The Mythistorical Chinese Scholar-Rebel-Advisor Li Yan
The Mythistorical Chinese Scholar-Rebel-Advisor Li Yan

Author: Roger V. Des Forges

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-09

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 9004421068

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Roger Des Forges here examines the puzzle of Li Yan, a Chinese scholar who advised the rebel Li Zicheng (1605-1645), and helped him to overthrow the Ming, only to die at his hands. For more than three centuries, Li Yan’s identity and even existence were seriously questioned. Then, in 2004, there was discovered a genealogical manuscript which includes a Li Yan (1606-1644). He now appears to be the principal historical reality behind the Li Yan story, which became a powerful metaphor for the rise and fall of Li Zicheng’s rebellion. Offering a fresh theory of Chinese and world history, the author elucidates Li Yan’s historical significance by comparing and contrasting him with similar figures in other times and places around the globe.

臺勢教會 The Taiwanese Making of the Canada Presbyterian Mission
臺勢教會 The Taiwanese Making of the Canada Presbyterian Mission

Author: Mark A. Dodge

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1648891853

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"臺勢教會 The Taiwanese Making of the Canada Presbyterian Mission" explores the Canadian Presbyterian Mission to Northern Taiwan, 1872-1915. The Canada Presbyterian Mission has often been portrayed as one of the nineteenth- century’s most successful missions, and its founder, George Leslie Mackay, has been called the most successful Protestant Missionary of all time. Mark Dodge challenges the heroic narrative by exploring the motives and actions of the Taiwanese actors who supported and established the mission. Religious leaders, teachers, doctors, and businessmen from Northern Taiwan collaborated to build a strong and vital mission, whose phenomenal success brought fame and status to Mackay and their cause. In turn, this status provided a protective space in which these Taiwanese patrons were able to exert significant economic and political autonomy in spite of pressures from competing colonial interests. This book will be of particular interest to students and historians of nineteenth-century East Asia as well as scholars of comparative colonialism, with a focus on missionary history and cultural colonialism.

Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila
Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila

Author: Richard Chu

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-01-25

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 9047426851

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For centuries, the Chinese have been intermarrying with inhabitants of the Philippines, resulting in a creolized community of Chinese mestizos under the Spanish colonial regime. In contemporary Philippine society, the “Chinese” are seen as a racialized “Other” while descendants from early Chinese-Filipino intermarriages as “Filipino.” Previous scholarship attributes this development to the identification of Chinese mestizos with the equally “Hispanicized” and “Catholic” indios. Building on works in Chinese transnationalism and cultural anthropology, this book examines the everyday practices of Chinese merchant families in Manila from the 1860s to the 1930s. The result is a fascinating study of how families and individuals creatively negotiate their identities in ways that challenge our understanding of the genesis of ethnic identities in the Philippines. “...[This book] helps contribute to the revision of the existing literature on the Chinese and Chinese mestizos with a new perspective that highlights the emerging field of transnational studies.” - Prof. Augusto Espiritu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “...the author does an outstanding job and we recommend that citizens of the Philippine ‘nation,’ whether they see themselves as ‘Chinese’ or ‘Filipino’ would do well to read this work and understand the origins of the racial stereotypes that influence the way they look at particular members of Philippine society, particularly in Manila.” - Prof. Ellen Palanca and Prof. Clark Alejandrino, Ateneo de Manila University "...an ambitious study of the Chinese and first-generation Chinese mestizos of Manila...[the author] has added valuable research materials from Philippine and American archival collections and...a wide range of published primary sources...The book is meticulously annotated and rich in descriptive detail..." - Michael Cullinane, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Cold War in Asia
The Cold War in Asia

Author: Yangwen Zheng

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9004175377

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Cold War stayed cold in Europe but it was hot in Asia. Its legacy lives on in the region. In none of the three dominant historiographical paradigms: orthodox, revisionist and post-revisionist, does Asia, or the rest of the Third World, figure with much significance. What happens to these narratives if we put them to the test in Asia? This volume argues that attention to what has been conventionally considered the periphery is essential to a full understanding of the global Cold War. Foregrounding Asia necessarily leads to a re-assessment of the dominant narratives. This volume also argues for a shift in focus from diplomacy and high politics alone towards research into the culture of the Cold War era and its public diplomacy. "As a whole, the essays contribute to enriching our understanding of what was really happening in an era that is too often understood in the catch-all framework of the Cold War." - Akira Iriye, "Harvard University"

Representing Lives in China
Representing Lives in China

Author: Ihor Pidhainy

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1942242913

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The chapters in this ground-breaking volume examine the complex practices of biographical writing in Ming and Qing China. The authors draw on a rich variety of sources to answer some basic questions: Who were the writers of these texts and the subjects of their biographical constructions? What motivated these textual productions and sustained the routes from (re)creations to (re)publications? The informed and fascinating readings illuminate the enduring appeal of representing and represented lives in Chinese history.

The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran
The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran

Author: Colin P. Mitchell

Publisher: I.B. Tauris

Published: 2011-12-15

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9781780760964

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Safavid dynasty originated as a fledgling apocalyptic mystical movement based in Iranian Azarbaijan, and grew into a large, cosmopolitan Irano-Islamic empire stretching from Baghdad to Herat. Here, Colin P. Mitchell examines how the Safavid state introduced and molded a unique and vibrant political discourse, reflecting the social and religious heterogeneity of sixteenth-century Iran. Beginning with the millenarian-minded Shah Isma'il and concluding with the autocrat par excellence, Shah Abbas, Mitchell explores the phenomenon of state-sponsored rhetoric. A thorough investigation of the Safavid state and the significance of rhetoric, power and religion in its functioning, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran is indispensable for all those interested in Iranian history and politics and Middle East studies.

Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History
Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History

Author: Roger V. Des Forges

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780804740449

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Ming period of Chinese history is often depicted as one of cultural aridity, political despotism, and social stasis. Recent studies have shown that the arts continued to flourish, government remained effective, people enjoyed considerable mobility, and China served as a center of the global economy. This study goes further to argue that China’s perennial quest for cultural centrality resulted in periodic political changes that permitted the Chinese people to retain control over social and economic developments. The study focuses on two and a half million people in three prefectures of northeast Henan, the central province in the heart of the "central plain”--a common synecdoche for China. The author argues that this population may have been more representative of the Chinese people at large than were the residents of more prosperous regions. Many diverse individuals in northeast Henan invoked historical models to deal with the present and shape the future. Though they differed in the lessons they drew, they shared the view that the Han dynasty was particularly relevant to their own time. Han and Ming politics were integral parts of a pattern of Chinese historical development that has lasted to the present.

Defeat Is the Only Bad News
Defeat Is the Only Bad News

Author: Alison Des Forges

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2011-05-17

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 0299281434

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A Rwandan proverb says “Defeat is the only bad news.” For Rwandans living under colonial rule, winning called not only for armed confrontation, but also for a battle of wits—and not only with foreigners, but also with each other. In Defeat Is the Only Bad News Alison Des Forges recounts the ambitions, strategies, and intrigues of an African royal court under Yuhi Musinga, the Rwandan ruler from 1896 to 1931. These were turbulent years for Rwanda, when first Germany and then Belgium pursued an aggressive plan of colonization there. At the time of the Europeans’ arrival, Rwanda was also engaged in a succession dispute after the death of one of its most famous kings. Against this backdrop, the Rwandan court became the stage for a drama of Shakespearean proportions, filled with deceit, shrewd calculation, ruthless betrayal, and sometimes murder. Historians who study European expansion typically focus on interactions between colonizers and colonized; they rarely attend to relations among the different factions inhabiting occupied lands. Des Forges, drawing on oral histories and extensive archival research, reveals how divisions among different groups in Rwanda shaped their responses to colonial governments, missionaries, and traders. Rwandans, she shows, used European resources to extend their power, even as they sought to preserve the autonomy of the royal court. Europeans, for their part, seized on internal divisions to advance their own goals. Des Forges’s vividly narrated history, meticulously edited and introduced by David Newbury, provides a deep context for understanding the Rwandan civil war a century later.

The Asian World, 600-1500
The Asian World, 600-1500

Author: Roger V. Des Forges

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on numerous primary sources, this volume covers the history of Asia from the reunification of China under the Sui and Tang dynasties from the fifth century CE to Choson Korea in the 16th century, also covering other parts of the continent including India and Japan. This book is designed to serve the seventh grade social studies curriculum in California and other states. The Medieval and Early Modern World tells the colorful story of a pivotal period in human history, an era that is crucial to understanding our own times. The expansion of trade and city life, the spread and reform of religious institutions, the rise of regional empires and local feudal regimes, and revolutionary advances in science and technology laid the foundation for the modern world. Told through the words and experiences of the people who lived it- kings, queens, and commoners, priests and lay people, explorers, scientists, artists, and world travelers- this is a world history for a new generation.