Department of History
Module Handbook
2012/2013
China’s Global History: 1500 to Present
Module Leader: Dr Anne Gerritsen
Context of Module
This module, taught in the Spring term, may be taken by students on the MA in History, the
MA in Modern History, the MA in Global History, or any taught Master's student outside the
History Department.
Module Aims
This module explores China’s role in a global context and China’s engagement with the
outside world through time (1500 to the present day). It has been designed to serve as an
optional second part to the core module for students taking the MA in Global History. For
students having taken the Global History MA core module, which looks at theories and
approaches, this module provides an in-depth focus on a single country. The module deals
with themes such as globalisation past and present, economic connections through time,
and the cultural interactions that follow from movements of people and objects. The module
is organised thematically around China’s global interactions. Each of its themes can be
explored either in relation to a specific period (depending on the cohort of students and
their interests), or by comparative analysis of historical and contemporary topics. The
module can stand alone and may be taken by students with no prior knowledge of China,
but it also builds on undergraduate modules on China and global interactions already on
offer in the History Department.
Intended Learning Outcomes
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To introduce students to the vast subject of Chinese history and culture by exploring a
single theme: China's engagement with global developments through overseas trade, or
migration, or the introduction of Western philosophies and technologies from 1500 to
the present day.
To offer an overview of and an insight into those aspects of Chinese culture that
emerge from China's history and global connections.
To allow students to develop a focus of their own within each of the themes, depending
on their interests and further research plans.
Syllabus
Week 1: China in Global History
Week 2: Science and Technology between China and the West
Week 3: Art and exchange between China and Europe
Week 4: Violent Encounters: Opium and the Opium Wars
Week 5: The Taiping Rebellion and Christianity in China
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: Western ideas and the fall of the Qing
Week 8: Medicine and modernity: the introduction of Western medicine in China
Week 9: China’s Global Cities: Shanghai and Hong Kong
Week 10: China and a Global East Asian Modernity?
Illustrative Bibliography
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art of the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America (University of
Toronto Press, 1999)
Barnes, Linda. Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848
(Harvard UP, 2005)
Brockey, Liam. Journey to the East: the Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724 (Harvard UP,
2007)
Fairbank, John King, ed. The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations
(Harvard UP, 1968)
Furth, Charlotte. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960-1665 (California
UP, 1999)
Gernet, Jacques. A History of Chinese Civilization, trans. J. R. Foster, (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1982, pb. 1985, first French ed. 1972)
Gerth, Karl. China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (Harvard UP,
2003)
Gordon, Stewart. When Asia was the World (Da Capo Press, 2007)
Hevia, James. Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of
1793 (Duke UP, 1995)
Huff, Toby. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge UP,
2003).
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 19301945 (Harvard UP, 1999)
Mungello, David. The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou (Hawai’i UP, 1994).
Pierson, Stacey. Collectors, Collections, and Museums: the Field of Chinese Ceramics in
Britain, 1560-1960 (P. Lang, 2007).
Spence, Jonathan. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (Viking, 1984)
Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China (second ed. Norton, 1999)
Waley, Arthur. The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (Allen & Unwin, 1958)
Assessment
1 assessed essay of 5,000 words: the course is taught in weekly 2-hour seminars
Week 1: China in Global History
For discussion:
What is China's place in the contemporary study of global history? (Have a look at Pomeranz
and/or some of the reviews for this question).
Is economic history the best approach to understanding China's role in global history? What
other methodological approaches are available to study the relationship between China and
the wider world?
What were the main (cultural) forces that brought China into contact with Europe between
the 16th and the early 19th centuries (i.e. before the Opium Wars)? (Read David Mungello's
book for this question, or Joanna Waley-Cohen, Sextants of Beijing)
How did early encounters between China and the West influence their interactions in the
19th and 20th centuries (i.e. after the Opium Wars)? (See Waley-Cohen's chapters on this
subject).
Should we focus on China's relationship with Europe/'the West'? What other 'global
contexts' are relevant here? What about East Asia?
Readings:
Pomeranz, Ken. The Great Divergence (2000). Look at the chapter entitled 'Europe before
Asia?' (Photocopy in the Short Loan Collection.) There are many reviews of this work. See,
for example:
Peter C. Perdue. Review of Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and
the Making of the Modern World Economy. H-World, H-Net Reviews. August, 2000.
Robert B. Marks, Reviewed work(s): The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of
the Modern World Economy by Kenneth Pomeranz in The American Historical Review, Vol.
106, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 934-935.
Prasannan Parthasarathi, ‘Review Article: The Great Divergence’, Past and Present, 176
(2002), pp. 275-293.
P.H.H. Vries, ‘Are Coal and Colonies Really Crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the Great
Divergence’, Journal of World History, 12, no. 2 (2001), pp. 408-446
Mungello, David. The Great Encounter of China and the West: 1500-1800 (2005, or 2009). DS
754.M8 (some of it is on Google Books)
Waley-Cohen, Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (2000). DS 721.W2
Week 2: Science and Technology between China and the West
For discussion:
How and when was Western science introduced in China?
How deeply integrated did Western science become in China?
How did Joseph Needham see world history?
Does the introduction of science in Chinese mean the Westernization of China?
Core Readings:
Bray, Francesca, “Technics and Civilization in Late Imperial China: An Essay in the Cultural
History of Technology.” Osiris, 2nd series 13 (1998), pp. 11-33
Elman, Benjamin A., “Jesuit Scientia and Natural Studies in Late Imperial China, 1600-1800.“
Journal of Early Modern History 6 pt. 3 (2002), pp. 209-232
Finlay, Robert. “China, the West, and World History in Joseph Needham's Science and
Civilisation in China” Journal of World History 11.2 (2000), 265-303.
Waley-Cohen, Joanna, “China and Western Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century."
American Historical Review 98 pt. 5 (1993), pp. 1525-1544.
Further Readings:
Ho, P.Y., “China and Europe: Scientific and Technological Exchanges from the Sixteenth to
the Eighteenth Centuries”, in China and Europe: Images and Influences from the Sixteenth to
the Eighteenth Centuries, ed. by T.H.C. Lee, (1991).
Huff, Toby E., The Rise of Early Modern Science. Islam, China, and the West (2003).
Jami, Catherine, ‘Learning Mathermatical Sciences in during the early and mid Qing’ in Elman
and Woodside, eds., Education and Society in Late Imperial China.
Mungello, D. E. Chapters 4 & 5, ‘European Acceptance of Chinese Culture and Confucianism’
and ‘European Rejection of Chinese Culture and Confucianism’, in The Great Encounter of
China and the West, 1500-1800 (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), especially pp. 77132.
Perdue, Peter C. ”Joseph Needham's Problematic Legacy” in Technology and Culture 47.1
(2006), pp. 175-8.
Joseph Needham, ‘Conditions of Travel of Scientific Ideas and Techniques Between China
and Europe’, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge University Press, 1965) Chapter 7
of Volume 1, pp.150-248
You might be interested in the Needham Research Institute, which continues to be a very
important location for the study of science and civilization in China. www.nri.org.uk
For the wartime photographs taken by Dr Needham, see here.
Week 3: Art and exchange between China and Europe
For discussion:
The point of this seminar is to think about China as a centre for global manufacturing, and to
explore the ways in which the manufacture of goods for global markets was connected to
the creation of the identity of the empire/nation. Ceramics form the main case study for
exploring this, but feel free to bring in other examples (you could think of lacquer or silk or
furniture, for example)
Questions for discussion include:
How did China produce for a global market? How was knowledge about different consumers
transmitted?
What was the appeal of porcelain for European consumers?
How and when did China and china become connected?
Is hybridity a useful term when discussing Chinese and European consumption of porcelain?
Readings:
Have a look at
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/research/globalporcelain/exhibition/ Also
look through Gerritsen and McDowall, unpublished exhibition texts.
See also http://www.asia.si.edu/Shipwrecked/catalogue.asp
Dean, Carolyn and Dana Leibsohn. 2003. “Hybridity and its Discontents: Considering Visual
Culture in Colonial Spanish America,” Colonial Latin American Review 12.1.
Clare Le Corbeiller and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, ‘Chinese Export Porcelain’ in The
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 60, No. 3, Chinese Export Porcelain
(Winter, 2003), pp. 1+5-60
Finlay, Robert. "The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History." Journal of World
History 9, no. 2 (2005): 141-187.
Riello et al., Global Design History. Routledge, 2011.
Wills, John E., ‘European Consumption and Asian production in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries’, in Consumption and the World of Goods, John Brewer and Roy Porter,
eds., (London, 1993)
Week 4: Violent Encounters: Opium and the Opium Wars
For discussion:
What happened, who were involved, and what were the outcomes? (For an overview, check
the narratives available in Fairbank or Gernet or Hsu or Jack Grey)
What were the Opium Wars about? (make sure you consider all the options)
What is the best framework for understanding the Opium War?
What do the Opium Wars tell us about China’s global history?
Primary Sources:
Pei-kai Cheng and Michael Lestz, with Jonathan D. Spence, eds., The Search for Modern
China: a Documentary Collection (Norton: 1999). This contains several relevant important
documents with brief introductions.
‘Trade, politics & culture, 1793-1980 : sources from the School of Oriental and African
Studies and the British Library, London’
'Making of the Modern World': there are a range of primary sources relating to the role of
the English in the Opium War available in this resource, including:
British opium trade with China. [Birmingham], [1840?].
Lindsay, H. H. (Hugh Hamilton). Is the war with China a just one?- 2d ed. 2nd ed. London,
1840
Fry, William Storrs. Facts and evidence relating to the opium trade with China. London, 1840.
Selborne, Roundell Palmer, Earl of. Statement of claims of the British subjects interested in
opium surrendered to Captain Elliot at Canton for the public service. London, 1840.
Shuck, J. Lewis (Jehu Lewis). Portfolio chinensis : or, A collection of authentic Chinese state
papers, illustrative of the history of the present position of affairs in China : with a
translation, notes and introduction. Macao, China, 1840.
'Address to the people of Great Britain explanatory of our commercial relations with the
empire of China, and of the course of policy by which it may be rendered an almost
unbounded field for British commerce' by 'Visitor to China' Hume Tracts (1836)
Secondary Materials:
General narratives of Chinese history to give you the background:
Fairbank and Goldman, China: A New History
Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization
Hsu, The Rise of Modern China
Spence, The Search for Modern China
Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions
For a review of some of some recent secondary sources on the Opium War, see Hevia's
extensive review: 'Opium, Empire and Modern History' in China Review International, 10.2
(2003): 307-326.
Dikötter, Frank, Narcotic Culture: a History of Drugs in China (London : C. Hurst, 2004).
Gilman, Sander L. and Zhou Xun, eds., Smoke: a global history of smoking. (Reaktion Books,
2004)
Hevia, James, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism (2003)
Madancy, Joyce A. The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin: the Opium Trade and
Opium Suppression in Fujian Province, 1820s to 1920s (Harvard University Press, 2003).
Pomeranz, Kenneth and Steven Topic, The World the Trade Created: Society: Culture, and the
World Economy (2006).
Trocki, Carl A. Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy : a Study of the Asian Opium
Trade, 1750-1950 (London : Routledge, 1999.)
Wakeman, F., ‘The Opium War and the Canton Trade’ (photocopy in the Short Loan
Collection)
Wong, J.Y., Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the ‘Arrow War’ in China (Cambridge
U.P., 1998)
Zheng, Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium (Cambridge University Press. See here for one
chapter.
Week 5: The Taiping Rebellion and Christianity in China
Seminar Questions:
To what extent was the Taiping Rebellion about Christianity?
Was the Taiping rebellion a global or a local uprising? Or something else?
How far are the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars about Western imperialism?
Core Readings:
Please read this text from the Taiping Rebellion, "The Land System of the Heavenly
Kingdom." published in 1853.
Also read this document about the 'the Taeping Rebellion' from China: Trade, Politics &
Culture 1793-1980.
Lian Xi, 'The Search for Chinese Christianity in the Republican Period (1912-1949)' Modern
Asian Studies , Vol. 38, No. 4 (Oct., 2004), pp. 851-89. On J-stor.
Further Readings:
John W. Witek, 'Catholic missions and the Chinese reaction to Christianity, 1644-1800' in
Wills, ed., China and Maritime Europe, 1500-1800 : trade, settlement, diplomacy, and
missions. Cambridge, 2011. See here.
Jonathan Spence, God's Chinese Son: the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (1996).
See here.
Robert Weller, Resistance, chaos, and control in China : Taiping rebels, Taiwanese ghosts,
and Tiananmen (Seattle, 1994). See here.
Week 7: Western ideas and the fall of the Qing dynasty
Seminar Questions:
How far did Western ideas lead to the fall of the Qing empire?
Was Confucianism to blame?
How important was 'the search for wealth and power' to Chinese intellectuals?
Core Readings (read the works of one of the following thinkers):
Yan Fu (Yen Fu)
Kang Youwei (K'an Yu-wei)
Liang Qichao (Liang Ch'i-ch'ao)
Further Readings:
William de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume 2 (2000). See pp. 260-270, 244-249,
287-293. see here.
Fairbank and Goldman, China, A New History, (chapter 12). see here.
Joseph Levenson, Liang Ch'i - ch'ao and the mind of modern China, 1959. See here.
Joseph levenson, Confucian China and its modern fate, 1968. ACLS E-book.
Ben Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964). E-Book.
Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese enlightenment: intellectuals and the legacy of the May fourth
Movement of 1919, 1986. See here.
Rana Mitter, A bitter revolution : China's struggle with the modern world, 2005. See here,
and EBSCO e-book.
Week 8: Medicine and modernity: the introduction of Western
medicine in China
For discussion:
Who is Lu Xun (Lu Hsun), and why is he relevant in this context?
What are the main features in the history of the introduction of Western medicine in China
and what impact did Western medicine have in China?
How was Chinese medicine ‘translated’ to the West?
Did Western medicine bring modernity to China?
Core Readings:
On Lu Xun, see the relevant section in any of these (or any other Modern Chinese History
textbook in the library):
Fairbank, John, and Merle Goldman. China: A New History. Enlarged edition. Harvard
University Press: Cambrdige, Mass., 1998.
Lau, Joseph S.M. and Howard Goldblatt, eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese
Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
McDougall, Bonnie S. The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. London: Hurst, 1997.
Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.
Lu Xun, “Medicine” in Diary of a Madman and other Stories, trans. William Lyell. The text is
also available here in the translation by the Yangs.
PLUS
Heinrich, Larissa, The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body between China
and the West (Duke University Press, 2008), 1-37
OR
Heinrich, Larissa, 'How China Became the "Cradle of Smallpox": Transformations in
Discourse, 1726-2002' positions 15.1 (2007): 7-34.
Further Readings:
Barnes, Linda, Needles, Herbs, Gods and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848
(Harvard University Press, 2005), chapter 4: ‘Sinophiles, Sinophobes, and the Cult of
Chinoiserie: 1737- 1804’.
Du, Shi-ran and Qi Han. 'The Contribution of French Jesuits to Chinese Science in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', Impact of Science on Society, 42.167 (1992): 265278.
Furth, Charlotte. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960-1665 (California
UP, 1999).
Scheid, Volker. Chinese medicine in contemporary China : plurality and synthesis (Duke
University Press, 2002).
Elman, Ben., On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 (Harvard UP, 2005)
Wu, Yi-Li. 'The Bamboo Grove Monastery and Popular Gynecology in Qing China' Late
Imperial China 21.1 (2000): 41-76.
Leung, Angela ki che. 'Medical Instruction and Popularization in Ming-Qing China' Late
Imperial China 24.1 (2003): 130-152.
Angela Ki Che Leung, 'The Business of Vaccination in Nineteenth-Century Canton' Late
Imperial China 29.1 (2008): 7-39.
Week 9: China's Global Cities: Shanghai and Hong Kong
For discussion:
What is a ‘global city’? In what ways were Chinese cities global? In what ways were they not
global?
To what extent are these modern cities shaped by their colonial pasts? Is 'colonial' the right
term?
Please select one city, and present (informally) the ways in which this city was or was not
global.
Readings:
General studies:
William G. Skinner, The City in Late Imperial China (1977). (Humanities E-Book)
Linda Cooke Johnson, Cities of Jiangnan in Late Imperial China (1993)
Kwan Man Bun, ‘Chinese Urban History: Four Cheers’, Urban History 29.2 (2002): 254-61.
Comparisons
Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991). Link item in catalogue here.
Leonard Blussé, Visible Cities: Canton, Nagasaki, and Batavia and the Coming of the
Americans (2008).
Shanghai
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments (Routledge, 2009).
Wasserstrom's book also has very useful 'suggestions for further reading' section.
Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern: the Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945
(Harvard University Press, 1999)
Historic Shanghai: http://www.historic-shanghai.com/
'Tales of Old China' http://www.talesofoldchina.com/ (and see also what is available on
www.earnshaw.com)
Hong Kong
John Carroll, "Colonial Hong Kong as a Cultural-Historical Place," Modern Asian Studies, 40.2
(2006): 517-43
Echenberg, Myron. ‘An unexampled calamity: Hong Kong, 1894’ in Plague ports: the global
urban impact of bubonic plague, 1894-1901 (New York: 2007).
Canton
Paul van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700-1845 (Hong
Kong University Press, 2005)
John K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: the Opening of the Treaty Ports,
1842-1854 (Stanford University Press, 1969).
The Making of the Modern World has important materials regarding the interactions, and
specifically the trade, between Britain and China.
Macau:
Boxer, Fidalgoes in the Far East, 1550-1750 (Oxford University Press, 1968).
Visions of China: Stories from Macau Selection, introduction and translation by David
Brookshaw. (Hong Kong University Press, 2002).
The Macau Heritage Project.
Week 10: China and a Global East Asian Modernity?
Essay Presentations:
All students will present their essay projects in short (5-10 minute) presentations. Each
student will also serve as discussant for one of the other papers, offering constructive
feedback and introducing other questions from the group.
For the final discussion:
Is there an ‘East Asian modernity’?
Is East Asia the best context for understanding China's global history?
What are ‘Asian values’ and do they have any relevance for a global East Asian modernity?
Readings:
‘Confucianism and Modernity, Insights from an Interview with Tu Wei-ming’ China Review
International 7.2 (2000): 377-87.
Chua, Beng-huat, ‘"Asian-Values" Discourse and the Resurrection of the Social’ positions:
east asia cultures critique 7.2 (1999).