Pär Kristoffer Cassel
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199792054
- eISBN:
- 9780199932573
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199792054.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History, World Modern History
This chapter argues that prior to the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century, both Qing China and Tokugawa Japan were familiar with the principle of personal jurisdiction and the existence of ...
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This chapter argues that prior to the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century, both Qing China and Tokugawa Japan were familiar with the principle of personal jurisdiction and the existence of ethnic and social groups that had separate legal existences prior to the Opium War. In the Qing legal order, the Manchu conquest élite enjoyed extensive legal privileges, which placed them outside the criminal jurisdiction of the local Chinese administration. Similarly, the Tokugawa shogunate was accustomed to devolving jurisdiction to local domains and different status groups.Less
This chapter argues that prior to the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century, both Qing China and Tokugawa Japan were familiar with the principle of personal jurisdiction and the existence of ethnic and social groups that had separate legal existences prior to the Opium War. In the Qing legal order, the Manchu conquest élite enjoyed extensive legal privileges, which placed them outside the criminal jurisdiction of the local Chinese administration. Similarly, the Tokugawa shogunate was accustomed to devolving jurisdiction to local domains and different status groups.
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520220096
- eISBN:
- 9780520924499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520220096.003.0021
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter focuses on nineteenth-century Japan. It notes that the Tokugawa and Meiji regimes, both before and after 1868, enjoyed almost total success at controlling opium within Japan's borders, ...
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This chapter focuses on nineteenth-century Japan. It notes that the Tokugawa and Meiji regimes, both before and after 1868, enjoyed almost total success at controlling opium within Japan's borders, and both employed this control to enhance state consolidation and centralization of power. The chapter notes that Japan also established an opium regime in China and sold refined narcotics, doing so in the face of ever-mounting Chinese resistance and international censure. It furthermore explores the historical origins of Japanese involvement in the opium trade by examining changing Japanese views of opium use in Qing China. The chapter demonstrates how the mechanisms of sakoku furthered political consolidation in Tokugawa Japan, and argues that Meiji Japan used opium to move away from being a co-victim of Western imperialism to become a co-predator in China.Less
This chapter focuses on nineteenth-century Japan. It notes that the Tokugawa and Meiji regimes, both before and after 1868, enjoyed almost total success at controlling opium within Japan's borders, and both employed this control to enhance state consolidation and centralization of power. The chapter notes that Japan also established an opium regime in China and sold refined narcotics, doing so in the face of ever-mounting Chinese resistance and international censure. It furthermore explores the historical origins of Japanese involvement in the opium trade by examining changing Japanese views of opium use in Qing China. The chapter demonstrates how the mechanisms of sakoku furthered political consolidation in Tokugawa Japan, and argues that Meiji Japan used opium to move away from being a co-victim of Western imperialism to become a co-predator in China.
Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520253025
- eISBN:
- 9780520934221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520253025.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Between 1876 and 1879, the most lethal drought-famine in imperial China's long history of famines and disasters struck the five northern provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, Zhili, and Shaanxi. The ...
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Between 1876 and 1879, the most lethal drought-famine in imperial China's long history of famines and disasters struck the five northern provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, Zhili, and Shaanxi. The drought in the Yellow River basin began in 1876 and worsened dramatically with the almost total failure of rain in 1877. The lack of consensus over theories of famine causation and over definitions of moral versus immoral responses to the disaster presaged the more extreme breakdown in consensus following the famine over what values were crucial to Chinese identity. The famine thus reveals competing contexts for the consideration of trauma in a key period of transition in late-Qing China. Because the image of innocent human beings starving to death is so disturbing, a famine provides a particularly vivid window through which to view a culture's response to disaster.Less
Between 1876 and 1879, the most lethal drought-famine in imperial China's long history of famines and disasters struck the five northern provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, Zhili, and Shaanxi. The drought in the Yellow River basin began in 1876 and worsened dramatically with the almost total failure of rain in 1877. The lack of consensus over theories of famine causation and over definitions of moral versus immoral responses to the disaster presaged the more extreme breakdown in consensus following the famine over what values were crucial to Chinese identity. The famine thus reveals competing contexts for the consideration of trauma in a key period of transition in late-Qing China. Because the image of innocent human beings starving to death is so disturbing, a famine provides a particularly vivid window through which to view a culture's response to disaster.
Ho-Fung Hung
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231152037
- eISBN:
- 9780231525459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152037.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter discusses data and methodological issues, and provides a general overview and classification of all documented protests. These episodes were not distributed evenly over time but were ...
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This chapter discusses data and methodological issues, and provides a general overview and classification of all documented protests. These episodes were not distributed evenly over time but were clustered in three waves: 1740–1759, 1776–1795, and 1820–1839. The reasons for establishing 1740 and 1839 as the temporal boundaries of the study are twofold. First, Qing China during this period was at its height of early modernity. Its levels of centralized state power and commercialized economy were comparable to eighteenth-century Europe. Second, studies that deal with unrest in the late Ming–early Qing period (from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century) and the late Qing period (from the end of the first Opium War, in 1842, to the collapse of the Qing empire in 1911) are relatively abundant.Less
This chapter discusses data and methodological issues, and provides a general overview and classification of all documented protests. These episodes were not distributed evenly over time but were clustered in three waves: 1740–1759, 1776–1795, and 1820–1839. The reasons for establishing 1740 and 1839 as the temporal boundaries of the study are twofold. First, Qing China during this period was at its height of early modernity. Its levels of centralized state power and commercialized economy were comparable to eighteenth-century Europe. Second, studies that deal with unrest in the late Ming–early Qing period (from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century) and the late Qing period (from the end of the first Opium War, in 1842, to the collapse of the Qing empire in 1911) are relatively abundant.
Ho-fung Hung
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231152037
- eISBN:
- 9780231525459
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152037.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one ...
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The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the book charts an evolution of Chinese dissent that stands apart from Western trends. The author samples from mid-Qing petitions and humble plaints to the emperor, revisiting rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of contention rarely considered in previous studies. Drawing on new world history, which accommodates parallels and divergences between political-economic and cultural developments East and West, the author shows how the centralization of political power and an expanding market, coupled with a persistent Confucianist orthodoxy, shaped protesters' strategies and appeals in Qing China. This unique form of mid-Qing protest combined a quest for justice and autonomy with a filial-loyal respect for the imperial center, and the author's research ties this distinct characteristic to popular protest in China today. The book makes clear, the nature of these protests prove late imperial China was anything but a stagnant and tranquil empire before the West cracked it open. In fact, the origins of modern popular politics in China predate the 1911 Revolution. The book establishes a framework that others can use to compare popular protest among different cultural fabrics, and fundamentally recasts the evolution of such acts worldwide.Less
The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the book charts an evolution of Chinese dissent that stands apart from Western trends. The author samples from mid-Qing petitions and humble plaints to the emperor, revisiting rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of contention rarely considered in previous studies. Drawing on new world history, which accommodates parallels and divergences between political-economic and cultural developments East and West, the author shows how the centralization of political power and an expanding market, coupled with a persistent Confucianist orthodoxy, shaped protesters' strategies and appeals in Qing China. This unique form of mid-Qing protest combined a quest for justice and autonomy with a filial-loyal respect for the imperial center, and the author's research ties this distinct characteristic to popular protest in China today. The book makes clear, the nature of these protests prove late imperial China was anything but a stagnant and tranquil empire before the West cracked it open. In fact, the origins of modern popular politics in China predate the 1911 Revolution. The book establishes a framework that others can use to compare popular protest among different cultural fabrics, and fundamentally recasts the evolution of such acts worldwide.
Jeremi Suri
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190611477
- eISBN:
- 9780190611514
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190611477.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The secret to sustaining national power since the eighteenth century has revolved around “state financial capacity,” or the ability to raise low-cost capital and then use it to adapt to change and ...
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The secret to sustaining national power since the eighteenth century has revolved around “state financial capacity,” or the ability to raise low-cost capital and then use it to adapt to change and stay active in the world. While the historical record does not offer license to legislate smothering taxation or carry crippling debt, it does warn against the seductive assumption that taxing less and borrowing less are necessarily good. This chapter draws lessons from the English strategy after the Glorious Revolution and the American strategy after the Great Depression, both of which used low-cost capital judiciously to buy security and growth. Qing China and the Soviet Union failed because they could not do the same. The correct balance involves adequate taxation and borrowing to increase the capacities of a society; doing less undermines national power in the long run.Less
The secret to sustaining national power since the eighteenth century has revolved around “state financial capacity,” or the ability to raise low-cost capital and then use it to adapt to change and stay active in the world. While the historical record does not offer license to legislate smothering taxation or carry crippling debt, it does warn against the seductive assumption that taxing less and borrowing less are necessarily good. This chapter draws lessons from the English strategy after the Glorious Revolution and the American strategy after the Great Depression, both of which used low-cost capital judiciously to buy security and growth. Qing China and the Soviet Union failed because they could not do the same. The correct balance involves adequate taxation and borrowing to increase the capacities of a society; doing less undermines national power in the long run.
