Abstract The earliest pieces of knowledge and research on China in Poland reflected development of Sinological studies in Western Europe. Being located on the sidelines of trade routes through which Eastern ideas and goods reached Western Europe, Poles used to get their information about China mostly from intermediaries: medieval travelers, merchants, and envoys, and since the sixteenth century, letters, writings, and books by Jesuit missionaries. The Poles contributed the very first comprehensive description of Chinese flora, and were important in spreading mathematical knowledge among Chinese scientists. A Pole established Monumenta Serica, still published today, and another Pole applied formal logic to the research of Chinese classical texts for the very first time. Despite all that, regular Sinological research in Poland did not take off until the twentieth century, and even then it was interrupted by political upheaval in Poland and by researchers’ fight either for freedom or with ideology.
{"title":"Chinese Studies in Poland: History and Current Perspectives","authors":"Katarzyna Sarek","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.22","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The earliest pieces of knowledge and research on China in Poland reflected development of Sinological studies in Western Europe. Being located on the sidelines of trade routes through which Eastern ideas and goods reached Western Europe, Poles used to get their information about China mostly from intermediaries: medieval travelers, merchants, and envoys, and since the sixteenth century, letters, writings, and books by Jesuit missionaries. The Poles contributed the very first comprehensive description of Chinese flora, and were important in spreading mathematical knowledge among Chinese scientists. A Pole established Monumenta Serica, still published today, and another Pole applied formal logic to the research of Chinese classical texts for the very first time. Despite all that, regular Sinological research in Poland did not take off until the twentieth century, and even then it was interrupted by political upheaval in Poland and by researchers’ fight either for freedom or with ideology.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"613 - 630"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42524607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
By investigating a one thousandth national execution quota issued in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–1953), the article explores an aspect of Maoist politics that has largely escaped mainstream scholarship on Mao, the CCP, and PRC history. It shows how the newly created Maoist regime sought to eliminate its political enemy based on a specific demographic estimate of one thousandth. Tracing the roots of this quantification of political enemies into Mao's class-analysis theory back to the 1920s and explaining other political campaigns throughout the 1950s as continuations of the party's use of this method, the article argues that quantitative concepts and relations were important instruments in Maoist ideology, the CCP's political strategy and the working of the party-state. By proposing a concept of “quotacide,” the article identifies an ignored type of large-scale, ideologically based, and politically driven homicide in the history of political violence. The article also brings in similar quantitative policies of political suppression in other authoritarian party-states such as the Soviet Union (the 1930s) and North Vietnam (the 1950s) in this context.
{"title":"Quota, Class, and Political Violence in Mao's China","authors":"Yinghong Cheng","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.43","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 By investigating a one thousandth national execution quota issued in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–1953), the article explores an aspect of Maoist politics that has largely escaped mainstream scholarship on Mao, the CCP, and PRC history. It shows how the newly created Maoist regime sought to eliminate its political enemy based on a specific demographic estimate of one thousandth. Tracing the roots of this quantification of political enemies into Mao's class-analysis theory back to the 1920s and explaining other political campaigns throughout the 1950s as continuations of the party's use of this method, the article argues that quantitative concepts and relations were important instruments in Maoist ideology, the CCP's political strategy and the working of the party-state. By proposing a concept of “quotacide,” the article identifies an ignored type of large-scale, ideologically based, and politically driven homicide in the history of political violence. The article also brings in similar quantitative policies of political suppression in other authoritarian party-states such as the Soviet Union (the 1930s) and North Vietnam (the 1950s) in this context.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42808030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay explores the interlocking roles of science and religion in Sino-Western exchanges by examining China's encounter with Jesuit mathematics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It first focuses on late Ming by studying the joint translation of Euclidean geometry by high-ranking scholar-official Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). Then it studies how this encounter affected later literati-scholars, with a special attention to Mei Wending (1633–1721), the leading mathematical astronomer of early Qing. I argue that Xu's appropriation of Western mathematics not only helped strengthen the basis of Confucian statecraft in the milieu of late Ming crisis but also contributed to later reconstruction and renaissance of Chinese classical tradition through Qing-dynasty evidential studies. Far from predetermined, this cross-cultural encounter represents a trial-and-error process of contested accommodation dictated by different personal agendas, changing socio-political circumstances, evolving intellectual trends as well as shifting global balance of power.
{"title":"Science, Religion and Sino-Western Exchanges: Literati-Jesuit Translation of Euclidean Geometry and Its Reception from Late Ming to Mid-Qing","authors":"Wensheng Wang","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.38","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay explores the interlocking roles of science and religion in Sino-Western exchanges by examining China's encounter with Jesuit mathematics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It first focuses on late Ming by studying the joint translation of Euclidean geometry by high-ranking scholar-official Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). Then it studies how this encounter affected later literati-scholars, with a special attention to Mei Wending (1633–1721), the leading mathematical astronomer of early Qing. I argue that Xu's appropriation of Western mathematics not only helped strengthen the basis of Confucian statecraft in the milieu of late Ming crisis but also contributed to later reconstruction and renaissance of Chinese classical tradition through Qing-dynasty evidential studies. Far from predetermined, this cross-cultural encounter represents a trial-and-error process of contested accommodation dictated by different personal agendas, changing socio-political circumstances, evolving intellectual trends as well as shifting global balance of power.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42186223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Culture of Language in Ming China: Sound, Script, and the Redefinition of Boundaries of Knowledge By Nathan Vedal. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. pp. ix+321. $140.00 (cloth).","authors":"Ori Sela","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.42","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.42","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"249 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49328724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article uses a case study of the Qin Empire to explore the ecology of an agrarian political system, analysis that has become possible because of the archaeological excavation of Qin administrative documents. Qin's power derived from photosynthesis, and its empire mobilized this energy and used it to conquer territory and expand its productivity. The state's power was based on its ability to extract taxes in grain from its subjects, store it in granaries, and then use it to feed laborers working on state projects. Grain and most other taxable materials were too bulky to move very far, so the government relied on a subcontinent-wide system of information gathering and processing that allowed officials at the capital to make decisions about local resource use. Qin's centralized bureaucratic system became the standard model of political organization in China, so it offers clues into the effects subsequent empires would have on their environments.
{"title":"Making Use of the Land: The Political Ecology of China's First Empire","authors":"B. Lander","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.19","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article uses a case study of the Qin Empire to explore the ecology of an agrarian political system, analysis that has become possible because of the archaeological excavation of Qin administrative documents. Qin's power derived from photosynthesis, and its empire mobilized this energy and used it to conquer territory and expand its productivity. The state's power was based on its ability to extract taxes in grain from its subjects, store it in granaries, and then use it to feed laborers working on state projects. Grain and most other taxable materials were too bulky to move very far, so the government relied on a subcontinent-wide system of information gathering and processing that allowed officials at the capital to make decisions about local resource use. Qin's centralized bureaucratic system became the standard model of political organization in China, so it offers clues into the effects subsequent empires would have on their environments.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"1 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45638793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making the Palace Machine Work: Mobilizing People Objects and Nature in the Qing Empire Edited by Martina Siebert, Kai Jun Chen, and Dorothy Ko. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. 334 pp. € 117 (cloth)","authors":"Aurelia Campbell","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.26","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"241 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48515020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Studies of Chinese maritime history have overwhelmingly focused on the southeastern coast, an area roughly comprising the provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong. Some works have extended the focus to the diaspora from this area in Southeast Asia and beyond. In contrast, the extensive northern coastline has occupied a much smaller position in historiography. Yet, its importance to China ’ s maritime development has been severely underestimated. Ma Guang has written the first serious English-language study of this littoral space. In doing so, he seeks to correct the “ Southeast China centrism ” of historiography on the maritime zone (162). Centering his narrative upon the Shandong and Liaodong Peninsulas, which are situated next to the Yellow Sea in close proximity to one another, and containing the inner sea of Bo Hai, he traces their extensive connections with Northeast Asia and the rest of the Chinese coast. He further examines the area ’ s evolution from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, shedding light on both continuities and ruptures in the policies of the terres-trial state under the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. The book contains three distinct but interrelated components. The first section deals with trade and tribute missions. Ma shows that commercial exchange constituted an important component of Shandong ’ s maritime connections during the Yuan period. Domestic coastal routes flourished, as products such as ceramics from kilns in Hebei traveled from Dengzhou, Penglai, and elsewhere in coastal Shandong to southern ports, such as Quanzhou, for re-export
{"title":"Rupture, Evolution and Continuity: The Shandong Peninsula in East Asian Maritime History During the Yuan-Ming Transition East Asian Maritime History 16. By Ma Guang. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. xii + 230 pp. €68.00; $92.00","authors":"X. Hang","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.35","url":null,"abstract":"Studies of Chinese maritime history have overwhelmingly focused on the southeastern coast, an area roughly comprising the provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong. Some works have extended the focus to the diaspora from this area in Southeast Asia and beyond. In contrast, the extensive northern coastline has occupied a much smaller position in historiography. Yet, its importance to China ’ s maritime development has been severely underestimated. Ma Guang has written the first serious English-language study of this littoral space. In doing so, he seeks to correct the “ Southeast China centrism ” of historiography on the maritime zone (162). Centering his narrative upon the Shandong and Liaodong Peninsulas, which are situated next to the Yellow Sea in close proximity to one another, and containing the inner sea of Bo Hai, he traces their extensive connections with Northeast Asia and the rest of the Chinese coast. He further examines the area ’ s evolution from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, shedding light on both continuities and ruptures in the policies of the terres-trial state under the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. The book contains three distinct but interrelated components. The first section deals with trade and tribute missions. Ma shows that commercial exchange constituted an important component of Shandong ’ s maritime connections during the Yuan period. Domestic coastal routes flourished, as products such as ceramics from kilns in Hebei traveled from Dengzhou, Penglai, and elsewhere in coastal Shandong to southern ports, such as Quanzhou, for re-export","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"234 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44509850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article relies on reports written by Swiss diplomats during the Cultural Revolution in Beijing to discuss how they experienced the Cultural Revolution, and how the violence and chaos that they witnessed in 1966 and 1967 affected their mental health. Switzerland's importance as a hub for China in Western Europe meant that the Swiss diplomats were not harmed by the Red Guards. As a result, the Swiss diplomats gained a unique perspective among Beijing's foreign diplomats, observing and documenting the Cultural Revolution in fascinating detail in their reports to Bern. However, while they were protected from outright violence, they struggled with the helplessness they felt in the face of Red Guard brutality, being forced to witness the suffering of their colleagues and employees, traumatizing some of them to such an extent that they had to leave Beijing.
{"title":"Worse than Hitler and Nazi Germany: Swiss Diplomats and the Cultural Revolution","authors":"A. Knüsel","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.13","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article relies on reports written by Swiss diplomats during the Cultural Revolution in Beijing to discuss how they experienced the Cultural Revolution, and how the violence and chaos that they witnessed in 1966 and 1967 affected their mental health. Switzerland's importance as a hub for China in Western Europe meant that the Swiss diplomats were not harmed by the Red Guards. As a result, the Swiss diplomats gained a unique perspective among Beijing's foreign diplomats, observing and documenting the Cultural Revolution in fascinating detail in their reports to Bern. However, while they were protected from outright violence, they struggled with the helplessness they felt in the face of Red Guard brutality, being forced to witness the suffering of their colleagues and employees, traumatizing some of them to such an extent that they had to leave Beijing.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48108209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The history of French Sinology—that is, of scholarly research on things Chinese by French-speaking authors working from Chinese sources—goes back to the seventeenth century and can be divided into several periods determined in large part by sociopolitical factors, and marked by different approaches and emphases: I propose to describe them as the missionary age (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries); the first academic efflorescence (nineteenth century); the advent of field research and the impact of colonialism and the social sciences (first half of twentieth century); and the postwar era of specialization and internationalization (second half of twentieth century), which marked the end of a certain French domination of Chinese studies in the West.1
{"title":"French Sinology","authors":"Pierre-Étienne Will","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.27","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The history of French Sinology—that is, of scholarly research on things Chinese by French-speaking authors working from Chinese sources—goes back to the seventeenth century and can be divided into several periods determined in large part by sociopolitical factors, and marked by different approaches and emphases: I propose to describe them as the missionary age (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries); the first academic efflorescence (nineteenth century); the advent of field research and the impact of colonialism and the social sciences (first half of twentieth century); and the postwar era of specialization and internationalization (second half of twentieth century), which marked the end of a certain French domination of Chinese studies in the West.1","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"525 - 574"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44770034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In the second half of the twentieth century, Czechoslovak Sinology gained international recognition and, beginning in the late 1970s, has sometimes been referred to as the “Prague School of Sinology.” This paper will contextualize the achievements of Czechoslovak Sinologists in the broader historical context of the study of China, in the end summarizing the present situation in the Czech Republic. It discusses both Czechoslovak and Czech Sinology as the product of a specific intellectual environment that has nourished academic interest in China and shaped a specific understanding of what “Sinology” (side by side with other “Oriental studies”) means, including its situatedness in specific moments of history.
{"title":"Czecho(slovak) Sinology","authors":"O. Lomová","doi":"10.1017/jch.2022.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2022.7","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the second half of the twentieth century, Czechoslovak Sinology gained international recognition and, beginning in the late 1970s, has sometimes been referred to as the “Prague School of Sinology.” This paper will contextualize the achievements of Czechoslovak Sinologists in the broader historical context of the study of China, in the end summarizing the present situation in the Czech Republic. It discusses both Czechoslovak and Czech Sinology as the product of a specific intellectual environment that has nourished academic interest in China and shaped a specific understanding of what “Sinology” (side by side with other “Oriental studies”) means, including its situatedness in specific moments of history.","PeriodicalId":15316,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese History","volume":"7 1","pages":"443 - 461"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46620803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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