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The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China

Michael Szonyi

How did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) deal with the demands of the state? This book explores the myriad ways that families fulfilled their obligations to provide a soldier to the ... More

How did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) deal with the demands of the state? This book explores the myriad ways that families fulfilled their obligations to provide a soldier to the army. The complex strategies they developed to manage their responsibilities suggest a new interpretation of an important period in China's history as well as a broader theory of politics. The book examines how soldiers and their families living on China's southeast coast minimized the costs and maximized the benefits of meeting government demands for manpower. Families that had to provide a soldier for the army set up elaborate rules to ensure their obligation was fulfilled, and to provide incentives for the soldier not to desert his post. People in the system found ways to gain advantages for themselves and their families. For example, naval officers used the military's protection to engage in the very piracy and smuggling they were supposed to suppress. The book demonstrates how subjects of the Ming state operated in a space between defiance and compliance, and how paying attention to this middle ground can help us better understand not only Ming China but also other periods and places. The book illustrates the ways that arrangements between communities and the state hundreds of years ago have consequences and relevance for how we look at diverse cultures and societies, even today.Less

Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought

Hüseyin Yilmaz

The medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750–1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the ... More

The medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750–1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the Prophet Muhammed's political authority. This book traces how a new conception of the caliphate emerged under the Ottomans, who redefined the caliph as at once a ruler, a spiritual guide, and a lawmaker corresponding to the prophet's three natures. Challenging conventional narratives that portray the Ottoman caliphate as a fading relic of medieval Islamic law, the book offers a novel interpretation of authority, sovereignty, and imperial ideology by examining how Ottoman political discourse led to the mystification of Muslim political ideals and redefined the caliphate. It illuminates how Ottoman Sufis reimagined the caliphate as a manifestation and extension of cosmic divine governance. The Ottoman Empire arose in Western Anatolia and the Balkans, where charismatic Sufi leaders were perceived to be God's deputies on earth. The book traces how Ottoman rulers, in alliance with an increasingly powerful Sufi establishment, continuously refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authority, and how the caliphate itself reemerged as a moral paradigm that shaped early modern Muslim empires.Less

The Constitution of Ancient China

Su Li

Zhang Yongle and Daniel A. Bell (eds)

How was the vast ancient Chinese empire brought together and effectively ruled? What are the historical origins of the resilience of contemporary China's political system? This book examines the ways ... More

How was the vast ancient Chinese empire brought together and effectively ruled? What are the historical origins of the resilience of contemporary China's political system? This book examines the ways in which a series of fundamental institutions, rather than a supreme legal code upholding the laws of the land, evolved and coalesced into an effective constitution. Arguing that a constitution is an institutional response to a set of issues particular to a specific society, the book demonstrates how China unified a vast territory, diverse cultures, and elites from different backgrounds into a whole. The book delves into such areas as uniform weights and measurements, the standardization of Chinese characters, and the building of the Great Wall. Exploring why China has endured as one political entity for over 2,000 years, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the institutional legacy of the Chinese empire.Less

Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Southeast Asia

Diana S. Kim

During the late nineteenth century, opium was integral to European colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The taxation of opium was a major source of revenue for British and French colonizers, who also ... More

During the late nineteenth century, opium was integral to European colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The taxation of opium was a major source of revenue for British and French colonizers, who also derived moral authority from imposing a tax on a peculiar vice of their non-European subjects. Yet between the 1890s and the 1940s, colonial states began to ban opium, upsetting the very foundations of overseas rule—how did this happen? This book traces the history of this dramatic reversal, revealing the colonial legacies that set the stage for the region's drug problems today. The book challenges the conventional wisdom about opium prohibition—that it came about because doctors awoke to the dangers of drug addiction or that it was a response to moral crusaders—uncovering a more complex story deep within the colonial bureaucracy. The book shows how prohibition was made possible by the pivotal contributions of seemingly weak bureaucratic officials. Comparing British and French experiences across today's Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam, the book examines how the everyday work of local administrators delegitimized the taxing of opium, which in turn made major anti-opium reforms possible. The book reveals the inner life of colonial bureaucracy, illuminating how European rulers reconfigured their opium-entangled foundations of governance and shaped Southeast Asia's political economy of illicit drugs and the punitive state.Less

The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy

Yuri Pines

Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign ... More

Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions—yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. This book traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. The book demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch—hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. The book shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, this book argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.Less

Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953

Janet Y. Chen

In the early twentieth century, a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval in China, poverty became the focus of an anguished national conversation about the future of the country. ... More

In the early twentieth century, a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval in China, poverty became the focus of an anguished national conversation about the future of the country. Investigating the lives of the urban poor in China during this critical era, this book examines the solutions implemented by a nation attempting to deal with “society's most fundamental problem.” Interweaving analysis of shifting social viewpoints, the evolution of poor relief institutions, and the lived experiences of the urban poor, the book explores the development of Chinese attitudes toward urban poverty and of policies intended for its alleviation. The book concentrates on Beijing and Shanghai, two of China's most important cities, and considers how various interventions carried a lasting influence. The advent of the workhouse, the denigration of the nonworking poor as “social parasites,” efforts to police homelessness and vagrancy—all had significant impact on the lives of people struggling to survive. The book provides a crucially needed historical lens for understanding how beliefs about poverty intersected with shattering historical events, producing new welfare policies and institutions for the benefit of some, but to the detriment of others. Drawing on vast archival material, the book deepens the historical perspective on poverty in China and reveals critical lessons about a still-pervasive social issue.Less

The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66

Geoffrey B. Robinson

This book explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century—the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in ... More

This book explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century—the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965–66, leaving some five hundred thousand people dead and more than a million others in detention. The author of this book sets out to account for this violence and to end the troubling silence surrounding it. In doing so, the book sheds new light on broad, enduring historical questions. How do we account for instances of systematic mass killing and detention? Why are some of these crimes remembered and punished, while others are forgotten? The book is a detailed account of a pivotal period in Indonesian history.Less

Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China

He Bian

This book presents a panoramic inquiry into China’s early modern cultural transformation through the lens of pharmacy. In the history of science and civilization in China, pharmacy—as a commercial ... More

This book presents a panoramic inquiry into China’s early modern cultural transformation through the lens of pharmacy. In the history of science and civilization in China, pharmacy—as a commercial enterprise and as a branch of classical medicine—resists easy characterization. While China’s long tradition of documenting the natural world through state-commissioned pharmacopeias, known as bencao, dwindled after the sixteenth century, the ubiquitous presence of Chinese pharmacy shops around the world today testifies to the vitality of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Rejecting narratives of intellectual stagnation or an unchanging folk culture, the book argues that pharmacy’s history in early modern China can best be understood as a dynamic interplay between elite and popular culture. Beginning with decentralizing trends in book culture and fiscal policy in the sixteenth century, the book reveals pharmacy’s central role in late Ming public discourse. Fueled by factional politics in the early 1600s, amateur investigation into pharmacology reached peak popularity among the literati on the eve of the Qing conquest in the mid-seventeenth century. The eighteenth century witnessed a systematic reclassification of knowledge, as the Qing court turned away from pharmacopeia in favor of a demedicalized natural history. Throughout this time, growth in long-distance trade enabled the rise of urban pharmacy shops, generating new knowledge about the natural world.Less

Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People’s Republic of China

Arunabh Ghosh

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's ... More

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting.” The book explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers. It shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, the book not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data. Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, the book offers fresh perspectives on China's transition to socialism.Less

The Makings of Indonesian Islam: Orientalism and the Narration of a Sufi Past

Michael Laffan

Indonesian Islam is often portrayed as being intrinsically moderate by virtue of the role that mystical Sufism played in shaping its traditions. According to Western observers—from Dutch colonial ... More

Indonesian Islam is often portrayed as being intrinsically moderate by virtue of the role that mystical Sufism played in shaping its traditions. According to Western observers—from Dutch colonial administrators and orientalist scholars to modern anthropologists such as the late Clifford Geertz—Indonesia's peaceful interpretation of Islam has been perpetually under threat from outside by more violent, intolerant Islamic traditions that were originally imposed by conquering Arab armies. This book challenges this widely accepted narrative, offering a more balanced assessment of the intellectual and cultural history of the most populous Muslim nation on Earth. The book traces how the popular image of Indonesian Islam was shaped by encounters between colonial Dutch scholars and reformist Islamic thinkers. It shows how Dutch religious preoccupations sometimes echoed Muslim concerns about the relationship between faith and the state, and how Dutch–Islamic discourse throughout the long centuries of European colonialism helped give rise to Indonesia's distinctive national and religious culture. This book presents Islamic and colonial history as an integrated whole, revealing the ways our understanding of Indonesian Islam, both past and present, came to be.Less

Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China

Fei-Hsien Wang

This book reveals the unknown social and cultural history of copyright in China from the 1890s through the 1950s, a time of profound sociopolitical changes. It draws on a vast range of previously ... More

This book reveals the unknown social and cultural history of copyright in China from the 1890s through the 1950s, a time of profound sociopolitical changes. It draws on a vast range of previously underutilized archival sources to show how copyright was received, appropriated, and practiced in China, within and beyond the legal institutions of the state. Contrary to common belief, copyright was not a problematic doctrine simply imposed on China by foreign powers with little regard for Chinese cultural and social traditions. Shifting the focus from the state legislation of copyright to the daily, on-the-ground negotiations among Chinese authors, publishers, and state agents, the book presents a more dynamic, nuanced picture of the encounter between Chinese and foreign ideas and customs. Developing multiple ways for articulating their understanding of copyright, Chinese authors, booksellers, and publishers played a crucial role in its growth and eventual institutionalization in China. These individuals enforced what they viewed as copyright to justify their profit, protect their books, and crack down on piracy in a changing knowledge economy. As China transitioned from a late imperial system to a modern state, booksellers and publishers created and maintained their own economic rules and regulations when faced with the absence of an effective legal framework. Exploring how copyright was transplanted, adopted, and practiced, the book demonstrates the pivotal roles of those who produce and circulate knowledge.Less