Technology And Society In Ming China 1368 1644

Historians of Chinese technology have tended to pay little attention to the Ming dynasty, characterizing it as a stagnantperiod unmarked by significant inventions of the kind that in Europe gave rise to the industrial revolution and the modern world. Yet the Ming was a period of extraordinary social, cultural, and economic vitality and change, and it would be curious if technology had played no part in these changes. This pamphlet approaches the material world of the Ming from a more anthropological perspective than has been conventional among historians of China, emphasizing the role of technologies in social order and identity.

This engaging, deeply informed book provides the first concise history of one of China's most important eras. Leading scholar John W. Dardess offers a thematically organized political, social, and economic exploration of China from 1368 to 1644. He examines how the Ming dynasty was able to endure for 276 years, illuminating Ming foreign relations and border control, the lives and careers of its sixteen emperors, its system of governance and the kinds of people who served it, its great class of literati, and finally the mass outlawry that, in unhappy conjunction with the Manchu invasions from outside, ended the once-mighty dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. The Ming witnessed the beginning of China's contact with the West, and its story will fascinate all readers interested in global as well as Asian history.

The Ming dynasty was the last great Chinese dynasty before the Manchu conquest in 1644. During that time, China, not Europe, was the center of the world: the European voyages of exploration were searching not just for new lands but also for new trade routes to the Far East. In this book, Timothy Brook eloquently narrates the changing landscape of life over the three centuries of the Ming (1368-1644), when China was transformed from a closely administered agrarian realm into a place of commercial profits and intense competition for status. The Confusions of Pleasure marks a significant departure from the conventional ways in which Chinese history has been written. Rather than recounting the Ming dynasty in a series of political events and philosophical achievements, it narrates this longue durée in terms of the habits and strains of everyday life. Peppered with stories of real people and their negotiations of a rapidly changing world, this book provides a new way of seeing the Ming dynasty that not only contributes to the scholarly understanding of the period but also provides an entertaining and accessible introduction to Chinese history for anyone.

Recent proponents of non-Eurocentric approaches to the study of development in non-Western areas in the early modern period have seized on late imperial China (1368-1911) as an example of an indigenous trajectory of development that disputes the primacy of early modern Europe in some theories. The commercialization of Ming China (1368-1644) is sometimes appropriated in their arguments. But at times the term "commercialization" is not particularly well-defined in the case of sixteenth and seventeenth century China. In order to strengthen the arguments against Eurocentric assessments of non-Western development, this thesis covers some aspects of Ming commerce and society that are sometimes not captured by the term commercialization. In particular, it focuses on more 'personal' dimensions often neglected by references to the commercialization of China's economy and society in the latter half of the Ming period. Aspects that will be discussed include: social change and social mobility, higher-ranking officials' views of commerce and merchants, and the identity of merchants as seen in merchant manuals. The application of some recent research by other scholars of Ming China and my readings of some sources dating from the period, I hope, will add nuances to our understanding of Ming commerce and society and furthermore contribute to a detailed approach to the non-Eurocentric writing of a comparative history of development in the early modern world.

"This collection of essays reveals the Ming court as an arena of competition and negotiation, where a large cast of actors pursued individual and corporate ends, personal agency shaped protocol and style, and diverse people, goods, and tastes converged. Rather than observing an immutable set of traditions, court culture underwent frequent reinterpretation and rearticulation, processes driven by immediate personal imperatives, mediated through social, political, and cultural interaction.The essays address several common themes. First, they rethink previous notions of imperial isolation, instead stressing the court’s myriad ties both to local Beijing society and to the empire as a whole. Second, the court was far from monolithic or static. Palace women, monks, craftsmen, educators, moralists, warriors, eunuchs, foreign envoys, and others strove to advance their interests and forge advantageous relations with the emperor and one another. Finally, these case studies illustrate the importance of individual agency. The founder’s legacy may have formed the warp of court practices and tastes, but the weft varied considerably. Reflecting the complexity of the court, the essays represent a variety of perspectives and disciplines—from intellectual, cultural, military, and political to art history and musicology."

Empire of Great Brightnessis an innovative and accessible history of a high point in Chinese culture, seen through the riches of its images and objects. Not a simple emperor-by-emperor history, it instead introduces the reader to themes that provide stimulating and original points of entry to the culture of China: to ideas of motion and rest; to the position occupied by writing and objects featuring writing; to ideas about pleasure, about violence and about ageing. It challenges notions of Ming China as a culture closed off from the rest of the world by emphasizing the vibrant interactions between China and the rest of Asia at this period. Craig Clunas uses a wide range of pictures and objects from Ming China to illustrate familiar areas such as painting and ceramics (including the blue-and-white porcelain of the period, arguably the world’s first global ‘brand’). He draws on items from public and private collections from around the world, which will be new even to specialists, including weapons, architecture, textiles and items of dress, printed books (from Ming pornography to the world’s first illustrated reading book for children). He also examines contemporary sources from government edicts to novels and phrasebooks of colloquial Chinese as well as the most recent scholarship to illuminate this most diverse period of Chinese art and culture. Empire of Great Brightnessoffers a varied and stimulating resource for all scholars of China’s cultural history, for historians and art historians of related aspects of the early modern world, and for readers who are intrigued by China’s past.

This is the second of two volumes in this major Cambridge history dealing with the gradual decline of the Ch'ing empire in China (the first was volume 10). Volume 11 surveys the persistence and deterioration of the old order in China during the late nineteenth century, and the profound stirring during that period, which led to China's great twentieth-century revolution. The contributors focus on commercial and technological growth, foreign relations, the stimulation of Chinese intellectual life by the outside world, and military triumphs and disasters. They show that the effects of the accelerating changes were to fragment the old ruling class and the ancient monarchy, finally bringing the Chinese people face to face with the challenges of the new century. For readers with Chinese, proper names and terms are identified with their characters in the glossary, and full references to Chinese, Japanese and other works are given in the bibliographies.

This volume deals with the social legislation of Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), following the era of Mongol rule in China. It recounts the circumstances under which the laws were enacted and what the Emperor claimed he was trying to accomplish - a restoration of traditional Chinese social norms. The contents of several codes are discussed in terms of the groups to which they applied and the range of activities they purported to regulate. The early Ming codes formed one of the most comprehensive and cohesive bodies of law in all of Chinese history. Taken as a group, they constituted an autocrate's blueprint for the ideal society. The texts of three codifications - an imperial clan constitution, a general summary of the laws, and guidelines for village life - are translated as appendixes.