"How can mankind move upward," John K. Fairbank once asked, "except by standing on the shoulders and faces of the older generation?" Join Micah Muscolino and his guests as they put feet to faces and discuss the best books about Chinese history that no one reads anymore.
Old China Books
Claim This Podcastby Micah Muscolino
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Podcast Overview
"How can mankind move upward," John K. Fairbank once asked, "except by standing on the shoulders and faces of the older generation?" Join Micah Muscolino and his guests as they put feet to faces and discuss the best books about Chinese history that no one reads anymore.
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2/2/2022
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Recent Episodes
August 28, 2023
Matthew Sommer on T'ung-Tsu Ch'ü [Qu Tongzu 瞿同祖], Law and Society in Traditional China
<p>Matthew Sommer joins Micah to discuss Law and Society in Traditional China (Mouton, 1961). Listeners should also check out Matt's two groundbreaking books on Chinese legal history: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Society-Late-Imperial-China-Culture/dp/0804745595" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China </a> (Stanford University Press, 2002) and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Polyandry-Wife-Selling-Qing-Dynasty-China/dp/0520287037" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions</a> (University of California Press, 2015).</p> <p><br></p> <p>EPISODE BIBLIOGRAPHY</p> <p><strong>Secondary works:</strong></p> <p>瞿同祖《中国法律与中国社会》(上海商务印书馆, 1947).</p> <p>Ch'ü, T'ung-Tsu, Local Government in China under the Ch'ing (Harvard University Press, 1962).</p> <p>Ch'ü, T'ung-Tsu, The History of Chinese Feudal Society (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020) [English translation of 《中国封建社会》 (1937)].</p> <p>Chang， Chung-li, The Income of the Chinese Gentry (University of Washington Press, 1962).</p> <p>Jing Junjian, “Hierarchy in the Qing Dynasty,” Social Sciences in China: A Quarterly Journal 3:1 (1982): 156–92.</p> <p>经君健《清代社会的贱民等级》 (中国人民大学出版社, 2009).</p> <p>Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China: Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases (Harvard University Press, 1967).</p> <p>David C. Buxbaum, 1971: “Some Aspects of Civil Procedure and Practice at the Trial Level in Tanshui and Hsinchu from 1789 to 1895,” Journal of Asian Studies 30:2 (1971), pp. 255-279. </p> <p>Philip C. C. Huang, Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in the Qing (Stanford University Press, 1996).</p> <p>Melissa Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (Stanford University Press, 1998).</p> <p>Bradly W. Reed, Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty (Stanford University Press, 2000).</p> <p><br></p> <p><strong>Primary sources</strong> (recommendations and comments courtesy of Matthew Sommer):</p> <p>祝慶祺編次、鮑書芸參定 《刑案匯覽》[1834] (reprint edition 成文出版社, 1968).</p> <p>吳潮、何錫儼合編；薛允升鑒定; 何錫儼,《刑案滙覽續編 》 [1887](reprint edition, 文海出版社, 1970).</p> <p>黃六鴻 (Kangxi era),《福惠全書》.</p> <p>汪輝組 (late Qianlong-early Jiaqing era), 《佐治藥言》, 《學治臆說》, and sequels.</p> <p>劉衡 (Jiaqing-Daoguang): 《蜀僚問答》，《庸吏庸言》，《庸吏餘談》.</p> <p>Liu Heng is interesting because he served as magistrate of Ba County, so you can compare the cases he actually judged with the self-serving stuff he wrote in his books — quite illuminating! But Ch'ü's favorite by far is Wang Huizu.</p> <p>Also, the most accessible version of the Qing code, which includes valuable commentaries, is the late Qing edition by Xue Yunsheng called 《讀例存疑》. There are various published editions, but the following is (in my opinion) the best one to use for scholarly citation:</p> <p>薛允升 (Guangxu era): 《<讀例存疑>重刊本》 (5 vols.), punctuated and edited by 黃靜嘉 (Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1970).</p> <p>But there is also an incredibly useful full-text searchable version, free access online, thanks to the Japanese legal historian Professor Terada Hiroaki (emeritus, Kyoto University): http://www.terada.law.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dlcy/index.htm</p>
December 12, 2022
Jeffrey Wasserstrom on White and Jacoby, Thunder Out of China.
<p>Jeffrey Wasserstrom joins Micah to discuss Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of China (William Sloane Assoc., 1946).</p> <p>Interested listeners should take a look at Jeffrey Wasserstrom's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082VL39XH/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0">Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink </a>(Columbia Global Reports, 2020). Here's a bibliography of the other books and articles that we mentioned in the episode: </p> <p>Stephen R. MacKinnon and Oris Friesen. <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft1s2004h3;query=;brand=ucpress">China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s</a>. University of California Press, 1987.</p> <p>Lloyd E. Eastman, Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937-1949. Stanford University Press, 1984.</p> <p>Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.</p> <p>Hans J. van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, 1925-1945. RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.</p> <p>Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2010.</p> <p>Rebecca Nedostup, “Burying, Repatriating, and Leaving the Dead in Wartime and Postwar China and Taiwan, 1937-1955,” Journal of Chinese History 1:1 (2017), 111-139.</p> <p>Nicole E. Barnes, Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937-1945. University of California Press, 2018.</p> <p>Aaron W. Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire. Harvard University Press, 2013.</p> <p>Graham Peck, Two Kinds of Time. Houghton Mifflin, 1950.</p> <p>Leslie T. Chang, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. Spiegel & Grau, 2008.</p> <p>Mike Chinoy, Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People's Republic. Columbia University Press, 2023.</p> <p>Frederic Wakeman, Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service. University of California Press, 2003.</p> <p>John Pomfret, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China. Henry Holt, 2006.</p> <p>Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China. University of California Press, 1994.</p> <p>Bill Lascher, Eve of a Hundred Midnights: The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two WWII Correspondents and Their Epic Escape Across the Pacific. William Morrow, 2016.</p> <p>Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. University of California Press, 1978.</p> <p>Parks Coble, China's War Reporters. Harvard University Press, 2015.</p>
May 23, 2022
Elisabeth Köll on Albert Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization.
<p>Elisabeth Köll and Micah discuss Albert Feuerwerker, China’s Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-huai (1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958). </p> <p>For cutting-edge research on the history of business in modern China, take a look at Elisabeth's two books:</p> <p>Elisabeth Köll, Railroads and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).</p> <p>Elisabeth Köll, From Cotton Mill to Business Empire: The Emergence of Regional Enterprises in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004).</p> <p><br></p> <p>Some of the many sources on the career of Sheng Xuanhuai that were not available to Feuerwerker in the 1950s have been published in these volumes:</p> <p>陈旭麓, 顾廷龙, 汪熙主编. 陈旭麓, 顾廷龙, 汪熙编 《盛宣怀档案资料》 (上海人民出版社, 2016).</p> <p>盛宣懷 《盛宣懷實業函電稿》(香港中文大學中國文化研究所; 中央研究院近代史研究所, 1993).</p> <p>上海图书馆编 《上海图书馆藏盛宣懷档案萃编》(上海古籍出版社, 2008).</p> <p>北京大學歷史系近代史教研室整理 《盛宣懷未刊信稿》 (上海人民出版社, 2019).</p> <p>香港中文大學文物館編 《香港中文大學藏盛宣懷檔案全編》 (上海人民出版社, 2021).</p> <p><br></p> <p>Works mentioned in the episode are listed below:</p> <p>Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella, ed. Contract and Property in Early Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).</p> <p>David Faure, China and Capitalism: A History of Business Enterprise in Modern China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006).</p> <p>William C. Kirby, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2058950?seq=1">“China Unincorporated: Company Law and Business Enterprise in Twentieth-Century China,” </a>The Journal of Asian Studies 54:1 (1995), pp. 43-63.</p> <p>Marie-Claire Bergère, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911-1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).</p> <p>Thomas G. Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).</p> <p>Albert Feuerwerker, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2059035?seq=1">“Presidential Address: Questions About China's Early Modern Economic History That I Wish I Could Answer,”</a> The Journal of Asian Studies 51:4 (1992), pp. 757-769.</p>
7 total episodes available
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