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Guangzhou is located in the southern part of China, near the South China Sea, belongs to Guangdong Province. It serves as China's southern gateway to the world and was historically called "The Southern Treasure of the Emperor", playing a crucial role in China's maritime trade history. Throughout Chinese history, Guangzhou underwent several cycles of "closure" and "opening", policies that severely impacted trade. However, foreign merchants never ceased to request permission from the Chinese government to engage in trade. In 1757, Emperor Qianlong decreed Guangzhou as the only one official port for foreign trade. This edict led to the establishment of the one port trading system in Guangzhou, as the Qing government aimed to counter foreign influences and local uprisings while maintaining a self-sufficient small-scale agricultural economy. Western nations and their traders sought opportunities within this system, aspiring to expand trade to other regions of China, even the inland areas. The exclusive status of Guangzhou as China's only one trading port persisted until 1842, following the defeat of the Qing government in the Opium War against Britain, the Nanjing Treaty was signed. This treaty opened Guangzhou, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Xiamen as trading ports, bringing an end to the one port trading system. The reasons and impacts of the establishment of this system have not been comprehensively analyzed to date. Therefore, this paper based on historical archives, analyzes both the direct and underlying reasons behind Emperor Qianlong's decision and elucidates the system's diverse impacts on various aspects of Qing-era China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between Spain and China, regardless of regimes and time, have followed a path of friendship without excessive mutual commitment. An analysis of these relations reveals the decisive role played by the diplomats and officials who have led them from the moment they were formally established as sovereign states. This article deals with the identification and analysis of the curricula vitae of the Chinese officials who played a leading role in the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Spain. It affirms that they established a relationship characterized, structurally, by a protocolary nature conditioned by the officials' impulse to the post. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research comprehensively examined multiple sources of historical records and the built heritages of flood control construction along the Yongding River surrounding the Marco Polo Bridge section from 1890 to 1899, including stone levees, brick levees, cement dams, distributary channels, steel bridges, and temples dedicated to flood control. We mapped all these construction heritage features by time and geographical location according to historical documents to reveal the cause and intention behind each site. The following new insights were gained. First, the human–river relationship transitioned from utilization to resistance throughout the history of the Yongding River. Second, the philosophy of flood control represented a balance between symptom suppression and condition treatment at the peak of water management in imperial China. Third, the cultural and religious attitudes of humans in regard to flood control gradually shifted from a belief in the supernatural to faith in the ability of humans. Finally, modern technology, materials, and technicians were gradually imported, and water construction was implemented during the late Qing Dynasty, indicating modernization of the human–river relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic discussion of traditional zinc-smelting technology in China has been hampered by a paucity of physical data recovered from early production sites. In recent years, however, the discovery of former zinc-smelting sites in the municipality of Chongqing in south-western China has provided important evidence from archaeological excavations that contribute to the study of this topic. Taking the smelting furnace found at the Linjiangerdui site in Zhong County as an example, this paper introduces and discusses the form, use and maintenance of the zinc-smelting furnace of the Ming Dynasty (AD 1368–1644), and makes a preliminary comparison with the smelting furnaces dating to the Qing Dynasty (AD 1636–1912) unearthed in Shizhu County and the mountainous Hunan Province in an attempt to elucidate the development and evolution of ancient Chinese zinc-smelting technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining a series of events involving sightings of multicolored clouds and discoveries of colorful minerals in China's southwestern provinces, this article considers the political implications of natural manifestations of polychromy in the Yongzheng period. Through previously unexamined written and material correspondence between governor-general Ortai (1680–1745) and the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–35), I argue that physical occurrences of color, both above and below ground, were understood as signs of Heavenly approval of the emperor's governance at a time of questionable military expansion into the Southwest. I also consider how celestial phenomena and colorful stones were translated into design motifs and carved into exclusive items at the Qing court, positing that these objects were understood as signs of the Yongzheng emperor's political legitimacy and concrete evidence of Qing control over the remote reaches of the empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until now most studies on commercial publishing in pre-modern China have focused on two areas in the south, Jiangnan and Fujian, where publishing centers had been clustered since the Song dynasty. Before the Qing dynasty, commercial publications for the whole country had been provided by the publishing centers located in those two areas. However, the landscape changed significantly in the Qing dynasty, as commercial publishing extended to places where there had existed no printing shops before, especially the northern provinces of China. Dongchang prefecture along the Great Canal in Shandong province rose to become an important regional publishing center during the Qing. The publications produced in Dongchang not only satisfied the needs of local readers but were sold throughout Shandong and in other provinces in the north. As an outstanding publishing center in the north, Dongchang prefecture is a useful window from which to observe the development of commercial publishing and the book market in northern China in the Qing dynasty. This article investigates the origin, publications, readership, and distribution networks of printing shops in Dongchang prefecture. The author argues that rather than completely replacing the southern publishers in supplying books for readers in the north, the newly risen northern commercial publishers captured only a part of the market share. Some categories of books, such as new titles and high-end publications, still heavily relied on the southern publishers. In the Qing dynasty there was a notable trend towards stronger relationships between publishing centers and regional book markets. Hopefully this study will provide a more comprehensive landscape of commercial publishing in pre-modern China, and enhance our understanding of the development of book markets in the north. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicine was one of the articles of tribute paid by other countries and kingdoms to the imperial court of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). The act of paying tributes and the rituals associated with it enhanced communication and helped establish relationships between ancient China and other nations or territories. The imperial court was generous in return, which attracted many countries to pay tributes. This paper analyzes how medicines as tributes played an important role in consolidating the dominant status of ancient China, and in promoting the exchange of knowledge between Chinese and Western medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries Qing officials in China periodically instructed their Mongolian subordinates to make maps of the regions they governed. The Qing were aiming thereby to gain information about the Empire, but the Mongols had other concerns. This article focuses on Mongolian map-making practice and argues that it differed from that prevalent at the time in both China and Russia. Concerned less with conveying practical information than with locating the domain in a cosmological understanding of the world, the Mongol maps were holistic. They were also both 'participatory', involving several different actors in their compilation, and 'relational', concerned to demonstrate the stance of the map-making subject in relation to the map's receiver (the office of the Lifanyuan and ultimately, the Qing Emperor). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background of climate warming, drought disasters occur frequently in China, especially in the Central China. In this study, drought disaster grade sequences from 14 representative stations were chosen from 268 years of drought disaster historical data for the Hunan Province of China collected during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). The empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) methods were used to conduct a spatial characteristics analysis of these drought disasters. The results are as follows. (1) There was an inconsistency between the frequency and intensity of the drought disasters. (2) The spatial distribution of the first four EOF loads for the drought disasters showed regional consistency; however, there was a difference in the anti-phase changes in the east–west, south–north, and central directions. (3) The features of the drought disaster distribution in the Hunan Province during the Qing Dynasty are evident, and according to the high values (absolute value ≥ 0.6) for the first six EOF rotational loads, the study area can be divided into the following sections: northeast Xiang (Section I), west Xiang (Section II), southeast Xiang (Section III), middle Xiang (Section IV), north Xiang (Section V), and southwest Xiang (Section VI). The study of drought disasters in Qing Dynasty is of great significance and reference value for disaster prevention, disaster reduction and climate prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decoration with feathers is a universal phenomenon in human history. Objects decorated with feathers were regarded as fine artworks and hence were enormously prized. In ancient China, dotting a surface with blue kingfisher feathers was a famous, complex and delicate decoration technique called diancui. Although various ancient diancui artworks appear in many museums around the world and researchers have realized significant results in studies of the history, technique and conservation of diancui, some key historical details are still not clear. In this research performed during restoration, an important object from the Palace Museum, the "Feather Decoration Hanging Screen with Birds and Flowers Pattern", was analyzed by various scientific technologies. This object is a Chinese imperial artwork of the Qing dynasty (seventeenth to eighteenth century) decorated with kingfisher feathers and the feathers of several other birds, and it represents the highest level of this period. As a typical and valuable case, the results provide important clues for solving questions arising from related academic fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many historians of China, particularly those based in North America, insist that the Qing dynasty's territorial expansion was imperial and comparable to the imperial expansions of other global empires. Other historians, particularly but not only those based in the People's Republic of China, continue to resist this interpretation. They argue that dynastic expansion in the Ming and Qing periods was simply a form of nation-state building, akin to similar processes in Europe. Rather than rejecting their claims as a product of Chinese nationalism, we argue that the term "empire" should be (re)understood as a global co-production, emerging from multiple intersecting histories and scholarly debates about those histories. Doing so challenges influential definitions of empire that rely on a distinction between empires and nation-states, highlighting their dual presence in both Euro-American and Chinese pasts (and presents). This move demands a rejection of periodizations that suggest that empires ceased to exist following the period of decolonization from 1945 to the 1970s. This opens up new avenues of historical and normative inquiry to acknowledge the modern continuity between empires and nation-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embroidered bands on the edges of the sleeves of women's garments were fashionable in China during the late 19th century. They adorned Manchu and Han ladies' garments with colourful landscapes, flowers and birds, figural scenes and auspicious symbols that expressed wishes for long life, many male offspring, and an advance in social position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qing government promulgated the new version of the criminal law in 1910, which, unlike the Great Qing Code, loosened the state's grip on private firearms, proposing that any ordinary individuals were permitted to own either bird guns or foreign guns for self-defense purpose as long as they had their weapons registered. This article examines the manifold ways in which the Qing state was gradually impotent to maintain the monopoly of violence and made an adjustment to the new social and political situation. Before the promulgation of this law, most ordinary people were strictly forbidden to carry bird guns. Only a small number of people were allowed to be armed with less sophisticated guns, which not only would not challenge the state authority, but also assisted the state to maintain local order. In the midst of the late Qing chaotic social and political order and the pouring of foreign weapons, the government found it difficult to restrict the diffusion of firearms in local society. The officials gradually recognized the potential of armed civilians in its efforts to combat rebels. This paper argues that the Qing's policy on private weapons was determined by the stance between two ideologies: the reliance on social power to defend the localities, and the resolute maintenance of their monopoly of the deadliest forms of weapons. The state's regulation and control over its armed civilians appeared as a dynamic process, hovering between the two ideologies until the end of the dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing interior decoration of Qing Dynasty is the master of that of each dynasty, with its diversified forms and complicated functions. As early as 1920s, the Rehabilitation Committee of Qing court recorded the interior furnishing in the Forbidden City by using Chinese traditional documentary method. Today, along with the constantly updated techniques, the recording method for the current situation of interior decoration has gradually developed from two-dimensional drawings into digital and comprehensive record. However, the current research results are mostly limited to a single field. This paper takes the digital record and reproduction about the current situation of interior decoration in Jingfu Palace in the Forbidden City as an example. Through the use of photogrammetry, 3D laser scanning, virtual display and other technology and equipment at the forefront of architectural field, it makes qualitative and quantitative record about the interior decoration inside Jingfu Palace. By combing with the interpretation of historical documents, it restores the original design ideas hidden behind the current situation of interior decoration, so as to summarize the best recording and reproducing method of interior decoration of Qing Dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many histories of China have attempted to impose outside interpretive methods upon the Chinese past. In this essay, Mizoguchi works from within the Chinese tradition to understand how changing ideas of economics (and in particular the conflict between private land ownership by the ruler and by the common people), literature, philosophy, religion, and politics all combined to make the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the subsequent Qing Dynasty a time of great change in the ways in which Chinese thinkers understood their history and present. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the British attempt to enter China, the role of the East India Company, the opium trade and the ensuing war (1839–1842). It examines the missionaries’ ambivalent attitudes towards the opium trade and wars, which vacillated between silence, conniving and condemnation. From the missionaries’ point of view, everything was calculated towards furthering the Great Commission (Matt. 28.18–20), and so most Christians at that time did not think it was odd that opium trading and gospel preaching could be endorsed in the same treaty. Opium traffickers and Christian preachers may make strange bedfellows but, in this case, they supported the unequal treaties that Britain imposed on China for different reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Established as a multiethnic and multilingual empire, the Qing dynasty used Manchu, Chinese, and other languages in its government. Influenced by nationalism, the court attempted to establish Manchu as the “national language.” Yet over time, the “national language movement” resulted in Chinese being adopted as the “national language.” Occurring in the twilight years of the Qing, this transition reflected the moribund fate of the Qing empire against the rising tide of Chinese nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research note draws upon secondary sources to describe the role of western shipping companies in China during the late stages of the Qing dynasty, 1840–1911. Driven by industrialisation in Europe and North America and a rapid increase in global trade, the world shipping industry expanded greatly during this period. Keen to take advantage of this growth, the British, French, German, American and Japanese governments adopted policies designed to develop and support their national shipping industries, and to help them access the new markets in China. As a result, western shipping companies quickly came to dominate both coastal and international shipping in China. This pre-eminence is outlined in an overview, and then in more detail in three chronological sections, before possible lines of research-based enquiry are identified in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the sixteenth to eighteenth century, China underwent a commercial revolution similar to the one in contemporaneous Europe. The rise of market did foster the rise of a nascent bourgeois and the concomitant rise of a liberal, populist version of Confucianism, which advocated a more decentralized and less authoritarian political system in the last few decades of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). But after the collapse of the Ming Empire and the establishment of the Qing Empire (1644-1911) by the Manchu conquerors, the new rulers designated the late-Ming liberal ideologies as heretics, and they resurrected the most conservative form of Confucianism as the political orthodoxy. Under the principle of filial piety given by this orthodoxy, the whole empire was imagined as a fictitious family with the emperor as the grand patriarch and the civil bureaucrats and subjects as children or grandchildren. Under the highly centralized administrative and communicative apparatus of the Qing state, this ideology of the fictitious patrimonial state penetrated into the lowest level of the society. The subsequent paternalist, authoritarian, and moralizing politics of the Qing state contributed to China's nontransition to capitalism despite its advanced market economy, and helped explain the peculiar form and trajectory of China's popular contention in the eighteenth century. I also argue that this tradition of fictitious patrimonial politics continued to shape the state-making processes in twentieth-century China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late 1800s, internal rebellion and European imperialism transformed existing patterns of taxation, resource distribution, and government spending in China. Continual preparation for war led to an enormous growth in the state's extractive capacity, and indirect commercial taxes supplanted the system of direct agrarian levies established in the early Qing era. Authorities earmarked the majority of these new resources for military spending in eastern China in an effort to amass the sinews of politico-economic power. Together these changes laid the initial foundation for the military-fiscal state in modern China, a transformation that parallels the experience of early modern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the first estimates of housing price movements for Beijing in late pre-modern China. We hand-collect from archival sources transaction prices and other house attribute information from the 498 surviving house sale contracts for Beijing during the first two centuries of the Qing Dynasty ( 1644-1840), a long period without major wars, political turmoil, or significant institutional change in the Chinese capital. We use hedonic methods to construct a real estate price index for Beijing for the period. The regression analysis explains a major proportion of the variance of housing prices. We find that house prices grew steadily for the first half-century of the Qing Dynasty and declined afterwards in both nominal and real terms through the late eighteenth century. Nominal prices grew starting in the late eighteenth century and declined from the early nineteenth century through 1840. But these price changes occurred with contemporaneous price changes in basic measures of the cost of living: there was little change in real tenns to the end of our period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Qing Dynasty, the setup of local administrators can be generally divided into two grades: basic and regional levels: the former is concerned with villages and manors, which generally have one or several persons each, while the latter may be placed on one particular person or co-shouldered by a number of people, and these local administrators should be well-off. To be a regional administrator, one needs to be recommended by the regional authorities and then experiences such procedures as governmental check and ratification; the basic level administrators may be selected by turn, along with other non-regular forms. The authorities at the county or higher level are responsible for supervising these local administrators by setting up the system of ensuring, calling the roll in the mornings, retiring, mis-conducting and law breaking punishment. Such administrators form a power community on the one hand, and are servants in the eye of the authorities on the other. It is therefore a system in terms of which the governments attempt to save financial cost and hence rely but on personal and social forces for the management. In such a circumstance, the system is easy to catch corruptions and gives rise to social and economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All pirates had reputations for violence and terror, but in Asia people also depicted them as bloodthirsty demons who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifices. But how deserved were those reputations? Here I examine the images, nature, and meanings of pirate violence in the South China Sea between the fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pirates consciously used violence and brutality to obtain money and goods, to seek vengeance against their enemies, and to instill fear in anyone who might resist them. In this article I focus on what I call the cultural construction of violence with Chinese characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study argues against the common perception that the Qing court theatre was a closed cultural institution. It suggests that this theatre developed in conjunction with popular performance traditions outside the court that were stimulated by Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908). Through close readings of a set of ceremonial dramas (yidian xi) commissioned by the Empress for the birthday celebrations of imperial family members, this essay explores the aesthetic transition from ritual to entertainment in this particular genre. It shows how as Empress Dowager Cixi indulged in her personal fantasies, the court theatre altered. These new plays initiated a paradigm shift from choreographed pageantry to an actor-centered stage, and as such indicate Cixi's important role in the transformation of ceremonial court theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qing Imperial Court documents are a major source of primary research material for studying the Qing era China since they provide the most direct and first-hand details of how national affairs were handled. However, the way Qing archived these documents has made it cumbersome to collect documents covering the same event and rebuild their original contexts. In this paper, we describe some information technology that we have developed to discover two important and useful relations among these documents. The first is the citation relation among the Imperial Edicts and the Memorials. We discovered 6,801 pairs from the 37,831 Taiwan-related Imperial Court documents in the Taiwan History Digital Library (THDL) and produced 1,101 graphs of successive citations, which we call IE-M diagrams. The second relation is a template relation, which indicates groups of documents that were created following a specific format. Numerical data can also be tabulated from these documents and be used for further analysis. Our studies show how information technology can be used to discover useful contexts from seemingly unrelated historical documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 9 to 11 August 2010, the Institute of Qing History of the Renmin University of China held the international symposium "Qing Politics and National Identity" in Beijing. Nearly 60 experts and scholars from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, the United States, Japan, Germany, and other countries addressed the issue of "New Qing History.” This shift in paradigm benefited from focused research on marginalization in political history, as well as input from social history and cultural history methodologies. The reaction to this influx of approaches and ideas also generated a counter-reaction to “return to old political history.” This core theme runs throughout the symposium. Scholars discussed such topics as the Qing state and national identity, the Qing political system, Qing bureaucracy and government administration, Qing political culture, and state control and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a study of the yellow riding jacket (magua) as a political tool and a symbol. The jackets were special items bestowed by Qing emperors; an example can be seen in "Illustrations of Qianlong’s Southern Tour." Previous scholars have criticized the yellow riding jacket as a non-Han costume. Focusing on the close relationship between politics and dress code, the author utilizes the study of the yellow riding jacket as a focus on Qing-dynasty political culture. The first section describes the origins of the yellow riding jacket, its typology, and imperial power. The second section discusses whether the jacket’s origin is Han or non-Han, and traces its evolution in the Qing dynasty.

Characteristics of Xinjiang Province, China, make it vulnerable to frequent natural hazards. Due to limited ability of the population to withstand and to recover from disasters, the region’s social and economic development is comparatively low. This article addresses the lack of research on this topic by gathering information from primary source documents from 1759 to 1911. The first part of the article provides an overview of disasters in Qing-dynasty Xinjiang. The second part of the article describes the types of relief provided by Qing government. The author concludes that the government paid a high level of attention to relief in the region.

The reduction of the regular tribute grains from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in the early Tongzhi reign was widely recorded in official documents and local gazetteers. The ensuing reduction of the subsidies for sea transportation and transformation of the canal assisting fee, which was crucial to the reform of the deep-rooted corruption of the tribute grain transportation, had far-reaching influence, however, it can not be found in the Veritable Records nor do modern scholars mention it in their research on the funding of sea transportation. This paper revisits this important issue in the tribute grain transportation of the Qing, reexamines its origins and developments, and explores the subjective and objective causes for the ultimate abolishment of the allowance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Ligdan Qayan of Caqar died in 1634, the Qing controlled the Mongols of the Southern Gobi Desert, but despite Qing efforts to obstruct them, the Qalq-a of the Northern Gobi Desert renewed trade with Ming for a time. The Ming purchased horses from the Qalq-a for their military, and the Ming court even wanted to use the Qalq-a to thwart the western advance of Qing troops. The Qing court employed military threats and economic enticements to stop Qalqa trade with the Ming and shift the trade to the Qing. Furthermore, in the name of the Tumed and Qarc in tribes, the Qing court controlled the markets between the Mongols and the Ming, not only fulfilling its own economic needs, but also controlling the Qalq-a. Under military threat from the Qing, the Ming court tacitly allowed the Qing to trade indirectly to avoid an attack on its northern border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article carefully combs through the administrative process of the dissolution of four counties, Qingyuan, Pingshun, Mayi, and Leping in the Qing dynasty. The evidence suggests that a variety of objective geographic factors and subjective policy decision must be understood and considered. The different attitudes of rural residents and villagers can be attributed to their respective individual interest rather than cultural and regional factors. The specific policies in the four dissolved counties enhanced the regional differences, and led to the restoration of the four counties in early Republican period. It is necessary for the historical research of the evolution of jurisdictions to go beyond the official accounts and to return to the administrative operation and search for the voice of the grassroots inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of assistant magistrates in the villages and towns has increased greatly since the Yongzheng reign. This article first tries to define the administrative organization inferior to that of a county and then makes an analysis on the assistant magistrates in the villages and towns. It shows that some Tongzhi (subprefect of subprefecture), Tongpan and other officials are within this system and thus proves the types of officials of the administrative organization inferior to that of a county varying. Their functions can be divided into three types. The first is only responsible for safety of a village. The second is authorized to deal with small lawsuits. The third can even collect principal tax, a similar function to a county magistrate. The large increase of administrative organization inferior to a county enforces the control of local government over the grassroots' society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to make the Khalkha group in the Mobei area submit to the Qing dynasty, Taizong and Shizu of the Qing adopted a series of strategies and measures including the threat of a military campaign, preventing them from trading with the inner provinces, taking in their fugitives, driving a wedge into their alliance with the Oirat, inviting the Fifth Dalai Lama on a pilgrimage. This eventually forced the Khalkha to acknowledge their tributary status and establish a tribute trade relationship with the Qing. Among all these factors, the most important reason for the Khalkha's submission was their economic dependence on the hinterland provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an introduction and description of the so-called Old Manchu Archives. The Manchu language was invented based on Mongolian scripts under the order of Nurhachi in 1599. By 1632, the script was revised under the order of the first Qing emperor Huang Taiji. The revised script is known as New Manchu script. Old Manchu documents written from that 33-year period were compiled during the Qianlong period and the collection is known as Old Manchu Archives. This article discusses different editions of the archives, the process of compiling the documents, content of the archives, physical characteristics of the documents, discussion of authenticity of various historical editions, overview of various modern editions, and a detailed discussion of the edition published by the China Number One Historical Archives.

As part of the coinage bronze manufacture of the Qing dynasty, lead mining in Guizhou Province played important roles in the Qing mining industry and on the economic and social development of this frontier area. However, estimates of lead output and sales volumes of this area remain largely obscure for historians, leaving the evaluation of its compact on local society groundless. Based on detailed textual study of the mining factories memoirs of annual sales volumes found in Qing archives, this paper provides a new estimate of the lead output and sales volume in this area and examines the previous calculating methods of mine output volume of the Qing dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qing rulers inherited a Ming tradition of sacrificing the former "sage rulers" after they entered into Beijing in 1644. The temple of former emperors of the successive dynasties had been constructed, and the list of "sage rulers" and their "famous ministers" to be offered sacrifices was regulated to serve the political need of the Qing dynasty. By many rounds of increasing and reconfiguring the former rulers and ministers, Qing rulers eventually built up a genealogy of sagely rulership that included many rulers of former dynasties established by minority ethnic groups in China's history. This final structure of temple sacrifices to former emperors had its multi-faceted meanings. The selection of "famous ministers" had set up moral models for the bureaucrats, and the "sage rulers," examples and critical sources for the later emperors. By enhancing its legitimacy through this tradition, Qing rulers fundamentally supported the political culture with a clear identity of Confucius orthodoxy and Chinese civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jiangsu Province takes up a significant position in the development of Qing Lyrics, since it enjoys advantages on the numbers of both poets and poems. However, it shows disequilibrium between its northern and southern part seen from regional distribution. From the analysis of the lyrics from area, for example, Liangxi, southern Jiangsu, we observe that, the prosperity of Southern Jiangsu Lyrics bears a close relation with the regional environment, views on education and hometown literature consciousness. Family culture plays an internal pushing role for the formation of poet groups, poetry schools and the growth of female poet groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imperial tour was the great important official activity in the early Qing dynasty. In the time of Kangxi and Qianlong reigns, they frequently went north to the Mountain Resort in Chengde, and raised the hunting trips, besides there were the eastern tour (Mukden), southern tour (Jiangnan), and western tour (Wutai Mountain), these imperial tours continued until the early 19th century. By preparing these imperial tours, the emperors could patrol and observe the public sentiment, custom. In the same time, excellent literary, outstanding armed strength was advocated and rewarded. The emperors want to unfold the Manchu imperial authority, simultaneously to coordinate the relation between the central government and local governments, shaped models of Qing Dynasty’s unique disposition. Shanxi’s Wutai Mountain is located neat the Great Wall, where is the boundary between Mongolian and Chinese people. There were coexisting the Chinese and the Tibetan Buddhism, especially attracted the Mongolian to go to worship. Visited by the Qing emperors did push its historical status to the peak. Making Tibet inside the frontier was that the definition of Wutai Mountain by Emperor Jiaqing. After Emperor Jiaqing ascended to the throne, the Great Qing entered the post-Qianlong time. Emperor Jiaqing followed the regulations established during the Qianlong time, imperial touring was one of the tradition except southern tour. Emperor Jiaqing paid close attention to raise western tour in 1811. He prepared discretely for many years, however besides pecuniary embarrassment, as a result of the cognitive disparity between the emperor and the bureaucrat, his western tour differed from the previous, and the Qing had not conducted again. This study is about the Quing’s last western tour based on analyzing some archives, rare books holding in the National Palace Museum, especially the archives of Wutai Wei Dang. The Grand Secretariat Archives (collection of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica) is very useful. I also deliberate the Western tour magnificent ceremony of Jiaqing imperial edition to analyze its whole story, and demonstrate the religious factor was the special function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a bibliographical index of scholarly articles published during the year 2009 in Chinese academic journals on the subject of Chinese history during the Qing dynasty. The index is categorized by topics, which include: politics, military affairs, law, society, economics, frontier and borderland ethnic groups, foreign relations, culture and education, intellectual history, science and environmental studies, and individual historical figures.

The Great Qing Draft Civil Code, the first Chinese code of civil law, has been a topic of historical debate. Some historians believe that it was largely based on German law, while others see Japanese law as the original model. The article argues that the Japanese Meiji Constitution was the blueprint for the Qing Draft Civil Code, based on the following points: 1) After the Meiji Restoration took place, Japan’s economy improved significantly and many Qing scholars studied in Japan; 2) Japanese experts were invited to China during the drafting of the law; 3) The most frequently printed foreign legal document during the Qing dynasty was the Japanese Civil Code; 4) While the Qing Draft Civil Code had some stylistic similarities with German laws, this was due to Japan’s integration of some aspects of German Law at the end of the 19th century; and 5) Many Chinese legal terms can be traced to the Japanese language.

Multiple large-scale peasant revolts occurred in China in 1644. These uprisings eventually overthrew the Ming dynasty. However, none of the peasant rebel groups was able to establish its own government. The Manchus, in northeastern China, took advantage of the situation to establish the Qing regime. This article uses the city of Jining as a case study to illustrate the reasons behind the failed rebel governments. After local groups staged military rebellions against the Ming rulers, Jining was subsequently controlled by 1) the peasant regime of Li Zicheng, 2) local noblemen, 3) a local militia force, and finally 4) the Manchus. The article concludes that the fall of Jining occurred because the local groups were unable to form a united front.

Pu’er tea is a variety of fermented tea produced in Yunnan Province, China. The production of Pu’er tea increased significantly during the Qing dynasty. This article explores the history of Pu’er tea by examining: 1) its origin, 2) its cultivation and production, 3) its rising popularity, and 4) its impact and legacy. The author attributes the expanding production of Pu’er tea to the increasing tea trade between Yunnan and Tibet, as well as the relatively simple processing technology. The Qing dynasty saw a surge of Pu’er tea factories and merchants. The article also analyzes the taxation of tea merchants and associated political issues.

Aerbuba was a Tibetan who defected to the Qing regime and was given an official Qing noble title. He played an active role in Qing\Tibetian relations during the reign of the Kangxi and Yongzheng Emperors. In 1728, Aerbuba was captured by the Tibetan leader Poluoding, taken to the the Lhasa Bamari Mountains, and put to death by dismemberment. Much research has been conducted on the family ties shared between Aerbuba and Suonuomudaerzha, the father of the 7th Dalai Lama Kelsang Gyatso. Using mutiple sources, this article sets out to prove that Suonumuderzha was Aerbuba’s aunt’s husband, contrary to the common belief that Suonumuderzha was Aerbuba’s biological uncle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Hanjian,” or Traitor of Han, is a term used by the Chinese to describe traitors. The term has come under fire recently because of its ethnic connotations. Even though Han is the largest Chinese nationality, China also has many other ethnic groups. This article traces the historical origins and development of the word “Hanjian.” Initially, Hanjian was used only for Han defectors. During the downfall of the Qing dynasty, the word started to be used for people who collaborated with foreign enemy forces. During a period of “Foreign expulsion,” anyone who showed preference toward foreign things was labeled as “Hanjian.” The increased use of the word coincided with the wartime strife China faced after the Qing period. Defectors are a phenomenon closely associated with wars.

In the study of the Qing Dynasty we must begin with the political principle of national survival. In order to maintain long-term control, the state must employ all means to obtain political legitimacy and have people identify with the nation. The state must transform people's passive identification into active identification. The Qing Dynasty Rulers were oriented toward continuing the Ming Dynasty and all previous dynasties emperor's domination, The Qing Dynasty rulers took Confucianism as the official ideology and by approving Confucianism, won the Han people's favorable impression in return for the Han people obeyed the Qing rule, and realized the national identity. This national identity was embodied in honoring Confucianism and changing existing habits and customs. Orthodox ideas especially those represented by the Temple of Ancient Monarchs in Qing Dynasty actually contained, or bred, a new concept of a multinational country and also implied a reinterpretation of universal national sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We revisit the debate over the deliberate control of reproduction in historical China through a reanalysis of data from the Qing (1644–1911) Imperial Lineage that accounts for physiological or other differences between couples that affected their chances of having children. Even though studies of contemporary and historical European fertility suggest that failing to control for such differences may obscure evidence of parity-specific control, previous studies of historical Chinese fertility have not accounted for them. We show that in the Lineage, failure to account for such differences leads the association between the number of children already born and the chances of having another birth to appear to be positive, but that once they are accounted for properly, the relationship is inverted. Based on this, we conclude that lineage members adjusted their reproductive behavior based on the number of children. We also show that the sex composition and survival of previous births affected reproductive behavior. We conclude by suggesting that one way forward in the ongoing debate over fertility control in historical China is through application of such methods to other datasets and comparison of results. We also suggest that progress in the debate over fertility in historical China has been impeded by confusion over the definition of fertility control, so that some behaviors are recognized as fertility control by some parties in the debate but not others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a study of the corruption trial of Li Fengbao (1834-1887). He served as the Chinese diplomat in Germany from 1878 to 1884. Under the order of Chinese statesman Li Hongzhang, Li Fengbao was to commission military ships as well as weapons and armaments. But before Li Fengbao had returned to China, news of corruption charges had appeared. This event coincided with the termination of his post. The author contends that these two events were unrelated, and that the corruption case was not the cause of his termination. Drawing from primary sources such as archival information on Li Hongzhang, the author proposes other reasons for the termination.

This article concerns three different versions of the map of the Jinsha River, in China, in a set of historical atlases from the Qing dynasty published by the Chinese Academy of Science in 1997. The Jinsha River is part of the Yangtze River in the west of China. It originates in Qinghai Province and branches into Sichuan Province and the Mekong River. Historically, due to its rapid currents, the Jinsha River has not been suitable for transportation purposes. This changed in 1544, during the Jiaqing period in the Ming dynasty, when there were attempts to create a passage for a postal station and transportation of grains. By the time of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing dynasty, an upstream passage was finally established. However, due to piracy, the waterway was closed by the fourteenth year of Qianlong period (1749). The author analyzes this history in order to authenticate various versions of the map.

"Wuche Yunfu" is a bilingual dictionary of Chinese and English compiled by Robert Morrison and named after an early Qing exemplar. The Chinese legal terms contained the dictionary are from a pre-modern discourse system very familiar to the Chinese of the time. From his translation of legal terms in the major branches of Chinese law including criminal law, civil law, procedural law, basic law and feudal law, we can see that Morrison's translation was the first attempt to convey Chinese legal concepts to the English-speaking world. As such, it played quite an important role in communication between Chinese and Western legal cultures. Morrison's translation strategies and paradigms had an influence on the later compilation of bilingual dictionaries of Chinese and English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]