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54 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 Timothy Brook. The Confusions ofPleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1998. xxv, 320 pp. Hardcover $40.00, isbn 0-520-21091-3. In The Confusions ofPleasure Timothy Brook has given us the first single-author history of the Ming period (1368-1644) in English. Before the appearance of this work the only available account of the era was that found in the massive, multiauthored volumes 7 and 8 of the Cambridge History ofChina, one chronological (1988) and one topical (1998). As Brook relates in his preface, it was authorship ofa chapter on communications and commerce for the Cambridge History that inspired him to write The Confusions ofPleasure. He also notes that his perspective on the commercialization of China in the late Ming has been colored by witnessing contemporary China's sudden transition from the ideological obsessions of the Cultural Revolution to the harsh expediencies ofthe world market. This work does not claim to be a general history of the Ming dynasty: it is narrower in scope and more imaginative in intent. Still, Brook's boldest endeavor is the attempt to encompass Ming history in a single, chronological narrative, "a coherent arc of change from ordered self-sufficiency in the early Ming to the decadence of urban-based commerce in the late" (p. xvii). Thus the structure of this history is provided by the commercialization of the Chinese economy over the course ofthe Ming dynasty. Rich descriptions of the communications infrastructure and commercial practices bear testimony to the book's origins in the earlier project, but Brook hastens to inform the reader that he is writing a cultural history, not an economic one. What interests Brook is the impact of economic growth and change on the lives of the Chinese literate elite. At the heart of the story is the way Ming authors are obliged to adjust their perceptions of social reality and their conceptions of social ideals over a period of three centuries. The meaning ofthe title, Confusions ofPleasure, is to be found in their struggle to make sense ofan increasingly monetized and commodified environment. Brook takes pains to penetrate the Confucian rhetoric ofhis authors to get at the realities behind their pieties about the four classes of the people and the low position usually assigned to merchants. He pays particular attention to the boundaries of gentry status and identity. The central thesis is that the class system survived the massive transformation of the Ming economy in altered form. Paternalism and deference based on Confucian con-© 1999 by University cepts ofhierarchy were replaced by a system based primarily on wealth. Social ofHawai'i Pressmobility increased as merchants gained greater access to the gentry and gentry were more apt to engage in commercial pursuits on the side. The paired conse- Reviews 55 quences of these changes were the "pleasure" ofincreased consumption and the "confusions" ofblurred roles and compromised values. This book, in its own way, provides the reader with a good measure ofpleasure and confusions. The pleasure derives from the beauty ofthe volume's design and manufacture and the skill with which it was written. An arresting blue, black, and brown dust jacket with a portrait ofan early Qing scholar encases a handsomely designed text set in Sabon, printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc., the best-known ofthe Michigan printers. Inside, the main body of the text is preceded by quotations, a table ofcontents, a list ofillustrations and maps, a preface, a chronology, a genealogy ofMing emperors, abbreviations, an introduction, and dramatis personae listed in order of appearance, and is followed by notes, a bibliography, and an index with Chinese characters for key names and terms. Elegant use is made ofwoodblock illustrations from nine Ming and Qing works (the largest number from Tiangong kaiwu) in addition to maps and photographs, closely linked to topics in the text. The Confusions ofPleasure is artfully structured around four "seasons," a metaphor drawn from the poignant writings of Zhang Tao, a minor official of the late Ming. Brook really breaks the story into three parts, "centuries" coarsely defined: Winter (1368-1450), Spring (1450-1550), and...

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