Breaking the Ice: The establishment of overland winter postal routes in the late Qing China

AbstractThis paper looks at the establishment of experimental winter overland postal routes in the late 1870s and 1880s, which eventually led to the creation of the Great Qing Imperial Post Office in 1896. The history of this experiment sheds much light on important issues in the establishment of what was to become the country's most crucial information-bearing network, in particular those related to collaboration and negotiation between foreign and Chinese officials, and those between local interests and the central authorities. It also explores how foreign processes and management had to be adapted in order to function in a Chinese context.In March 1878, Robert Hart, inspector general of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, instructed Gustav Detring, commissioner of Tianjin Port, to investigate the possibility of introducing overland public postal routes in China, beginning with Beijing to Tianijn, Niuzhuang, Yantai, and then to Zhenjiang, a treaty port on the lower Yangtze River.The three main challenges involved were: to establish a reliable workforce, to design appropriate routes, and to win the cooperation of local governing officials. Although the winter service was initiated on time, problems repeatedly arose from each one of these challenges.

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Vernacular Capitalism and Intellectual History in a Gujarati Account of China, 1860–68

The Journal of Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021911820003678 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-26

Author(s):

Michael O'Sullivan

Keyword(s):

South China Sea ◽

Intellectual History ◽

Southern China ◽

Western Indian Ocean ◽

Port Cities ◽

Late Qing ◽

Modern Capitalism ◽

Late Qing China ◽

History Of ◽

The Many

This article examines one of the earliest Gujarati travelogues concerning China, written by Damodar Ishwardas—a Hindu resident of Bombay and a clerk for a Sunni Khoja commercial firm—and published in Bombay in 1868. Based on a three-year trip to the port cities of southern China, Ishwardas's text runs close to 400 pages and was patronized by a prominent stratum of Bombay's Gujarati-speaking commercial and bureaucratic elite. The primary intervention in this article is to analyze Ishwardas's account as a neglected relic of vernacular capitalism and vernacular intellectual history. Furthermore, the text presents an opportunity to reexamine the history of the Indian intellectual and mercantile engagement with late Qing China, especially before anticolonial nationalism and pan-Asianism supplied new paradigms for Indian writing on East Asia beginning around 1900. It further points to the many unstudied Indian materials that have yet to be integrated into the study of modern capitalism in the regions from the South China Sea to the western Indian Ocean.

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Rediscovering the Yellow River and the Yangtze River: the Circulation of Discourses on the North–South Dichotomy between Late Qing China and Meiji Japan

International Journal of Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s1479591418000323 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 33-51

Author(s):

Fei Chen

Keyword(s):

Yangtze River ◽

Yellow River ◽

Narrative Structure ◽

The Yellow River ◽

Meiji Japan ◽

Late Qing ◽

Liang Qichao ◽

The North ◽

Southern Chinese ◽

Late Qing China

AbstractMany novels, poems, and academic works produced in the last decades of Qing China were characterized by a structure of North–South dichotomy. While existing studies have investigated the root of this narrative structure in Chinese traditions, this article tries to uncover Japan's lesser-known role in the revitalization of traditional discourses. It first discusses how Japanese intellectuals, such as Shiga Shigetaka and Naitō Konan, reconfigured Chinese discourses on the North–South dichotomy as theories to assert Japan's superiority over China. It goes on to examine how Liang Qichao appropriated Japanese theories to mobilize southern Chinese to participate in state politics. It then explores how Chinese revolutionary students in Japan exploited Japanese intellectuals’ and Liang's discourses to promote a cross-provincial consciousness by representing China as a river-based region writ large. Lastly, it reveals how the restructured discourses on the North–South dichotomy were manipulated by revolutionaries after they flowed back to China.

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Liang Fa: Pioneer Chinese Protestant Evangelist

Studies in World Christianity ◽

10.3366/swc.2021.0352 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 253-279

Author(s):

P. Richard Bohr

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

Late Qing ◽

Chinese Christianity ◽

Late Qing China ◽

History Of ◽

The One ◽

The Relationship ◽

Christian Message

Through a meticulous study of the life and times of Liang Fa, this article explores the ways in which the Anglo-Chinese College prepared him to become a pioneer Chinese Protestant evangelist. While not overlooking his struggle with deep-rooted Chinese cultural precepts, on the one hand, and his responses to changing circumstances in late Qing China while presenting the Christian message, on the other, this study examines both the questions of the relationship between Liang and his missionary mentors and of Liang's proselytisng strategies that involved both direct and indirect evangelism, including his major Chinese publication, Quanshi Liangyan (commonly known as Good Words to Admonish the Age). Special attention is paid to the question of how Hong Xiuquan misinterpreted Liang's book, thereby creating the Taiping heresy and its tragic consequences. The study concludes with an overall assessment of Liang's place in the history of Chinese Christianity.

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DEVELOPMENTALISM IN LATE QING CHINA, 1874–1911

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x19000669 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-23

Author(s):

JONATHAN CHAPPELL

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Han Chinese ◽

Late Qing ◽

Late Qing China ◽

Chinese Perceptions ◽

History Of ◽

European Colonialism ◽

Evolutionary Fate

Abstract This article explores the changing historical referents that Qing officials used in arguing for the extension of direct governance to the empire's frontier regions from the 1870s to the 1900s. In the 1870s, Shen Baozhen and Zuo Zongtang made the case for a change of governance on Taiwan and in Xinjiang respectively by reference to past Chinese frontier management. However, in the first decade of the twentieth century Cen Chunxuan and Yao Xiguang both referred to the European past, and specifically the history of European colonialism, to argue for reform of frontier policy in Mongolia. I argue that this shift was a result of both the empire's altered political circumstances and a growing belief in the inevitability of an evolutionary fate which awaited nomadic peoples, who were destined to be colonized. Yet this was not a case of Chinese thinkers simply adopting European ideas and perspectives wholesale. The adoption of European historical referents was entangled with Han Chinese perceptions of Mongolian populations which had been carefully cultivated by the Manchu Qing state.

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