Category: Asia

Pastimes: From Art and Antiquarianism to Modern Chinese Historiography, by Shana J. Brown, is the first book in English on Chinese jinshi, or antiquarianism, the pinnacle of traditional connoisseurship of ancient artifacts and inscriptions. As a scholarly field, jinshi was inaugurated in the Northern Song (960–1127) and remained popular until the early twentieth century. Literally the study of inscriptions on bronze vessels and stone steles, jinshi combined calligraphy and painting, the collection of artifacts, and philological and historical research. For aficionados of Chinese art, the practices of jinshi offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of traditional Chinese scholars and artists, who spent their days roaming the sometimes seamy world of the commercial art market before attending elegant antiquarian parties, where they composed poetic tributes to their ancient objects of obsession. And during times of political upheaval, such as the nineteenth century, the art and artifact studies of jinshi legitimatized reform and contributed to a dynamic and progressive field of learning.

The history of jinshi offers insights that are relevant to Chinese cultural and intellectual history, art history, and politics. Scholars of the modern period will find the resiliency and continuing influence of jinshi to be an important counterpoint to received views on the trajectory of Chinese cultural and intellectual change.

“Shana Brown’s new study represents the first serious examination in any Western language of the phenomenon of what we have (somewhat disparagingly) called antiquarianism in modern Chinese culture. To her great credit, she not only accords her many subjects the respect they deserve, but she puts meat on the bones of what many have dismissed as hopelessly outdated, conservative culturalism. Many of the finest minds in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century China fall under the rubric of antiquarianism, and we have ignored their work at our peril.” —Joshua Fogel, York University

August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3498-2 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

Remote Homeland, Recovered Borderland: Manchus, Manchoukuo, and Manchuria, 1907-1985, by Shao Dan, addresses a long-ignored issue in the existing studies of community construction: How does the past failure of an ethnic people to maintain sovereignty over their homeland influence their contemporary reconfigurations of ethnic and national identities? To answer this question, Shao focuses on the Manzus, the second largest non-Han group in contemporary China, whose cultural and historical ancestors, the Manchus, ruled China from 1644 to 1912. Based on deep and rigorous empirical research, Shao analyzes the major forces responsible for the transformation of Manchu identity from the ruling group of the Qing empire to the minority of minorities in China today: the de-territorialization and provincialization of Manchuria in the late Qing, the remaking of national borders and ethnic boundaries during the Sino-Japanese contestation over Manchuria, and the power of the state to re-categorize borderland populations and ascribe ethnic identity in post-Qing republican states.

“This is a valuable study of a little known and important subject. Theauthor analyzes the changes in ethnic identity of the peoples ofManchuria during the early twentieth century, focusing on the way thatexternal interventions and political changes reconfigured classifications of this territory and its inhabitants. Using abundantprimary source materials and judicious reference to leading theorists ofnationalism and ethnicity, the author makes an important contributionto studies of ethnicity, imperialism, national identity, and stateformation in Modern China.” —Rana Mitter, Institute for Chinese Studies,University of Oxford

The World of East Asia
August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3445-6 / $55.00 (CLOTH)