The Chinese History Podcast
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Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Chinese History Podcast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Chinese History Podcast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Chinese History Podcast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
The Rise of Merchants: Maritime Sea Trade in East Asia in the 10th to 12th centuries
The Chinese History Podcast
10/31/21 • 29 min
In our very first episode, Greg talks about some aspects of his research on the growing role of Chinese merchants in the East Asian sea trade between the 10th to 12th centuries. Diplomacy from the 7th to 9th centuries was dominated by official embassies that neighboring states dispatched to the Sui-Tang courts, but after the fall of the Tang dynasty in the early 10th century, private merchants from southeastern China began to dominate the maritime trading routes to Japan, Korean, and Southeast Asia. Greg shares with us some information about why that came to be, where these merchants came from, where they show up in the textual records, and some of the implications that this had for Sino-Japanese relations.
We apologize for some of the audio quality in this episode. We are just starting out and we are working to improve our audio quality!
Contributors:
Greg Sattler
Gregory Sattler is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, with a particular consideration of their place in society, their trade networks, and their relationships with government officials. Gregory has recently published an article titled “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127” (Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6) and he is currently working on two additional manuscripts. He has received degrees in Taiwan and Japan, and is a proficient speaker of both Chinese and Japanese.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 1
Release date: October 31, 2021
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Greg
Tōjin sōbetsushi narabini sekitoku 唐人送別詩幷尺牘 (Chinese Farewell Poems and Writings). From the Onjō-ji collections 園城寺蔵, currently held in the Nara National Museum 奈良国立博物館.
Select Bibliography
Ennin 円仁. Ennin’s Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law. Trans. Edwin O. Reischauer. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1955. Reischauer, Edwin O. Ennin's Travels in T'ang China. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1955. Sattler, Gregory. “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127.” Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6 (2021), pp. 41–60. Tackett, Nicolas. “A Tang–Song Turning Point.” In A Companion to Chinese History, ed. Michael Szonyi, pp. 118–28. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2017. Yamauchi Shinji 山内晋次. Nara Heian ki no Nihon to Ajia 奈良平安期の日本とアジア [Japan and Asia during the Nara and Hei'an Periods]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003.1 Listener
The Ming in the Southwest: Conquest, Rule, and Legacy
The Chinese History Podcast
07/31/22 • 39 min
In 1381, Ming armies marched into Yunnan and Guizhou and within a year had deposed the Mongol Yuan's Prince of Liang, who had been enfeoffed there by the Yuan court. The Hongwu's emperor's decision to annex Yunnan and Guizhou and establish Ming administration there was unusual, for before the Mongols conquered it in the mid-1250s, the area had never been under the control of a China-based empire. It was more Southeast Asian in character than it was Chinese in character. Yet for decades, the scholarly community has neglected the study of the southwest. In this episode, Sean Cronan will discuss the Ming's rule in the region, how the early Ming court reshaped the interstate environment of Southwest China and Upper Mainland Southeast Asia, as well as some of the legacies that the early Ming left on the region.
Contributors
Sean Cronan
Sean Cronan is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on East and Southeast Asian diplomatic encounters from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, tracing the development of new shared diplomatic norms following the Mongol conquests of Eurasia, as well as how rulers and scholar-officials in the Ming (1368- 1644) and Qing Dynasties (1644-1911) institutionalized and challenged these new norms. He explores how ideas of multipolarity, regime legitimacy, and the makeup of the interstate order came under debate throughout the Mongol Empire, Ming China, the Qing Empire, Chosŏn Korea, Dai Viet (Northern Vietnam), Japan, the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand, the Pagan Kingdom of Burma, and beyond. He works with sources in Chinese (literary Sinitic), Japanese, Thai, Burmese, Manchu, and Dutch.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 13
Release date: July 31, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles/Berkeley, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Sean Cronan
Images
Cover Image: A Buddhist monastery in Xishuangbanna (Sipsongpanna), located in Yunnan at the border with Laos and Myanmar. Note the distinct Southeast Asian style architecture. In Ming times this area was called Cheli 車里 and a native official ruled here on behalf of the Ming court. Today it is classified as an autonomous region for the Dai/Tai ethnic group. (Image Source)
https://i.imgur.com/tn3BrKI.jpg
A 1636 Ming map of Yunnan, from the Zhifang dayitong zhi 職方大一統志. Due to the large file size, it cannot be uploaded here. Please click on the link above to view it. The yellow rectangle denotes the location of Kunming, the prefectural seat of Yunnan. Red squares represent major settlements.
Map of the Möeng Maaw Empire at its greatest extent in 1398. . Areas in red were either governed by a Sa clan appointee or had long been conquered and integrated into the Maaw administrative structure. Areas in yellow were seized by more recent conquest or held only loosely. Map courtesy of Sean Cronan. Please do not cite or circulate.
A Yuan seal granted to the native official of Cheli. (Image Source)
References
Daniels, Christian. “The Mongol-Yuan in Yunnan and ProtoTai/Tai Polities during the 13th-14th
Centuries.” Journal of the Siam Society, 106 (2018), 201-243.
Daniels, Christian and Jianxiong Ma, eds. The Transformation of Yunnan in Ming China: from the
Dali Kingdom to Imperial Province. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020.
Fernquest, Jon. “Crucible of War: Burma and the Ming in the Tai Frontier Zone (1382-1454).”
SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 4:2 (2006), 27-90.
The Mongol-Yuan Conquest of the Southern Song
The Chinese History Podcast
12/26/21 • 34 min
We hope everyone had a good Christmas! In this episode, Yiming Ha will give an introduction to the forty-four year war between the Mongol-Yuan and the Southern Song. This was one of the longest wars the Mongols had to fight against an adversary and the Southern Song was among the states that put up the longest resistance against the Mongols. This topic is covered very extensively in Chinese language scholarship, but has not received too much detailed attention in English language scholarship. Yiming will talk about the general course of the war, some of the major engagements, the kind of weapons that were used, and some of the implications that this war had on other Mongol conquests and campaigns in Eurasia.
Note: There is a mistake at 12:09 - when Yiming said November, it should actually be December.
Contributors
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Greg Sattler
Gregory Sattler is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, with a particular consideration of their place in society, their trade networks, and their relationships with government officials. Gregory has recently published an article titled “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127” (Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6) and he is currently working on two additional manuscripts. He has received degrees in Taiwan and Japan, and is a proficient speaker of both Chinese and Japanese.
Credits
Episode No. 5
Release date: December 26, 2021
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Yiming Ha
Images
Cover Image: Song Wong Tai 宋王臺, or Terrace of the Song King, was a memorial carved on a large rock in Hong Kong after the Yuan conquest to honor the child Song emperors who died. This picture was taken before it was demolished by Japanese forces occupying Hong Kong for an extension of Kai Tak airport. (Image Source)
Map of the Mongol invasions of the Southern Song, 1234-1279 (Image Source)
Mongol siege fortifications during the Siege of Xiangyang, 1268-1273 (Image Source: Li, Song Yuan zhan shi)
Song attempts at reinforcing Xiangyang in 1271 (Image Source: Li, Song Yuan zhan shi)
Battle of Ezhou, 1274 (Image Source: Li, Song Yuan zhan shi)
Select Bibliography
Davis, Richard L. “The Reigns of Tu-Tsung (1264-274) and His Successors to 1279.” In The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 5, Part 1: The Sung and Its Precursors, 907-1279, edited by Denis Twitchett and Paul Jakov Smith, 913-962. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Li Tianming 李天鳴. Song Yuan zhan shi 宋元戰史 [History of the Song-Yuan War]. Taipei: Shihuo chubanshe, 1988.
Li Zhi’an 李治安. Hubilie zhuan 忽必烈傳 [Biography of Khubilai Khan]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2004.
Lorge, Peter. War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900-1795. London: Routledge, 2005.
Needham, Joseph and Robin D.S. Yates. Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology; Part 6, Military Technology: Missiles and Sieges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Sugiyama Masaaki 杉山正明. Kubirai no ch ōsen: Mongoru ni yoru seikaishi no daitenkai クビライの挑戦 モンゴルによる世界史の大転回 [Khubilai’s Challenge: The Mongols and World Revolution]. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2010.
Wu Guoqing 武國卿. Zhongguo zhanzheng shi, diliu juan: Yuanchao shiqi, Mingchao shiqi 中國戰爭史,第六卷:元朝時期,明朝時期 [History of Warfare in China, Vol. 6: Yuan Dynasty Period and Ming Dynasty Period]. Beij...
Diplomacy, War, and Interstate Order in the Late 13th century East Asia: A Reconsideration of the Mongol Invasions of Japan
The Chinese History Podcast
04/04/22 • 34 min
The two Mongol-Yuan invasions of Japan (1274 and 1281) were important events in Japanese history. The two typhoons that destroyed the Mongol fleet, known as "divine wind," (shinpū 神風, better known today as kamikaze) would forever be etched into Japanese historical memory, directly influencing the so-called kamikaze suicide bombers of World War II. Most scholarship on the topic has focused primarily on the military aspect, but before and after the invasions there was also an intense diplomatic effort behind the scenes involving the Mongol-Yuan, Kamakura Japan, and Koryŏ Korea in an attempt to integrate Japan peacefully into the Mongol world order. In this episode, Greg speaks to USC PhD candidate Lina Nie about her dissertation research on this diplomatic effort. Lina will share with us some new perspectives on why the Mongols wanted to engage and ultimately invade Japan, what the diplomatic negotiations can tell us about the interstate order of East Asia during that time, and how her research both complements existing scholarship and adds a new layer in our understanding of the Mongol invasions of Japan.
Contributors
Lina Nie
Lina Nie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Southern California. She graduated from the Hong Kong University with double majors in Chinese History and Japanese Studies and received her MA from Harvard University. Her research interests are on maritime, diplomatic, military, and cultural exchanges among China, Korea, and Japan. She is also interested in global history and comparative history in a broader geographical context that goes beyond East Asia. Her Japanese article discussing the traditions of Japanese culture won the second runner-up in the annual essay contest held by the Japanese Consulate General in New England in 2017.
Greg Sattler
Gregory Sattler is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, with a particular consideration of their place in society, their trade networks, and their relationships with government officials. Gregory has recently published an article titled “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127” (Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6) and he is currently working on two additional manuscripts. He has received degrees in Taiwan and Japan, and is a proficient speaker of both Chinese and Japanese.
Credits
Episode no. 10
Release date: April 3, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Lina Nie
Images
Cover Image: The famous battle scene depicting the samurai Takezaki Suenaga escaping the Mongol forces. (Image Source)
Map of the two Mongol invasions. (Image Source)
A 1266 letter Khubilai sent to Japan. (Image Source)
Japanese samurai boarding a Yuan ship during the 1281 invasion. (Image Source)
References
Andrade, Tonio. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016.
Conlan, Thomas. In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga’s Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2001.
Fukuokashi maizō bunka zai 福岡市埋蔵文化財年報. Ed. Fukuokaken Kyoiku Iinkai福岡県教育委員会, vol. 274, 2019.
Kamakura ibun鎌倉遺文. Ed. Takeuchi Rizō竹内理三. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 2008.
Cambridge History of Japan: Medieval Japan (vol. 3), eds. John Hall, Marius Jansen, Madoka Kanai, and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990.
Kim Gu 金坵. Chipojip 止浦集. Han’guk munjip ch’onggan 韓國文集叢刊. Seoul: Minjok Munhwa Ch’ujinhoe, 1991.
Kuraki kaitei iseki hakkutsu c hōsa gaihō 倉木崎海底遺跡発掘調査概報. Ed. Ukenson Kyoiku Iinkai宇検村教育委員会. 1993.
Mass, Jeffery. Yoritomo and the Founding of the Kamakura Bakufu. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995.
Robinson, David. Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia Under the Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Yenching Monograph, 2009.
Cambridge History of China vol.6: Alien Regimes and Border States, eds...
Sino-Japanese Diplomatic Encounters from the 1st to the 9th Century
The Chinese History Podcast
02/13/22 • 45 min
In this prequel to our first interview, UCLA Ph.D. student Greg Sattler talks about the diplomatic/tribute embassies that peoples and polities from the Japanese Archipelago dispatched to China from the 1st to the 9th centuries. While Japanese tribute embassies to China mainly evoke the missions that Japan dispatched to Tang China in the 8th and 9th centuries, diplomacy between China and Japan had been going on well before then. Greg talks about the evidence for these earlier embassies, why they happened, the role of the Korean Peninsula in facilitating exchange, why the Japanese decided to dispatched embassies to learn from Tang China, and why these embassies stopped in the late 9th century.
Contributors
Greg Sattler
Gregory Sattler is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, with a particular consideration of their place in society, their trade networks, and their relationships with government officials. Gregory has recently published an article titled “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127” (Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6) and he is currently working on two additional manuscripts. He has received degrees in Taiwan and Japan, and is a proficient speaker of both Chinese and Japanese.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode no. 8
Release date: February 13, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Greg
Images
Cover Image: A 6th century Chinese depiction of a Wa (Wo) envoy from Japan (Image Source).
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The golden seal, discovered in Kyushu, bearing the same inscriptions as one described in Chinese textual sources that was bestowed upon a Wa (Wo) embassy by Emperor Guangwu of Eastern Han in 57 CE (Image Source).
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Bronze mirrors (Shinjū-kyō) uncovered in Japan. These mirrors are referenced in Chinese historical sources as gifts to the embassy of Himiko (Image Source).
A model of the type of ships that the Japanese dispatched to Tang China (Image Source).
References
Barnes, Gina L. State Formation in Japan: Essays on Yayoi and Kofun Period Archaeology. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003.
Fogel, Joshua A. Japanese Historiography and the Gold Seal of 57 CE: Relic, Text, Object, Fake. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Holcombe, Charles. The Genesis of East Asia, 221 BC-AD 907. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.
Kidder, Edward J. Himiko and Japan's Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007.
Saeki, Arikiyo. Treatise on the People of Wa in the Chronicle of the Kingdom of Wei: The World's Earliest Written Text on Japan. Trans. Joshua A. Fogel. Portland: Merwin Asia, 2018.
Sui shu 隋書. Comp. Wei Zheng 魏徵. 85 vols. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/隋書.
Suzuki Yasutami 鈴木靖民. “Wa to Chōsen Sankoku to Kaya” 倭と朝鮮三国と加耶. In Nihon kodai kōryūshi nyūmon 日本古代交流史入門, ed. Suzuki Yasutami 鈴木靖民, Kaneko Shūichi 金子修一, Tanaka Fumio 田中史生, and Ri Sonshi 李成市. Bensei Shuppan, 2017.
Wang, Zhenping. Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005.
Wang, Zhenping. Tang China in Mu...
Feeding and Supplying the World’s Largest City: The Environmental Impact of Northern Song Kaifeng
The Chinese History Podcast
01/12/22 • 41 min
The Northern Song (960-1127) capital city of Kaifeng (also known as Bianjing or Dongjing) was the largest city in the medieval world. Its population surpassed the previous capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang and dwarfed contemporary world cities such as Baghdad and Constantinople. At its peak, Kaifeng boasted a population of well over a million people and was home to hundreds of thousands of soldiers. It was also the central node of vast transportation network consisting of rivers, canals, and roads and as a result became a huge commercial center. It's wealth and prosperity has been immortalized in the famous painting Qingming shanghe tu (清明上河圖), which offers various depictions of daily life in the bustling city. Yet at what cost was this prosperity achieved? How was this vast city supplied? How did Kaifeng's consumption, and by extension the Northern Song's rapid economic and technological development as whole, impact the environment and change ecological features? And in our own age of climate change, what lessons can we draw from the history and experience of Song Kaifeng? To answer these questions, we interviewed Dr. Yuan Chen, an environmental historian of premodern China with a focus on Song Kaifeng, who will talk to us about the fascinating history of Kaifeng during the Northern Song and Kaifeng's broader impacts on China.
Note: We apologize for some minor audio distortions in the interview.
Contributors
Yuan Chen
Yuan Chen is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Franklin Humanities Institute & Global Asia Initiative at Duke University. She received her PhD from Yale University and was also a Visiting Professor at Boston College. Her current research focuses on the environmental history of premodern and early modern East Asia, and she is working on a book manuscript that seeks to explore the environmental changes of Middle Period China from the view of the imperial capital of Kaifeng and Kaifeng’s ecological and economical connections with its diverse supplying regions in China and beyond. Her works have been published in several historical journals, and her teaching interests include Chinese history, Tokugawa Japan, early modern global history, environmental history, and the Silk Road.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 6
Release date: January 12, 2021
Recording location: Chicago, IL/ Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Dr. Yuan Chen
Images
Map of Kaifeng, c. 1100 (Image Source: West, Spectacle, Ritual, and Social Relations.")
Cover Image: City Gate of Kaifeng, as depicted in the Qingming shanghe tu (view full painting here).
The famous bridge scene in Qingming shanghe tu (view full painting here).
Supply of timber for the construction of the Yuqing Temple (Image Source: Chen, "China’s Song-dynasty Capital of Kaifeng and its Hinterlands."). Reproduced here with permission from author. Please do not cite without permission.
Song defensive forest in the north along its border with the Khitan Liao (Image Source: Chen, "Frontier, Fortification, and Forestation") Reproduced here with permission from author. Please do not cite without permission.
Rock formation in Yandang Mountain, as seen today (Image Source).
For a map of Northern Song...
Wang Yangming and the School of Mind: An Interview with Professor George L. Israel
The Chinese History Podcast
05/01/22 • 55 min
Wang Yangming 王陽明 (born Wang Shouren 王守仁, 1472-1529) is one of the most famous pre-modern Chinese intellectuals and the founder of the School of Mind (心學) of Neo-Confucianism, which was hugely influential in the later half of the Ming Dynasty. In addition to being philosopher, he was also an accomplished statesman, military leader, and calligrapher. In this episode, we speak with Professor George L. Israel, an expert on the study of Wang Yangming, who will introduce us to Wang's life and career, his thoughts and tenants, and his reception in the Ming and the Qing, as well as in neighboring Korea and Japan, and how Wang is viewed in China today.
We apologize for some audio issues with this recording.
Contributors
Professor George L. Israel
Professor George L. Israel is a Professor of History at Middle Georgia State University. His research is primarily on Ming intellectual history and Neo-Confucianism, with a particular focus on the famous Ming Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming, and he has published extensively about that subject in both English and Chinese.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode no. 11
Release date: May 1, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA/Macon, GA
Bibliography courtesy of Professor Israel
Images
Cover Image: An official portrait of Wang Yangming (Image Source)
Grand Hall of Wang Yangming's former residence in Shaoxing (Image Source)
Wang Yangming's tomb at Shaoxing (Image Source)
A copy of Wang Yangming's calligraphy, currently held at Princeton University (Image Source)
References
Bresciani, Umberto. Reinventing Confucianism: The New Confucian Movement. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 2001.
Ching, Julia. The Records of Ming Scholars. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.
Chow, Kai-wing. The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
Chung, So-yi. “Korean Yangming Learning.” In Dao Companion to Korean Confucian Philosophy, 253-284. Edited by Young-chan Ro. Springer, 2019.
Israel, George L. Studying Wang Yangming: History of a Sinological Field. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2022.
____. “The Renaissance of Wang Yangming Studies in the People’s Republic of China.” Philosophy East and West 66, no. 3 (Jul. 2019): 1001-1019.
Jiao Kun 焦堃. Yangming xinxue yu Mingdai neige zhengzhi 陽明心學與明代内閣政治 (The Yangming school of mind and the politics of the grand secretariat during the Ming dynasty). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2021.
Ogyū Shigehiro 荻生茂博. “The Construction of ‘Modern Yōmeigaku’ in Meiji Japan and Its Impact on China.” Translated, with an introduction, by Barry D. Steben. East Asian History no. 20 (December 2000): 83–120.
Qian Ming 錢明. Wang Yangming ji qi xuepai lun kao 王陽明及其學派論考 (Verification of theories of Wang Yangming and his school of thought). Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 2009.
Zhang Kunjiang 張崑將. Yangmingxue zai dongya: quanshi, jiaoliu yu xingdong 陽明學在東亞:詮釋, 交流與行動 (Yangming learning in East Asia: interpretation, exchange, and action). Taipei: Guoli Taiwan Daxue Chuban Zhongxin, 2011.
The Tributary System and Chosŏn-Ming Relations: A Conversation with Professor Sixiang Wang
The Chinese History Podcast
12/12/21 • 46 min
In our previous episodes, the term "tributary system" has come up a few times, yet we've never had the opportunity to explain what exactly it is. To better shed light on this topic, and as part of our exploration of Chinese diplomacy, we interviewed Professor Sixiang Wang, an Assistant Professor of Korean history at UCLA who specializes in the diplomatic relationship between Chosŏn Korea and Ming China and Early Modern East Asia. In this episode, Professor Wang will first explain what the tributary system is as a historiographical concept and how it is often used to view China's diplomatic engagement with the outside world, before giving us a more detailed look into the diplomacy between Chosŏn and Ming and how this diplomatic interaction complicates the simple narrative of the tributary system.
P.S. Don't forget to check out this awesome podcast on the steppe nomads at Nomads and Empires!
Contributors
Sixiang Wang
Sixiang Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He is a historian of Chosŏn Korea and early modern East Asia, and his research interests also include comparative perspectives on early modern empire, the history of science and knowledge, and issues of language and writing in Korea’s cultural and political history. His current book project reconstructs the cultural strategies that the Korean court deployed in its interactions with Ming China through an examination of poetry-writing, gift-giving, diplomatic ceremony, and historiography, and it underscores the centrality of ritual and literary practices in producing diplomatic norms, political concepts, and ideals of sovereignty in the construction of a shared, regional interstate order.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 4
Release date: December 12, 2021
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Professor Sixiang Wang
Images
Cover Image: "Myŏngnyun Hall" 明倫堂, Hanging board with calligraphy by the 1606 Ming envoy Zhu Zhifan 朱之蕃, Sunggyun'gwan University (photographed by Prof. Sixiang Wang)
Chosŏn Envoys Traveling to Ming China by Sea, by Yi Tŏkhyŏng. It details an envoy mission which travelled to Ming China in 1624. One of a set of 25 paintings, currently held in the National Museum of Korea and reproduced with permission here (Image Source)
Reception of Ming envoys, unknown painter, currently held in the National Museum of Korea and reproduced with permission here (Image Source)
Collection of Poems by a Ming Envoy and the Scholars of the Chosŏn Dynasty. A collection of poetic exchange by the 15th century Ming envoy Ni Qian 倪謙 and three Korean scholars, currently held in the National Museum of Korea (Image Source)
Select Bibliography
Bohnet, Adam. Turning Toward Edification: Foreigners in Chosŏn Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2020. Cha, Hyewon. “Was Joseon a Model or an Exception? Reconsidering the Tributary Relations during Ming China.” Korea Journal 51, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 33–58. Fairbank, John King. The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968. Fairbank, John King and S. Y. Teng. "On the Ch'ing Tributary System." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6 (1941): 135-246.Jung Donghun. “From a Lord to a Bureaucrat – the Change of Koryŏ King’s Status in the Korea-China Relations.” The Review of Korean Studies 19, no. 2 (December 2016): 115–36. Kang, David. East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. Ne...
King Kwong Wong on Koryŏ Korea Under Mongol-Yuan Domination
The Chinese History Podcast
11/28/21 • 36 min
In 1231, Mongol forces invaded the Korean Peninsula, beginning almost three decades of warfare against the Koryŏ Kingdom. In 1258, the Koryŏ court finally surrendered and the kingdom became a part of the Mongol Empire. King Kwong Wong, an independent scholar who specializes in the relationship between the Mongol-Yuan and Koryŏ, joins us to give a brief look into this fascinating period in Korean history. He will talk about why Koryŏ surrendered to the Mongol-Yuan, how the Mongols integrated Koryŏ into their empire, what that relationship came to look like, and how Koryŏ dealt with the fall of the Mongols in the second half of the fourteenth century.
Contributors:
King Kwong Wong
King Kwong Wong is an independent scholar who received his Master's Degree in Chinese History from the University of Southern California. He is now working as a part-time lecturer at the Hong Kong University's School of Professional and Continuing Education. His research focuses on Koryŏ Korea during the Mongol-Yuan period, and he recently published a paper titled "All Are the Ruler’s Domain, but All Are Different: Mongol-Yuan Rule and Koryŏ Sovereignty in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries", which explores how Koryŏ literati viewed the idea of sovereignty and their state's relationship with the Mongol-Yuan.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits:
Episode No. 3
Release date: November 27, 2021
Recording location: Hong Kong, China/Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of King Kwong
Images
Cover Image: Koryŏ noblemen hunting (see full image credits below)
Kanghwa Island, where the Koryŏ court fled to in order to escape from the Mongols (Image Source)
Painting of Koryŏ noblemen hunting (also titled Crossing the River on Horseback) by Yi Je-hyeon (李齊賢, 1287-1367), currently held in the National Museum of Korea and reproduced here with permission (Image Source)
Painting on the Grand Hunting in the Heavenly Mountain by King Kongmin, currently held in the National Museum of Korea and reproduced here with permission (Image Source)
Empress Chabi (1225-1281) wearing a gugu hat. The hat is also known as a boghtagh (Image Source).
Select Bibliography:
Clark, Donald N. “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations under the Ming.” In The Cambridge History of China, vol. 8: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part II , edited by Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote, 272-300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Duncan, John B. The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.
Henthorn, William E. Korea: the Mongol Invasions. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.
Kim Hodong. Monggol cheguk kwa Koryŏ: K’ubillai chŏngkwŏn ŭi t’ansaeng kwa Koryŏ ŭi chŏngch’ijŏk wisang [The Mongol Empire and Koryŏ: The Rise of Khubilai and the Political Status of Koryŏ]. Seoul: Sŏul taehakkyo ch’ulpanbu, 2007
Lee, Ik-joo. “Trends and Prospects: Historical Studies on Koryŏ-Mongol Relationship in the 13–14th Centuries.” The Review of Korean Studies 19, no. 2 (2016): 15–46.
Lee, Jin-han. “The Development of Diplomatic Relations and Trade with Ming in the Last Years of the Koryŏ Dynasty.” International Journal of Korean History 10 (2006): 1-24.
Lee, Kang Hahn. “Shifting Political, Legal, and Institutional Borderlines between Koryŏ and the Mongol Y...
Professor Maura Dykstra on Her New Book ”Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State” (Governing China, Part 2)
The Chinese History Podcast
09/20/22 • 37 min
Professor Maura Dykstra of Caltech joins us today to talk about her new book titled Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State. According to the publisher, the book "investigates the administrative revolution of China’s eighteenth-century Qing state. It begins in the mid-seventeenth century with what seemed, at the time, to be straightforward policies to clean up the bureaucracy: a regulation about deadlines here, a requirement about reporting standards there. Over the course of a hundred years, the central court continued to demand more information from the provinces about local administrative activities. By the middle of the eighteenth century, unprecedented amounts of data about local offices throughout the empire existed.
The result of this information coup was a growing discourse of crisis and decline. Gathering data to ensure that officials were doing their jobs properly, it turned out, repeatedly exposed new issues requiring new forms of scrutiny. Slowly but surely, the thicket of imperial routines and standards binding together local offices, provincial superiors, and central ministries shifted the very epistemological foundations of the state. A vicious cycle arose whereby reporting protocols implemented to solve problems uncovered more problems, necessitating the collection of more information. At the very moment that the Qing knew more about itself than ever before, the central court became certain that it had entered an age of decline."
Contributors
Maura Dykstra
Professor Maura Dykstra is an Assistant Professor of History at Caltech. As a historian of Late Imperial China, her research interests are on bureaucratic, economic, and legal institutions of empire and their implications for political and social interactions in quotidian contexts. Professor Dykstra received her PhD from UCLA and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. In addition, she has held numerous residential fellowships and visiting positions in Europe and Asia. Starting in Fall of 2023, Professor Dykstra will begin a new position as Assistant Professor of Chinese History at Yale University.
Yiming Ha
Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Credits
Episode No. 15
Release date: September 20, 2022
Recording location: Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography courtesy of Professor Dykstra
Images
Cover Image: Cover of Professor Dykstra's book, which can be purchased directly from the publisher or from Amazon.
A 1771 prisoner's register from Ba County. Fig. 6 in the book with the following description: "Draft of a 1771 prisoner register produced by the Ba County magistrate." It is document 清 006-01-03710 in the Sichuan Provincial Archives' Ba County collection. Photo provided by Professor Dykstra. References Bartlett, Beatrice S. Monarchs and Ministers: The Grand Council in Mid-Ch’ing China,1723–1820. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Fitzgerald, Devin T. "The Ming Open Archive and the Global Reading of Early Modern China." Ph. D. diss. Harvard University, 2020. Hucker, Charles O. The Censorial System of Ming China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966. Kuhn, Philip A. Origins of the Modern Chinese State. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Mokros, Emily. The Peking gazette in late imperial China: state news and political authority in late imperial China. University of Washington Press, 2020. Wu, Silas H. L. Communication and Imperial Control in China: The Evolution of the Palace Memorial System 1693–1735. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. ———. “Transmis...Show more best episodes
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