Late Qing China Research Articles

Manias, panics, & land: The property bubbles of the great Chinese crash of the 1880s

Historians researching China’s debt crisis of the early 1880s have largely focused on its stock market collapse of 1882-83. Yet the crisis was more than this—it was also a real estate crash. More precisely, the crisis entailed the bursting of two asset price bubbles in urban property: one in Hong Kong (1881), the other in Shanghai (1883). These boom-busts have long remained under-appreciated in both Chinese and global history. This article thus draws on what patchwork data exist, qualitative sources, economic theory, and global historical comparison to reconstruct their histories for the first time. That the crash was a property debacle in these globalising ports, not just a share selloff, suggests that it was no bout of speculation divorced from economic fundamentals, as some posit. Instead, the 1880s crash was a crisis that triggered a major depression, one inextricably bound up with late-Qing China’s integration into the global economy.

Institutionalising global mining knowledge: the rise of engineering education in late Qing China, 1870–95

Abstract The history of mining education in late Qing China has received relatively little attention in scholarly literature. Through the lens of institutionalising global mining knowledge, this article addresses the following questions: How did the demand for expertise within the framework of mining bureaucracy evolve under the impact of Western imperialism? How did mining education enter scholarly discourse and become eventually institutionalised in the late Qing China? Drawing on evidence from the collections of Sheng Xuanhuai's archive series, it investigates two previously overlooked ‘failures’ of Sheng's mining-related enterprises, namely his earliest mining practices in Hubei in the 1870s and his proposal for establishing a mining school in Shandong in 1888–89. It then reconnects these efforts with the histories of Western learning, late Qing mining bureaucracy, the monetary crisis of that era, and the global recruitment of engineers despite a pronounced distrust of foreign expertise. It argues that these seemingly discrete efforts or ‘failures’ in fact paved the way for initiating China's first engineering university as well as other mining colleges in around 1895 and eventually led to the rise of engineering education before the entire educational system was transformed in China.

Impact of Western transmission of the Peking Gazette on Late-Qing China’s information security

The Peking Gazette, as a widespread and effective medium for the dissemination of important information from the Qing government, played a significant role in the internal governance of the empire. In the 19th century, Western missionaries, diplomats, and businessmen in China respected the authenticity and authority of the content in the Gazette, and carried out large-scale translations of political, social, cultural, economic, and military-diplomatic information into English. Western transmission of the Peking Gazette to some extent promoted cultural exchanges between China and the West and also provided the Western powers, which were in a period of expansion, with a wealth of political and military intelligence. The internally focused Qing dynasty was initially unaware of the Western transmission of the Peking Gazette and later took a series of doomed measures, leading to severe damage to national information security and political safety. The historical lessons of the Qing empire are enlightening for countries worldwide today: there is a need not only for openness and transparency but also for balancing the relationship between information disclosure and national security.

Missionary’s Envision of Children in Late Qing China: Children’s Education and the Construction of Christian Discourse in Child’s Paper

In the late Qing Dynasty, religious periodicals by Western missionaries were made legal in China, and subsequently became an important manner of their missionary cause. Among them, Child’s Paper 小孩月报 (1875–1881) by John Marshall Willoughby Farnham, a Protestant missionary from the United States, endeavoured to convert child readers by carrying children’s stories of moral and emotional education. By concentrating on the educational elements of Child’s Paper, this article inspects how conversion was achieved via the intertextual interpretation of Christian doctrines within these educational elements. Specifically, how the image of little Christians and urchins, respectively, represents salvation and redemption in Christian morals. This article holds that the missionaries’ stress on the authority of Christian discourse in the education of Chinese children makes evident an increasing emphasis on the reformative effects of Christianity on Chinese children. Moreover, the conversion-education efforts by missionaries also construed helping Chinese children gain a cross-cultural perspective on Western religion, and arguably inspired later Chinese intellectuals’ to create newspapers for the purpose of the pre-primary education of Chinese children.

Institutional mosaic of financial institutions in the late Qing China and synthesis of organizational forms: from piaohao and qianzhuang to the central bank

Objective: to determine the peculiarities of forming the banking system in late imperial China in terms of the interaction between traditional Chinese banking institutions, imported institutional forms, and state reform strategies. Methods: qualitative methods (comparative analysis, generalization), historical and genetic method.Results: based on a wide array of historical data, the history of the Chinese banking system development during the Qin dynasty decline is demonstrated. By the time of the Chinese economy “forced opening” by Western powers during the Opium Wars, China had its own quasi-banking institutions based on the established clan networks of trade organizations that covered the credit needs of the traditional economy. The local development of modern industries in China required modern approaches to the organization of banking activities. The lacuna was filled by foreign banks, which actually monopolized modern banking in China, and later by state-owned banks. It is shown that by the end of the Qing period all three participants of the banking industry – traditional banks, foreign banks and state banks – covered the needs of the Chinese economy. It is concluded that the banking industry of the late imperial period was a mosaic institutional fabric, combining both traditional and westernized elements and embedding clan ties traditional for China.Scientific novelty: the article is the first attempt in Russia to comprehensively examine the evolution of the banking system of late Qing China.Practical significance: the main conclusions of the article can be used in scientific and pedagogical activities in the study of economic history of traditional China, and may enrich the concepts of institutional economics concerning the limits and possibilities of institutional transformations.

How a translation impacts its translator

Abstract The present article is a function-oriented case study within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies, as developed by Gideon Toury, which posits translations as facts in the target culture where they interact with other works and influence them. The present article argues that a translation can have an impact on its translator whose relationship with the target culture is ambivalent. The British missionary Timothy Richard and his Chinese translation of Looking Backward is the case under investigation. Richard played multiple roles in late Qing China. He was a reformer as well as a missionary. His translation of Looking Backward influenced his own reform ideas, which in turn influenced the reformists in late Qing China.

Reinterpreting and Remapping Philosophy, Evolutionism and Religion in Late Qing Missionary’s Translation of The Making of a Man

Between the Boxer Movement and the 1911 Revolution, missionaries in China confronted distinct social challenges compared to their counterparts in home countries. In response, American missionary Young John Allen and his Chinese assistant, Van Yi, co-translated James Wideman Lee’s The Making of a Man into Chinese as Ren Xue. This translation aimed to counter Spencer’s social evolutionism, introduced by native intellectuals like Yan Fu, offering a reinterpretation of the relationships among individuals, nations, and God. Additionally, it sought to remap philosophy, evolutionism, ethics, and religion tailored for late Qing China. In contrast to clergymen in America and China, Chinese native intellectuals developed their unique reinterpretations and reshaping of philosophy, science, evolutionism, ethics, and religion for China. Through a cross-comparison of works by Yan Fu, Huxley, Spencer, Lee and Allen, this study explored the diverse responses to Spencer’s evolutionary theory and related issues among the advocates of evolutionism, Chinese intellectuals, and clergies in America and China.

Mineral extraction and long‐term human capital accumulation

AbstractThis study examines the long‐term impacts of early coal mining on human capital outcomes. Based on coal mines across 260 prefectures in late Qing China (c.1840–1912), we find that early coal mining led to a significant rise in schooling years in 2000. We trace the historical channels and show that the influence of early coal mining has persisted through and helped shape the modernization of China, which includes local industrialization and a complimentary supply of educational infrastructure. These results suggest that in contrast to other grabbing mineral extraction, inclusive coal mining systems benefit long‐term human capital accumulation and economic growth, not mining activity per se.

Polyphonic Poetics: Reading Yang Shaoping’s Pidgin Bamboo Branch Lyrics

Pidgin English appeared in China along the Pearl River Delta as a contact language composed of a mixture of English, Cantonese, Portuguese, Hindi, and Malay as early as the eighteenth century. It spread to the Yangzi River delta in the mid-nineteenth century when an increasing number of Cantonese merchants and workers traveled to other treaty ports after the First Opium War. Focusing on a series of poems called Pidgin Bamboo Branch Lyrics (Bieqin zhuzhici) published in the newspaper Shen Bao in 1873, this paper explores how pidgin was appropriated in Chinese poetry and altered the literary soundscape in late Qing China. I argue that these pidgin English terms created a heteroglot poetic space wherein Sinographs and European words, literary language and local tongues, and classical images and contemporary anecdotes intertwine to generate diverse and contradictory meanings. Through an innovative collocation of the graphic, literal, and phonetic features of Chinese characters, the pidgin words and expressions in these poems produce a multilayered structure of meanings with various possibilities for interpretation. Moreover, unlike traditional bamboo branch lyrics in which non-Chinese words are incorporated to domesticate strangeness and consolidate the imperial order of center and periphery, these poems have an inverse effect: their use of pidgin English instead alienates the native, the conventional, and the familiar landscape/soundscape. This poetry made of language crossings depicts modernity as an uncanny sonic experience and makes foreignness appear not in a faraway land but in one’s own poetic language and everyday life.

Steven Miles. Opportunity in Crisis: Cantonese Migrants and the State in Late Qing China.

Opportunity in Crisis: Cantonese Migrants and the State in Late Qing China is the second of two books written by Steven Miles to document the under-explored history of Cantonese diaspora moving along the West River into Guangxi in late imperial China. In these works, Miles advocates for understanding Cantonese diaspora in a truly global context by achieving a holistic view of their experiences in both domestic and overseas destinations. With rich individual stories, the book continues chronologically from the first book, Upriver Journeys: Diaspora and Empire in Southern China 1570–1850 (2017), and highlights the movements of Cantonese migrants who rode on currents amidst the regional and national crises in the second half of the nineteenth century to advance their statuses and transform the social, economic, and cultural landscapes of Guangxi. The book presents exemplary historical research of a highly mobile population lacking systematic records. By meticulously identifying and linking individuals across myriad sources—government archives, gazetteers, genealogies, the list of donors inscribed in stelae erected in huiguan (native-place associations) and temples in the market towns along the West River, and anthologies, to name a few—Miles brings to light the life stories of numerous migrants with varying social backgrounds. The work makes a significant contribution to the fields of migration studies, the social history of southern China, and the Qing Empire in the nineteenth century.

Crafting a nation, fishing for power: The Universal Exposition of 1906 and fisheries governance in Late Qing China

AbstractThe 1906 Universal Exposition hosted in Milan was a defining moment for the late Qing in terms of its fisheries development. The exhibition not only allowed China to portray its strategic focus on its fisheries but also its determination to be seen as a modernized and progressive sea power in Asia. China’s involvement in this world’s fair also paralleled the process of political and economic consolidation of some of the country’s intellectuals at the turn of the nineteenth century. These intellectuals’ accumulated experience, common goals, and international consciousness made it possible to assemble a group of professional experts I refer to as the ‘new fisheries elites’, who were able to construct the image of China as a modern fisheries power, if not a sea power, at various levels. The first part of this article will situate this exposition within the final two decades of the Qing Empire in the context of the political, social, and cultural transformation that was taking place around the world at the time. China’s presence at the world’s fair during this period displayed the adjustments of a changing and dynamic national image in terms of both its national circumstances and its international situation. The second part will then move on to discuss in what ways the Milan exposition was conceived by elites such as Zhang Jian, Luo Cheng, and Guo Fengming as a paradigmatic setting in which to showcase China’s drive toward modernity and becoming a sea power. Although China had participated in several other universal expositions, the Qing court had clearer and more pragmatic objectives in its participation in Milan in 1906. This was to demonstrate its recent progress and to change the common impression of China as an insecure, inexperienced, and incompetent country in terms of its fisheries governance and maritime vision. To produce this image, Zhang Jian and his team undertook a sensible and impressive approach towards presenting to the world China’s maritime awareness and the long historical continuity between this country and the sea. This was a conscious effort to produce an ideal of what a modern, progressive maritime China should look like.

Boats, Barbarians, & Bandits: Riverine Warfare & the Taiping Rebellion

Abstract While much has been written about the impact (or not) of Western intervention in the latter stages of the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1866), comparatively little attention has heretofore been directed towards the impact of the riverine campaigns and the combined land-river operations whereby the Qing steadily reduced the scope of Taiping control and tightened the cordon around their heavenly capital at Nanjing. Strategists such as Hu Linyi and Zuo Zongtang recognized the importance of riverine warfare and sought to build a Qing flotilla capable of meeting its military needs. Furthermore, the experience gained in riverine operations against the Taipings would later be applied in Zuo Zongtang’s campaigns in northwest China and Central Asia to great effect. Using Zuo’s personal accounts, contemporary newspaper reports, and other primary sources, this article highlights significance of rivers and riverine operations for the extension and maintenance of empire in late Qing China.

Missionary Work in Late Qing China and the John Fryer Papers: Some Considerations from an Almost Secular Perspective

The John Fryer Papers, bequeathed by the English translator John Fryer (1839—1928) to the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, are a notable yet underestimated archive for information, from a variety of perspectives, on the Xixue Dongjian and in a broader sense, the circumstances of late Qing China. This article focuses on one of the aspects that, for personal and historical reasons related to Fryer, has been neglected more in relation to the man himself: his contribution to the description of the missionary history and cultural interactions between the West and China. Fryer indeed supplies his acute insider perspective on the relevant situation in late Qing China within different folders of the Papers. In this article, the descriptions, analyses, and suggestions for the missionary work put forward by Fryer are presented and examined. John Fryer did indeed set off for China to become a missionary, but he soon abandoned this purpose; nevertheless, his ties with the missionary milieu of the Jiangnan area remained solid throughout his time in China. The purpose of the article is to provide new information and a fresh perspective on the history of missions and Xixue Dongjian in late Qing China, also casting a brighter light on John Fryer's role.

Activism in translation: Yan Fu’s translational activism against foreign imperialism in late Qing China

The concept of translational activism underscores the ways translation has been used to promote social change. Translation and activism as an emerging area of interest in Translation Studies have attracted growing scholarly attention. Nevertheless, few studies have been conducted on activist translation in the context of China. This study examines translational activism against foreign imperialism through a case study on Yan Fu, a pioneer activist translator in late Qing China. Tymoczko’s concepts of resistance and engagement are used as descriptive categories for the empirical analysis. The appraisal framework is adopted as the analytical tool to address Yan Fu’s positioning and activist intervention. It is found that Yan pursued two complementary forms of activism in his translation: Yan demonstrates his resistance to foreign imperialism by criticising foreign aggression and resisting imperial privileges; while Yan manifests his engagement by disclosing the national crisis, inspiring patriotism and calling for action. As textual intervention has received little attention in activist translation, the present study fills this gap by examining the linguistic and textual manifestations of Yan’s activist intervention. In addition to applying the new theoretical lens of activism to examine Yan’s translation practice, the present study makes a theoretical contribution by adopting the appraisal framework in the area of translation and activism.

From Reading to Dressing: Portraiture of a Qing Empress in Gender and Cross-Cultural Perspective

This paper argues that the abundance in quantity and innovation of the painted and photographic portraits commissioned by Empress Dowager Cixi between the latter years of the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries, exceeded that of any other late Qing emperor or royal consort, and it is the diversity of gender references presented among them that is particularly distinctive. Through separating such a practice of ritualised “gender performance” into three stages, from 1) the ‘masculinised’ pose of “reading” appearing frequently in works of an earlier period, through 2) the gender-neutral divine imagery of dressing as a bodhisattva, to 3) the late-period feminised image of “dressing in front of the mirror”, the purpose of this paper is to explore how gender is shown in a late Qing empress’ portraiture, which is subject to multifarious changes dependent on different domestic and international political demands. The conclusion is that 1) on the international stage as set in the early years of the 20th century, the image of a late Qing empress dowager participated in the broader shaping of China’s national image as something weak, feminine and disempowered, and 2) the essential incompatibility of Chinese and Western visual cultures was a major factor in the failures of the projection of the image of late Qing China overseas.

Constructing Women of Martial Spirit through Translation: From the Thane’s Daughter to a Gallant Woman

A fad of cultivating Chinese women’s martial spirit was witnessed in late Qing China as a result of Chinese male elites’ effort to mobilize women in nation rejuvenation. Role models of female martial spirit were thus urgently needed. A prototypical woman of martial spirit was constructed by Lin Shu through translating The Thane’s Daughter, an imaginary history of lady Macbeth. Lin reframed the original from a tale about parenting to a biography of a self-constituting gallant woman. Also, the evil attributes of the heroine was deliberately covered, including her sinister appearance, her unfilial thoughts to her father and her ruthlessness to people surrounding her. Finally, features indicating her martial spirit were foregrounded, like masculinity, resoluteness and courage. To further highlight martial spirit, the translator established a contrast between martial spirit and gentleness. This paper therefore argues that translation, the media of introducing otherness may turn out to be a vehicle of self-imaging, especially when a certain image is desperately needed in the target culture.

Imaging and Inventing Self: Constructing Heroines Through Translation in Late Qing China

A fad for female heroism emerged in the late Qing China as women were urgently mobilized to undertake the mission of ‘strengthening the nation and preserving the race.’ However, women reaching the modern standards of heroines were almost absent in China. Western heroines were then introduced into China as exemplars for Chinese women to emulate. The story of Madame Roland, the most prestigious Western heroine at that time, was appropriated to the political ends. The male-coded virtues of her were highlighted in conformity to the standards of heroines in late Qing China: hero-worship, patriotism, political maternity and beauty. An ideal heroine was thus created through translation. As a prototype of heroine, she inspired a flood of localized Chinese heroines.

From an Angle to a Filial Daughter: Lin Shu’s Rewriting of Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop

Nell, the protagonist in The Old Curiosity Shop, is an angle but was translated into a filial daughter adhering to the Confucian doctrines by Lin Shu in late Qing China. The translator, Lin Shu reshaped Nell’s appearance, mental activities and behaviors to construct a role model of filial piety. Lin’s translation is actually rewriting. Such rewriting is necessary to fulfill his translation purposes: to defuse the national crisis by introducing beneficial elements from Western culture; to re-glorify the Confucian doctrines by proving that the Westerners upheld the same morality as those in traditional China. This paper thus argues that translation, the means of introducing foreign images, is a vehicle for Lin Shu to construct and imagine self-image.

The symbiosis of state and citizens: Yan Fu’s transformation of Chinese citizenship idea

ABSTRACT The article traces the Chinese conception of citizenship in imperial China and its modern transformation by looking into the socio-political thought of modern Chinese intellectual Yan Fu (1854–1921). It begins with an analysis of the Confucian-Legalist ruler-ruled relationship in imperial Chinese history, arguing that it is characterized by a hierarchical order among four different social groups to which Chinese are divided and collectively belong. After depicting the historical context of late Qing China in which Yan plays a vital role, the article further discusses Yan Fu’s transformation of Chinese citizenship idea based on cultural integration between Western and Chinese political thought. It introduces the idea of ‘symbiosis of the state and citizens’ to illustrate Yan’s vision of the Chinese citizenship model. The symbiotic relationship is characterized by 1), the endorsement of the liberty of individual min as citizens and the democracy of the state; 2), the interdependence and reciprocity between citizens and the Chinese state.

The State Formation of Late Qing China within Global Geopolitical Dynamics

AbstractThis article views the nineteenth-century Qing government's acceptance of modern state logics as a momentous occasion in the government-led modern state transition amid pressure from across the geopolitical landscape. In the process of this transition, the Qing government strove to adopt the rules of the interstate system, such as border demarcation and the system of international law, which were fine-tuned to the politico-economic expansion of the modern world-system. Perspective builds on theories of China's process of incorporation into the modern world-system; however, it is qualitatively different from previous approaches such as the impact-response approach or the colonial perspective in that it is based on an understanding of global geopolitics as a transnational entity and, as such, a unit of analysis. Global geopolitics first appeared in Western Europe, but as it expanded into non-European areas, its logics gradually became global logics that encompassed European and non-European practices alike. This paper makes two significant theoretical contributions. First, from a macroscopic perspective, it suggests that the global connected histories between Western Europe and China can be examined without excluding the distinctive dynamics of either Europe or China. Second, by using global geopolitics as a unit of analysis, it argues that the role of the Qing government is as important as the influence of Western colonial powers in the formation of the modern Chinese state. This approach challenges the Eurocentric perspective that considers European powers to be active and progressive and China to be passive and lethargic.