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2 books match the query '1861-1912'
Staging the World
Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth CenturyRebecca E. Karl
Duke University Press, 2002
In Staging the World Rebecca E. Karl rethinks the production of nationalist discourse in China during the late Qing period, between China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the proclamation of the Republic in 1911. She argues that at this historical moment a growing Chinese identification with what we now call the Third World first made the modern world visible as a totality and that the key components of Chinese nationalist discourse developed in reference to this worldview.
The emergence of Chinese nationalism during this period is often portrayed as following from China’s position vis-à-vis Japan and the West. Karl has mined the archives of the late Qing period to discern the foci of Chinese intellectuals from 1895 to 1911 to assert that even though the China/Japan/West triangle was crucial, it alone is an incomplete—and therefore flawed—model of the development of nationalism in China. Although the perceptions and concerns of these thinkers form the basis of Staging the World, Karl begins by examining a 1904 Shanghai production of an opera about a fictional partition of Poland and its modern reincarnation as an ethno-nation. By focusing on the type of dialogue this opera generated in China, Karl elucidates concepts such as race, colonization, globalization, and history. From there, she discusses how Chinese conceptions of nationalism were affected by the “discovery” of Hawai’i as a center of the Pacific, the Philippine revolution against the United States, and the relationship between nationality and ethnicity made apparent by the Boer War in South Africa.
The emergence of Chinese nationalism during this period is often portrayed as following from China’s position vis-à-vis Japan and the West. Karl has mined the archives of the late Qing period to discern the foci of Chinese intellectuals from 1895 to 1911 to assert that even though the China/Japan/West triangle was crucial, it alone is an incomplete—and therefore flawed—model of the development of nationalism in China. Although the perceptions and concerns of these thinkers form the basis of Staging the World, Karl begins by examining a 1904 Shanghai production of an opera about a fictional partition of Poland and its modern reincarnation as an ethno-nation. By focusing on the type of dialogue this opera generated in China, Karl elucidates concepts such as race, colonization, globalization, and history. From there, she discusses how Chinese conceptions of nationalism were affected by the “discovery” of Hawai’i as a center of the Pacific, the Philippine revolution against the United States, and the relationship between nationality and ethnicity made apparent by the Boer War in South Africa.
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Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing
Katherine L. Alexander
University of Michigan Press, 2025
The Taiping Civil War (1851–1864) was one of the most destructive wars in Chinese history, with the death toll estimated between twenty and thirty million. What visions did survivors have for restoring their fractured society once the war ended? Katherine L. Alexander’s Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing approaches these questions through literature by examining the works of evangelical Confucian teacher Yu Zhi (1809-1874), who gave a voice to the zealous side of conservative Confucian reform efforts before, during, and after the Taiping War. His works offer radical visions of a world that could be restored through collective effort and goodness, while also revealing the shifting nature of power and the cracks in Qing society.
Yu’s works complicate the picture of socio-moral reform, particularly the Confucian mission of jiaohua (teaching and transformation). Though he viewed the disasters of the late Qing as the natural consequence of jiaohua’s failure to compete against socially disruptive media, such as vernacular fiction and theatrical productions, he also wanted reformers to engage closely with these genres. Yu became a vocal advocate of teaching with moral vernacular literature that he believed met commoners at their level. He emphasized the hope that by writing, printing, and performing such texts, every member of his audience could be transformed into teachers themselves, restoring society from the bottom up.
Yu’s works complicate the picture of socio-moral reform, particularly the Confucian mission of jiaohua (teaching and transformation). Though he viewed the disasters of the late Qing as the natural consequence of jiaohua’s failure to compete against socially disruptive media, such as vernacular fiction and theatrical productions, he also wanted reformers to engage closely with these genres. Yu became a vocal advocate of teaching with moral vernacular literature that he believed met commoners at their level. He emphasized the hope that by writing, printing, and performing such texts, every member of his audience could be transformed into teachers themselves, restoring society from the bottom up.
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