Research Themes in Ming-Qing Socioeconomic History—The State of the Field

Abstract

China's political “opening to the West” in 1979–89 directly affected historical scholarship on Ming and Qing socioeconomic history. Some PRC scholars were able to travel abroad, others met foreign specialists at international conferences held in China, and many more were introduced to foreign scholarship through Chinese translations of articles and books published in Taiwan, Japan, Europe, and North America. Foreign scholars, also, profited from new access to archival sources for research; a few anthropologists and historians even were able to reside in the countryside and interview villagers. While increased access and scholarly exchange have enriched research, they have not erased national differences in interpretation and approach.

A Place in the Nation: Yangzhou and theIdle TalkControversy of 1934

“…While few scholars would argue that the Western impact failed to alter the course of Chinese history, the chronology of nationalism and modernity in China remains a more or less disputed point. Evidence of commerce, the socalled "roots of capitalism," urbanization, increasing literacy, voluntary associations, and so on-in brief, the trappings of a civil society-can all be drawn upon to support the notion of an "early modern China" emerging around the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries (Rawski 1991;Feuerwerker 1992). Parallel arguments can be mounted in the sphere of arts and letters, with Elman positing the emergence of evidential philosophy as the decisive conjuncture in late imperial history, and Vinograd's research on the rise in portrait painting suggesting the discovery of the autonomous self (Elman 1990; Vinograd 1992).…”

Reinterpreting History

“…Recent scholarship has been fairly consistent in challenging this view. The trend has been to consider the Qing period as a whole, and to view it as a period of considerable dynamism in Chinese society (Rawski 1991;Rowe 2009). This view is based on phenomena like the growing commercialisation of the Chinese economy in this period and its integration into global trade flows, the opening up of new frontiers, major shifts in population, the evolution of popular culture, etc.…”

Beyond Sinology: New Developments in the Study of Chinese Economic and Social History

“…In an important review article of many of the academic works published during the 1980s in East Asia and EuroAmerica, Evelyn Rawski documented how the study of Chinese history had become specialized (Rawski 1991). What distinguished work of this decade from that of before was the emergence of new Ôsub eldsÕ encompassing a variety of topics that fell outside the grand narrative of Chinese politics; the study of gender, ethnicity, or popular culture began to appeal to both younger and older scholars, and graduate students were encouraged to research and write on these themes.…”