History Commons^™

Pleas For Toleration Against The Call Of Treason: The 1890 Shanghai Protestant Missionary Conference And The Controversy Over Chinese Rites, Joseph Seeley

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On May 7,1890, a colorful assortment of Western Protestant missionaries, stationed in all corners of late Qing-dynasty China, gathered in Shanghai for a thirteen-day mission conference. Some came to the conference clad in native Chinese dress, complete with Manchu-style ponytails or queues, while others were dressed more formally in the proper Victorian garb preferred by their non-missionary Western counterparts. Regardless of perceived differences in dress or ecclesiastical affiliation in the multi-denominational assembly, all sought to enjoy what was later described by conference organizers as "an occasion of the highest social enjoyment... as well as spiritual profit." As over four hundred …

Domestic And Foreign Opium Regulation In Victorian England: 1830-1900, Zachary Zundel

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

By the nineteenth century, the British Empire had extended its reach all the way around the globe. They did not come to this position easily. Extending their reach required the British to fight wars with many of the major European powers, such as France, both on the mainland and in colonies around the world. China proved to be one of the most difficult areas for the British to extend into. In China the people were resistant to diseases and possessed greater technology than the other areas of the globe. Europeans wanted access to Asia for products such as spices and …

The Rise Of China And The Concept Of Civilization: Constructing Conceptual Apparatus For Cross-Civilizational Comparisons, Liah Greenfeld

Comparative Civilizations Review

The paper argues that the rise of China to a position of prominence in the contemporary world offers Western scholars a greatly expanded comparative perspective and, thus, an opportunity to re-assess their fundamental view of social reality. This comparative perspective draws attention to supra-national cultural unities, “civilizations,” first suggested by both Durkheim and Weber.

There are deficiencies in the current understanding of “civilization” in the social science literature, among others exemplified by “civilizational analysis,” and so this paper proposes a new concept which adds to the conceptual apparatus of sociological theory a new — fully independent of others — variant …

Apotheosis Of The State And The Decline Of Civilization: A Systems Approach, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Humanity is undergoing a second Axial Age. The first, as described by Karl Jaspers, brought transcendence into the vision and self-understanding of humans and the world. The rise of secularism and “Death of God” is dissolving and fragmenting that transcendence — a vital subsystem of the civilization system. Economy, knowledge and government comprise three additional subsystems and have coalesced to form the modern sovereign state, diminishing the traditional place of religion, art and philosophy in civilizations. An example of a state lacking common institutions of transcendence was the Mongol empire. Ruling Russia for a quarter millennium, its state form was …

The Economic Regions Of Chinese Civilization: A Gis-Based Analysis Of Grain Markets In China, 1736-1842, Karl Ryavec, Mark Henderson, Rocco Bowman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Philip Ball. The Water Kingdom: A Secret History Of China, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Over centuries scores of sinologists have sought to define the essence of China. Philip Ball addresses and goes well beyond the materialist paradigm of Karl Wittfogel’s hydraulic thesis, which described the role of water management in China as stimulating state development. In his theory, government emerged as the central institution to manage transportation, flood control and irrigation. Ball also sees water management as critical in Chinese civilization and injects his description with spiritual and moral content, drawing on poetry, art, biography and extensive reference to historical events. His book is an exploration of the role of water in China’s culture, …

The Future Of Civilization: A Systems Approach, Robert Bedeski, Ph.D.

Comparative Civilizations Review

Civilization is one of several stages of human evolution and forms a system of interaction. Its past dominance is now challenged by growth of three subsystems — state, economy, and science/technology. These three subsystems have matured through application of rational knowledge. The vertically integrated state now dominates society and demarcated territory. The horizontally integrated global economy and global science/technology society have become worldwide in scope. State domination is reinforced by autonomous global science and international capital. The remaining subsystem of Moral Knowledge occupies present non-material civilization and is characterized by organic knowledge and embracing the unprovable, which includes religion, art, …

What In Chinese Culture And Political Philosophy Makes It Difficult To Share Power At The Top?, Natalie Lyman Shields

BYU Asian Studies Journal

天高皇帝远, Tiān gāo, huángdì yuan, is an ancient Chinese proverb that translates to “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away.” Starting anciently in the Shang Dynasty, China typically had an emperor who ruled over his subjects, yet in a far away manner: “For two thousand years China had an emperor figure who was state power and spiritual authority rolled into one” (Wild Swans, 261–262). The most notable emperor was the first blazing Emperor Qin Shi Huang who unified the land around 247 B.C. Many emperors followed, claiming the Mandate of Heaven, until the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty …

The Comparative Study Of Civilizations And Its Relation To China, David Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

Chinese scholars have recently expressed much interest in the comparative study of civilizations, lately carried on mostly in the West, but long open to, and increasingly of interest to, diverse perspectives. This essay is intended to suggest a road toward the development of comparative-civilizational studies centered on some questions of both historical and contemporary significance, with particular attention to one question concerning which the initial presuppositions of Western and Chinese scholars, in particular, may be at variance, but where there may be room for the development of agreed empirical-theoretical conclusions.

Haldore Hanson In China, The 80th Anniversary: A Case Study Of A Digitization Project, Kristi Wermager, Hsianghui Liu-Spencer

Journal of East Asian Libraries

Carleton College is home to a collection of photographs, Haldore Hanson’s China Collection (1937-1938), that an alumnus took in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 2008 Carleton staff digitized the China Collection and made it available to researchers online. In our paper, we introduce the Collection and discuss its historical significance, in particular for the history of guerrilla warfare during the early days of the conflict. Following our introductory overview of the Collection, we report on our use of web usage mining to track use of the Collection over the last ten years. We also discuss the …

Collecting Oral History In An Academic Library: The Cr/10 Project, Sandi Ward

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

China And The North Korean Refugee Crisis, Christina Ahn

BYU Asian Studies Journal

On 8 May 2002, shocking images of five North Korean refugees at a Japanese consulate in northeast China were captured. Although two members of the party—both men—successfully made it inside the consulate, two women and a child were dragged away from the gate of their safe haven by Chinese police (Gittings 2002). All five individuals were eventually detained—and though their fates remain unknown, it is likely they were immediately deported to North Korea, possibly the worst outcome for any North Korean defector.

The Intrigue Of Paradigmatic Similarity: Leibniz And China, Yu Liu

Comparative Civilizations Review

The cosmology of China is indeed strikingly similar to the metaphysics of Leibniz, but precisely where the two resemble each other, the former is unmistakably different from Christianity. Scholars of Leibniz have so far generally taken it for granted that he was ideologically aligned with Christianity, but his paradigmatic similarity to China should alert us of a surprisingly different story. Leibniz was indisputably “the greatest of the seventeenth century sinophiles” and key Chinese cosmological ideas were introduced to Europe long before he formulated his worldview. Together, these two facts can help us decide whether he “owes to Chinese organic naturalism …

China's Use Of Economic Hard Power In The 21st Century, Taylor Shippen

BYU Asian Studies Journal

China’s growing willingness to project military power may make the nightly news, but military power is not China’s greatest tool in achieving political ends. Since Deng Xiaoping began his reforms in 1978, economic influence has been the source of many of China’s diplomatic breakthroughs with the West. Although there is some dispute among scholars about what to call China’s growing influence (Klein 1994: 39; Huang 2013), for the purposes of this paper, China’s growing persuasiveness will be based on Joseph Nye’s definition of hard power, which he defines as “the ability to use the carrots and sticks of economic and …

On The Fringe: China's Disability Laws Through The Lens Of The Traditional Culture, Brandon Christensen

BYU Asian Studies Journal

Explosive economic growth over the last two decades has dramatically increased China’s standard of living and given rise to a rapidly growing middle class. Political reform, however, has been slow to follow with decades-old legal restrictions on civil liberties still firmly in place. Among China’s underdeveloped civil protections is the right for people with disabilities to enjoy freedom from popular and institutional prejudice in language or action, especially when seeking employment. Recent revisions of China’s disability laws provide increased employment protections, but latent prejudicial language and traditional stereotypes in the law suggest these revisions may not reach the core objective …

Leibniz And China: Religion, Hermeneutics, And Enlightenment, Eric Sean Nelson

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is not typically seen as having formulated a "hermeneutics;' or as being a "hermeneutical thinker;' despite his discussions of the art of interpretation and his influence on the development of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century hermeneutics in Germany. Nonetheless, many of his works involve issues of how best to interpret texts and other persons. His voluminous writings thus contain-at least implicitly-a hermeneutics, or art of understanding signs, through his practice of interpretation. Furthermore, hermeneutical concerns are prevalent in a number of Leibniz's international projects. Through various philosophical and practical endeavors, Leibniz attempted to reconcile conflicting and seemingly irreconcilable arguments …