Download or read book Writing World History in Late Ming China and the Perception of Maritime Asia written by Elke Papelitzky and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last century of China's Ming dynasty (1368-1644) saw many troubles and challenges from abroad. Pirates raided the coast, Europeans challenged the traditional world order of the tribute system, and the everlasting threat from the northern steppe people continued to raise concerns for the state. This climate of uncertainty resulted in many Ming literati discussing foreign countries. During the last decades of the Ming, seven authors wrote monographs that can be considered a form of early Chinese "world history." The authors describe the geography, the history, and the political systems of foreign countries and regions ranging from China's close neighbors Japan and Mongolia to more distant lands such as Mogadishu and Europe. This books by Elke Papelitzky studies each of the seven author's knowledge and perception of the world and focuses especially on the countries connected with China at the maritime border: Siam, Malacca, and Portugal, combining a close textual and paratextual analysis with a biographical study to understand why the authors wrote the texts the way they did. This is the first comprehensive introduction to these texts contributing to an understanding of late Ming historiography as well as the perception of foreign countries by late Ming scholars.

Download or read book Writing Pirates written by Yuanfei Wang and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines writings on China's oceanic piracy wars of the sixteenth century

Download or read book Writing Pirates written by Yuanfei Wang and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Writing Pirates, Yuanfei Wang connects Chinese literary production to emerging discourses of pirates and the sea. In the late Ming dynasty, so-called “Japanese pirates” raided southeast coastal China. Hideyoshi invaded Korea. Europeans sailed for overseas territories, and Chinese maritime merchants and emigrants founded diaspora communities in Southeast Asia. Travel writings, histories, and fiction of the period jointly narrate pirates and China’s Orient in maritime Asia. Wang shows that the late Ming discourses of pirates and the sea were fluid, ambivalent, and dialogical; they simultaneously entailed imperialistic and personal narratives of the “other”: foreigners, renegades, migrants, and marginalized authors. At the center of the discourses, early modern concepts of empire, race, and authenticity were intensively negotiated. Connecting late Ming literature to the global maritime world, Writing Pirates expands current discussions of Chinese diaspora and debates on Sinophone language and identity.

Download or read book Boundaries and Beyond written by Ng Chin-keong and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the concept of boundaries, physical and cultural, to understand the development of China’s maritime southeast in late Imperial times, and its interactions across maritime East Asia and the broader Asian Seas, these linked essays by a senior scholar in the field challenge the usual readings of Chinese history from the centre. After an opening essay which positions China’s southeastern coast within a broader view of maritime Asia, the first section of the book looks at boundaries, between “us” and “them”, Chinese and other, during this period. The second section looks at the challenges to such rigid demarcations posed by the state and existed in the status quo. The third section discusses movements of people, goods and ideas across national borders and cultural boundaries, seeing tradition and innovation as two contesting forces in a constant state of interaction, compromise and reconciliation. This approach underpins a fresh understanding of China’s boundaries and the distinctions that separate China from the rest of the world. In developing this theme, Ng Chin-keong draws on many years of writing and research in Chinese and European archives. Of interest to students of migration, of Chinese history, and of the long term perspective on relations between China and its region, Ng’s analysis provides a crucial background to the historical shared experience of the people in Asian maritime zones. The result is a novel way of approaching Chinese history, argued from the perspective of a fresh understanding of China’s relations with neighbouring territories and the populations residing there, and of the nature of tradition and its persistence in the face of changing circumstances.

Download or read book The Confusions of Pleasure written by Timothy Brook and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-05-18 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ming dynasty was the last great Chinese dynasty before the Manchu conquest in 1644. During that time, China, not Europe, was the center of the world: the European voyages of exploration were searching not just for new lands but also for new trade routes to the Far East. In this book, Timothy Brook eloquently narrates the changing landscape of life over the three centuries of the Ming (1368-1644), when China was transformed from a closely administered agrarian realm into a place of commercial profits and intense competition for status. The Confusions of Pleasure marks a significant departure from the conventional ways in which Chinese history has been written. Rather than recounting the Ming dynasty in a series of political events and philosophical achievements, it narrates this longue durée in terms of the habits and strains of everyday life. Peppered with stories of real people and their negotiations of a rapidly changing world, this book provides a new way of seeing the Ming dynasty that not only contributes to the scholarly understanding of the period but also provides an entertaining and accessible introduction to Chinese history for anyone.

Download or read book Global History in China written by Xin Fan and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ming China 1368 1644 written by John W. Dardess and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging, deeply informed book provides the first concise history of one of China's most important eras. Leading scholar John W. Dardess offers a thematically organized political, social, and economic exploration of China from 1368 to 1644. He examines how the Ming dynasty was able to endure for 276 years, illuminating Ming foreign relations and border control, the lives and careers of its sixteen emperors, its system of governance and the kinds of people who served it, its great class of literati, and finally the mass outlawry that, in unhappy conjunction with the Manchu invasions from outside, ended the once-mighty dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. The Ming witnessed the beginning of China's contact with the West, and its story will fascinate all readers interested in global as well as Asian history.

Download or read book The Ming Maritime Trade Policy in Transition 1368 to 1567 written by Kangying Li and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2010 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Ming World written by Kenneth M Swope and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 845 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ming World draws together scholars from all over the world to bring China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1662) to life, exploring recent scholarly trends and academic debates that highlight the dynamism of the Ming and its key place in the early modern world. The book is designed to replicate the structure of popular Ming-era unofficial histories that gathered information and gossip from a wide variety of fields and disciplines. Engaging with a broad array of primary and secondary sources, the authors build upon earlier scholarship while extending the field to embrace new theories, methodologies, and interpretive frameworks. It is divided into five thematically linked sections: Institutions, Ideas, Identities, Individuals, and Interactions. Unique in its breadth and scope, The Ming World is essential reading for scholars and postgraduates of early modern China, the history of East Asia and anyone interested in gaining a broader picture of the colorful Ming world and its inhabitants.

Download or read book China and the Silk Roads ca 100 BCE to 1800 CE written by Angela Schottenhammer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-14 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book investigates China’s relations to the outside world between ca. 100 BCE and 1800 CE. In contrast to most histories of the Silk Roads, the focus of this book clearly lies on the maritime Silk Road and on the period between Tang and high Qing, selecting aspects that have so far been neglected in research on the history of China’s relations with the outside world. The author examines, for example, issue of 'imperialism' in imperial China, the specific role of fanbing 蕃兵 (frontier tribal troops) during Song times, the interrelationship between maritime commerce, military expansion, and environmental factors during the Yuan, the question of whether or not early Ming China can be considered a (proto-)colonialist country, the role force and violence played during the Zheng He expeditions, and the significance the Asia-Pacific world possessed for late Ming and early Qing rulers.

Download or read book Ming Loyalists in Southeast Asia written by Claudine Salmon and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to attain a panoramic view of the Ming loyalists who, after the rise of the Qing in 1644, settled in various port cities of what is today Vietnam and the Malay World, this study seeks to make use of various European and Asian sources such as travelogs, commercial records, genealogies, inscriptions, old maps, drawings, and archaeological findings as well as researches focused on a few leading Chinese figures. The first chapter, after analyzing how some European observers perceived the Ming refugees, tries to provide a diachronic view of the various migratory waves lasting for more than forty years, and their geographical distribution. The second chapter emphasizes some communities, for which the documentation is rather rich, to investigate the strategies used by the loyalists to adjust to the local environment. This includes the part their leaders played in the host countries, their contribution to urbanization, their attempts to solve local political issues, their role in the development of agriculture and Asian maritime trade, thanks to their close contacts with the Zheng state in Taiwan, but also to their connections with European companies. The third and last chapter considers the eventual posthumous fame of these loyalists within Southeast Asia and abroad, especially in Europe during the 18th century and even later, and more recently in the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and in South China, where some loyalist heroes have been given pride of place in local history, and also in historical fiction. The appendices offer an insight into the concerns of a few Ming loyalist leaders and the manner in which they expressed themselves, by presenting some of their writings.

Download or read book Remapping the World in East Asia written by Mario Cams and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2024-02-29 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When European missionaries arrived in East Asia in the sixteenth century, they entered ongoing conversations about cosmology and world geography. Soon after, intellectuals in Ming China, Edo Japan, and Joseon Korea selectively encompassed elements of the late Renaissance worldview, leading to the creation of new artifacts that mitigated old and new knowledge in creative ways. Simultaneously, missionaries and their collaborators transcribed, replicated, and recombined from East Asian artifacts and informed European audiences about the newly discovered lands known as the “Far East.” All these new artifacts enjoyed long afterlives that ensured the continuous remapping of the world in the following decades and centuries. Focusing on artifacts, this expansively illustrated volume tells the story of a meeting of worldviews. Tracing the connections emanating from each artifact, the authors illuminate how every map, globe, or book was shaped by the intellectual, social, and material cultures of East Asia, while connecting multiple global centers of learning and print culture. Crossing both historical and historiographical boundaries reveals how this series of artifacts embody a continuous and globally connected process of mapping the world, rather than a grand encounter between East and West. As such, this book rewrites the narrative surrounding the so-called “Ricci Maps,” which assumes that one Jesuit missionary brought scientific cartography to East Asia by translating and adapting a Renaissance world map. It argues for a revision of that narrative by emphasizing process and connectivity, displacing the European missionary and “his map” as central actors that supposedly bridged a formidable civilizational divide between Europe and China. Rather than a single map authored by a European missionary, a series of materially different artifacts were created as a result of discussions between the Jesuit Matteo Ricci and his Chinese contacts during the last decades of Ming rule. Each of these gave rise to the production of new artifacts that embodied broader intellectual conversations. By presenting eleven original chapters by Asian, European, and American scholars, this work covers an extensive range of artifacts and crosses boundaries between China, Japan, Korea, and the global pathways that connected them to the other end of the Eurasian landmass.

Download or read book The Military Collapse of China s Ming Dynasty 1618 44 written by Kenneth M. Swope and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-23 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the military collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty to a combination of foreign and domestic foes. The Ming’s defeat was a highly surprising development, not least because as recently as in the 1590s the Ming had managed to defeat a Japanese force considered to be perhaps the most formidable of its day when the latter attempted to subjugate Korea en-route to a planned invasion of China. In contrast to conventional explanations for the Ming’s collapse, which focus upon political and socio-economic factors, this book shows how the military collapse of the Ming state was intimately connected to the deterioration of the personal relationship between the Ming throne and the military establishment that had served as the cornerstone of the Ming military renaissance of the previous decades. Moreover, it examines the broader process of the militarization of late Ming society as a whole to arrive at an understanding of how a state with such tremendous military resources and potential could be defeated by numerically and technologically inferior foes. It concludes with a consideration of the fall of the Ming in light of contemporary conflicts and regime changes around the globe, drawing attention to climatological factors and developments outside state control. Utilizing recently released archival materials, this book adds a much needed piece to the puzzle of the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in China.

Download or read book The 1421 Heresy written by Anatole Andro and published by . This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the formative years of the Ming Dynasty the Chinese government dispatched hundreds of gigantic ships, some over 400 feet long, into the Indian Ocean.The enterprise was dubbed Zheng He's Seven Voyages to the Western Ocean because the Ming fleets, led by the legendary Admiral Zheng He, went to sea altogether seven times. After twenty-seven years these maritime expeditions mysteriously stopped. To date no scholar is entirely certain of the reason behind the undertaking. Although practically unknown in the West, these events made indelible impressions on the Southeast Asians. Today Admiral Zheng He is regarded as a god and is worshipped in temples not just in China, but throughout Southeast Asia This year we see the 600th anniversary of the Ming Chinese launching of their monumental excursions, and scholars have renewed their interest in the historical events. There are speculations and assertions that the Ming fleets actually went beyond the Indian Oceanand even sailed to Americaall before Christopher Columbus had made his momentous trips. However, researchers seem to be able to neither prove their hypotheses nor disprove them. In any case, it does seem odd that the Chinese, with their superior naval technology would choose to confine their activities to local waters only. Nevertheless, to prove that they did, one needs irrefutable evidence because the suggestion challenges centuries of established history. Historian/researcher Anatole Andro believes that if such evidence exists, it will need to be European evidence to prove the case. By leaving theIndian Oceanthe Chinese would be entering European territory, so to speak. If confirmation to this effect is lacking it will not only fail to prove that the Chinese had sailed outside their local waters, but on the contrary, it would be as good as proof that the Ming Chinese never went beyond their traditional sphere of interest. For two and a half years the author searched for such evidence, examining each piece of suspected artifact and following up on every lead. Not only was he able to uncover such evidence he found the evidence to be widespread. Further, scholars had examined such evidence and either discarded, ignored, or obscured it. This book is the presentation of Mr. Andro's research data, his analyses of the data thereof, and the startling but inevitable conclusions that he arrived at. Written in easy to understand language, this book challenges you to accept his findings or dispute it. In either case it is a thrill ride.

Download or read book The Chinese State in Ming Society written by Timothy Brook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-10-27 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a period of commercial expansion and cultural innovation, fashioned the relationship between state and society in Chinese history. This unique collection of reworked and heavily illustrated essays, by one of the leading scholars of Chinese history, re-examines this relationship. It argues that, contrary to previous scholarship, it was radical responses within society that led to a 'constitution', not periods of fluctuation within the dynasty itself. Brook's outstanding scholarship demonstrates that it was changes in commercial relations and social networks that were actually responsible for the development of a stable society. This imaginative reconsidering of existing scholarship on the history of China will be fascinating reading for scholars and students interested in China's development.

Download or read book Empire in the Western Ocean written by Lo Jung-pang and published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. This book was released on 2023-03-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ground-breaking, posthumous study, the late Lo Jung-pang discusses the geographic, political, and commercial factors that led to the emergence of seapower and a navy under the Ming. While Zheng He and his seven expeditions have received some scholarly attention, few understand the long history of maritime engagement which provided the nautical and technical background for these voyages. The evolution of this maritime engagement and its extension into the Indian Ocean is the focus of Lo’s still-timely and highly significant work. In addition to detailing the rise of the Ming navy and its extraordinary accomplishments, Lo also examines some of the factors that led to the end of China’s first great maritime era: Why did China suddenly seem to turn away from the seas? Were the military defeats in Annam and on the northern borders significant in this? Or were financial pressures key? Empire in the Western Ocean represents the most comprehensive and insightful English-language treatment to date of the evolution and activities of the early Ming navy. Moreover, it encourages further inquiry into contemporary questions of China’s maritime aspirations. -------------- To aid the reader, a Foreword by Richard J. Smith discusses how Lo viewed the early Ming navy—not simply in terms of its evolution and military strength, but also in terms of the commerce and shipping that it promoted. This history is presented in the context of the centuries-long shift of China’s demographic center of gravity from the northwest to the southeast by the Song period (960–1279). In the Afterword, Ming scholar Geoff Wade explains how the Ming rulers, eager to widely display their legitimacy, sent military forces abroad, collected treasure for the imperial court, and urged rulers of all known states to demonstrate their submission to the Ming court. He also shows how this often gave rise to violence during the Ming expeditions.

Download or read book From Ming to Ch ing written by Jonathan D. Spence and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1979-01-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of the Ming dynasty and the takeover of China by Manchu rulers in the 1640s were of crucial importance in the late history of China. But because traditional Chinese sources arbitrarily divide the century at the change of dynasty in 1644, it has been difficult to form a clear picture of the transition. The nine essays in this book will contribute significantly toward understanding the complexity of change and continuity over the span of time leading up to and resulting from the tumult of the mid-1600s. "The fullest introduction in English to the Ming-Ch'ing transition."--Tom Fisher, Pacific Affairs "No other recent work compares with its scope, and no older work can stand up to the introduction of its new materials and perspectives."--Library Journal " This book] makes a valuable contribution to Ming-Ch'ing studies and should be required reading for anyone interested in the two dynasties."--James B. Parsons, American Historical Review