Modern China: The Transition to Modern Times, 1600-1912 (381-1-20)
Topic
Modern China: The Transition to Modern Times, 1600
Instructors
Peter J Carroll
847/491-2753
Harris Hall - Room 216
https://history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/peter-j-carroll.html
Peter J. Carroll specializes in the social and cultural history of 19th and 20th century China. His research interests include urban history, Chinese modernism, popular and material culture, gender/sexuality, and nationalism.
Meeting Info
Harris Hall L06: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
This is the first quarter of a two-quarter sequence on late imperial and modern China. (The second quarter covers twentieth-century China. Each course stands on its own; you will not be required to take both.) The themes linking both quarters are tensions regarding ethnic and national identity, shifts in gender ideals and family structure, and the effects of imperialist depredation.
Modern China was forged by the Qing (1644-1911), the last imperial dynasty. Its achievements and travails continue to inform our present moment. Whether its massive territory, multi-ethnic society, complex economic and political relations with the "West" and the rest of Asia—and much more—key facets of contemporary China are rooted in the Qing. Formidable in warfare, the Qing created a multi-ethnic empire bound by Confucian culture, surging domestic and international commerce, and a potent imperial political structure and ideology. At the same time, millenarian and ethnic yearnings, foreign imperialism, and intellectual and political ferment threatened throughout the course of the dynasty to tear the empire apart. Topics to be explored include the Manchu conquest, the imperial state and its problematic relationship with the gentry elite, shifts in gender ideals and family structure, millenarian movements, commercial and industrial growth, intra-Asian connections, the lives of common people, foreign imperialism, US-China relations, early Chinese nationalism and feminism, human and state rights, and revolutionary radicalism.
Both classes explore the definition and development of modernity in China. As part of this process, we will question the applicability of the term "modern" to Chinese history and consider how the Chinese experience with imperialism has fundamentally shaped their contemporary understanding of their own history.
Learning Objectives
1) Gain understanding of the general pattern of Qing history and knowledge of key people, institutions, events, and political and cultural ideologies.
2) Provide opportunities for students to improve their capacity to discuss and analyze key events and course themes in speech and writing. What techniques can make writing more rhetorically powerful? What constitutes a good thesis/argument/point, and how might it be improved?
3) Utilize sympathetic imagination to consider the logic and function of components of the Qing imperial world view(s): ethnic ideology, Confucian political and family beliefs; i.e., students should "try on" different ways of approaching the world.
4) Consider how a complex understanding of Qing China might alter your received sense of World history, modernity, and/or the histories of the USA, the PRC, Taiwan, Japan, or other countries?
5) The course focuses on the past, yet students should gain an appreciation that present-day notions of "China", including China's national borders, are rooted in Qing experience. Many 21st c. concerns, such as Taiwan, an absolutist attitude toward national sovereignty, conceptions of ethnic identity and ethno-nationalism, and concepts of the nation are rooted in Qing experience.
Evaluation Method
Take-home midterm (25%), Canvas discussion board, class attendance and participation (15%), analytic essay (30%), final exam (30%)
Class Materials (Required)
All the assigned readings will be uploaded on Canvas
Class Notes
History Area(s) of Concentration: Asia/Middle East
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Distro Area