William T. Rowe

Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China

Illustrations Preface Introduction 1. Being a Man: 1. Home 2. Politics 3. First things 4. Study Part II. Creating Prosperity: 5. Food 6. Economics 7. Production 8. Accumulation Part III. Ordering the World: 9. People 10. Governance 11. Community 12. Civilization Conclusion Notes References Character List Index.

Hankow : conflict and community in a Chinese city, 1796-1895

Introduction Part I. The City: 1. City people 2. Urban space Part II. Community: 3. Popular welfare 4. Public goods and public services Part III. Conflict: 5. Structures of conflict 6. Dangerous classes and laboring classes 7. True believers Part IV. Control 8. Forces of order 9. Crisis and response Conclusion Notes Selected bibliography Character list Index.

Review Article : The Public Sphere in Modern China

Questions of elite and mass politicization during the late Qing and early Republican periods, and broader issues of the shifting state-society relationship during this era, have preoccupied historians of modern China for quite some time. In the past decade, however, this inquiry has begun to take a more specific direction, as students of these questions have become increasingly attracted to the concept of &dquo;public&dquo; (gong) as a useful tool for their analysis. In large part, this trend has been source-driven, the product of a growing recognition of the importance of this notion in the discourse of the period itself. It also, however, has responded to a broader movement in the academic community which has fastened upon the idea of a &dquo;public sphere&dquo; as a critical element in any attempt to identify what is distinctive about our contemporary world.

Women and the Family in Mid-Qing Social Thought: The Case of Chen Hongmou

An increasing number of scholars in recent years have come to detect in the early modern era of Chinese history an unprecedentedly articulated debate within the elite over questions relating to women and the family.1 Many now feel that we may see here a critical moment when, under the influence of new economic and social realities, long-standing assumptions about the cultural construction of gender could no longer be accepted as self-evident. Discussion of these issues consequently emerged in the public arena, with previous attitudes and practices challenged by some and defended by others, both in an unprecedentedly open and vigorous way. Because such questions were so laden with implications for the polity as well as society, it may not be going too far to see, in the attempt to come to grips with the disruptive impact of early modern social changes on inherited assumptions about gender and the family, the most centrally critical problem in the history of late imperial Chinese consciousness.

Owen Lattimore, Asia, and Comparative History

Perhaps best known today as a pioneering scholar of Inner Asia and a victim of the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, Owen Lattimore was more basically, like his friend Arnold Toynbee, a major player in the vogue of comparative history that captured wide public attention in the second quarter of the twentieth century. His lifelong intellectual project was to develop a “scientific” model of the way human societies form, evolve, grow, decline, mutate, and interact with one another along “frontiers.” In the process of working out this model, Lattimore appropriated for his own purposes, and often later discarded, some of the analytic devices most popular in his day, including ecological determinism, biological racism, economic geography and location theory, and Marxist modes of production. At every stage in his thinking, he sought to confound complacent teleologies, both those of Western “progress” and those of Chinese “civilization” of its pastoralist neighbors.

Water Control and the Qing Political Process: The Fankou Dam Controversy, 1876-1883

to flooding, the allocation of water resources (shuill) would be among the most basic and recurring issues in both local and national politics. At least in the West, however, this critically important area has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. Most likely this is due above all to the negative influence of Karl A. Wittfogel’s theory of &dquo;hydraulic society,&dquo; which, while a brilliant hypothesis that might have served as a baseline for further research, instead through its political contentiousness, its extreme overstatement, and its heavy-handed emphasis on one potential political consequence of water control concerns-the illusive &dquo;oriental despotism&dquo;-served to close off rather than open further inquiry. Scholars who in recent years have begun to look once again at this area have been virtually unanimous in finding Wittfogel’s hypothesis untenable, yet no equally encompassing theory has-or perhaps can-emerge to take its place. When studied empirically, the impact of water control on local community formation, intergroup conflict, and state-society relations in late imperial China has appeared much more complex than once imagined. Most of the studies accomplished in recent years have taken as their focus the long-term hydraulic history of a province or a region (Morita, 1974; Will, 1980, 1985; Perdue, 1982). Here, I propose looking more intensively at a single local controversy

Family, Fields, and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China's Social and Economic History, 1550-1949.

This is the first book to synthesize and make available important recent research on Chinas social and economic history, offering a completely new perspective on the four centuries from the Ming Dynasty to the Communist revolution. Drawing on a wide array of sources, the author clarifies the complexities of Chinese society, covering a wide range of topics from population trends, class structure, and religion to agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing.

Rewriting the Qing Constitution: Bao Shichen's “On Wealth” (Shuochu)

In 1801, with Heshen recently deposed and the Jiaqing emperor having assumed his personal rule, a young household tutor named Bao Shichen wrote an ambitious essay—Shuochu (On Wealth)—laying out the reforms he believed would set the Qing empire back on the path to political strength and economic prosperity. Although Bao would go on to achieve celebrity as a reformist advisor to high-ranking policy-makers, this particular work, in which he presents his most comprehensive statement on political economy, remained unpublished for more than a century. In the final decade of the Qing it was rediscovered and published by Liu Shipei and his associates in the National Essence (guocui) movement, hailed as a prescient document anticipating current political trends and presenting strong similarities to Western political practice. The present article explores the content of this work in detail, arguing that, despite its relatively cautious tone, it does indeed offer a bold and somewhat populist revision of the unwritten constitution that governed the Qing empire.

Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796-1889.

Introduction: cities in the history of Europe and China Part I. The Emporium: 1. Hankow in the nineteenth century 2. The trade of Hankow 3. The salt trade 4. The tea trade 5. Credit and finance in Hankow 6. The state and commerce Part II. Urban Social Organization: 7. Local origin in an immigrant city 8. Guild structure 9. Guild functions 10. Guilds and local power Conclusion Notes Selected bibliography Character list Index.

Materials on Manchuria, Inner Asia, and China Held at the Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University is not a major East Asian research center, and consequently its Milton S. Eisenhower Library contains no comprehensive collection of materials in East Asian languages. However, through such former faculty members as Paul Linebarger, Owen Lattimore, and Richard Pfeffer, a number of scattered bodies of material in Asian laguages or on Asian subjects have found their way into the Librarys possession. One unique resource, for example, is a collection in the University Archives of the correspondence of Frank Goodnow, former President of Johns Hopkins and constitutional advisor to the Republic of China under Yuan Shikai. Of more general interest are two collections of items in various languages relating largely, but not exclusively, to the history of Chinas northeast and inner Asian borderlands and peoples. Some of this material appears to my non-specialist eye to be quite rare; a few volumes may even be unique to this collection.