Commerce and Empire in the Borderlands： How do Merchants and Trade Fit into Qing Frontier History？

As our understanding of the Qing empire and its various borderlands has evolved, so too have we come to appreciate China＇s early modem commercial sophistication. In recent North American studies of the Qing, the links between commerce and conquest have come under investigation, and we are increasingly urged to pay attention to merchants and merchant capital. But how should we understand the relationship between merchants and the Qing empire in the borderlands？ This article surveys selected work on the borderlands and commercialization, primarily in the Northwest and Southwest. The goal is to initiate a more comprehensive discussion of how to understand the intersection of commerce and empire while also making some suggestions for ways that borderlands history might shape future work on China.     

Restituting Church Buildings and Negotiating Church Factions： Missionary Mapmakers and the Making of Local Networks （1712-1716）

At the turn of the 18th century, the Kangxi emperor initiated a large project to map the vast territories of the Qing. The land surveys that ensued were executed by teams of Qing officials and European missionaries, most of them French Jesuits first sent to China in 1685 and actively supported by the French crown. Early 18th century Jesuit publications foster a much-heralded claim that these missionary-mapmakers drew on their status of imperial envoys during the surveys to locally advance the position of the Catholic church. This article strives to explore the format/on of such local networks by these missionaries as they passed through the cities and towns of the Chinese provinces. On the basis of archival material, details emerge of contacts with local Qing administrators and Chinese Christians, and of attempts to purchase and recover local churches. This is then discussed against the background of the Rites Controversy, in an attempt to evaluate how such local networks relate to the rivalry between missionaries of different orders. The article emphasizes that there was （and perhaps is） no such thing as ＂pure science＂ by underscoring that important technical achievements such as the Qing mapping project are often shaped by complex networks and historical contingencies.     

Walk Out of Sanyan

Sanyan refers to a place that is tucked away in a deep gully screened by high mountains and by the Jinshajiang River in Gongjor County, Qamdo. It is obviously a solitary place, but it has found its way into the historical records and became so famous that Qing Emperor Qianlong wrote of it.Over the past few hundred years, it was home to     

An Encounter between the Qing Dynasty and Khoqand in 1759-1760： Central Asia in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

This paper examines negotiations involving the exchange of envoys between the Qing dynasty and Khoqand in 1759-60. The Qing made contact with Khoqand in order to bring rapid stabilization to the newly acquired western territories. Khoqand, on the other hand, established a relationship with the Qing in order to expand their authority over the Kirghiz, and to advance toward Bukhara. Irdana tried to take advantage of Qing authority for the purpose of expanding his territories, but at the same time, he appealed to the other Central Asian Muslims to engage with him in a ＂holy war＂ against the Qing. It is true that each power in Central Asia shared a sense of crisis in reaction to the Qing＇s sudden expansion to the west. However, we also need to examine the competition for hegemony among the powers under the pretext of opposition to the Qing＇s advance.     

Henriot,Christian.Scythe and the City.A Social History of Death in Shanghai

Much has been written on Chinese death and funerary culture by anthropologists—far less by historians.This book is therefore a much-welcome attempt to fill this gap in the field of Chinese modem history.Its chronological scope encompasses one century:from the 1860s to the eve of the Cultural Revolution,but it is clearly more focused on the twentieth century due to the availability of a much greater amount of source materials from that period.     

Power of Religion in Rural Areas and Its Public Service （I）——An Analysis of Cases in Five Villages

In the study of socio-economic development in Tibet, one tends to stress the role of non-economic elements, especially the role of humans and social background.Of these, the role of religious culture is regarded as the most important. However, there are basically two approaches to the issue: First of all, although religion exerts a varied role on economic growth, legal construction, public welfare and ethics, one tends to each only a general judgment. Secondly, study of the role played by religion focused on the religious doctrines held by monks, and monks themselves. Although many point out the fact that religious power over people varies, it roots in the rural areas and among the folk at large is still neglected.Hence, there is the need to study individual cases.     

A Brief Analysis of Discrimination in Language Classroom——from the Perspective of Sociolinguistics

It is widely acknowledged that sociolinguistics is the study of language in certain context concerned with our society.Sociolinguistics and linguistics are intrinsically related to each other,but there has been difference as well.Linguistics research deals with language system itself,which belongs to the micro level on the one hand;many phenomena reflect discrimination in language classroom,these discrimination are caused by social factors to a certain degree.This paper makes a brief analysis of discrimination in language classroom from the perspective of sociolinguistics,which deals with many issues such as depiction of language discrimination、analysis of phenomenon and accordinglysolved measures.     

Onstage Rumor,Offstage Voices： The Politics of the Present in the Contemporary Opera of Li Yu

Much scholarly work on the literary culture of the early Qing dynasty has focused on notions of memory, trauma, and nostalgia. In contrast, this essay investigates the ＂contemporary operas＂ （shishi xiqu） of the seventeenth-century Suzhou playwright Li Yu to argue for the importance of the notion of＂the present day.＂ How is this notion of the present day given dramatic form in Li Yu＇s operas and what implications does this interest in the contemporary have for the broader cultural scene of the early Qing dynasty？ This paper will answer these questions by investigating one dramatic technique favored by Li Yu： the inclusion of snippets of rumor and ＂news＂ reports into the play. By including such contemporary media reports, Li Yu not only generates a constantly evolving sense of the present, he also projects this sense of immediacy beyond the fiction of the stage into the ＂reality＂ of the audience, creating a form of opera eminently suited for both reflecting and producing local Suzhou activism, as evidenced in Li Yu＇s most famous work, Qing zhong pu （Registers of the pure and loyal）, a work chronicling the popular Suzhou protests of the mid-1620s and Wanli yuan （Reunion over ten thousand miles）, which stages the dissolution and reintegration of family and empire right after the fall of the Ming.     

万象小报：近代中国城市的文化、社会与政治

The Shanghai tabloid press has gained growing scholarly attention in the recent decade. Wanxiao xiaobao （All-Seeing Tabloid） is another major publication to deal with this fascinating form of popular print press that flourished in late Qing and Republican China. Earlier studies have explored the Shanghai tabloid press as a platform for popular literature （Li Nan 李楠, Wan Qing, Minguo shiqi Shanghai xiaobao yanjiu [A study of the Shanghai tabloid press in the late Qing and Republican period], Beijing： Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2005）, as an important part of media history in modem China （Hong Yu 洪煜, Jindai Shanghai xiaobao yu shimin wenhua yanjiu, 1897-1937 [A study of the tabloid press and popular culture in modem Shanghai, 1897-1937], Shanghai： Shanghai shudian, 2007）, as a mirror of a flowering Shanghai-based entertainment culture （Catherine Yeh, ＂Shanghai Leisure, Print Entertainment, and the Tabloids, xiaobao,＂ in Rudolf G. Wagner, ed.,     

The Middle Ground, “Middle Ground Moments,” and Accommodation in the Study of Later Qing Borderland History

This article examines Richard White’s concept of the “middle ground” and its prospective application to the study of China’s Qing (1644–1911) borderlands from the late eighteenth century. It argues that although White’s model, in its specific formulation, is problematic to apply due to the dissimilarity of Qing conditions, it yet has value and can be adapted. One possibility is advanced in the notion of “middle ground moments,” briefly explored in the cases of Shaanxi’s Dabashan highlands in a “population boom,” Hunan’s Miao Frontier in the “fog of war,” and Xinjiang’s Kashgar crossroads during the “fall of empires.” Focusing on group exchange, adaptation, and hybridization offers insight into regional cultural creation, as well as a means to question received narratives of breakdown, pacification, resistance, or Great Game struggle. Such modeling, and shared attention to accommodation perspectives generally, also presents a space for dialogue across the New Qing History and Chinese nationalist divide in Qing frontier studies.     

Of Peaceable Kingdoms and Lawless Frontiers: Exploring the Relationship between History,Mythology and Gun Culture in the North American West

The United States is more violent than Canada and it always has been. Even in the face of mass shootings, most Americans remain culturally and politically resistant to the sorts of gun control measures that have long existed in Canada. America’s unique gun culture is embedded in the history, imagery, and especially the mythology of the American frontier. Canada had its own frontier experience and has its own history of gun ownership, but it does not have a parallel gun culture. This article presents a comparative analysis of post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier history and mythology, and examines the construction of contrasting cultural narratives of America’s “Wild West” and Canada’s “Mild West.” It suggests that US–Canadian differences in gun laws and gun culture—even in the borderlands region of Alberta/Montana—are better explained by the countries’ two different frontier mythologies than by their actual western histories.     

The Formation of the Qing State in Global Perspective: A Geopolitical and Fiscal Analysis

This article re-examines the formation of the Qing state and its nature from a global perspective. It underscores the key roles of geopolitical setting and fiscal constitution in shaping the course of frontier expeditions and territorial expansions, unlike past studies that have centered on the dynasty’s administrative institutions and the ruling elites’ ideologies or lifestyles to defend or question the thesis of “Sinicization” in Qing historiography. This study demonstrates the different motivations and varying strategies behind the Qing dynasty’s two waves of military conquests, which lasted until the 1750s, and explains how the Qing state’s peculiar geopolitical interests and the low-level equilibrium in its fiscal constitution shaped the “cycles” in its military operations and frontier building. The article ends by comparing the Qing with early modern European states and the Ottoman empire to discuss its vulnerability as well as resilience in the transition to modern sovereign statehood in the nineteenth century.     

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work

Ambitions for a European “circular economy” imply waste is becoming an important “commodity frontier”. Increased recycling in Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal waste work. “Southern” geographies of informal recyclers provide resources for interpreting this phenomenon but studies of a commodity frontier in urban waste have tended to focus on moments when informal waste workers are displaced by capital intensive waste management systems. I draw on concepts in world-ecology and materialist ecofeminism to explore the proliferation of informal waste workers in Barcelona and the way their (re)production produces “Metabolic Value”. Informal waste work is shown to emerge and persist as part of a commodity frontier process—where the appropriation of unpaid work from non-commodified spaces is the hallmark of how capitalism secures “Cheap Nature”. The study suggests that, rather than internalising ecological costs, recycling often rests on the appropriation of value from uncommodified spaces.     

论顾颉刚的中华民族共同体思想:以民族史编撰为中心

清末民初以来,面对国家危亡的局势,许多知识分子通过“中华民族”话语和历史书写,推动民众民族意识的觉醒。其中,顾颉刚的民族史编撰思想尤其具有典型意义。顾颉刚最初只希望做与实用和政治无关的学问,其古史辨致力于打破中国“民族出于一元”的神话,这无疑与当时已兴起的中华民族话语相抵牾;在“九一八”事变后的民族危亡之际,他自觉地转向救亡图存和民族边疆现实问题的研究,并在反思其疑古立场的基础上,结合中国的历史与现实,提出了“中华民族是一个”的理论,强调以此理论为核心编撰中国通史和民族史,纠正古史材料“言分化有余,言团结不足”的偏颇,以历史教育培育中华民族共同体意识。尽管顾颉刚的中国通史和民族史编撰事业并未完成,但其民族史编撰思想及理论自觉意识,对新时代加强中华民族共同体历史研究和铸牢中华民族共同体意识仍有着重要的启示意义。     

Re-emerging Frontiers: Postcolonial Theory and Historical Archaeology of the Borderlands

The article considers the importance of frontier studies in historical archaeology and discusses applicability of some of the concepts deriving from postcolonial theories for a better understanding of human relationships in the frontier zones. The conditions of frontiers and borderlands are compared with the characteristics of the “Third Space” described by Homi Bhabha as a realm of negotiation, translation and remaking. It is argued that concepts developed in postcolonial theories, such as “Third Space,” “in-betweeness” or hybridity, are useful not only to address cultural and social processes in borderlands that were created by colonial empires. They are also an apt way to conceptualize relationships in frontiers that lacked colonial stigma. To illustrate this point, two different historical examples of borderlands are scrutinized in this paper: the medieval frontier region that emerged between Denmark and the Northwestern Slavic area and the creation of the colonial frontier in Northeastern America through the establishment of the Praying Indian Towns.     

Disastrous hydropower,uneven regional development,and decolonization in India's Eastern Himalayan borderlands

Sikkim, a small Eastern Himalayan state in India has twenty-seven hydropower projects proposed under the Indian Power Ministry's hydropower initiative that envisions the Himalayan region as the country's "future powerhouse" (Dharamadhikary 2008; Kohli, 2011). In 2011, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Sikkim, the epicenter of which was located eerily close to two under construction dams and the Dzongu reserve, revered as sacred by Sikkim's Indigenous minority Lepchas. Drawing on interviews with Lepcha residents of Dzongu, and state geologists and disaster management officials, I center my analysis on their encounters with disasters and hydropower infrastructure. Building on decolonial theorizations and scholarship on Himalayan borderlands, I argue that disastrous hydropower forms on historical terrains shaped not only by geophysical conditions but also generations of uneven regional development, and the racialized colonial and postcolonial governance of the Eastern Himalayan frontier. In placing ‘disastrous’ as a prefix to hydropower, I follow my interlocutors who implicate state and private developers in producing disaster conditions in Sikkim even as they evade culpability by discursively shifting blame onto the region's “inhospitable terrain” (GoI 2008: 27). I demonstrate that despite key differences in their relation to state power both Dzongu Lepchas and Sikkimese technocrats, forward a materialist, place-based understanding of precarity, differential vulnerability, and uneven regional development. Centering Indigenous and regionalist critiques, I argue that the recent entry of hydropower development in the Eastern Himalayas, conceptualized by colonial authorities as India's “Mongolian Fringe” (Baruah, 2013), requires a closer attention to the entanglements of frontier-making and racialization in India. More broadly, I demonstrate how disastrous hydropower development in a racialized frontier region offers a productive entry into decolonial theorizing in the Indian context.     

THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA DURING THE ROMANOV PERIOD (1613-1917)

This paper compares and contrasts Russian frontier experiences on the northern and southern parts of the European plain during the Romanov era (1613-1917). Both were “open” frontiers, in Turner's sense of a frontier as the “hither edge of free land,” but their environments and the settlement processes which affected them were very different. It is suggested that the character of a frontier society is decisively influenced by the process whereby settlers must adapt to their new environment, the features which attract them to that environment, and the character of the pre-existing inhabitants. The northern frontier formed part of what Meinig has called a “boreal riverine empire” with a harsh environment, to which paradoxically the Russians found it relatively easy to adapt, the great attraction of fur-bearing animals and reasonably benign relations with native peoples. By contrast, the southern frontier was a “frontier of exclusion,” following Lattimore's phrase, with hostile indigenes, a natural environment demanding special methods of adaptation, but with many more attractions than the north. Such contrasts gave rise to considerable differences in the settlement process, in the character of land allocation and in the type of society evolving subsequently, with long-term consequences for emerging human landscapes.