Amherst College Fall 2009 History 57/Asian Langs & Civs 49 Tues/Thurs 10: 00-11: 20 china in the world: 1895-1919

Professor Jerry Dennerline Office hours: Tues/Thurs 3:30-4:00

Office: Chapin 12 Wed. 1:00-3:00

E-mail: jpdennerline@amherst.edu; phone: 542-2486 And by appointment

The following books are available for purchase at Amherst Books:

Ida Pruitt (with Ning Lao T’ai-t’ai), A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman.

Paul Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth.

Lu Xun. Selected Stories of Lu Hsun. W.W. Norton, new edition, 2003.

Copies of these books are also on reserve at Frost Library. A Collection of Readings, in two or three installments, will be available at the History Department Office, Chapin 11. There will be a fee to cover the expense of photo-copying.

Brief lectures will supplement reading, but the primary work will be to engage the documents, interpretations, biographies, and other materials in class. To pass the course, a student must complete all of the requirements. The first requirement is to attend and participate in class. In addition, before Oct. 5, students will draft three one-page responses to readings for Thursday classes. Each student will choose one of these responses to expand into a 3-page paper due the following Monday (10% of the grade for the course). There will be one more one-page response and a five page paper on the Boxer uprising due on Monday, Oct. 19 (30%). Each student will convert one additional one-page (Tuesday or Thursday) in-class response into a 3 page paper by Monday, Nov. 9 (10%), and write a 3 page paper using A Daughter of Han on a topic of the student’s choice by Dec 4 (10%). Each student will schedule a term paper conference by the week before Thanksgiving and make an oral presentation in class on Dec. 8, 10 or 15 (10%). Finally, a term paper of 10-12 pages on a topic to be developed by the student in consultation with the instructor will be due on Dec. 21 (30%). Repeated unexcused absence will lower the grade. Regular contributions to discussion will raise the grade.

Syllabus: Reading Assignments and Due Dates
Thurs., Sept. 10 Introduction to the Course: China in Time and Space
Recommended background reading: Patricia Ebrey, A Cultural, Social, and Political History, pp. 201-49; or Joanna Waley-Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History, pp. 129-215.
Tues., Sept. 15 Opium: Two Histories

Read: Carl A. Trocki, “Drugs, Taxes, and Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia,” in Opium Regimes, pp. 79-101.

Gregory Blue, “Opium for China: The British Connection,” in Opium Regimes, ed. T. Brook and B. Wakabayashi, pp. 31-47.

Michael Adas, “Machines as the Measure of Men,” pp. 221-32.

Theodore Roosevelt, “ Expansion and Peace,” from The Strenuous Life (1901).

Liang Qichao, “Notes from a Journey to the New Continent,” tr. Arkush and Lee.

Peter Carroll, Between Heaven and Modernity: Reconstructing Zuzhou, 1895-1937, pp. 23-67;

Hon, Tze-ki, “Zhang Zhidong’s Proposal for Reform: A New Reading of the Quanxue pian,” pp. 77-98.

Zhang Zhidong, Quanxuepian, Ch. 6: “Centralization of Power.”

Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han, pp. 1-73.

Thurs., Oct. 1 Culture and Change: Two American Perspectives

Read: Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics (1894), excerpts on “Industry,” “Contempt for Foreigners,” “Absence of Public Spirit,” “The Real Condition of China and Her Present Needs”

Wm. Barclay Parsons, An American Engineer in China (1900), excerpts.

Diana Preston, The Boxer Rebellion (1999), pp. 33-65;

Joseph Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising, pp. 271-90, 302-13;

The Boxer Uprising: Pictorial Stories of the Chinese Peasants’ Resistance against Western Powers in Contemporary History (Singapore, 1993), excerpts.
Thurs., Oct. 8 Boxer Uprising

Read: J. Dennerline, Late Qing Modern: Life, Death, and the Limits of Modernity (8p);

Paul Cohen, History in Three Keys, pp. 59-118.

Cohen, History in Three Keys, pp. 211-60.

Mori Noriko, “Liang Qichao, Late-Qing Buddhism, and Modern Japan,” in The Role of Japan in Ling Qichao’s Introduction of Modern Western Civilization to China, ed. J. Fogel, pp. 222-46.

Hazama Naoki, “On Liang Qichao’s Conceptions of Gong and Si: ‘Civic Virtue’ and ‘Personal Virtue’ in the Xinmin shuo,” in The Role of Japan, pp. 205-21.
Thurs., Oct. 22 Progressive Mobilization and Ideology

Read: J. Dennerline, Reform, Resistance, Revolution: Education as the Way Out (12p);

Kai-wing Chow, “Narrating Nation, Race, and National Culture: Imagining the Hanzu Identity in Modern China,” in Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia, ed. K. Chow, K. Doak, P. Fu, pp. 47-76.

Guanhua Wang, In Search of Justice: the 1905-1906 Chinese Anti-American Boycott, pp. 134-59.

Sin Kiong Wong, China’s Anti-American Boycott Movement in 1905: A Study in Urban Protest, 95-117.
Thurs., Oct. 29 Student Revolutionary Mobilization 1904-1911

Read: J. Dennerline, Reform, Resistance, Revolution: Reformers’ Predicament (11p);

Tsou Jung (Zou Rong), “The Revolutionary Army” (excerpts), in Hsueh Chun-tu, Revolutionary Leaders of Modern China (“The Life and Writings of Tsou Jung), excerpts.

Ono, Kazuko, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, “Women in the 1911 Revolution,” pp. 70-92.

Roxann Prazniak, Of Camels and Kings and Other Things: Rural Rebels Against Modernity in Late Imperial China, pp. 213-47.

Xiong, Yuezhi. “The Theory and Practice of Women’s Rights in Late-Qing Shanghai, 1843-1911, in Beyond the May Fourth paradigm : in search of Chinese modernity, ed Kai-wing Chow, et al., pp 71-93.

Jin Chongji, “The 1911 Revolution and the Awakening of the Chinese Nation,” in The 1911 Revolution in China (1984), pp. 3-16.

Harold Z. Schiffrin, “The Enigma of Sun Yat-sen,” in China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913, ed. by Mary C. Wright, pp. 443-74.
Tues., Nov. 10 The Republic and the World

Read: Ernest Young, “Yuan Shih-k’ai’s Rise to the Presidency,” in China in Revolution, pp. 419-442.

Edward McCord, The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism, pp. 48-59, 161-72, and 205-207.

Thurs., Nov. 12 Economic Development and Culture

Read: Zhang Binglin, Refutation of the Petition to Establish a Confucian Religion, in Pioneer of the Chinese Revolution (1913), pp. 122-32.

Huang Yanpei, “Report of an Investigation of American Education,” tr. Arkush and Lee.

Peter Carroll, Between Heaven and Modernity, pp. 101-31;

Shao, Qin. Culturing Modernity: The Nantong Model, 1890-1930, pp. 10-54.

Elizabeth Perry, Shanghai on Strike, pp. 32-64.