Beginning in the late Ming period, China experienced a surge in the production and consumption of books. Printed pages bound into fascicles and housed in cases moved across space and through the social landscape. Their trajectories illuminate larger social, intellectual, economic, and cultural patterns. They also reveal identities under construction—by readers, writers, publishers, and consumers. This article assesses the expanding field of late imperial Chinese book history in the United States and Japan, with some reference to scholarship in China and Taiwan. It looks at the field's move away from its origins in the history of technology and its increasing engagement with social and cultural questions. In particular, the article highlights the field's focus on the “place” of publishing in late imperial China, construed both in terms of regional orientation and the social position of readers and producers of books.
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This article highlights the strategies and institutions that were mobilized in order to collect information during the Taiping Civil War (1851-1864). Through a close reading of the Zei qing huizuan 賊情彙纂 (Compendium of Rebel Intelligence), the article reveals that the Qing and its allies understood the Taiping as a political entity constituted on a familiar (dynastic) model and also in ethnographic terms (linguistic, sartorial, religious, regional). The article also demonstrates how individuals made use of their access to information to obtain patronage and employment within the pro-Qing camp. Finally, by spotlighting the political and moral language used by the authors of the Zei qing huizuan, the article makes obvious the deep relationship between intelligence and ideology.
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