Global History and New Polycentric Approaches

Global History and New Polycentric Approaches
Author: Manuel Perez Garcia
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2017-12-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 9811040532

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. Rethinking the ways global history is envisioned and conceptualized in diverse countries such as China, Japan, Mexico or Spain, this collections considers how global issues are connected with our local and national communities. It examines how the discipline had evolved in various historiographies, from Anglo Saxon to southern European, and its emergence in Asia with the rapid development of the Chinese economy motivation to legitimate the current uniqueness of the history and economy of the nation. It contributes to the revitalization of the field of global history in Chinese historiography, which have been dominated by national narratives and promotes a debate to open new venues in which important features such as scholarly mobility, diversity and internationalization are firmly rooted, putting aside national specificities. Dealing with new approaches on the use of empirical data by framing the proper questions and hypotheses and connecting western and eastern sources, this text opens a new forum of discussion on how global history has penetrated in western and eastern historiographies, moving the pivotal axis of analysis from national perspectives to open new venues of global history.

Tribute System and Rulership in Late Imperial China

Tribute System and Rulership in Late Imperial China
Author: Ralph Kauz
Publisher: V&R Unipress
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2022-04-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 3847014021

Demanding and offering tribute is a most common feature in human societies and nothing special to China. In the course of the development of Neolithic and later societies social classes have developed where persons who achieved superior positions first could demand 'presents' or tribute from neighboring societies they defeated and then, with the assistance of sturdy 'servants' from their own people. China was certainly no exception to that principle and one of the first terms for tax was thus 'gong', tribute. In China's early, 'feudatory' social system, tribute was demanded from lower political entities, and the mutual 'political' relations were already highly developed during the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BCE). This system of 'inner Chinese' relations became a sort of matrix when China expanded and achieved contact with countries which were more or less independent, and thus the 'tribute system' evolved. The individual case studies in this volume focus on the latest manifestations of the tribute system in late Imperial China.

Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers

Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers
Author: Robert J. Antony
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2010-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9888028111

Piracy and smuggling are as great a problem today as they were several hundreds of years ago. The studies in Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers, for the first time, carefully describe and critically analyze piracy and smuggling in the Greater China Seas region from the sixteenth century to the present. Because piracy and smuggling involve complex historical processes that are still evolving, to fully understand contemporary problems it is important to place them in larger historical and comparative perspectives. The essays in this book add significantly to the scholarship on East and Southeast Asian history, and in particular to the maritime history of the region we call the Greater China Seas. This is the first book to analyze the whole region from Japan to Southeast Asia as a single, integrated historical and geographical area. This book takes a radical departure from the standard terracentered histories to place the seas at the center rather than at the margins of our inquiries. By focusing on the water we are better able to stitch together the diverse histories of Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. The contributors to this anthology show that, although often dismissed as historically unimportant, pirates and smugglers have in fact played significant roles in the development of the modern world. Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers should appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in history and Asian studies, as well as to general readers interested in pirates and maritime history.

China’s War on Smuggling

China’s War on Smuggling
Author: Philip Thai
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 023154636X

Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium and weapons concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to nylon stockings and wristwatches trafficked in the People’s Republic, contests between state and smuggler have exerted a surprising but crucial influence on the political economy of modern China. Seeking to consolidate domestic authority and confront foreign challenges, states introduced tighter regulations, higher taxes, and harsher enforcement. These interventions sparked widespread defiance, triggering further coercive measures. Smuggling simultaneously threatened the state’s power while inviting repression that strengthened its authority. Philip Thai chronicles the vicissitudes of smuggling in modern China—its practice, suppression, and significance—to demonstrate the intimate link between illicit coastal trade and the amplification of state power. China’s War on Smuggling shows that the fight against smuggling was not a simple law enforcement problem but rather an impetus to centralize authority and expand economic controls. The smuggling epidemic gave Chinese states pretext to define legal and illegal behavior, and the resulting constraints on consumption and movement remade everyday life for individuals, merchants, and communities. Drawing from varied sources such as legal cases, customs records, and popular press reports and including diverse perspectives from political leaders, frontline enforcers, organized traffickers, and petty runners, Thai uncovers how different regimes policed maritime trade and the unintended consequences their campaigns unleashed. China’s War on Smuggling traces how defiance and repression redefined state power, offering new insights into modern Chinese social, legal, and economic history.

Global Study on Smuggling of Migrants 2018

Global Study on Smuggling of Migrants 2018
Author: United Nations
Publisher:
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2019-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789211303506

This study shows that migrant smuggling routes affect every part of the world. It is based on an extensive review of existing data and literature. The study presents detailed information about key smuggling routes, such as the magnitude, the profiles of smugglers and smuggled migrants, the modus operandi of smugglers and the risks that smuggled migrants face. It shows that smugglers use land, air and sea routes - and combinations of those - in their quest to profit from people's desire to improve their lives. Smugglers also expose migrants to a range of risks; violence, theft, exploitation, sexual violence, kidnapping and even death along many routes.

The Qing Opening to the Ocean

The Qing Opening to the Ocean
Author: Gang Zhao
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2013-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824837924

Did China drive or resist the early wave of globalization? Some scholars insist that China contributed nothing to the rise of the global economy that began around 1500. Others have placed China at the center of global integration. Neither side, though, has paid attention to the complex story of China’s maritime policies. Drawing on sources from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the West, this important new work systematically explores the evolution of imperial Qing maritime policy from 1684 to 1757 and sets its findings in the context of early globalization. Gang Zhao argues that rather than constrain private maritime trade, globalization drove it forward, linking the Song and Yuan dynasties to a dynamic world system. As bold Chinese merchants began to dominate East Asian trade, officials and emperors came to see private trade as the solution to the daunting economic and social challenges of the day. The ascent of maritime business convinced the Kangzi emperor to open the coast to international trade, putting an end to the tribute trade system. Zhao’s study details China’s unique contribution to early globalization, the pattern of which differs significantly from the European experience. It offers impressive insights into the rise of the Asian trade network, the emergence of Shanghai as Asia’s commercial hub, and the spread of a regional Chinese diaspora. To understand the place of China in the early modern world, how modernity came to China, and early globalization and the rise of the Asian trade network, The Qing Opening to the Ocean is essential reading.

The Canton Trade

The Canton Trade
Author: Paul A. Van Dyke
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2005-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9622097499

This study utilizes a wide range of new source materials to reconstruct the day-to-day operations of the port of Canton during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Using a bottom-up approach, it provides a fresh look at the successes and failures of the trade by focusing on the practices and procedures rather than on the official policies and protocols. The narrative, however, reads like a story as the author unravels the daily lives of all the players from sampan operators, pilots, compradors and linguists, to country traders, supercargoes, Hong merchants and customs officials. New areas to studies of this kind are covered as well, such as Armenians, junk traders and rice traders, all of whom played intricate roles in moving the commerce forward. The Canton Trade shows that contrary to popular belief, the trade was stable, predictable and secure, with many incentives built into the policies to encourage it to grow. The huge expansion of trade was, in fact, one of the factors that contributed to its collapse as the increase in revenues blinded government officials to the long-term deterioration of the lower administrative echelons. In the end, the system was toppled, but that happened mainly because it had already defeated itself. General readers and academicians interested in world and Asian history, trading companies, country trade, Hong merchants, and articles of trade will find much new and relevant information here.

Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Author: Vermeer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2022-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004488456

The history of China's Southeast coast has unusual features. For many centuries, overseas trade and migration, internal and external warfare, strong religious beliefs and receptiveness to foreign influences characterized this society of fiercely independent traders, fishermen and mountain farmers. The protracted struggle of Cheng Ch'eng- kung and the Southern Ming against the Ch'ing dynasty precipitated Fukien into a crisis, from which many chose to escape by emigration to the Philippines and Taiwan. Recovery was slow. ; The fourteen Western and Chinese contributors to this study focus on internal economic and social developments, overseas and religious change. From the rich Chinese and European source materials, a picture emerges of great regional diversity. Local interests and values were confronted by the central government's orthodox rule, and Western influences of Jesuits and traders. The Fukienese reaction to them produces fascinating insights into Chinese society, and a truly local history which may qualify our ideas on the Chinese Empire. REA sinologists, social and economic historians.

The Politics of Imagining Asia

The Politics of Imagining Asia
Author: Hui Wang
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2011-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674055195

One of China’s most influential intellectuals questions the validity of thinking about Chinese history and its legacy from a Western conceptual framework. Wang Hui argues that we need to more fully understand China’s past in order to imagine alternative ways of conceiving Asia and world order.

The Ming Maritime Trade Policy in Transition, 1368 to 1567

The Ming Maritime Trade Policy in Transition, 1368 to 1567
Author: Kangying Li
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9783447061728

The Ming maritime policy in transition, 1368-1567" is an unprecedented structural approach to one of the most puzzling phenomena in Chinese early modern history: the maritime trade prohibition from 1368 to 1567. This policy deliberately interdicted its own people from sailing abroad and prevented foreigners from entering China unless they were part of an official tribute mission. Other than treating this phenomenon as an isolated trade policy or defense strategy the author analyzes the policy against the general Chinese historical background from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. He approaches the policy as a superstructure established on the foundation of a compatible ideology, the social context, economic institutions and the political power landscape. The 200 years long process of the policy in transition is hence investigated as a 200 years course that witnessed the general transformation of the Ming ideological, social, economic and political structures. It is the historical undercurrent rather than spindrift that appeals to this book's historiography; it is a comprehensive study of the two particular centuries of the Ming society, of which the developments and characteristics have amazed not only historians.