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This article argues that secondary states in international hierarchy pursue distinctive strategies to define and secure their identities. When and why do they adopt strategy of socialization and emulation? When and why do they prioritize security of identity even at the expense of physical security? To address these questions, I empirically examine the relationships between Korea and imperial China during the Ming and Qing dynasties. I ask why Chosŏn Korea chose to voluntarily subordinate to the Ming, and why it risked its survival during the period of obvious power transition with the rise of the Qing. I develop a theory of secondary states' identity-seeking based on social identity theory and ontological security studies. Theoretically, it suggests a new mechanism in which secondary states' status-seeking generates a lock-in effect through deep socialization. Empirically, it adds to the growing literature on historical East Asian international relations by explicitly theorizing secondary states' quest for identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the exhibit "China's Hidden Century" at the British Museum in London, from May 18, 2023 to October 8, 2023.

At the theoretical level, Bartsch shows that Plato's I Republic i and the creation myth underpinning the ideal city, Kallipolis, have been the subject of considerable discussion in China. I Plato goes to China i is an expanded version of the Martin Lectures that Shadi Bartsch delivered at Oberlin College in 2018. [Extracted from the article]

We use the 1910 Copyright Code of the Great Qing Dynasty (Qing Copyright Code) as a lens to understand China's initial encounter with international intellectual property norms, examine the dynamic political economy in which the law was enacted, and provide an overview of the structure and important provisions of the Qing Copyright Code. We argue that, although foreign pressure was an important factor shaping the Qing Copyright Code, the Code was designed not to protect the economic interests of foreigners in China but to achieve a pair of distinct goals: advance China's national interests in accessing Western knowledge and incentivize the production and dissemination of knowledge in the country. This argument is substantiated by not only the political economy of the legislation but also the later implementation of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The offence of abortion was a Western legal disposition introduced into late Qing China in the 1900s and it remained in effect during the Republican period. In Imperial China, abortion did not constitute a criminal offence, and foetal life was generally considered inferior to human life. The widespread humanization of the foetus in early twentieth-century China was closely intertwined with the nationalist ideology that exhorted women to reproduce for the nation. In this narrative, the foetus was valued as a future citizen, and abortion came to be seen as a demographic calamity for the nation. Abortion was also condemned by conservatives who depreciated it as a scandalous act mostly attempted by women engaged in 'illicit' sexual relationships. Although the 1935 Criminal Code decriminalized therapeutic abortion, it was still illegal to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape. In this regard, the vision of legal Orientalism that portrays Chinese law as the inferior other to modern Western law is problematic, as certain aspects of Chinese legal tradition may provide a more appropriate protection of personal choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has become a serious issue, and tracing climate events from historical records could be a solution to find a way to deal with it. This study conducted two experiments for classifying metrological text data—one unsupervised method for exploring a solution in the lack of labeled data and another supervised method for achieving high-performance classification. Both experiments took the meteorological text records as material in the early Qing Dynasty (1644 C.E. to 1795 C.E.) from the REACHES database. We also integrated the classification results to develop a Spatio-Temporal research platform with an instant response front-end interface to help humanity researchers access and analyze data according to the three dimensions of time, area, and event categories. With our Spatio-Temporal research platform, we had the ability with ease to analyze the meteorological records during 1650 C.E. to 1700 C.E. the late stage of the Little Ice Age, to investigate the phenomenon of climate change in the Qing Dynasty of China. We will continue to expand the capacity of the database and establish a mature Spatio-Temporal research platform in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late nineteenth-century age of empire was also an age of anti-superstition. In China, Western missionaries, diplomats and travellers labelled practices that resisted Western technologies and ideas as 'superstitious'. This article examines how a group of Qing scholar-officials, all members of the diplomatic corps, interpreted and ultimately defended these customs. Conventionally viewed as tragic figures unable to transcend a 'Sinocentric' world view, they were deeply embedded in the global circulations of empire. During their time in Europe and the United States, they compared Western culture and the development of capitalism with the changes they saw in China. For these cosmopolitan actors, Chinese popular cultural practices offered potential sources of anti-imperial resistance to Western presence in China. Yet they also had differing, at times conflicting, visions for how the Chinese state should relate to the 'superstitious'. Some argued that they needed to be kept in place, undisturbed from the onslaught of Western influence; others believed the 'superstitious' could be mobilized as an anti-imperial force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French Jesuit Joseph Prémare, a missionary to Qing Dynasty China, had completed by the end of 1728 the draft of a book entitled Notitia linguæ sinicæ , intended to assist aspiring Catholic missionaries from Europe in learning the Chinese language. One of the original manuscripts sent from Canton to Paris, now held in the Bibliothæque nationale de France in Paris, was rediscovered in the 1810s by the French sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, and became the source for some manuscript copies, made mostly before the work's eventual publication in 1831. This paper examines two of these manuscript copies dated between 1825 and 1830, held respectively in the Archive of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, both important in their own ways, and both somewhat misunderstood and largely neglected by recent studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the first academic research on the collection of Yan Xinhou (1838–1906), a prominent gentry–merchant from the second half of the nineteenth century. It presents the Yan collection, now housed at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and tells a fascinating story of the Yan family and how their collection came to the United States during the early twentieth century. More importantly, it provides a starting point for future explorations of the taste, collecting practices and social relations of the late Qing merchants. The collection contains thirty-two works of Ming and Qing dynasty painting and calligraphy, including calligraphy items by Zhang Ruitu (1570–1641), Jiang Chenying (1628–1699) and Qian Bojiong (1738–1812); paintings by Wang Shimin (1592–1680), Xiao Yuncong (1596–1673), Wang Wu (1632-1690), Ma Quan (active 1800s), Shangguan Zhou (1665–c.1749), Zheng Xie (1693–1765), Hua Yan (1682–1756), Xi Gang (1746–1803), Pan Simu (1756–after 1843), Zhao Wei (1746–1825), Qian Du (1764–1845), Gai Qi (1773–1828) and Wu Xizai (1799–1870). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dear Editor, For millions of years, anthropoid primates were presumably affected by itch (pruritus),[1] which is currently defined as an unpleasant sensation provoking the desire to scratch.[2] Backscratchers are popular tools used to scratch itchy skin on the back not accessible by the affected individual's own hands (typically the interscapular area). Here, we present evidence illustrating the development of these -utensils from rudimentary tools to artistic, ceremonial so-called "Ruyi" sceptres, symbolizing authority and power in ancient China. Scratching the itch: how crude backscratchers turned into decorative "Ruyi" sceptres symbolizing authority and power in ancient China. [Extracted from the article]

Crystal glass containers as novel artefacts in the early modern period acted out their function of containment as miraculous material events. Focusing on glass containers used to contain and constitute Buddhist objects in China's Qing dynasty (1644–1911), this essay provides historical and critical views on issues of aura and containment. Primarily, it examines the modalities and experiences of container and containment as expressed in the Qing court's material, religious and political practices. In doing so, the essay highlights the fusional relationship between matter and form, while also apprehending the metamorphosis between image and object in processes of transmedial translation and transcultural crossing or dislocation. It argues that glass containers used to simulate, animate and amplify the 'aura' of devotional objects manifested more general religio‐political and intercultural phenomena at that time. Those phenomena in turn invite reflections on material objects' immaterial expressions, and vice versa, in terms of the interplay between formal schema and amorphous force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most totemic nineteenth-century military conflict between Britain and China was the First Opium War; the least memorable, perhaps, was the brief Camphor War of 1868, which broke out twenty-nine years later in Taiwan. As in the First Opium War, the Qing was defeated in the Camphor War as a result of Britain's clear technological edge over China. Yet this was more than a minor military skirmish: it was an encounter that indicates the eagerness of the Qing to reposition itself in the global arena, both politically and economically. The Camphor War reminds us that the 'clash of empires' was very much part of a process of global consumption and commercialisation, which forced the Qing court for the first time to grapple with defending its natural resources and its existing monopoly over an established market. By tracing the social and material history of camphor, we can also see how demand for this commodity set the gears of the Qing, the British and the American empires into motion. The Camphor War was not concerned with a territorial dispute or the opening of a port city; its essential interest lies in revealing how, in the post-Opium age, competition between the Qing Empire and foreign powers could revolve around access to, and control over, a truly global commodity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice turn in IR offers new ways to understand how diplomats can creatively engage with their environment and one another. Yet, sometimes their diplomatic practices limit their ability to achieve agreements. This article focuses on how and why domestic practices conflict with international practices, and why states sometimes might feel constrained into engaging in practices that harm their international position. Drawing on field theory, I introduce a causal mechanism I call symbolic binding that explains why regimes may become so bound by their domestic practices of legitimation that they incur considerable international cost. Symbolic binding occurs when the symbolic practices needed to generate domestic legitimacy intersect and conflict with practices from the diplomatic field, when domestic audiences are observing the diplomatic interaction, and when regimes have limited access to alternative forms of political capital. I demonstrate the logic of this mechanism by analyzing the antagonistic diplomacy that occurred between Britain and China from the late eighteenth until the late nineteenth century. I show that the root of this diplomatic conflict can be linked to the incompatibility of both states' diplomatic practices and show how the Qing regime's need to maintain domestic legitimacy constrained it into steadfastly adhering to diplomatic practices that were incompatible with that of encroaching European powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic in its coverage and eclectic in its chosen episodes, Caquet's fast-paced narrative frequently treats "drug prohibition" as synonymous with "drug control" (p. 13.) Moreover, the author criticizes the move to equate "narcotics" with "illicit drugs" as "a historical category, and not a scientific one" (p. 333). This book offers "a history of drug prohibition" from 1813, when the Qing dynasty's Jiaqing emperor issued a major opium edict, up to the present. [Extracted from the article]

The articel focuses on appearance of poet Geoffrey Chaucer's name in English newspaper published in Shanghai, China in 1878 and mentions printing of excerpt which presented biographical information of Chaucer. Topics discussed include lack of mentions of literary career or achievements and fame in English literary history of Chaucer, Treaty of Nanking signed by Qing dynasty government and Chaucer's rhythm and rhyme detailed in journal "The China Press."

The article considers foreign relations between China and Europe between 1845 and 1914, focusing on how European-led changes to China's infrastructure after the First Opium War impacted ancestral tombs and led to social unrest among Chinese against their colonizers. Topics include anti-foreign propaganda, ancestor worship, modernization and traditional Chinese society, the belief of the interrelationship between nature and built environment known as feng sui, and death practices.

Steam locomotives, a transformative transportation technology, experienced quick and wide adoption among major Western powers in the nineteenth century. However, when this technology reached East Asia later in the century, Japan enthusiastically adopted it while China did not. Why was this the case? This article investigates the difference in railroad technology adoption between late Qing China and Meiji-era Japan. Through analysis of historical accounts as well as original source documents, we argue that variations in concern for internal and external security were important determinants of the distinct adoption decisions. The Qing Court's apprehension that technological change would lead to domestic social unrest and make China vulnerable to external threats deterred it from adopting railroads. In Japan, the Meiji leadership faced a less-pronounced internal and external threat environment. This allowed them to focus on the railroads' potential to drive economic growth, consolidate administrative rule, and mobilize military resources. Our results suggest that perceptions regarding a technology's expected effects may contribute more to technology adoption decisions than is suggested by the prevailing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the life of a British would-be adventurer and clerk in the Imperial Maritime Service, Charles Mason, who became embroiled in an uprising against the Chinese government in 1891. By exploring Mason's life, his writings and the diplomatic dialogue sparked by his actions, the article highlights the growing disjuncture between imperial fantasy and the reality of imperial administration. It considers how the actions of errant individuals could be used as a pretext to renegotiate the limits of British and Chinese power. As Mason's actions and his literary career demonstrate, China and other imperial sites beyond the formal control of colonial authorities acted as ideal places for adventuring in the British imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the result of a survey of sunspots and auroras in Qíngshĭgăo (...), a draft chronicle of Qíng dynasty, for the period of 1559-1912 CE. This is a sequel to a series of works surveying historical sunspot and aurora records, and providing online data to the scientific community regarding the attained results. In total of this Qíngshĭgăo survey, we found 111 records of night-sky luminous events with such keywords as vapor (..., qì), cloud (..., yún), and light (..., guāng), which may indicate auroras as well as some other phenomena. Similarly, a keyword survey for sunspots was conducted, but no sunspot record was found. In comparison with the aurora records in the western world, we found that 14 of the 111 records have a corresponding record of simultaneous observation in the western world, and hence are very likely to be aurora. In order to investigate the likeliness of the remainder of the record being aurora, we calculated the lunar age and the phase of a solar cycle for each record. After these calculations, a notable fraction of these records clustered near the full moon were to be found statistically doubtful in considerations with atmospheric optics; meanwhile, a few records of observations near the new moon could be more likely interpreted as being auroras, including three records during the Maunder minimum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the historiography of Chinese capitalism, focusing on the study of the late Qing tea trade. Topics covered include the basic materials describing the tea merchants of Huizhou, China in the late Qing period, an exploration of how a form of abstract time regulated the tea production process, and an analysis on the use by labour overseers in Huizhou of incense sticks to regulate the efficient completion of tasks.

The article offers information on the Nineteenth-Century Civil War in China in 1850-1864. Topics discussed include Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolutionary Movement between the Qing dynasty and the Christian millenarian movement of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace, violence, social conditions, and efforts to commemorate the war, and competition between Beijing, China and the provinces over legitimacy and power.