Regulating Church Property in Late Imperial China

In recent years,religion in China has attracted increased attention,both domestically and internationally.A core aspect of this attention has been the role of church real estate,a contemporary issue with historical origins.After the Second Opium War,France—the self-proclaimed protector of Catholicism—took on the cause of obtaining additional rights and freedoms for Western missionaries in China,albeit with only mixed results.Constant disagreements between China's central and local governments made it difficult to implement nation-wide regulations.     

身份的反观:中华帝国晚期的泰山朝圣

在中国,泰山大约是最为显赫的圣山了,但让人难以理解的是,它长期以来一直为史学家忽略。自沙畹(Edouard Chavannes)在1910年发表过一部关于泰山的重     

Frugality and Luxury: Morality,Market, and Consumption in Late Imperial China

This article contributes to a wider critique of the use of European capitalist, patterns of industrialization in studies of the economic history of modern China—patterns commonly assumed to be universally valid. This sort of analytical framework denies not only the value of alternative economic models, but also that of Chinese independent economic thought. In this context, the present article argues that most of the intellectual changes of seventeenth-century Europe that led to the formulation of liberal capitalism—resistance to government intervention, support for luxury consumption as well as a new understanding of the market and of the relationship between private interests and morality—had taken place in China more than a century earlier. The background against which the two processes emerged, however, varied significantly, leading to distinctive ramifications. Unprecedented population growth and a widening gap between hinterland and coastal economies led Chinese officials and intellectuals to discard ideas of free market and focus instead on solutions for increasing production, maximizing the circulation of resources, and fighting poverty. It was not, therefore, a lack of a “scientific” understanding of the economy that led China to turn away from European-style laissez fare, but rather an evaluation of the Empire’s circumstances, raising questions on whether the European model is indeed universally applicable regardless of local conditions.     

"民主"一词在近代中国的再生

本文从历史语义学的角度 ,首先考察了“民主”和“民本”在汉语语境中的古典含义及其在中国传统政治思想格局中的位置。在此基础上 ,细致地分析了近代以来“民主”一词如何在西方思想的刺激下 ,通过传教士和中国思想家的共同努力 ,被重新发掘出来 ,并在重新诠释的过程中 ,从“民之主” (君主 )走向自己的反面“人民群众当家作主”的过程。     

朱正元与《御览图》:晚清地图史的视角

许多翻译、改绘、新绘的中国海图在晚清出现,《御览江浙闽沿海图》(以下简称《御览图》)就是其中之一。已有研究对该图评价较高,但相关成果侧重制图技术的考辨,该图编纂的时代背景、朱正元在编纂中所担负的角色尚待厘清,而这些对于理解该图的历史地位同样至关重要。本文在考查《御览图》及其图说产生背景和经过后认为,正是在西方测绘技术的进步和清政府面临海上威胁背景下,洋务运动中兴起的西学教育培养了朱正元等测绘人才。而朱正元基于英版海图测绘和编纂的《御览图》融科学性和实用性于一体,是晚清作为中国海图由传统转向近代重要阶段的标志之一。     

Social Welfare Provision at the Imperial Edge: Single Mothers and Abandoned Children in the Late Russian Empire

This article looks to the societal and imperial margins to examine attitudes towards social welfare provision in the final decades of the Russian Empire. Drawing on archival material from the Empire's Estliand province (now northern Estonia), the article focuses on the self-representation of single mothers and official discussions of abandoned children. Society was in flux in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and rural-to-urban migration served to undermine traditional social structures, mentalities and identities. These changes were accompanied by the disruption of the traditional patriarchal gender order, as well shifting ideas about who ought to be responsible for taking care of vulnerable groups. In rural Estliand, Estonian-speaking unmarried women sought engagement with Russian imperial judicial structures to secure child maintenance. In the early 1900s, anxieties about the social impacts of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation and the development of new currents in philanthropy, meant that care for foundlings and abandoned children became a burning issue in the minds of Estliand's provincial officials. Examining single mothers and child abandonment in Estliand illuminates tensions between empire-wide and local mechanisms for dealing with social issues, as well as shifting attitudes to gender, the family and charity in light of urbanisation and modernisation.