Borders of Chinese Civilization

Borders of Chinese Civilization
Author: Douglas Howland
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1996-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822382032

D. R. Howland explores China’s representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century and, in so doing, examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbors. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, he undertakes an unprecedented analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan—the travel diary, poetry, and the geographical treatise. In his discussion of the practice of “brushtalk,” in which Chinese scholars communicated with the Japanese by exchanging ideographs, Howland further shows how the Chinese viewed the communication of their language and its dominant modes—history and poetry—as the textual and cultural basis of a shared civilization between the two societies. With Japan’s decision in the 1870s to modernize and westernize, China’s relationship with Japan underwent a crucial change—one that resulted in its decisive separation from Chinese civilization and, according to Howland, a destabilization of China’s worldview. His examination of the ways in which Chinese perceptions of Japan altered in the 1880s reveals the crucial choice faced by the Chinese of whether to interact with Japan as “kin,” based on geographical proximity and the existence of common cultural threads, or as a “barbarian,” an alien force molded by European influence. By probing China’s poetic and expository modes of portraying Japan, Borders of Chinese Civilization exposes the changing world of the nineteenth century and China’s comprehension of it. This broadly appealing work will engage scholars in the fields of Asian studies, Chinese literature, history, and geography, as well as those interested in theoretical reflections on travel or modernism.

Great State

Great State
Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2019-09-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782833471

China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, it has maintained them for the eight centuries since. Even the European colonial powers at the height of their power could not move past coastal enclaves. Thus, China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism. But, despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders from the steppe and the challenges posed by foreign traders and imperialists. Indeed, its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese. Timothy Brook examines China's relationship with the world from the Yuan through to the present by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met and meets the world. Bureaucrats, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, invaders, migrant workers, traitors, and visionaries: this is a history of China as no one has told it before.

The Way of the Barbarians

The Way of the Barbarians
Author: Shao-yun Yang
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-10-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295746017

Shao-yun Yang challenges assumptions that the cultural and socioeconomic watershed of the Tang-Song transition (800–1127 CE) was marked by a xenophobic or nationalist hardening of ethnocultural boundaries in response to growing foreign threats. In that period, reinterpretations of Chineseness and its supposed antithesis, “barbarism,” were not straightforward products of political change but had their own developmental logic based in two interrelated intellectual shifts among the literati elite: the emergence of Confucian ideological and intellectual orthodoxy and the rise of neo-Confucian (daoxue) philosophy. New discourses emphasized the fluidity of the Chinese-barbarian dichotomy, subverting the centrality of cultural or ritual practices to Chinese identity and redefining the essence of Chinese civilization and its purported superiority. The key issues at stake concerned the acceptability of intellectual pluralism in a Chinese society and the importance of Confucian moral values to the integrity and continuity of the Chinese state. Through close reading of the contexts and changing geopolitical realities in which new interpretations of identity emerged, this intellectual history engages with ongoing debates over relevance of the concepts of culture, nation, and ethnicity to premodern China.

Frontier Encounters

Frontier Encounters
Author: Franck Billé
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2012-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1906924872

China and Russia are rising economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite their proximity, their interactions with each other - and with their third neighbour Mongolia - are rarely discussed. Although the three countries share a boundary, their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Frontier Encounters presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It sheds light on global uncertainties: China's search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia's fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity
Author: Nicola Di Cosmo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1284
Release: 2018-04-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108547001

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity offers an integrated picture of Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppes during a formative period of world history. In the half millennium between 250 and 750 CE, settled empires underwent deep structural changes, while various nomadic peoples of the steppes (Huns, Avars, Turks, and others) experienced significant interactions and movements that changed their societies, cultures, and economies. This was a transformational era, a time when Roman, Persian, and Chinese monarchs were mutually aware of court practices, and when Christians and Buddhists criss-crossed the Eurasian lands together with merchants and armies. It was a time of greater circulation of ideas as well as material goods. This volume provides a conceptual frame for locating these developments in the same space and time. Without arguing for uniformity, it illuminates the interconnections and networks that tied countless local cultural expressions to far-reaching inter-regional ones.

The Early Chinese Empires

The Early Chinese Empires
Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2010-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674057341

In 221 bc the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia. The Qin and Han constitute the "classical period" of Chinese history--a role played by the Greeks and Romans in the West. Mark Edward Lewis highlights the key challenges faced by the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity of peoples. He traces the drastic measures taken to transcend, without eliminating, these regional differences: the invention of the emperor as the divine embodiment of the state; the establishment of a common script for communication and a state-sponsored canon for the propagation of Confucian ideals; the flourishing of the great families, whose domination of local society rested on wealth, landholding, and elaborate kinship structures; the demilitarization of the interior; and the impact of non-Chinese warrior-nomads in setting the boundaries of an emerging Chinese identity. The first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, The Early Chinese Empires illuminates many formative events in China's long history of imperialism--events whose residual influence can still be discerned today.

Borders of Chinese Civilization

Borders of Chinese Civilization
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:

DIVD. R. Howland explores China & rsquo;s representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century and, in so doing, examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbors. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, he undertakes an unprecedented analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan & mdash;the travel diary, poetry, and the geographical treatise. In his discussion of the practice of & ldquo;brushtalk, & rdquo; in which Chinese scholars communicated with the Japanese by exchanging ideographs, Howland further shows how the Chinese viewed the communication of their language and its dominant modes & mdash;history and poetry & mdash;as the textual and cultural basis of a shared civilization between the two societies. With Japan & rsquo;s decision in the 1870s to modernize and westernize, China & rsquo;s relationship with Japan underwent a crucial change & mdash;one that resulted in its decisive separation from Chinese civilization and, according to Howland, a destabilization of China & rsquo;s worldview. His examination of the ways in which Chinese perceptions of Japan altered in the 1880s reveals the crucial choice faced by the Chinese of whether to interact with Japan as & ldquo;kin, & rdquo; based on geographical proximity and the existence of common cultural threads, or as a & ldquo;barbarian, & rdquo; an alien force molded by European influence. By probing China & rsquo;s poetic and expository modes of portraying Japan, Borders of Chinese Civilization exposes the changing world of the nineteenth century and China & rsquo;s comprehension of it. This broadly appealing work will engage scholars in the fields of Asian studies, Chinese literature, history, and geography, as well as those interested in theoretical reflections on travel or modernism. /div

Re-understanding Japan

Re-understanding Japan
Author: Lu Yan
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2004-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780824827304

To many Chinese, the rise and expansion of Japanese power during the years between the two Sino-Japanese wars (1895–1945) presented a paradox: With its successful modernization, Japan became a model to be emulated; yet as the country’s imperial ambitions on the continent grew, it posed an ever-increasing threat. Drawing on an extraordinary array of source materials, Lu Yan shows that this attraction to and apprehension of Japan prompted the Chinese to engage in a variety of long-term relationships with the Japanese. Re-understanding Japan examines transnational and transcultural interactions between China and Japan during those five dramatic and tragic decades at the intimate level of personal lives and behavior. At the center of Lu’s inquiry are four diverse yet significant case studies: military strategist Jiang Baili, literary critic and essayist Zhou Zuoren, Guomindang leader Dai Jitao, and romantic poet turned Communist Guo Moruo. In their public and private lives, these influential Chinese formed lasting ties with Japan and the Japanese. While their writings reached the Chinese public through the print mass media and served to enhance popular understanding of Japan and its culture, their activities in political, cultural, and diplomatic affairs paralleledsignificant turns in Sino-Japanese relations. Based on archival documents, personal memoirs, correspondence, interviews, and contemporary literary works, Re-understanding Japan delineates diverse approaches in Chinese efforts to engage Japan in China’s modern reforms.

States, Nations and Borders

States, Nations and Borders
Author: Allen Buchanan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2003-03-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521525756

This volume examines comparatively the views and principles of seven prominent ethical traditions on one of the most pressing issues of modern politics - the making and unmaking of state and national boundaries. The traditions represented are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, natural law, Confucianism, liberalism and international law. Each contributor, an expert within one of these traditions, shows how that tradition can handle the five dominant methods of altering state and national boundaries: conquest, settlement, purchase, inheritance and secession. Written by a distinguished group of international specialists this volume is unique in providing both in-depth normative and comparative perspectives on a troubling question that will offer readers real insight into inter-tradition conflict. Those readers will range from upper-level undergraduates to scholars in such fields as philosophy, political science, international relations and comparative religion.

A History of Chinese Civilization

A History of Chinese Civilization
Author: Jacques Gernet
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 836
Release: 1996-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521497817

When published in 1982, this translation of Professor Jacques Gernet's masterly survey of the history and culture of China was immediately welcomed by critics and readers. This revised and updated edition makes it more useful for students and for the general reader concerned with the broad sweep of China's past.