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Despite the rapid growth of Chinese historical studies in the United States, a crucial epoch in the background of modern China has for a long time received the attention of comparatively few scholars. I refer to the early and middle Ch'ing period-the two centuries before the Opium War that saw the consolidation and the heyday of the Manchu rule in China. In the nineteen thirties American sinology was fascinated by the period. It was then that Pritchard published his books on the early relations between England and China, and Goodrich his study of the literary inquisition under Ch'ien-lung; that the great biographical dictionary, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, was prepared; that Fairbank and Teng were working on the Ch'ing documents and on the tributary system, and Michael on early Manchu military and political organization.1 But the Pacific War and the events in China that followed focused scholarly interest on that country's more recent experience. While many took up the study of “modern China,” inquiry into the Ch'ing before the nineteenth century was continued by only a few. Only in the last twelve years have we again seen the appearance of major studies touching upon the China of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Ho's works on commercial capitalism, population, social mobility, and voluntary associations; books on the shen-shih, the bureaucracy, and local government by Chang, Hsiao, Marsh, and Ch'ü; an analysis of rural social structure by Skinner; writings by de Bary, Nivison, and Wilhelm on intellectual history.
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- New Views of Ch'ing History: A Symposium
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- Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967
References
1 Pritchard, Earl H., Anglo-Chinese Relations during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Urbana, 1930)Google Scholar; The Crucial Years of Early Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1750–1800 (Pullman, Wash., 1936)Google Scholar; Goodrich, Carrington L., The Literary Inquisition of Ch'ien-lung (Baltimore, 1935)Google Scholar; Hummel, Arthur W., ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644–1912), 2 vols. (Washington, 1943–44)Google Scholar; Michael, Franz, The Origins of Manchu Rule in China (Baltimore, 1942)Google Scholar; articles by John K. Fairbank and Ssu-yü Teng in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, IV–VI (1939–1941), reprinted in the same authors' Ch'ing Administration: Three Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).Google Scholar
2 Ho, Ping-ti, “The Salt Merchants of Yang-chou: A Study of Commercial Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XVII (1954)Google Scholar; Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959)Google Scholar; The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368–1911 (N. Y., 1962)Google Scholar; Chung-kuo hui-kuan shih-lun (An Historical Survey of Landsmannschaften in China) (Taipei, 1966); Chang, Chung-li, The Chinese Gentry: Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society (Seattle, 1955)Google Scholar; Hsiao, Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, 1960)Google Scholar; Marsh, Robert M., The Mandarins: The Circulation of Elites in China (Glencoe, 1961)Google Scholar; Ch'ü, T'ung-tsu, Local Government in China under the Ch'ing (Cambridge, Mass., 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, G. William, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,” JAS, XXIV (1964–65)Google Scholar; de Bary, William Theodore, “Chinese Despotism and the Confucian Ideal: A Seventeenth Century View,” in Fairbank, John K., ed., Chinese Thought and Institutions (Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar; Nivison, David S., The Life and Thought of Chang Hsueh-ch'eng (1738–1801) (Stanford, 1966)Google Scholar; Wilhelm, Hellmut, “Chinese Confucianism on the Eve of the Great Encounter,” in Jansen, Marius B., ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar. About a score of articles on various aspects of the early and middle Ch'ing have been published in journals and symposia in the United States since the early 1950's (see the annual bibliographical volumes of FEQ and JAS.) The following are notable examples: Chaoying, Fang, “A Technique of Estimating the Numerical Strength of the Early Manchu Military Forces,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XIII (1950)Google Scholar; Wilhelm, Hellmut, “The Pohsüeh Hung-ju Examination of 1679,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, LXXI (1951)Google Scholar; Ho, Alfred Kuo-liang, “The Grand Council in the Ch'ing Dynasty,” FEQ, XI (1952)Google Scholar; Hinton, Harold C., “The Grain Tribute System of the Ch'ing Dynasty,” FEQ, XI (1952)Google Scholar; Levenson, Joseph R., “The Abortiveness of Empiricism in Early Ch'ing Thought,” FEQ, XIII (1954)Google Scholar; Hu, Ch'ang tu, “The Yellow River Administration in the Ch'ing Dynasty,” FEQ, XIV (1955)Google Scholar; Mancall, Mark, “China's First Missions to Russia, 1729–1731,” Papers on China, IX (1955)Google Scholar and “The Kiakhta Trade,” in Cowan, C. D., ed., The Economic Development of China and Japan (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Nivison, David S., “Ho-shen and His Accusers: Ideology and Political Behavior in the Eighteenth Century,” in Nivison, David S. and Wright, Arthur F., eds., Confucianism in Action (Stanford, 1959)Google Scholar; Ssu-ming, Meng, “The E-lo-ssu kuan (Russian Hostel) in Peking,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XXIII (1962)Google Scholar; Harrison, Judy Feldman, “Wrongful Treatment of Prisoners: A Case Study of Ch'ing Legal Practice,” JAS, XXIII (1964)Google Scholar; Kahn, Harold L., “Some Mid-Ch'ing Views of the Monarchy,” JAS, XXIV (1965).Google Scholar
3 Founded in April, 1965, the Society now has more than seventy members, including scholars in North America, Taiwan, Japan, Europe, and Australia. It publishes an informal bulletin, Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i, Jonathan Spence, editor (New Haven and St. Louis, 1965–).