The Taiping Rebellion was one of the costliest civil wars in human history. Many millions of people lost their lives. Yet while the Rebellion has been intensely studied by scholars in China and elsewhere, we still know little of how individuals coped with these cataclysmic events. Drawing upon a rich array of primary sources, What Remains explores the issues that preoccupied Chinese and Western survivors. Individuals, families, and communities grappled with fundamental questions of loyalty and loss as they struggled to rebuild shattered cities, bury the dead, and make sense of the horrors that they had witnessed. Driven by compelling accounts of raw emotion and deep injury, What Remains opens a window to a world described by survivors themselves. This book transforms our understanding of China's 19th century and recontextualizes suffering and loss in China during the 20th century.

Preliminary Material /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Opening Remarks /John K. Fairbank --Opening Remarks /John E. Schrecker --The Variety of Political Reforms in Chinese History: A Simplified Typology /James T.C. Liu --Comment /Hoyt Tillman --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Definitions of Community by Ch'i Chi-kuang and Lü k'un /Joanna F. Handlin --Three Images of the Cultural Hero in the Thought of Kung Tzu-chen /Judith Whitbeck --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Economic Aspects of Reform /Albert Feuerwerker --Merchant Investment, Commercialization, and Social Change in the Ningpo Area /Susan Mann Jones --Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs as Reformers: The Case of Chang Pi-shih /Michael R. Godley --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Imperialism, Sovereignty, and Self-Strengthening: A Reassessment of the 1870s /Saundra Sturdevant --Reform and the Tea Industry and Trade in Late Ch'ing China: The Fukien Case /Robert P. Gardella --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Politics, Intellectual Outlook, and Reform: The T'ung-wen kuan Controversy of 1867 /Kwang-Ching Liu --The Image of the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi /Sue Fawn Chung --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Social Context of Reform /Marianne Bastid --Local Reform and Its Opponents: Feng Kuei-fen's Struggle for Equality in Taxation /Frank A. Lojewski --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Intellectual Context of Reform /Hao Chang --The Ideal of Universality in Late Ch'ing Reformism /Young-tsu Wong --National Image: Missionaries and Some Conceptual Ingredients of Late Ch'ing Reform /Suzanne Wilson Barnett --Kung as an Ethos in Late Nineteenth-Century China: The Case of Wang Hsien-ch'ien (1842-1918) /I-fan Ch'eng --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Reflections on an Aspect of Modern China in Transition: T'an Ssu-t'ung (1865-1898) as a Reformer /Luke S.K. Kwong --Some Western Influences on T'an Ssu-t'ung's Thought /Richard H. Shek --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Reform at the Local and Provincial Level /James Polachek --Gentry-Official Conflict in the Restoration Kiangsu Countryside /Jonathan Ocko --The Formation of a Province: Reform of Frontier Administration in Sinkiang /Nailene Chou --Local Reform Currents in Chekiang before 1900 /Mary Backus Rankin --Chihli Academies and Other Schools in the Late Ch'ing: An Institutional Survey /Richard A. Orb --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Women and Reform /Linda P. Shin --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The New Coastal Reformers /Paul A. Cohen --Wu.T'ing-fang: A Member of a Colonial Elite as Coastal Reformer /Linda P. Shin --Foreign Policy Interests and Activities of the Treaty-Port Chinese Community /Louis T. Sigel --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Reform Movement of 1898 and the Ch'ing-i: Reform as Opposition /John E. Schrecker --On the Hundred Days Reform /Huang Chang-chien --Reform Through Study Societies in the Late Ch'ing Period, 1895-1900: The Nan hsueh-hui /Sung Wook Shin --Chang Chih-tung after the "100 Days": 1898-1900 as a Transitional Period for Reform Constituencies /Daniel H. Bays --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Closing Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Notes /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Glossary /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker.

Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Getty Research Institute, Nov. 6, 2007 to Feb. 10, 2008.

Inserting China into the history of nineteenth-century colonialism, English Lessons explores the ways that Euroamerican imperial powers humiliated the Qing monarchy and disciplined the Qing polity in the wake of multipower invasions of China in 1860 and 1900. Focusing on the processes by which Great Britain enacted a pedagogical project that was itself a form of colonization, James L. Hevia demonstrates how British actors instructed the Manchu-Chinese elite on “proper” behavior in a world dominated by multiple imperial powers. Their aim was to “bring China low” and make it a willing participant in British strategic goals in Asia. These lessons not only transformed the Qing dynasty but ultimately contributed to its destruction. Hevia analyzes British Foreign Office documents, diplomatic memoirs, auction house and museum records, nineteenth-century scholarly analyses of Chinese history and culture, campaign records, and photographs. He shows how Britain refigured its imperial project in China as a cultural endeavor through examinations of the circulation of military loot in Europe, the creation of an art history of “things Chinese,” the construction of a field of knowledge about China, and the Great Game rivalry between Britain, Russia, and the Qing empire in Central Asia. In so doing, he illuminates the impact of these elements on the colonial project and the creation of a national consciousness in China.

The many instances of regional insurgency and unrest that erupted on China’s borderlands at the turn of the nineteenth century are often regarded by scholars as evidence of government disability and the incipient decline of the imperial Qing dynasty. This book, based on extensive original research, argues that, on the contrary, the response of the imperial government went well beyond pacification and reconstruction, and demonstrates that the imperial political culture was dynamic, innovative and capable of confronting contemporary challenges. The author highlights in particular the Jiaqing Reforms of 1799, which enabled national reformist ideology, activist-oriented administrative education, the development of specialised frontier officials, comprehensive borderland rehabilitation, and the sharing of borderland administration best practice between different regions. Overall, the book shows that the Qing regime had sustained vigour, albeit in difficult and changing circumstances.

In The Peking Gazette: A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Chinese History, Lane J. Harris offers an innovative text covering the extraordinary ruptures and remarkable continuities in the history of China’s long nineteenth century (1793-1912) by providing scholarly introductions to thematic chapters of translated primary sources from the government gazette of the Qing Empire. The Peking Gazette is a unique collection of primary sources designed to help readers explore and understand the policies and attitudes of the Manchu emperors, the ideas and perspectives of Han officials, and the mentality and worldviews of several hundred million Han, Mongol, Manchu, Muslim, and Tibetan subjects of the Great Qing Empire as they discussed and debated the most important political, social, and cultural events of the long nineteenth century. This volume is related to the primary source database compiled by the author entitled Translations of the Peking Gazette Online and produced by Brill (2017). For a video with explanation by the author, visit Brill's YouTube channel