Introductory description

This module aims to offer an introductory overview of one of the greatest early modern empires: China between 1500 and 1800. The module covers the Ming and Qing dynasties, with themes like politics and imperial power, economics and trade; social topics like medicine, gender and social mobility, and cultural topics like art and material culture.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Term 1

1. Space
2. Time
3. Han and non-Han
4. Gender
5. Court culture
6. Reading Week (no classes)
7. Scholars and bureaucrats
8. Artisans and things
9. Merchants
10. Religion

Term 2

1. Tribute and trade
2. The Manchu threat
3. The Ming-Qing transition
4. Christianity
5. Foreign visitors
6. Reading Week (no classes)
7. Gender in Qing China
8. Kangxi and science
9. Writing women in Qing China
10. Qianlong: the power of collecting

Term 3

1. Medicine
2. Macartney Mission

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Gain a broad understanding of Chinese history, both on its own terms and in connection to the other histories the students are presented with in the first year.
• Identify some of the enduring debates in the study of the Chinese empire, such as the relationship between Han and non-Han population, the role of women, the engagement with the steppe threat, the role of merchants, and the relationship between the culture of the court and the daily experience in the provinces.
• Identify and engage with a range of visual, material and textual primary sources.
• Gain interpersonal and communication skills through the delivery of a presentation.
• Devise well-defined essay topics, collect relevant data from a variety of sources and present results in an effective fashion.

Indicative reading list

• Brook, Timothy, The confusions of pleasure commerce and culture in Ming China (Berkeley, CA 2011)
• Clunas, Craig, Screen of kings: royal art and power in Ming China (Honolulu, 2013)
• Dardess, John W., Ming China, 1368-1644: a concise history of a resilient empire (Lanham, MD, 2012)
• Elman, Benjamin A., A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (2000)
• Fong, Grace S and Ellen Widmer, The inner quarters and beyond: women writers from Ming through Qing (Leiden, 2010)
• Golas, Peter J., Picturing Technology in China - From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century (Hong Kong, 2015)
• Ho, Ping-ti, The ladder of succes in imperial China: aspects of social mobility, 1368-1911 (New York, 1964)
• Lewis, James Bryant (ed.), The East Asian War, 1592-1598: international relations, violence, and memory (Abingdon, Oxon, 2015)
• Marks, Robert B, Tigers, rice, silk, and silt environment and economy in late imperial South China (Cambridge, 2006)
• Nieuhof, Johannes, An embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, Emperor of China deliver’d by their excellencies, Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keyzer, at his imperial city of Peking (London, 1673)
• Ricci, Matteo, China in the Sixteenth Century
• Theiss, Janet M, Disgraceful Matters: the Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China. (Berkeley, 2005)
• Twitchett, Denis Crispin, The Cambridge history of China. Vol. 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Pt. 2 (Cambridge, 1998)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.