The haircutting movement in modern China (1903–1927): Analysis from the view of “body”

Modern China was an intense period of “body rebuilding.” Within the field of body history in China, the modern Chinese history has been rediscovered and reinterpreted from the view of “body.” In this paper, the author attempts to explore the movement of women’s haircutting in modern China and analyzes its social and political meaning from the view of body organ, gender, politics and culture. The conclusion is that the women’s haircutting movement in modern China was involved in the pursuit of state power, women’s rights, and political power in different levels.     

The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”: China's modern trauma

This paper examines and analyses the causes and consequences of the Cultural Revolution in China. This great twentieth century Chinese trauma cannot be detached from Mao as a person. He was its initiator and – as a charismatic leader – stood above the people and the party, and in the consciousness of the majority of the people was perceived as a great, compelling leader. This paper traces the historical setting, the causes, the process and the consequences of this tremendous political and social movement. In addition, the role of Mao and the concepts of his followers are scrutinized. Finally, the issue of whether or not the Cultural Revolution should be classified as a “revolution” is discussed.     

The Anglican patient: Robert Boyle and the “Medicalised Self” in early modern England

In Occasional Reflections upon the Accidents of an Ague (1665), Robert Boyle investigates the symptoms, signs, and causes of a vexing quartan fever. Boyle’s sickness inspires an exploration of the promises and perils of medicine, in which he tests both regimen and remedy. As he writes through his suffering, Boyle recognises that the eclecticism, eloquence, and flexibility of medical thought provide ways of preserving and re-describing agency and interest, ways of shaping and organising the self. As an “Anglican patient,” Boyle probes counsel, temperance, repentance, and fears of relapse, seeking a via media between enlisting medical assistance and enjoining spiritual rectitude, between curing and caring. His meditations interiorise the world in order to discover the social dimensions, and shared vocabularies, of suffering and the self, the latter embedded in conversations devoted to cure.     

A Turke turn’d Quaker: conversion from Islam to radical dissent in early modern England

The study of the relationship between the anglophone and Islamic worlds in the seventeenth century has been the subject of increasing interest in recent years, and much attention has been given to the cultural anxiety surrounding “Turning Turke”, conversion from Christianity to Islam, especially by English captives on the Barbary coast. Conversion in the other direction has attracted far less scrutiny, not least because it appears to have been far less common. Conversion from Islam to any form of radical dissent has attracted no scholarship whatsoever, probably because it has been assumed to be non-existent. However, the case of Bartholomew Cole provides evidence that such conversions did take place, and examining the life of this “Turke turn’d Quaker” provides an insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural conversion of an exceptional kind.     

Tribal diplomacy and frontier territoriality in modern China: Hunza and Nationalist China, 1947–1948

In the immediate post-World War II period, the Chinese Nationalist regime was eager to consolidate its position and formulate a proactive policy toward China's traditional Central Asian peripheries. Postwar Nationalist China's momentary confidence in extending central influence into the Pamir and Kashmir regions can be understood in such a geopolitical context. The withdrawal of British colonial rule in India further increased Nanjing's optimism about bringing Hunza, a Muslim tribal state in northwest Kashmir, under its territorial and administrative sway. To prevent possible infiltration of Soviet influence in Central Asia, the Nationalists at one point even considered resorting to the restoration of imperial “tributary ties” as a political expedient in their dealings with postwar China's frontier territorial issues. A careful examination of the Nationalists' previously unknown abortive attempt to reclaim Hunza enables us to fill an important scholarly lacuna in the history of modern China's external relations with its South and Central Asian neighbors. This reevaluation, moreover, may also lead us to further reconsider modern China's intriguing and complicated frontier diplomatic and territorial scenario, as well as how that scenario could have been manipulated by a certain group of ambitious distant Nationalist border officials during the course of postwar China's problematic frontier undertakings.     

Guanhua,Guoyu, and Putonghua: Politics and “proper names” for standard language in modern China

ABSTRACT

Guanhua (official language), Guoyu (national language), and Putonghua (common language) are generally regarded as different names for the same thing in different eras, but from the perspective of cultural history, there are many subtle semantic differences between these three concepts, symbolizing how different social classes and political groups defined their particular experiences, expectations, and efforts to take action. Guoyu, which replaced Guanhua in the late Qing Dynasty, is closely bound up with the construction of modern nationalism. In the 1930s, leftist intellectuals imbued Putonghua with strong proletariat attributes and overtones of indigenous and ethnic equality, wielding it as a tool for critiques against Guoyu. Although Putonghua returned to certain key positions of Guoyu after the mid-1950s, it putatively emphasized the legacy of the leftist language movement, and represented a new political identity. Through these “proper names” for the standard language, it was possible not only to launch a political and social “revolution,” but also to smooth over the historical rifts that this engendered, by repeatedly revising the concepts of “written” and “standard” to form a linear national narrative.     

Early modern or late imperial philology? The crisis of classical learning in eighteenth century China

The discourses of classical scholars during the eighteenth century reinforced a shift from Song-Ming rationalism to a more skeptical and secular classical empiricism. By making precise scholarship the source of acceptable knowledge, Qing classicists contended that the legitimate reach of ancient ideals should be reevaluated through comparative delineation of the textual sources from which all such knowledge derived. This turn to empirically based classical inquiry meant that abstract ideas and rational argumentation gave way as the primary objects of elite discussion to concrete facts, verifiable institutions, ancient natural studies, and historical events. In general, Qing classicists regarded Song and Ming “Learning of the Way” as an obstacle to verifiable truth because it discouraged further inquiry along empirical lines. The empirical approach to knowledge they advocated placed proof and verification at the heart of analysis of the classical tradition. During this time, scholars and critics also applied historical analysis to the official Classics. Classical commentary yielded to textual criticism and a “search for evidence” to refortify the ancient canon. Representing a late imperial movement in Confucian letters, Qing classicists still sought to restore the classical vision. The early modern power of their philology, however, yielded the forces of decanonization and delegitimation as modernist trends, which went beyond the intellectual limits they had imposed on their own writings.     

A synopsis of the symposium on “civil organizations and the state in modern China”

The other side of the formation of the modern state is the thorough transformation of social structure, the way people are organized, and the mechanisms of social mobilization and participation. One distinctive feature of these changes is the growth and expansion of civil organizations (minjian zuzhi). As a linkage point between the state and the individual, civil organizations have exerted an important and unique influence on the orientation as well as the nature of society. The history of the separation and reorientation of state and society in China was both specific to China as well as relevant to global experience. In recent years, research on modern Chinese civil organizations has become rigorous and fruitful, covering a wide range of topics from the history of chambers of commerce to guilds, peasant associations, freelancer groups, charity groups, cultural and educational clubs, and religious organizations. Thanks to a relatively large pool of participating scholars, the discussions have also multiplied and deepened, contributing to the study of modern Chinese history a new yet indispensable subfield. All of these studies not only delineate the organizations’ background, development, structure, and function, but also pay attention to their relations with the state. Indeed, state–society relations constitute the most widely applied analytical framework. This is related to the middleman position of civil organizations, as well as to the state’s ability to dominate them under the Chinese social tradition of strong state and weak society.     

Could've Been a Contender: The Making and Breaking of “China” in the Ottoman Empire

Growing interest in global historical archaeology is often focused on commodities exchange, especially between the west and the rest. However, ceramics production and consumption in the Ottoman Empire during the fourteenth through twentieth centuries was not only between the Ottomans and the west, but also the Far East. Chinese porcelains served as inspiration for the production of many Ottoman ceramics, especially during the Empire's height in the sixteenth century. Although with less success, Ottoman ceramics contended for a place within local and global markets. This paper will examine the production and consumption of Ottoman ceramics as part of this empire's struggle to achieve and maintain power relationships globally, as well as within its own dominions.