Rereading Modern Chinese History Brill’s Humanities in China Library Edited by Zhang Longxi (City University of Hong Kong) Axel Schneider (Universität Göttingen) Volume 8 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bhcl Rereading Modern Chinese History By Zhu Weizheng† Translated by Michael Dillon LEIDEN | BOSTON This book is a result of the translation license agreement between Zhongxi Book Company, Shanghai Century Publishing Group and Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is translated into English from the original《重读近代史》(朱维铮著) (Chong du jindai shi, by Zhu Weizheng) with financial support from the China Classics International of the General Administration of Press and Publication of China. This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1874-8023 isbn 978-90-04-29330-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-29331-1 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Series Editors’ Foreword ix Preface xi Translator’s Introduction 1 Part 1 Historical Uncertainties 1 ‘Backward Therefore Beaten’? 7 2 Questioning the Theory of the ‘Two Cannons’ 10 3 Three Questions on ‘Opening Their Eyes and Seeing the World’ 13 1 Who First Gazed on the Other Side of the World? 13 2 Can It Be That the Chinese Could Only Open Their Eyes When They Saw Silver? 16 3 Can It Be Said That the Ancestors Closed Their Eyes and Blocked Their Ears? 20 4 The Logic of ‘Being Modernised’ 24 5 Qing History and Modern History 27 6 The Necessity of Rereading Modern History 30 Part 2 Looking Back 7 Looking Back on the History of ‘Reform’ in the Qing Dynasty 35 8 Origins of ‘Reform’ 38 9 Resurrecting the ‘Statement of Accounts’ Tax Evasion Case 1661 41 10 ‘A Tertius is Not Worth a Single Cent’ 45 11 Manchus Inside, Han Outside and the Emphasis on Civil Over Military Affairs 50 12 Manchu Han Twin-Track System (1) 54 13 Manchu-Han ‘Twin-Track System’ (2) 57 14 Change and Interchange of Heaven and Man 60 15 Looking Back at the Reign of the Yongzheng Emperor from the Qianlong Period 64 16 Fake Draft Memorial in the Name of Sun Jiagan 69 vi contents 17 Literary Inquisition after the Death of Mao Qiling 75 18 Official History, Unofficial History and Jottings in the Qing Dynasty 86 Part 3 On Reform or Modernisation 19 Dealing with Corruption under the Jiaqing Emperor 93 20 Looking at the Jiaqing ‘Reforms’ or ‘Modernisation’ 97 21 The Emperor’s Penitential Decree 100 22 The Qing Emperor Makes a Show of Conciliating the British Ambassador 105 23 Napoleon Criticises the British 109 24 The Jiaqing Emperor and Napoleon 112 25 Purchase of Office during the Manchu Qing Dynasty 115 26 The Systematisation of Purchase of Office in the ‘High Qing’ 119 27 ‘Varieties’ of Purchase of Office 125 28 The Promotion of Purchasing Office 129 29 The Buying and Selling of Office in Fiction 136 30 Honest Officials and the Purchase of Office 141 31 Bao Shichen’s on Accumulated Wealth (Shuochu) 146 Part 4 The History of Opium 32 Opium from Medicine to Narcotic 153 33 Another Look at the Opium War 157 34 Was the Daoguang Emperor ‘Pitiful’? 160 35 Lin Zexu and Gong Zizhen 163 36 It is Necessary to Say More about Gong Zizhen 166 37 ‘Attacking Poison with Poison’ 170 38 Residual Doubts and Queries after the Opium War 174 Contents vii Part 5 Gods and Sages 39 ‘The Way of the Gods Established the Teachings’ in the Qing Dynasty 179 40 The ‘Present Holy Sage’ in Qing History 184 41 How Did Military Sages Prevail over Civilian Sages? 188 42 Ji Yun and ‘Basing Religious Teachings on the Divine Way’ 192 43 The Dual Effect of ‘Basing Religious Teachings on the Divine Way’ 196 44 The Defeated Heavenly Kingdom 201 45 Issachar Roberts and Hong Xiuquan 205 46 Another Look at ‘Internal Strife in the Heavenly Capital’ 209 47 Plundering the Image of Taiping History Overseas 214 48 Zeng Guofan Gasps at ‘Strange Changes to the Confucian Code’ 218 49 Two Sages: Washington and Napoleon (I) 221 50 Two Sages: Washington and Napoleon (II) 226 Part 6 Rapidly Changing Times 51 The Disintegration of Power in the Late Qing (I) 233 52 The Disintegration of Power in the Late Qing (II) 237 53 ‘Establishing a Reservoir’, the Selection of a Crown Prince (I) 240 54 ‘Establishing a Reservoir’, the Selection of a Crown Prince (II) 244 55 ‘Summons to Interview’ under the Daoguang and Xianfeng Emperors (I) 248 56 ‘Summons to Interview’ under the Daoguang and Xianfeng Emperors (II) 252 57 Eleven Years of the Xianfeng Reign 255 58 A Historical Paradox 258 59 The Burning of the Old Summer Palace 261 60 More on the Burning of the Old Summer Palace 266 61 Sushun 270 62 The Coup against the Regency and Sushun 274 63 Sheng Bao’s Fall and Rise 278 64 To the End of the Xianfeng Reign 282 viii contents Part 7 Problems of Political Reform 65 Learn from the Barbarians or Control the Barbarians? 287 66 Feng Guifen’s Protest from the Jiaobin Studio 290 67 The Grand Council in the Late Qing Period 295 68 Methods of Confucian Scholars during the Qing 299 69 Record of the Difficult Birth of the Zongli Yamen 302 70 Wenxiang and the Zongli Yamen 305 71 Wang Maoyin and Late Qing Views on Foreign Relations 309 72 Name and Reality of the Zongli Yamen in the Late Qing Period 313 73 Did the Manchu Qing ‘Inherit a Worn Out Process of Change’? 317 Part 8 Remembering the Empress Dowager Cixi 74 From Xianfeng to Cixi 321 75 The Legality of Cixi’s Regency 325 76 Shengbao and Cixi 328 77 Shengbao Had to Die 332 78 Cixi Does Away with the Conventions of the Manchu Qing 335 79 Empress Cixi 339 80 Who was Responsible for the Defeat in the 1894–5 War with Japan? 343 81 The Empire Terminated by Cixi 349 Postscript 359 Index 361 Series Editors’ Foreword The rise of China as an economic and political power is unquestionably one of the most striking phenomena of global significance as we enter the first decade of the twenty-first century. Ever since the end of the “Cultural Revolution” and the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, tremendous changes have transformed China from an isolated and relatively weak country into a rapidly developing and dynamic society. The scale and speed of such transformations have taken the world—even the Chinese themselves—by surprise; China today is drasti- cally different from, and in a remarkably better condition than, China thirty years ago despite the many economic, social, and political difficulties and problems that yet remain to be dealt with. China scholars in Europe and North America are called upon to provide information and explanation of the rise of China, a country with history and tradition reaching back to antiquity and yet showing amazing strength and cultural virility in the world today. Interest in China is not limited to the traditional field of Sinology or China studies, nor is it confined to the academic world of universities, for more and more people outside of academia are curious about China, about its history and culture, as well as the changes taking place in the contemporary world. The Western news media brings images from China to every household; Sinologists or China scholars publish numerous articles and books to satisfy the general need for understanding: China is receiving a high-level of attention in the West today whether we turn to the scholarly community or look at popular imagination. In understanding China, however, very little is available in the West that allows the average reader to have a glance at how China and its culture and history are understood by the Chinese themselves. This seems a rather strange omission, but in much of the twentieth century, the neglect of native Chinese scholarship was justified on the grounds of a perception of political control in China, where scholarship, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, was dominated by party ideology and strictly followed a prescribed party line. Such politically controlled scholarship was thought to be more propaganda than real scholarship, and consequently Western scholars rarely referred to contemporary Chinese scholarship in their works. In the last thirty years, however, Chinese scholarship and public opinion, like everything else in China, have undergone such tremendous changes that the old stereotype of a politically controlled scholarship no longer holds. New and important archaeological findings in China have changed our knowledge of ancient texts and our understanding of Chinese history in significant ways, and detailed studies of such new materials are available in native Chinese x Series Editors’ Foreword scholarship.