Malthus Goes to China: The Effect of “Positive Checks” on Grain Market Development, 1736–1910

After peaking around the mid-eighteenth century, grain market integration in China declined by a colossal 80 percent amid a twofold increase in population and remained at low levels for well over a century. Markets only resumed their growth momentum after the largest peasant revolt—the Taiping Rebellion—wiped out roughly one-sixth of the Chinese population starting 1851. This U-shaped pattern of grain market integration distinguished China from Europe in their trajectories of market development. Using grain prices to divide China into grain-deficit and grainsurplus regions, we find that the negative relationship between population growth and market integration originated from the grain-surplus-cum-exporting regions.

The Enigma of a Taiping Fugitive: The Illusion of Justice and the “Political Offence Exception” in Extradition from Hong Kong

In 1865, the British Colony of Hong Kong extradited a Chinese shop-owner on a charge of piracy and incited a barrage of criticism when the offender was punished by the infamous “death by a thousand cuts” in Canton upon his rendition. Rumors surfaced identifying him as a rebel chief in the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). By excavating court records, diplomatic exchanges, and legal discourses surrounding this case, the article engages in a critical examination of extradition law and implementation in mid-19th century between Hong Kong and China. It examines how the case played into the politics of four administrative localities - Hong Kong, Canton, Beijing, and London - and uncovers the networks of agencies at play. It contributes to the history of extradition by contextualizing the “political offence exception” in international law and explains how this exception, ill-defined and vaguely conceived as it was, found its way into the implementation of Article 21 of the Treaty of Tianjin on the rendition of fugitives from Hong Kong to China, with a significant impact on the Qing's governance and jurisdiction of cross-border fugitives.

Foreign Military Adventurers in the Taiping Rebellion, 1860–1864

Using Western and Chinese archival sources, the following paper explores the military intervention of freelance foreign adventurers, particularly a militia eventually known as the Ever-Victorious Army, in the waning years of the Taiping Rebellion (1860–1864). My goal here is not merely to retell the story of this force, or to reassess its contribution to the subjugation of the Taipings, a question already studied by several historians. Instead, I will analyze the complicated and ever-changing relationship between these adventurers and the powers around them: Qing local authorities, the imperial court in Beijing, and the various foreign countries, especially Great Britain. I argue that the opening for such a force as the Ever-Victorious Army was created by the need of all parties for informal cooperation against the Taiping while maintaining plausible deniability. Once this need had passed, the foreign military adventurers became redundant and could be discarded by their former sponsors.

Mob Ideology or Democracy: Analyzing Taiping Rebellion’s Defeat and Revolution of 1911’s Triumph in Ending the Qing Dynasty

This paper investigates the underlying factors that caused the Qing Dynasty of China to survive the Taiping Rebellion yet crumbled upon the Revolution of 1911. It first examines the ideological differences between the two attempts of regime change, followed by an exploration into the extent of foreign interference in determining the outcomes of the two events. Subsequently, the author analyzes the conflict between the constitutionalists and the absolute monarchists within the Qing court during the time of the Revolution in 1911. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the Qing dynasty survived the Taiping Rebellion yet crumbled upon the Xinhai Revolution because the latter’s San-min Doctrine, also known as the “Three Principles of the People,” drew support from within the Qing regional governments as its ideology gave them hopes of preserving powers, while the Taiping Rebellion’s mob ideology achieved the contrary; on top of this, the Revolution of 1911 faced a Qing government weakened by internal conflicts over constitutional reforms, and it also successfully prevented foreign powers from intervening on behalf of the falling imperial dynasty.

Reckoning with Rebellion

An innovative global history of the American Civil War, Reckoning with Rebellion compares and contrasts the American experience with other civil and national conflicts that happened at nearly the same time—the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Polish Insurrection of 1863, and China’s Taiping Rebellion. Aaron Sheehan-Dean identifies surprising new connections between these historical moments across three continents. Sheehan-Dean shows that insurgents around the globe often relied on irregular warfare and were labeled as criminals, mutineers, or rebels by the dominant powers. He traces commonalities between the United States, British empire, Russian empire, and Chinese empire, all large and ambitious states willing to use violence to maintain their authority. These powers were also able to control how these conflicts were described, affecting the way foreigners perceived them and whether they decided to intercede. While the stories of these conflicts are now told separately, Sheehan-Dean argues, the participants understood them in relation to each other. When Union officials condemned secession, they pointed to the violence unleashed by the Indian Rebellion. When Confederates denounced Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant, they did so by comparing him to Tsar Alexander II. Sheehan-Dean demonstrates that the causes and issues of the Civil War were also global problems, revealing the important paradigms at work in the age of nineteenth-century nation-building.

Interpreting the Maritime and Overland Trade Regulations of 1882 between Chosŏn and the Qing: How logics of appropriateness shaped Sino–Korean relations

Prior research on Qing China’s relationship towards Chosŏn Korea in the late 19th century suggested that China’s influence over Korea was a continuation of the tribute system. However, the Qing’s awareness of Westphalian laws altered Sino–Korean relations. In 1882, Qing China signed the Maritime and Overland Trade Regulations with Chosŏn Korea. Unlike the previous treaties that China signed with western states, the Qing negotiated terms economically beneficial to China in the agreement. The Qing officials determined much of the terms found in the Regulations. The Qing officials had leverage over Chosŏn officials partly because China had amassed cultural capital through centuries of tributary exchanges. The logics of appropriateness (LoA) or ‘bounded rationality’ of the tribute system shaped the Qing’s and Chosŏn’s responses, even in treaty negotiations. We argued that the Regulations reflected the Qing’s attempts to ‘modernize’ tributary relations with Westphalian LoA in light of the Qing’s own domestic crisis. Domestic insurrections such as the Taiping Rebellion led members of the self-strengthening ( Ziqiang) movement to focus on foreign affairs and adopt Westphalian international laws. The Qing’s goals to self-strengthen via an unequal agreement with Chosŏn, however, failed when westerners criticized China’s perceived suzerain authority over Korea. The criticisms highlighted the cleavages between the tributary and Westphalian systems as individuals attempted to justify their roles within these institutions.

Sign, Ground, and Interpretant

This chapter begins by elaborating on the relationships among what Peirce called sign, object, and interpretant. It goes on to explore how memory, mimesis, and metaphor form the ground for these relationships, and in the process transform people’s understandings of themselves in the world, sometimes with enormous consequences. The chapter achieves this by analyzing aspects of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, China’s cataclysmic Taiping Rebellion in the nineteenth century, reworked temples to a goddess in contemporary Taiwan and mainland China, and memorials to the Holocaust in Vienna and Jerusalem.