Issues in the History of Late-Imperial China

1

Department of History,

University of British Columbia

History 560

Issues in the History of Late-Imperial China

Winter 2015

Syllabus

Timothy Brook

Thursday 9-11, Buchanan Tower 1207

office hours Tuesday and Wednesday 1-2

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to some of the issues in the history of late-imperial China as it is studied in the West. Behind these themes and problems lie assumptions about state, society, economy, religion, and gender (among other concepts) that are worth makingexplicit in order to better understand how our categories and methods have shaped, and interfered with, ouranalysis of China’s imperial past. Each week we will focus on one piece of the conceptual terrain of Chinese history as it has been practised in the West, asking what kinds of question tend to rattle around in the heads of China historians, and what do we need to reflect on in order to separate out what we (you) still find useful. Our focus this year is on the political formations of the Chinese state and its relations to the larger world.

Weeks 3 and 4are orientational to the field, the first in a historical sense, thesecond in an analytical sense. Thereafter we will proceed by topics arranged in a loosely chronological fashion.

Our readings are taken from the recent secondary literature. Some of the readings may be been placed on reserve at Koerner Library; some will be posted on the Department website. For those without much background in late-imperial Chinese history, chapters from Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), and William Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) will be indicated for certain weeks.

Grading for the course will be based on:

● weekly two-page commentaries, beginning inWeeks 2, to be handed in at the start of class (20%);

● in-class presentations and discussion (20%);

● a critical paper of roughly 15 pages that explores a historiographical problem, written either as a survey of the field or as a working-out of that problem in relation to one or more historical documents,due December 5 (60%).

Topics and Readings

Week 3 (Sept 24)Writing the history of the other

G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover, 1956), pp. 103-113, 160-167.

Edward Said Orientalism, pp. 1-14.

Timothy Brook and Gregory Blue, China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), introduction,chs.3-4.

Nicolas Standaert, “Methodology in View of Contact between Cultures: The China Case in the 17th Century,” CSRCS Occasional Paper 11 (Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002).

Timothy Brook, “Europaeology? On the Difficulty of Assembling a Knowledge of Europe in China,” in Christianity and Cultures, ed. AntoniUçerler (Rome: InstitutumHistoricumSocietatisIesu, 2009), pp. 269-293.

Week 4 (Oct 1)Social theory from both directions

R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), Introduction andch. 1 (pp. 1-8, 13-32).

-----, “Reflections on Qing Institutions of Governance: Chinese Empire in Comparative Perspective,”Crossroads 5 (April 201), pp. 103-114.

Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence (Princeton University Press, 2000), Intro. andch.1.

Zhenping Wang, Ambassadors from the Isles of the Immortals, ch. 10.

Week 5 (Oct 8)The Mongol origins of late-imperial China

The Troubled Empire, chs. 2, 4.

Michal Biran, “The Mongol Transformation: From the Steppe to Eurasian Empire,” Medieval Encounters 10(2004), pp. 339-361.

David Sneath, The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (Columba University Press, 2007), pp. 1-11, 59-64, 181-186.

David Robinson, Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia under the Mongols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 15-25, 48-60, 269-289.

-----, “The Ming Court and the Legacy of the Yan Mongols,” in his Culture, Courtiers, and Com-petition: The Ming Court (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), ch. 8.

Week 6 (Oct 15) Working from artifacts– guest interlocutor: Fuyubi Nakamura

This session will be held at the Museum of Anthropology.

The Troubled Empire, ch. 8.

Craig Clunas, “Oriental Antiquities/Far Eastern Art,” positions 2:2 (1994), pp. 318-355.

Carla Nappi, “Surface Tension: Objectifying Ginseng in Early Chinese Modernity,” in Early Modern Things, ed. Paula Findlen (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), pp. 33-52.

Timothy Brook, “Something New,” in Early Modern Things, pp. 369-374.

-----, “Our Very Own Chinese Postcards from Hell,” in Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture, ed. Maria Pia Di Bella and James Elkins (New York: Routledge, 2013), 108-121.

Week 7 (Oct 22) The Ming dynasty and the maritime world

The Troubled Empire, chs. 5, 9.

TansenSen, “The Impact of Zheng He’s Expeditions on Indian Ocean Interactions,” forthcoming in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (Toronto: Penguin, 2008) especially chs. 4-7.

-----, Mr Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer (Toronto: Anansi, 2013), especiallychs. 5-8.

*Week 8 (Oct 29) Environmental crisis

The Troubled Empire, chs. 1, 3, 10.

Robert Marks, China: Its Environment and History (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012), ch. 5.

Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War Climate Change, and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

J.R. McNeill, “China’s Environmental History in World Perspective,” in Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History,ed. Mark Elvin and Liu Ts’ui-jung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 31-49.

Week 9 (Nov 5) The New Qing history

China’s Last Empire, Introduction, chs. 1-2.

Mark Elliott,The Manchu Way(Stanford University Press).

Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), Introduction, chs. 1, 3 (pp. 1-49, 81-100).

Week 10 (Nov 12)The tribute system and inter-polity relations

China’s Last Empire, ch.5.

Jiang Yonglin, The Mandate of Heaven and the Great Ming Code (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), ch. 4.

David Kang, East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010),chs. 1-2, 4, 8.

Yuan-kang Wang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), chs.1, 5-6.

LhamsurenMunkh-Erdene, “The 1640 Great Code: An Inner Asian Parallel to the Treaty of Westphalia.”Central Asian Survey 29:3 (September 2010), pp. 269–288.

Nicola di Cosmo, “Kirghiz Nomads on the Qing frontier: Tribute, Trade, or Gift Exchange?,” in Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, ch. 11, on-line @ UBC Library.

Week 11 (Nov 19) Tibet and the Manchu empire

China’s Last Empire, ch. 3.

Timothy Brook, “Tibet and the Chinese World-Empire,” in Empires and Autonomy, ed. Stephen Streeter et al. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), pp. 24-40.

Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

Peter Schwieger, The Dalai Lama and the Emperor of China: A Political History of the Tibetan Institution of Reincarnation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), chs. 1, 7.

Patricia Berger, Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), Introduction, chs. 1, 6 (pp. 1-33, 167-197).

Natalie Köhle, “Why Did the Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai Shan?” Late Imperial China 29:1 (June 2008), online @ UBC Library.

*Week 12 (Nov 26)European imperialism and the Manchu empire

China’s Last Empire, chs. 6, 9.

James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995).

Rune Svarverud, International Law as World Order in Late Imperial China: Translation, Reception and Discovery 1847-1911(Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Lydia Liu, “The Semiotic Turn of International Politics,” in her The Clash of Empires (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), ch. 1.

Week 13 (Dec 3) Living with the late-imperial past – guest interlocutor: Tim Cheek

China’s Last Empire, ch. 10 and Conclusion

Yuan-kang Wang, Harmony and War, ch. 7.

Edward Wang, “Beyond East and West: Antiquarianism, Evidential Learning and Global Trends in Historical Study,” Journal of World History 19:4 (Dec 2008), pp. 489-519.

GeZhaoguang, ZhaizaiZhongguo(or other reading).