China

The Qing period

Among works on the rise of the Qing dynasty are Robert H.G. Lee, The Manchurian Frontier in Ch’ing History (1970); Silas H.L. Wu, Communication and Imperial Control in China: Evolution of the Palace Memorial System, 1693–1735 (1970); and Frederic Wakeman, Jr., The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of the Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China, 2 vol. (1985).

Useful studies of early foreign relations include Chusei Suzuki, “China’s Relations with Inner Asia: The Hsiung-nu, Tibet,” pp. 180–197 in John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Chinese World Order (1968); Antonio S. Rosso, Apostolic Legations to China of the Eighteenth Century (1948); and Marc Mancall, Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728 (1971).

Society and economy during the mid-Qing period are discussed in Chung-li Chang, The Chinese Gentry (1955, reprinted 1974); T’ung-tsu Chu, Local Government in China Under the Ch’ing (1962, reissued 1988); Madeleine Zelin, The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century Ch’ing China (1984); and Yeh-chien Wang, Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750–1911 (1973).

Among works on intellectual and cultural aspects are Ch’i-ch’ao Liang, Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, trans. by Immanuel C.Y. Hsu (1959); R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien-lung Era (1987); Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (2005); Cynthia J. Brocaw and Kai-wing Chow (eds.), Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China (2005); and Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, Education and Popular Literacy in Ch’ing China (1979).

Studies of the Qing’s dynastic degeneration include Jean Chesneaux (comp.), Secret Societies in China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1971; originally published in French, 1965); Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (1960, reprinted 1967); Gilbert Rozman (ed.), The Modernization of China (1981), an interdisciplinary study of China’s modernization between the Opium Wars and 1980; Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1794–1864 (1970, reprinted 1980); and Susan Naquin, Millenarian Rebellion in China: The Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813 (1976). A more revisionist treatment of the period is in William T. Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (2009).

External challenges to the Qing are surveyed in Masataka Banno, China and the West, 1858–1861: The Origins of the Tsungli Yamen (1964); Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (1964, reissued 1970); John K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 2 vol. (1953, reissued in 1 vol., 1969); Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations: The Diplomatic Phase, 1858–1880 (1960); Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (1976, reprinted 1997); and Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861 (1966, reprinted 1997).

Studies of the Taiping Rebellion include Vincent Y.C. Shih, The Taiping Ideology: Its Sources, Interpretations, and Influences (1967, reprinted 1972); Franz H. Michael and Chang Chung-li, The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents, 3 vol. (1966–71); and Albert Feuerwerker, Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century China (1975); and among those for the Nian Rebellion are Siang-tseh Chiang, The Nien Rebellion (1954, reprinted 1967); S.Y. Teng, The Nien Army and Their Guerrilla Warfare, 1851–1868 (1961, reprinted 1984); and Elizabeth J. Perry, Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845–1945 (1980).

Efforts on reform are discussed in Albert Feuerwerker, China’s Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsüan-huai (1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise (1958, reissued 1970); Yen-p’ing Hao, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China: Bridge Between East and West (1970); Paul A. Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T’ao and Reform in Late Ch’ing China (1974, reissued 1987); William T. Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889 (1984); Luke S.K. Kwong, A Mosaic of the Hundred Days: Personalities, Politics, and Ideas of 1898 (1984); and Kung-ch’uan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927 (1975).

Studies of the Boxer Rebellion include Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860–1870 (1963), and History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (1997); Victor Purcell, The Boxer Uprising (1963, reprinted 1974); and Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (1987). Kenneth G. Lieberthal Benjamin Elman Lynn White