Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws (review)

Reviews 275 Lynn A. Struve, editor and translator. Voicesfrom the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. x, 303 pp. Hardcover $50.00, isbn 0-300- 05679-6. This is a very useful book. Lynn Struve has assembled a varied and highly engaging set oftexts, which she uses to lead us into and through the turbulent times of the middle seventeentii century, the period oftransition between the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. The readings are lively and often dramatically exciting, and make dus volume not only ofinterest to scholars but also ofvalue as a resource for drawing students into the immediacy ofhistory through the records of the lived experience ofreal people. In compiling these accounts, Struve has set out, as she notes in her introduction, to counter certain generalizations about the Ming-Qing transition that, she argues, have contributed to a broad misunderstanding ofthe period. She refers specifically to simplified ideas about loyalism—of either Ming holdouts or Manchu conquerors; to the minimizing ofthe traumatic nature of the transition period, which is instead seen as a minor disruption in longer-term developments; to die "sanitization" of the horrors ofthe conquest, in part out ofa desire to turn away from anti-Manchu ethnic chauvinism; and to the strong geographic bias toward the Jiangnan region in die generally available historical sources and treatments. What she gives us is a highly complex portrait, built up from many snippets and fragments, ofthe fears and terrors, and occasionally die happy endings, of men and women in widely scattered parts ofthe empire and with a range ofloyalties and identifications. The fifteen chapters present writings produced by Ming officials, military leaders, court ladies, and adventurers; by Manchu, Chinese, and European observers and participants; by a young eunuch present at the end ofthe last Ming pretender's flight; and by merchants and local gentry. There is a chilling account of the siege and destruction ofYangzhou, as well as the story of the rise ofan orphaned gentry daughter to become a Manchu princess. Some writers are caught up in the passion of their experiences, while others seek to present more balanced and analytical accounts. All in all, these accounts are a powerful testimony. These narratives ofcourse tell us much about Struve's principal concern, the chaos and intensity ofthe transitional period. But they also reveal a great deal© 1999 by University about Chinese society in the seventeenth century aside from the immediate conofHawai 'i Presstext 0fdynastic upheaval. The complexity ofthat society, in terms ofthe variety ofroles in which people make their appearances, reinforces the sense ofgeographic complexity, as distant parts ofChina are seen to be very different indeed. 276 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 The extent ofmobility is also made clear in these texts and in die many maps that illustrate the travels and the tribulations of several of the protagonists. Flight over long distances would not have been such a possibility without the infrastructure of travel and communication which had developed as part of the growth of the commercial economy of the later Ming. The relatively widespread literacy of the period is also reflected in die production of these texts, which include a merchant's memoirs and a popular storyteller's book. To a large extent, then, Struve accomplishes what she sets out to do in presenting a more subtly nuanced, more finely detailed, and more diverse and inclusive portrayal ofher chosen cataclysm. The reader is repeatedly struck by the emotional power of the selections, the awful devastation suffered by millions of people in the course ofthe dynastic changeover, and the extent to which this was truly an empire-wide conflagration. In one regard, however, the view ofthe Ming-Qing transition that Struve seeks to refute remains in place. However traumatic the events of the 1640S-1680S may have been, the change from Ming to Qing was a dynastic transition, not a historic transformation. There is a great deal more continuity than change across the divide of the mid-seventeentii century. The growth of the commercial economy, while disrupted severely by war and population dislocations, resumed witii the return of settled times under Kangxi. And die cultural hegemony...