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The Chinese History Podcast

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  • Summary

  • A podcast covering various aspects of Chinese history, from ancient to modern, through interviews with scholars.
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Episodes
  • Cultural Production during the Ming-Qing Transition: A Conversation with Professor Lynn Struve

    Cultural Production during the Ming-Qing Transition: A Conversation with Professor Lynn Struve
    Mar 2 2024

    The Ming-Qing transition was an extremely chaotic time in Chinese history. Millions died of warfare, pestilence, or starvation, and millions more were displaced. Yet despite all these issues, this was also a period of cultural production, which has often been overlooked as people focus on the wars, famine, and climate change that pervaded this period. In this episode, I speak with Professor Lynn Struve about the literary pursuits of men and women and the overall intellectual landscape in the Late Ming and the Early Qing

    Contributors

    Lynn Struve

    Lynn Struve is an emeritus professor of history and an emeritus professor of East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research interests include traditional Chinese history, 17th century political and intellectual history, East-West comparative thought, and Chinese reference and source materials. Over the course of her career, she has published widely, particularly on the period of the Ming-Qing transition, and has received numerous awards. Her representative works include Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws, The Southern Ming, 1644-1662, The Ming-Qing Conflict: A Historiography and Source Guide, and, more recently, The Dreaming Mind and the End of the Ming World, which was recently awarded best overall book in Ming studies published between 2019 and 2022 by the Society for Ming Studies.

    Yiming Ha

    Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

    Credits

    Episode no. 18

    Release date: March 1, 2024

    Recording location: Bloomington, IN/Los Angeles, CA

    References compiled by Yiming Ha

    Images

    A portrait of the Kangxi emperor as a scholar, painted in 1699 when he was forty-five years of age. (Image Source)

    An alternative portrait of the Kangxi emperor that Jonathan Spence used for his book on the Kangxi emperor. This portrait shows the pockmarks on his face, a result of his childhood survival of smallpox which devastated the Manchu population. (Image Source)

    A portrait of Huang Zongxi (1610-1695), one of the great scholars of the Late Ming and Early Qing. Originally a prominent figure in the Ming loyalist movement, Huang retired from Ming loyalism but also refused to serve the Qing. Nonetheless, Huang made many contributions to scholarship by indirectly accommodating the Qing. (Image Source)

    A late 18th/early 19th century portrait of Liu Rushi (1618-1664), one of the most famous courtesans of the 17th century and a prominent female scholar. (Image Source)

    Select References

    Brook, Timothy. The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.

    Ko, Dorothy. Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-century China. Stanford University Press, 1994.

    Struve, Lynn. The Dreaming Mind and the End of the Ming World. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019.

    Widmer, Ellen. The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-century China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006.

    Widmer, Ellen. The Inner Quarters and Beyond Women Writers from Ming Through Qing. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
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    56 mins
  • Professor Pamela Crossley on History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology

    Professor Pamela Crossley on History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology
    Mar 4 2023
    The Qing Empire (1636-1912) ruled over one of the largest land empires in the world. Its territories encompassed not only what is considered today to be China proper and Manchuria, but also Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia. Its subjects were composed of people belonging to different identities, of which Manchu, Han, Mongol, Tibetan, and later Uighur became the most important groups. As an empire that was composed of a small conquering elite, how did the Qing manage these different identities as its empire expanded and stabilized? What changes occurred over time? What legacy did the Qing leave on the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in terms of how they dealt with ethnic minorities? To help answer these question, we invite Professor Pamela Crossley to talk to us about how history and identity were constructed and weaved into Qing imperial ideology. Contributors Pamela Crossley Professor Pamela Crossley is the Charles and Elfriede Collis Professor of History at Dartmouth University. She specializes in the history of the Qing Empire and modern China, although her research interests also span Inner Asian history, global history, history of horsemanship in Eurasia, and imperial sources of modern identities. She is the author of eight books and numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles, and her book A Translucent Mirror is the winner of the Joseph Levenson Prize of the Association of Asian Studies. Additionally, she has also written commentaries for major newspapers and magazines. Yiming Ha Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Credits Episode no. 17 Release date: March 3, 2023 Recording location: Hanover, NH/Los Angeles, CA Transcript (by Yiming Ha and Greg Sattler) Bibliography courtesy of Prof. Crossley Images Cover Image: A page of the Pentaglot Dictionary (Yuzhi wuti qing wenjian 御製五體清文鑑), a dictionary of the major languages of the Qing compiled towards the later reign of Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century. The five languages are Manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Chagatai (now known as Uighur). (Image Source) The Stele Commemorating the Victory over the Dzungars, erected by the Qianlong emperor either in the 1750s or 1760s to commemorate the Qing victory over the Dzungars in the Xinjiang region. The stele featured four languages. On the front side are inscriptions written in Classical Chinese (by the Qianlong emperor himself) and Manchu, while the reverse side features inscriptions in Mongolian and Tibetan. (Image Source) The Capture of Tucheng, a painting commemorating a Qing victory during the Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan (1856-1873). Note the five colored banner that were flown by the Qing troops. The alternate version of this flag (with the colors rearranged) later became one of the early flags of the Republic of China, with each color representing an ethnic group. Red for the Han, yellow for the Manchus, blue for the Mongols, white for the Hui (Muslims), and black for the Tibetans. (Image Source) References Bovington, Goardner, "The History of the History of Xinjiang" in Twentieth-Century China, 26:.2 (April, 2001): 95-139. Bulag, Uradyn The Mongols at China's Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity (2002, Rowman & Littlefield) Crossley, "The Cycle of Inevitability in Imperial and Republican Identities in China" in Aviel Roshwald, ed, The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism: Volume One: Patterns and Trajectories over the Longue Durée (2022, Cambridge), 301-328. Crossley, Helen F. Siu, Donald S., Sutton, ed., Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ehtnicity and Frontier in the Early Modern China (California, 2006) Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imeprial Ideology (1999, California). Elliott, Mark, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (2002, Californai) Perdue, Peter. C, ."Empire and Nation in Comparative Perspective: Frontier Administration in Eighteenth-Century China" in Journal of Early Modern History, 5:4 (2001, 282-304. Jonathan D. Spence, Treason by the Book (2002, Viking). Wu, Hung, "Emperor's Masquerade:...
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    48 mins
  • The Maritime Kingdom of the Zheng Family: An Interview with Professor Xing Hang

    The Maritime Kingdom of the Zheng Family: An Interview with Professor Xing Hang
    Nov 28 2022
    The fall of Beijing in 1644 did not immediately put an end to the Ming Dynasty. For almost half a century, Ming pretenders and loyalists in the south warred with the Manchus. One of the most prominent Ming loyalist factions was the Zheng family regime based in Fujian and Taiwan. Founded by the pirate-merchant Zheng Zhilong, the enterprise reached new heights under his son Zheng Chenggong, better known as Koxinga, who is best known for driving the Dutch out of Taiwan. This regime carried out the pro-Ming, anti-Manchu banner until it was finally defeated by the Qing in 1683. Joining me to talk about this fascinating regime is Professor Xing Hang of Brandeis University. He will cover the history of the regime from its rise to its fall, how it became so powerful, how and why Koxinga took over Taiwan, as well as what Ming loyalism meant to the Zhengs. Contributors Xing Hang Professor Xing Hang is an Associate Professor of History at Brandeis University and a scholar of China and of the East Asian maritime world. His first project is about the Zheng organization in Taiwan, its role in seventeenth century East Asian maritime trade, and how it defined its legitimacy, and he has published extensively on the topic. His research on this topic has also greatly informed his more recent project, which is on Chinese communities in Southeast Asia from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first centuries. Yiming Ha Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Credits Episode no. 16 Release date: November 28, 2022 Recording location: Boston, MA/Los Angeles, CA Transcript (proofread and punctuated by Lina Nie) Bibliography courtesy of Prof. Hang Images Cover Image: Painting of Zheng Zhiling (in green robes) and his son Zheng Chenggong by Dutch painter Pieter van der Aa (Image Source) 17th century portrait of Zheng Chenggong, also known as Koxinga (Image Source) Maximum extent of Koxinga's territories in the late 1650s/early 1660s. Red shows areas under his direct control, while orange shows his area of influence. (Image Source) Birth rock of Koxinga, in Hirado, Japan. (Image Source) Koxinga worshipped in a temple in Tainan. (Image Source) References Andrade, Tonio. Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory over the West. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Andrade, Tonio and Xing Hang, eds. Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550-1700. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019. Cheng Wei-chung. War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas (1622-1683). Leiden: Brill, 2013. Clulow, Adam. The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Ho, Daphon David. "Sealords Live in Vain: Fujian and the Making of a Maritime Frontier in Seventeenth-century China." PhD diss., UCSD, 2011. Keliher, Macabe. Out of China: Yu Yonghe's Tales of Formosa: A History of Seventeenth-century Taiwan. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 2003. Shephard, John R. Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. Struve, Lynn. The Southern Ming, 1644-1662. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Wills, Jr., John E. "Maritime China from Wang Chih to Shih Lang: Themes in Peripheral History." In From Ming to Ch'ing: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century China, edited by Jonathan Spence and John Wills, 201-238. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Wong Young-tsu. China's Conquest of Taiwan in the Seventeenth Century: Victory at Full Moon. Singapore: Springer, 2017.
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    54 mins
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I'm so happy I found this!

Yes! I've been wanting to find a way to learn about the government of China throughout history! I'm even more pleased that I'm able to listen to professionals who know what they're talking about! thank you for this podcast!

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