Susan Naquin

Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tiger's Jaws.

This fascinating book presents eyewitness accounts of a turbulent period in Chinese history: the fall of the Ming dynasty and the conquest of China by the Manchus in the mid-seventeenth century. Lynn Struve has translated, introduced, and annotated absorbing testimonies from a wide range of individuals-Chinese and Europeans, missionaries and viceroys, artists and merchants, Ming loyalists and Qing collaborators, maidservants and eunuchs-all telling stories of hardship and challenge in the midst of cataclysmic change. Until now, biographies of individuals who lived in the late Ming and early Qing periods have been either in-depth studies of important intellectuals or portraits sketched from the historical record and amplified by the imaginations of present-day authors. This book is the first to provide actual comment from a variety of people in different social stations. Some of the documents made accessible to Western readers are little known even to Chinese scholars. The book also breaks new ground by offering examples of the diversity in Chinese historical writing: rustic histories, tendentious reports, self-serving memoirs, family letters, official memorials, and other forms of records. Together these translations provide evidence of the increasing articulateness about personal experience that characterized writing in late Ming times.

Connections Between Rebellions: Sect Family Networks in Qing China

A rebellion is, almost by definition, an interruption, a break in and a strike against the status quo; the history of rebellion is usually the history of explosions that were intense but short-lived and independent of one another. In late Imperial China, most rebellions have been viewed as this sort of disconnected disconnector. The thoroughness with which uprisings were suppressed further assured little continuity between rebellions, and there are few examples of rebels who survived one uprising to lead another. A great many of the rebellions in North China in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) were inspired by the White Lotus religion (hailian jiao J1 and at first glance they also appear to have been quite independent of one another. Yet behind these uprisings lay less visible but powerful connections. The White Lotus religion,

Trade and Society: The Amoy Network on the China Coast, 1683-1735.

The book examines the social and economic changes in south Fukien (Fujian) on the southeast coast of China during late imperial times. Faced with land shortages and overpopulation, the rural population of south Fukien turned to the sea in search of fresh opportunities to secure a livelihood. With the tacit support of local officials and the scholar gentry, the merchants played the pivotal role in long-distance trade, and the commercial networks they established spanned the entire China coast, making the port city of Amoy (Xiamen) a major centre for maritime trade. In the work, the author discusses four interrelated spheres of activity, namely, the traditional rural sector, the port cities, the coastal trade and the overseas trade links. He argues that the creative use of clan organizations was key to the growth of the Amoy network along the coast as well as overseas.