Robert K. Batchelor
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226080659
- eISBN:
- 9780226080796
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226080796.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
The arrival of a Chinese map and Japanese sailors with Thomas Cavendish on his return from circumnavigating the globe in 1588 helped transform understandings of national autonomy in the watershed ...
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The arrival of a Chinese map and Japanese sailors with Thomas Cavendish on his return from circumnavigating the globe in 1588 helped transform understandings of national autonomy in the watershed year of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Spain’s encounters with Ming China and Japan in particular set the stage for a discussion of autonomous polities outside the apparent Iberian dominance of global trade. Ming cartography and especially the atlas of Luo Hongxian as well as the actual process of state consolidation in Japan were important in introducing the idea that the collection and mapping of data indicated sovereign spaces and state rationality. English mapmakers in the 1580’s and 1590’s became increasingly reliant on data collection, and this increasing sense of national autonomy based on the data of ‘English navigations’ helped defined new grounds for speculation in the form of the English East India Company.Less
The arrival of a Chinese map and Japanese sailors with Thomas Cavendish on his return from circumnavigating the globe in 1588 helped transform understandings of national autonomy in the watershed year of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Spain’s encounters with Ming China and Japan in particular set the stage for a discussion of autonomous polities outside the apparent Iberian dominance of global trade. Ming cartography and especially the atlas of Luo Hongxian as well as the actual process of state consolidation in Japan were important in introducing the idea that the collection and mapping of data indicated sovereign spaces and state rationality. English mapmakers in the 1580’s and 1590’s became increasingly reliant on data collection, and this increasing sense of national autonomy based on the data of ‘English navigations’ helped defined new grounds for speculation in the form of the English East India Company.
Ning Ma
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190606565
- eISBN:
- 9780190606589
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190606565.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter focuses on the anonymous sixteenth-century Chinese novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei). It situates the novel within the late Ming Chinese society’s material contacts with ...
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This chapter focuses on the anonymous sixteenth-century Chinese novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei). It situates the novel within the late Ming Chinese society’s material contacts with the outside world and internal developments of economic, cultural, and political modernities. It theorizes Plum as the “first modern novel” in order to open up a transcultural lineage of narrative realism. Specifically, the chapter analyzes Plum’s reflection of the collapse of Confucian “cardinal relations” due to the rule of money, and the novel’s fusion of the themes of political and kinship decays. The novel’s foregrounding of the characters’ sexual excess and family conflicts embodies national representation and critique, while its narrative expresses a subversive political consciousness and changing visions about human nature and individuality. Overall, these findings reposition Plum not just as a distinctively “Chinese” text, but as an important example of transcultural literary early modernities.Less
This chapter focuses on the anonymous sixteenth-century Chinese novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei). It situates the novel within the late Ming Chinese society’s material contacts with the outside world and internal developments of economic, cultural, and political modernities. It theorizes Plum as the “first modern novel” in order to open up a transcultural lineage of narrative realism. Specifically, the chapter analyzes Plum’s reflection of the collapse of Confucian “cardinal relations” due to the rule of money, and the novel’s fusion of the themes of political and kinship decays. The novel’s foregrounding of the characters’ sexual excess and family conflicts embodies national representation and critique, while its narrative expresses a subversive political consciousness and changing visions about human nature and individuality. Overall, these findings reposition Plum not just as a distinctively “Chinese” text, but as an important example of transcultural literary early modernities.
Michael Szonyi
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691197241
- eISBN:
- 9781400888887
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691197241.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
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 ...
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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
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.
Ron Harris
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691150772
- eISBN:
- 9780691185804
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150772.003.0009
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
This chapter examines the formation, weaknesses, and demise of two ruler-owned trade enterprises. It describes the mercantile endeavors of early Ming China and sixteenth-century Portugal. The two ...
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This chapter examines the formation, weaknesses, and demise of two ruler-owned trade enterprises. It describes the mercantile endeavors of early Ming China and sixteenth-century Portugal. The two were radically different. The Chinese state was based on Confucian ideology, on extensive learned bureaucracy, on a worldview of being the Middle Kingdom, and on its huge geographic scale and huge population. In many eras the Chinese Empire had no ambitions with respect to overseas trade, and in others it allowed either foreign or local merchants to trade but was not involved in trade directly. Portugal was a small and young kingdom on the margins of the Iberian Peninsula. Its state capacity was limited, but its exposure to seafaring was significant due to its location on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.Less
This chapter examines the formation, weaknesses, and demise of two ruler-owned trade enterprises. It describes the mercantile endeavors of early Ming China and sixteenth-century Portugal. The two were radically different. The Chinese state was based on Confucian ideology, on extensive learned bureaucracy, on a worldview of being the Middle Kingdom, and on its huge geographic scale and huge population. In many eras the Chinese Empire had no ambitions with respect to overseas trade, and in others it allowed either foreign or local merchants to trade but was not involved in trade directly. Portugal was a small and young kingdom on the margins of the Iberian Peninsula. Its state capacity was limited, but its exposure to seafaring was significant due to its location on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.
Mamoru Akamine
Robert Huey (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824855178
- eISBN:
- 9780824872953
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824855178.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
A discussion of the Ryukyu Archipelago and its shifting historical boundaries is followed by an overview of the Ryukyu kingdom’s emergence as an important player in East Asian trade, concluding with ...
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A discussion of the Ryukyu Archipelago and its shifting historical boundaries is followed by an overview of the Ryukyu kingdom’s emergence as an important player in East Asian trade, concluding with a discussion of how recent historiography of the region has been changed by the emergence of previously lost ancient documents.Less
A discussion of the Ryukyu Archipelago and its shifting historical boundaries is followed by an overview of the Ryukyu kingdom’s emergence as an important player in East Asian trade, concluding with a discussion of how recent historiography of the region has been changed by the emergence of previously lost ancient documents.
Kuang-chi Hung
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719096006
- eISBN:
- 9781781708460
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096006.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This research explores the intersection between the history of medicine and that of the body by tracing the medicalization of a unique plant: Ginkgo biloba. As the only surviving species of its kind, ...
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This research explores the intersection between the history of medicine and that of the body by tracing the medicalization of a unique plant: Ginkgo biloba. As the only surviving species of its kind, ginkgo has become one of the most popular herbs in modern times. Different from current understandings of ginkgo’s medical history, my essay identifies great divergences that have surfaced in different societies’ contemplations of ginkgo as a pharmaceutical. For example, when the Chinese in the seventeenth century proved that ginkgo could cure disorders of the lungs, their counterparts in Edo Japan (1603‐1868) were convinced that ginkgo was effective in promoting digestion. Also, when ginkgo was widespread in Europe in the late twentieth century, Europeans came to formulate that ginkgo supported mental sharpness. This essay interprets such divergences by applying what anthropologists call “regional biologies.” The ways in which different societies conceptualize ginkgo as part of their living worlds, for example, agriculture, horticulture, taxonomy, and evolutionary theory, help shape ginkgo’s medicalization and, in turn, how the body perceives of an object’s efficacies.Less
This research explores the intersection between the history of medicine and that of the body by tracing the medicalization of a unique plant: Ginkgo biloba. As the only surviving species of its kind, ginkgo has become one of the most popular herbs in modern times. Different from current understandings of ginkgo’s medical history, my essay identifies great divergences that have surfaced in different societies’ contemplations of ginkgo as a pharmaceutical. For example, when the Chinese in the seventeenth century proved that ginkgo could cure disorders of the lungs, their counterparts in Edo Japan (1603‐1868) were convinced that ginkgo was effective in promoting digestion. Also, when ginkgo was widespread in Europe in the late twentieth century, Europeans came to formulate that ginkgo supported mental sharpness. This essay interprets such divergences by applying what anthropologists call “regional biologies.” The ways in which different societies conceptualize ginkgo as part of their living worlds, for example, agriculture, horticulture, taxonomy, and evolutionary theory, help shape ginkgo’s medicalization and, in turn, how the body perceives of an object’s efficacies.
Greg Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190886646
- eISBN:
- 9780190886677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190886646.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
To open Part Two (“The Many Real Worlds of the Past”), the book begins its ethical case for an ontological turn in history by establishing the past’s extraordinary ontological diversity. Drawing on a ...
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To open Part Two (“The Many Real Worlds of the Past”), the book begins its ethical case for an ontological turn in history by establishing the past’s extraordinary ontological diversity. Drawing on a lengthy inventory of ethnographies and histories, the chapter adduces evidence for non-modern ontologies from a broad range of environments, including precolonial Mexico, India, Bali, and Polynesia, medieval Europe, Ming China, and the lifeworlds of various indigenous peoples in Amazonia, South East Asia, Melanesia, and Africa. The cumulative result is a panorama of ontological alterities, indicating wide historical variabilities in the essences and foundations of human existence, in the ways humans experience, say, personhood and subjectivity, kinship and sociality, materiality and ideality, mortality and rationality, humanity and divinity, and the sources, means, and ends of life itself. Yet the tools of our conventional historicism cannot account for these variabilities, since they all presuppose the truth of an ontology that prevails only in our capitalist modernity.Less
To open Part Two (“The Many Real Worlds of the Past”), the book begins its ethical case for an ontological turn in history by establishing the past’s extraordinary ontological diversity. Drawing on a lengthy inventory of ethnographies and histories, the chapter adduces evidence for non-modern ontologies from a broad range of environments, including precolonial Mexico, India, Bali, and Polynesia, medieval Europe, Ming China, and the lifeworlds of various indigenous peoples in Amazonia, South East Asia, Melanesia, and Africa. The cumulative result is a panorama of ontological alterities, indicating wide historical variabilities in the essences and foundations of human existence, in the ways humans experience, say, personhood and subjectivity, kinship and sociality, materiality and ideality, mortality and rationality, humanity and divinity, and the sources, means, and ends of life itself. Yet the tools of our conventional historicism cannot account for these variabilities, since they all presuppose the truth of an ontology that prevails only in our capitalist modernity.
