under review is a study of manuscript texts from Warring States and early imperial China (approximately the 5th to 2nd centuries BCE); its specific topic is “manuscript collections,” that is, “single manuscripts containing multiple (originally) distinct texts”. In this book, Rens Krijgsman explores what happened when multiple texts came to be combined on the same material carrier: How were texts selected, organized, and integrated into individual collections? What relationships obtained among these different texts? And how did collections affect reception, including interpretation and perceptions of genre? Cautious not to overstep the evidence, Krijgsman acknowledges that certain basic information about production and use of early manuscript collections is wanting: we do not (and cannot) know who collected the texts and produced the manuscripts, nor can we know who used collections. Wielding impressive command of the technical aspects of early manuscripts and of a broad range of texts, he seeks to extract as much information as possible through a careful yet comprehensive analysis of the material aspects of manuscript collections, their content, and their organization.

Minor monarchs: The ‘Bad-Emperor’ problem in Chinese history

How important is the age and experience of political leaders for the quality of governance? I explore this question in the context of imperial China, where autocratic rule centered on the institution of the emperor persisted for nearly 2,000 years. While the issue of child emperors is frequently discussed in the historiography of China, the impact of minor rulers has not been explored empirically. Using rich biographical information on the lives of rulers, I show evidence consistent with the notion that the age of emperors mattered for the effective administration of the Chinese state. In particular, the incidences of minor monarchs appear to accelerate the decline of a dynasty and occur more frequently toward the end of an imperial dynasty. The rule of minor monarchs coincides with the timing of dynastic crises, nomadic attacks, peasant revolts, and declines in fiscal capacity. To assess causality, I conduct two tests. First, I validate my baseline findings using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits the early but natural deaths of preceding emperors. Second, I show that estimated relationships become stronger after the Tang-Song transition, during which the administrative power of the emperor increased dramatically relative to that of the civilian bureaucracy. Overall, the results in this paper suggest that in the absence of institutional constraints, weak executive leadership can lead to poor national outcomes even in a highly bureaucratized state.

Stealthily Breaching Dikes and the Bare Sticks Substatute: Notes on Some Legal Aspects of River Hydraulics in Late Imperial China

Stealthily Breaching Dikes and the Bare Sticks Substatute: Notes on Some Legal Aspects of River Hydraulics in Late Imperial China

墓誌와 族譜를 통해 본 行第 사례 고찰 －中國 宋代 安陽韓氏 가문을 중심으로－

This paper analyzes the “Hangje” of the Anyang Han clan during the Song Dynasty based on an initial case study of the Tang Dynasty’s Nak-An Sohn clan. By analyzing Han Qi’s The Literary Collection of Anyang, the recently excavated epitaphs of the Anyang Han clan, and The Genealogy of Xiaoshan Yidu Han Family Clan, it was possible to reconstruct the specific appearance of the “Hangje.” As a result, it was revealed that the generational ranks were assigned based on birth order of each male member, including cousins of the same generation among the extended family members within the Song Dynasty’s Anyang Han clan. This is a similar result to the research previously conducted by the author regarding the Nak-An Sohn clan of the Tang Dynasty. Despite a time gap of about 200 years between the Nak-An Sohn clan of the Tang Dynasty and the Anyang Han clan of the Song Dynasty in Chinese history, both clans are believed to have maintained a hierarchical system, known as “Hangje,” based on the birth order of family members, thereby suggesting a continued tradition of establishing generational ranks to preserve familial order among descendants sharing a common ancestor. In Imperial China, in order to establish the hierarchical order within the same clan, Chinese families adopted the practice of giving family members the names that included a common Chinese character for those of the same generation. Furthermore, each member was assigned a generational rank (行第: Hangje) to further distinguish the order within the family. This family-centric hierarchical structure likely played a crucial role in defining roles and responsibilities within the family, fostering harmony among its members, and contributing to the maintenance of social order.

Adultery Law and State Power in Early Empires: China and Rome Compared

Abstract As ancient China and Rome transformed into empires, both states showed an increasing interest in regulating family ethics and individuals’ sexuality. Using excavated documents and transmitted texts, this article compares legal statutes and practices against illicit consensual sex in early imperial China (221 BCE–220 CE) with those in the Roman empire. On the one hand, both legal systems aimed at consolidating social hierarchies based on gender, status, and generation. On the other, the Roman and Chinese statutes had different emphases due to their respective political, social, and cultural contexts, and the actual penalties for adultery and incest differed significantly from those prescribed in the statutes. In both empires, control over individuals’ sexuality facilitated state power’s penetration into the family during empire-building, giving rise to laws in areas that had been largely left to customs and individual will.

Fenye by the Numbers: A Quantitative Analysis of Astrological Contents in Chinese Local Gazetteers

Abstract Fenye (分野, lit., “field allocation”), is a traditional Chinese astrological system that associated celestial phenomena with regions on earth since ancient times. During middle and late imperial China, many literati writings criticized this system as illogical. Yet in the local gazetteers that were compiled in late imperial China to document local data within each administrative region, compilers continued to use fenye as the canonical way to identify their regions within the vast empire. The Jesuit introduction of Western sciences to China, in particular the technology that could precisely locate any place or region with latitude and longitude, appeared to render fenye obsolete, which fueled even more literati criticism. Modern scholars consider the public criticism from the Qianlong emperor and the resulting removal of fenye from the 1781 Rehe Gazetteer the end of fenye in imperial orthodoxy. However, by quantitatively analyzing a collection of 4,410 titles of local gazetteers and their section headings, this paper reveals many examples of local literati who resisted removing fenye entirely from their local history, well into the late Republican period.

A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Perspectives on Tang Dynasty Narratives: Examining History of Imperial China and A History of China

History of Imperial China, published by Harvard University Press in the United States, and A History of China, published by Kodansha in Japan, are significant works on Chinese general history abroad. Due to differing perspectives and temporal and spatial contexts, these works exhibit distinct narrative styles and characteristics for the same historical period. This article compares the narrative variances between the Tang History Volume of History of Imperial China and A History of China, aiming to elucidate the underlying reasons for such disparities. Analysis reveals that the primary distinction between these two historical works lies in their overarching focus: while History of Imperial China adopts a global perspective, examining the evolution of China's imperial system, the volume China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (History of Imperial China, Vol. III) delves into the shifts and adaptations of the Chinese imperial system during the Tang Dynasty. Conversely, each volume of A History of China boasts unique attributes, with Brilliant World Empires: The Sui and Tang Dynasties (A History of China, Vol. VI) adopting an East Asian perspective to scrutinize the Tang Dynasty's impact as a global empire. This article posits that the disparities in overall structure and specific content between the two works stem from several factors, including publishing objectives and target audiences, the scholarly traditions of Chinese history research in the United States and Japan, the historical relationship between respective countries and China during the Tang Dynasty, as well as the research fields and propositions of the authors.

Bodhisattva and Daoist: A New Study of Zhunti Daoren 準提道人in the Canonization of the Gods

Although the portrayal of Zhunti Daoren (Cundī Daoist 準提道人) in the Canonization of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi 封神演義) is relatively subdued, it has garnered considerable scholarly interest owing to the pivotal role he fulfills in advancing the narrative and the profound cultural connotations encapsulated within the character. Scholars have put forward three distinct hypotheses: “Zhunti Daoren as a Buddhist deity”, “Zhunti Daoren as a Daoist deity”, and “Zhunti Daoren as the Panchen Lama”. Based on the theory that the figures in the novels of gods and demons (Shenmo xiaoshuo 神魔小說) embody symbolic characteristics, as well as the sociocultural background of Ming–Qing times, this study uses literary image analysis to investigate these three different interpretations. A basic examination is also performed to explore the correlation between Zhunti Daoren and Jieyin Daoren (Welcoming Daoist接引道人), with the aim of illustrating the relationship between the cult of Zhunti and Pure Land Buddhism in late imperial China.

Leftover peaches: Female homoeroticism during the Western Han dynasty1

Female homoeroticism in early imperial China has received minimal scholarly attention. This article purposes to investigate lesbianism in the Western Han dynasty, taking into consideration both the literary and archaeological material. I first offer a succinct rundown of the ancient terminology of male homosexuality, principally in an effort to underline the classical Chinese language’s absence of a precise vocabulary to describe lesbian attachments. Next, I turn to the transmitted textual sources, analysing the two extant records of love between women in order to gauge something of the nature and permissibility of female homoerotic relationships. The final section of this essay is dedicated to mortuary objects, namely the moulded bronze phalli and other sexual training tools disentombed from Western Han gravesites. When properly contextualised, the excavated dildos can be interpreted as having been used by concubines, both within same-sex partnerships and in the course of pornographic displays staged for their master’s enjoyment.

Cyclic climate impacts on human activity in northern Central China recorded by varve evidence from the western Loess Plateau

Disentangling the relationship between climate change and human activities is a major challenge in paleoenvironmental research. Here, we report a decadal-resolution sedimentological record from an annually laminated archive from the western Loess Plateau spanning the Middle-Late Holocene, along with a database of archaeological radiocarbon dates in northern central China. Our results reveal the occurrence of 400–600-yr cyclic variations in the climate over the last 6200 years, which correlate well with the periodicities of solar activity and the East Asian summer monsoon. This mode of climate change is associated temporally and regionally with specific prehistoric human activities. More favorable warm-humid environmental conditions may have simultaneously facilitated cultural prosperity and population growth, while less favorable cold-dry periods may have led to cultural alterations and population decline. In addition, we determine that there is a closely coupled relationship between the fluctuations in geopolitical and socioeconomic variables and the cyclicity of the environmental changes in imperial China. That is, the warm-humid cycles are characterized by the northward expansion of agriculturalist empires, a decrease in the number of battles, bumper grain harvests, and economic development, while the cold-dry cycles are characterized by the southward expansion of pastoralist empires, an increase in the number of battles, famines, and economic recession. Further analysis of our study will increase the understanding of human dispersal, cultural exchanges, and climate-human interactions within and beyond northern China.

From the Qing Imperial Printing Office to the Hands of Medical Practitioners: Manuscripts Containing Parts of the Golden Mirror of the Orthodox Lineage of Medicine

Abstract The Imperially Commissioned Golden Mirror of the Orthodox Lineage of Medicine (Yuzuan yizong jinjian 御纂醫宗金鑑), first printed in 1742, was one of the most important and widely circulating works on medicine in late imperial China. This paper analyzes a group of twenty-three medical manuscripts from the nineteenth and early twentieth century that include parts of the Golden Mirror. The findings suggest that most of the manuscripts should not be considered mere copies, but as deliberate selections. They served didactic as well as epistemic functions that differ from, or go beyond, those that could be fulfilled by the printed Golden Mirror (or a faithful manuscript copy alone). This is indicated not only by different content type selections (verse form for memorization or recitation; prose form for study or consultation) and the combination with medical knowledge from other sources, but also by the ways in which these contents were formatted, usually to facilitate reading and navigation. Adjustment, updating or supplementation of Golden Mirror contents likewise functioned epistemically, integrating previous medical knowledge into the medical discourse of the time. Hence, the findings of the present study help to clarify the lasting importance of manuscripts in the age of print, for which possibilities of adapting knowledge to personal interests and requirements seem to have been decisive factors.

Inventing Ancestors and Limited Empiricism in Chosŏn Korea: A Case of the Kigye Yu Lineage

AbstractThis paper investigates how the members of the Kigye Yu lineage imagined and invented their ancestral roots during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) and how such a pursuit of ancestral origins led to subsequent developments in genealogical records. As early as the fifteenth century, Chosŏn elites began to show interests in genealogy that included identifying remote ancestors from ancient times for various political, social, and cultural reasons. From the seventeenth century, the transformation of kinship organization in line with the Confucian ideal of patriliny and elites’ competition for power and prestige intensified genealogical consciousness. Elites became heavily invested in searching for ancestral origins in the form of their lineages’ founders and their tombs. While claiming to rely on documentary and physical evidence, elites often deviated from their professed empiricism and adopted evidence from dubious sources such as oral testimonies and geomancy to rationalize invented ancestral roots. Such pliable approaches, often observed in other early modern cultures such as late imperial China and Europe, opened a floodgate of lineages glorifying their ancestry by pushing their origins back even to mythical founders of ancient Korean and Chinese kingdoms, and adorning their lineages with invented heroes. At the same time, loopholes and blank spots in genealogies enabled quasi- and nonelites to become a member of prominent lineages by grafting their names onto their family trees.