China's Encounters on the South and Southwest
China's Encounters on the South and Southwest

Author: James A. Anderson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-11-06

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 9004282483

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China's Encounters on the South and Southwest. Reforging the Fiery Frontier Over Two Millennia discusses the mountainous territory between lowland China and Southeast Asia, what we term the Dong world, and varied encounters by China with this world's many elements. The essays describe such encounters over the past two millennia and note various asymmetric relations that have resulted therefrom. Local populations, indigenous chiefs, state officials, and rulers have all acted to shape this frontier, especially after the Mongol incursions of the thirteenth century drastically shifted it. This process has moved from the alliances of the Dong world to the indirect rule of the Tusi (native official) age to the Qing and recent Gaitu Guiliu efforts at direct rule by the state, placing regular officials in charge there. The essays detail the complexities of this frontier through time, space, and personality, particularly in those instances, as today on land and sea, when China elects to pursue an aggressive policy in this direction. Contributors include: Brantly Womack, Kenneth MacLean, Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, Bradley Davis, Jaymin Kim, Alexander Ong, Joseph Dennis, Sun Laichen, John K. Whitmore, Kathlene Baldanza, Kenneth M. Swope, Michael Brose, James A. Anderson, Liam Kelley, and Catherine Churchman.

The South China Sea and Asian Regionalism
The South China Sea and Asian Regionalism

Author: Thanh-Dam Truong

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-01-15

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 3319135511

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This book offers an innovative approach to the analysis of the current crisis in the South China Sea. Moving beyond the spirit of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the mechanisms of which are limited to physical geography, it demonstrates how epistemological insights from the field of critical realist philosophy can reveal the importance of cultural and structural conditioning processes in social interactions, processes which shape the conditions for the emergence of crisis points along a spectrum of conflict and cooperation. The potential for conflict resolution and the emergence of new regions in Pacific Asia much depends on the nature of such interactions at many levels (political-economic, semiotic and cultural) based on perceptions of what constitutes the "common" versus a Sinicised version of "Lebensraum".

Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China
Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China

Author: Stevan Harrell

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2012-11-20

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0295804076

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Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in the 1980s and 1990s in southern Sichuan, this pathbreaking study examines the nature of ethnic consciousness and ethnic relations among local communities, focusing on the Nuosu (classified as Yi by the Chinese government), Prmi, Naze, and Han. It argues that even within the same regional social system, ethnic identity is formulated, perceived, and promoted differently by different communities at different times. Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China exemplifies a model in which ethnic consciousness and ethnic relations consist of drawing boundaries between one�s own group and others, crossing those boundaries, and promoting internal unity within a group. Leaders and members of ethnic groups use commonalties and differences in history, culture, and kinship to promote internal unity and to strengthen or cross external boundaries. Superimposed on the structure of competing and cooperating local groups is a state system of ethnic classification and administration; members and leaders of local groups incorporate this system into their own ethnic consciousness, co-opting or resisting it situationally. The heart of the book consists of detailed case studies of three Nuosu village communities, along with studies of Prmi and Naze communities, smaller groups such as the Yala and Nasu, and Han Chinese who live in minority areas. These are followed by a synthesis that compares different configurations of ethnic identity in different communities and discusses the implications of these examples for our understanding of ethnicity and for the near future of China. This lively description and analysis of the region�s complex ethnic identities and relationships constitutes an original and important contribution to the study of ethnic identity. Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China will be of interest to social scientists concerned with issues of ethnicity and state-building.

Environmental Winds
Environmental Winds

Author: Michael J. Hathaway

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2013-07-26

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0520276205

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Environmental Winds challenges the notion that globalized social formations emerged solely in the Global North prior to impacting the Global South. Instead, such formations have been constituted, transformed, and propelled through diverse, site-specific social interactions that complicate and defy divisions between 'global' and 'local.' The book brings the reader into the lives of Chinese scientists, officials, villagers, and expatriate conservationists who were caught up in environmental trends over the past 25 years. Hathaway reveals how global environmentalism has been enacted and altered in China, often with unanticipated effects, such as the rise of indigenous rights, or the reconfiguration of human/animal relationships, fostering what rural villagers refer to as “the revenge of wild elephants.”

East Asian Landscapes and Legitimation
East Asian Landscapes and Legitimation

Author: Yasmin Koppen

Publisher: Frank & Timme GmbH

Published: 2024-06-17

Total Pages: 849

ISBN-13: 3732909433

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The conquest of Sichuan and Vietnam by the Chinese Empire led to very different outcomes. This volume examines the negotiations between central authority and local autonomy, the physical manifestations of socially constructed identities, and the transformation of sacred spaces which reflect broader social, political, and religious currents. It also offers a method to study spatial-social interactions in historical settings that provides insights into dynamics of power imposition and identity negotiation in local contexts. Experiential Architecture Analysis (EAA) serves to explore the interplay of local traditions, transcultural ideology transfer, and sacred water sites in the peripheries of Chinese culture. It analyzes the spatial ensembles of sacred sites regarding their roles for legitimation, dominance, and social resistance, while highlighting the agency of consumers to redefine spatial media. All scholars of Chinese and Southeast Asian History, of Religious Studies or Cultural Anthropology find in this volume valuable insights for their research, especially where it concerns areas lacking reliable written sources.

Remaking the Chinese Empire
Remaking the Chinese Empire

Author: Yuanchong Wang

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-12-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1501730517

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Remaking the Chinese Empire examines China's development from an empire into a modern state through the lens of Sino-Korean political relations during the Qing period. Incorporating Korea into the historical narrative of the Chinese empire, it demonstrates that the Manchu regime used its relations with Chosŏn Korea to establish, legitimize, and consolidate its identity as the civilized center of the world, as a cosmopolitan empire, and as a modern sovereign state. For the Manchu regime and for the Chosŏn Dynasty, the relationship was one of mutual dependence, central to building and maintaining political legitimacy. Yuanchong Wang illuminates how this relationship served as the very model for China's foreign relations. Ultimately, this precipitated contests, conflicts, and compromises among empires and states in East Asia, Inner Asia, and Southeast Asia – in particular, in the nineteenth century when international law reached the Chinese world. By adopting a long-term and cross-border perspective on high politics at the empire's core and periphery, Wang revises our understanding of the rise and transformation of the last imperial dynasty of China. His work reveals new insights on the clashes between China's foreign relations system and its Western counterpart, imperialism and colonialism in the Chinese world, and the formation of modern sovereign states in East Asia. Most significantly, Remaking the Chinese Empire breaks free of the established, national history-oriented paradigm, establishing a new paradigm through which to observe and analyze the Korean impact on the Qing Dynasty.

Asymmetry and International Relationships
Asymmetry and International Relationships

Author: Brantly Womack

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1107132894

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America's longest wars have been 'small wars'. This book explains how power differences shape - but don't determine - international relationships.

Asian Expansions
Asian Expansions

Author: Geoff Wade

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-10-17

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 1135043523

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Asia as we know it today is the product of a wide range of polity expansions over time. Recognising the territorial expansions of Asian polities large and small through the last several millennia helps rectify the fallacy, long-held and deeply entrenched, that Asian polities have been interested only in the control of populations, not in expanding their command of territory. In countering this misapprehension, this book suggests that Asian polities have indeed been concerned with territorial control and expansion over time, whether for political or strategic advantage, trade purposes, defence needs, agricultural expansion or increased income through taxation. The book explores the historical experiences of a set of polity expansions within Asia, specifically in East and Southeast Asia, and, by examining the motivations, mechanisms, processes, validations and limitations of these Asian territorial expansions, reveals the diverse avenues by which Asian polities have grown. The chapters draw on these historical examples to highlight the connections between Asian polity expansion and centralised political structures, and this aids in a broader and more comprehensive understanding of Asian political practice, both past and present. Through these chapter studies and the integrative introduction, the book interrogates key concepts such as imperialism and colonialism, and the applicability and relevance of such terminology in Asian contexts, both historical and contemporary. Comparisons and contrasts with European historical expansions are also suggested. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of Asian history, as well as by those with an interest in Asian interactions, international relations, polity expansion, Asia--Europe historical comparisons and globalisation.

Ming China and Vietnam
Ming China and Vietnam

Author: Kathlene Baldanza

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-03-29

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1107124247

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Studies of Sino-Viet relations have traditionally focused on Chinese aggression and Vietnamese resistance, or have assumed out-of-date ideas about Sinicization and the tributary system. They have limited themselves to national historical traditions, doing little to reach beyond the border. Ming China and Vietnam, by contrast, relies on sources and viewpoints from both sides of the border, for a truly transnational history of Sino-Viet relations. Kathlene Baldanza offers a detailed examination of geopolitical and cultural relations between Ming China (1368-1644) and Dai Viet, the state that would go on to become Vietnam. She highlights the internal debates and external alliances that characterized their diplomatic and military relations in the pre-modern period, showing especially that Vietnamese patronage of East Asian classical culture posed an ideological threat to Chinese states. Baldanza presents an analysis of seven linked biographies of Chinese and Vietnamese border-crossers whose lives illustrate the entangled histories of those countries.

Asia Inside Out
Asia Inside Out

Author: Eric Tagliacozzo

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-03-11

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0674987632

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A pioneering study of historical developments that have shaped Asia concludes with this volume tracing the impact of ideas and cultures of people on the move across the continent, whether willingly or not. In the final volume of Asia Inside Out, a stellar interdisciplinary team of scholars considers the migration of people—and the ideas, practices, and things they brought with them—to show the ways in which itinerant groups have transformed their culture and surroundings. Going beyond time and place, which animated the first two books, this third one looks at human beings on the move. Human movement from place to place across time reinforces older connections while forging new ones. Erik Harms turns to Vietnam to show that the notion of a homeland as a marked geographic space can remain important even if that space is not fixed in people’s lived experience. Angela Leung traces how much of East Asia was brought into a single medical sphere by traveling practitioners. Seema Alavi shows that the British preoccupation with the 1857 Indian Revolt allowed traders to turn the Omani capital into a thriving arms emporium. James Pickett exposes the darker side of mobility in a netherworld of refugees, political prisoners, and hostages circulating from the southern Russian Empire to the Indian subcontinent. Other authors trace the impact of movement on religious art, ethnic foods, and sports spectacles. By stepping outside familiar categories and standard narratives, this remarkable series challenges us to rethink our conception of Asia in complex and nuanced ways.