scholarly journals DE-CENTERING CHINESE HISTORY

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-201
Author(s):  
John E. Herman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Chinese Perspective ◽  
Qing History ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
Seismic Impact

What would Chinese history look like if we were to examine it from the perspective of the peoples living along China's periphery? How might a non-Chinese perspective challenge the dominant themes in Chinese historiography, themes which represent Chinese history as a linear narrative arising from the Central Plain and its original inhabitants, the Han Chinese? If, for example, we rely solely on Chinese sources to tell us about Chinese-Jurchen/Manchu relations during the first half of the seventeenth century, we will have privileged Chinese sources, affirmed the authority of the Chinese perspective, and suppressed voices that might offer an alternative perspective. Only an aggressive deconstruction of such “authoritative” Chinese texts can expose biases and logical inconsistencies, unpack cultural tensions that demand more rigorous scrutiny, and tease out into the open silenced voices from spaces buried deep in the text. Those historians who engage in such a methodological approach, however, run the risk of being accused of applying fanciful postmodernist conjecture or presentist interpretations to the past. This is why the recent (since the 1980s) addition of Manchu language sources to our examination of Qing history (1636–1912) has had such a seismic impact on the field.

Credibility of the Past: Writing and Censoring History within Seventeenth-Century Catholicism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreea Badea
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Absolute Truth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Method

The chapter deals with the Curia’s reaction to Catholic historiography in the late seventeenth century. Authored by prominent Catholic thinkers, these books were widely admired throughout Catholic as well as Protestant Europe for their methodological approach. However, it was exactly their use of the historical-critical method that brought these authors into collision with Rome, which accused them of questioning the canonically attested truth that had already been defined with apostolic authority. Instead of simply banning them, censors and some factions of the Curia commissioned learned men to discredit these works, staging as absolute truth only the Roman historiographical version.

Real or Imagined Confusion in Ethnohistorical Research? A Rejoinder to Thurman

1988 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-326
Author(s):  
Charles E. Orser
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Missouri River ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Narrow View

Recently, Melburn D. Thurman has argued that my handling of the James Mackay manuscript, an early 19th-century account of Plains native groups, is unsound. Many of Thurman's criticisms, specifically those concerning the date of the document, the details of Mackay's experience on the Missouri River, and the intent of my original article, stem from misrepresentation and misunderstanding. Thurman has refused, for example, to accept that my essay was a test of the document using archaeological data associated with the Arikara. In addition, Thurman portrays a narrow view of the past and a rather unique understanding of ethnohistorical methods. In this response to Thurman, I restate many of the points in my original article and provide an alternative perspective for studying the past.

The Convent of Santa Clara, the Elite and Social Change in Eighteenth Century Querétaro

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELLEN GUNNARSDÓTTIR
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This article focuses on the changes that occurred within Querétaro's elite from the late Habsburg to the high Bourbon period in colonial Mexico from the perspective of its relationship to the convent of Santa Clara. It explores how creole elite families of landed background with firm roots in the early seventeenth century, tied together through marriage, entrepreneurship and membership in Santa Clara were slowly pushed out of the city's economic and administrative circles by a new Bourbon elite which broke with the social strategies of the past by not sheltering its daughters in the city's most opulent convent.

Transition Experiences of Indian Nurses Into Australian Mental Health System

2021 ◽  
pp. 104365962110263
Author(s):  
Bindu Joseph ◽  
Michael Olasoji ◽  
Cheryl Moss ◽  
Wendy Cross
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Mental Health System ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Hermeneutic Phenomenology ◽  
Dual Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transition Experience ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Insight Into

Introduction: In the past decade, there has been an influx of migrant nurses from India to Australia. Migrant professionals have specific transition needs associated with working in Mental Health (MH). This study aimed to explore the transition experience of overseas trained nurses from India working in Australian MH settings. Method: Hermeneutic phenomenology was the methodological approach used in the study. The participants ( N = 16) were overseas trained nurses from India. Data were collected through in-depth interview and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The findings resulted in the identification of the following themes: (1) Living in dual culture, (2) Loneliness, (3) Discrimination, and (4) Feeling incomplete. Discussion: It is evident that the transition to work in MH in Australia was a journey of mixed experiences. While certain findings of this study are comparable with experiences of migrant nurses in other settings, it provides insight into those that are working in MH.

Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane S. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Many ◽  
At Home

Sephardi identity has meant different things at different times, but has always entailed a connection with Spain, from which the Jews were expelled in 1492. While Sephardi Jews have lived in numerous cities and towns throughout history, certain cities had a greater impact on the shaping of their culture. This book focuses on those that may be considered most important, from Cordoba in the tenth century to Toledo, Venice, Safed, Istanbul, Salonica, and Amsterdam at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Each served as a venue in which a particular dimension of Sephardi Jewry either took shape or was expressed in especially intense form. Significantly, these cities were mostly heterogeneous in their population and culture — half of them under Christian rule and half under Muslim rule — and this too shaped the Sephardi worldview and attitude. While Sephardim cultivated a distinctive identity, they felt at home in the cultures of their adopted lands. The book demonstrates that Sephardi history and culture have always been multifaceted. The book's interdisciplinary approach captures the many contexts in which the life of the Jews from Iberia unfolded, without either romanticizing the past or diluting its reality.

The Album De Colbert: The Image of Shipbuilding

2021 ◽  
Vol 163 (A3) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Corradi
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
Shipbuilding Industry ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The Album de Colbert compiled by an anonymous author in the second half of the seventeenth century is among the most important illustrated testimonies of the art of shipbuilding. Probably commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Minister of Finance and Minister of the Navy of the kingdom of France, the Album was composed to make Louis XIV understand the complexity of shipbuilding. It was also made to support the creation of a navy with the ambition of being competitive with the Royal Navy and with the intent of modernising and expanding the French shipbuilding industry. The fifty plates that make up this illustrated treatise unravel the story of the construction of a first-rank 80-gun line vessel, from the laying of the keel to the launch. It is a unique document that has no contemporaries or precursors because it is not a didactic collection of boats, like the previous treaties that had a completely different methodological approach, more technical-descriptive than illustrative, but it wants to go beyond the scientific treatise. Its purpose was instead to measure itself with representation, showing through the strength of drawing and images the peculiar aspects of the reality of shipbuilding, using iconography as a means of transmitting knowledge related to the world of shipyards and shipbuilding in the 17th century.

scholarly journals Population Dynamics in Pre-Modern China

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhongwei Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Chinese Population ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Population History ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Population Changes ◽  
The Past

China constituted one of the earliest civilizations in the world. During most of the past two millennia, China was also one of the most advanced economies and the home of around a quarter of the world’s population. By the start of the first millennium, the Chinese population was already about sixty million. In the next two thousand years, China’s population growth and economic development significantly influenced the world’s population changes and history. Partly for these reasons, in the study of population and social history, China’s historical population growth, demographic regimes, marriage patterns, and household formation systems are frequently used as examples in the discussion of population changes, microsocial structure, and their relationships with natural resources and economic development in past times. Population changes were one of the key components of Chinese history. The size and density of the population, the rise and fall of fertility and mortality, and the increase and decrease of population movements were not only related to demographic factors such as age structure. They were also strongly affected by political and economic conditions, social institutions and cultural traditions, and natural and social environments. Therefore, studies of demographic history, those conducted recently in particular, often shed new light on economic, political, social, and environmental changes in the past. This bibliography, through reviewing major works published in Chinese and English, provides an introduction to China’s main historical population data sources, major research questions, and debates in the study of Chinese population history. It also introduces recent advances in Chinese historical demography and important research findings made by these developments.

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