Empire, Nation, and Beyond

Empire, Nation, and Beyond

Chinese History in Late Imperial and Modern Times—A Festschrift in Honor of Frederic Wakeman (CRM 61)

Joseph W. Esherick, ed., Madeleine Zelin, ed., Wen-hsin Yeh, ed.

Publication date: 2006
ISBN-13 (print): 978-1-55729-084-7
ISBN-10 (print): 1-55729-084-9

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The essays in this collection, all by Frederic Wakeman's former students, approach the past with sensitivities to the dynamics of politics, the power of cultural or ideological norms, the complexities of local infrastructures and the significance of human choices. Reflecting the wide chronological range, thematic diversity, and methodological versatility of Wakeman's scholarship and mentoring, the essays traverse the broad terrain of late imperial and modern Chinese history.

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Title information

The essays in this collection, all by Frederic Wakeman's former students, approach the past with sensitivities to the dynamics of politics, the power of cultural or ideological norms, the complexities of local infrastructures and the significance of human choices. Part 1 sheds light on the inner workings of late imperial society. Part 2 addresses local patterns of profit-making and the role of the state. Part 3 looks at China's response to the West. Part 4 is about social history and the networks of patronage, community service, and family that characterized Chinese society. Part 5 examines the contested narratives of China's twentieth-century history.  

Contributors:
Sue Fawn Chung is associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, where she has served as director of international programs and chair of the department.
Mark C. Elliot is Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard University.
Robert Y. Eng is professor of history and department chair at the University of Redlands.
Joseph W. Esherick is professor of history and Hsiu Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
Linda Grove is professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University.
Lionel M. Jensen is associate professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame.
Melissa Macauley is associate professor of history and Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at  Northwestern University.
Jonathan Porter is professor of history at the University of New Mexico.
Richard Shek is professor of humanities and religious studies at California State University, Sacramento.
Ann Waltner is professor of history and director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.
Timothy Weston is associate professor of history at the University of Colorado.
Wen-hsin Yeh is Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Professor in History at the University of California, Berkeley.
Madeleine Zelin is professor of modern Chinese history and director of the East Asian National Resource Center at Columbia University.

 

Pages: 323
Language: English
Publisher: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
OCLC: 67922723

Joseph W. Esherick, ed.

Joseph W. Esherick is emeritus professor of modern Chinese history at the University of California, San Diego.

Education:

B.A. Harvard University, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Madeleine Zelin, ed.

Madeleine Zelin is Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies and professor of history at Columbia University.

Education:

B.A. Cornell University, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Wen-hsin Yeh, ed.

Wen-hsin Yeh is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She has served as the director of the Institute of East Asian Studies and the chair of the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley. She has edited and contributed to many IEAS publications, including Mobile Subjects; Mobile Horizons; History in Images; Cities in Motion; Empire, Nation, and Beyond; Cross-Cultural Readings of Chineseness; Landscape, Culture, and Space in Chinese Society; and Shanghai Sojourners.

Education:

B.A., History, National Taiwan University; M.A., History, University of Southern California; Ph.D., History, University of California, Berkeley

Empire, Nation, and Beyond

Contributors – vii
Introduction – 1

  1. Part I: Unofficial Accounts – 15
    1. Manchus as Ethnographic Subject in the Qing – 17
        Mark C. Elliott
  2. 2. Fictional and Real-Life Rulers: Journey to the West and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Monarchs – 38
        Richard Shek
  3. 3. The Disputation of the Body Snatchers: Scandal in Chinese Legal Culture – 58
        Melissa Macauley
  4. 4. Spatial Decorum, Transgression, and Displacement in Shen Fu's Six Records from a Floating Life – 78
        Ann Waltner
  5.  
  6. Part II: Politics in Economy – 103
  7. 5. Eastern Sichuan Coal Mines in the Late Qing – 105
        Madeleine Zelin
  8. 6. Rural Commercialization, Polder Reclamation, and Social Transformation in Modern China – 123
        Robert Y. Eng
  9. 7. "Native" and "Foreign": Discourses on Economic Nationalism and Market Practice in Twentieth-Century North China – 149
        Linda Grove
  10.  
  11. Part III: Beyond the Binary – 167
  12. 8. Shards of Ming: Culture and Improvisation in Enterprises Great and Small – 169
        Lionel M. Jenson
  13. 9. Terror and War at the Turn of Two Centuries: The Boxer Crisis Revisited – 192
        Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
  14.  
  15. Part IV: Enduring Networks – 211
  16. 10. The Culture of Patronage in Early Nineteenth-Century China: Ruan Yuan's Circle at Canton – 213
        Jonathan Porter
  17. 11. The Zhigongtang in the United States, 1860–1949 – 231
        Sue Fawn Chung
  18. 12. Two Generations of a Chinese Family – 250
        Joseph W. Esherick
  19.  
  20. Part V: Contesting Narratives – 273
  21. 13. Beijing University as a Contested Symbol – 275
        Timothy B. Weston
  22. 14. History in Modernity: The May Fourth Movement and Shanghai – 292
        Wen-hsin Yeh
  23.  
  24. Index – 309

 

JOURNAL REVIEWS

"The ten original and four republished contributions of this festschrift reveal much about Wakeman's influence on the contributors who–according to the editors–"cohere in their endeavour to look beyond the obvious ... to consider the weight of documented evidence and to make a case through a methodical teasing out of the inherent logic" (p. 13) of their historical sources. And indeed the volume coheres with its ideas about how to write history. That is why the reader comes to appreciate this book...by what it tells us about the discipline of modern Chinese history." ~Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, in The China Quarterly (http://www.jstor.org/stable/20192185)

"This collection of essays, by fourteen distinguished students of Fred Wakeman, appeared only shortly before his untimely death, which itself came very soon after his retirement. One imagines he must have felt both honoured and gratified at the superior level and broad range of scholarship on display, qualities that aptly reflect and refract his own scholarly endeavours....The usual misgivings about the uneven quality of festschrifts and of essay collections more generally are completely misplaced here. The essays are individually and collectively strong....[T]he single thread that binds them together is perhaps the heritage of Wakeman's eclectic and acute spirit of enquiry....This book adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. It is an apt monument to Professor Wakeman, and its essays will be read and cited for some years to come. Its wide coverage and innovative scholarship should attract attention well beyond the field of Chinese History." ~Joanna Waley-Cohen, New York University, in China Review (http://www.jstor.org/stable/23462270)