Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History: Northeast Henan in the Fall of the Ming (review)

In this ambitious work, Des Forges vows to "explore the relationship between China's persistent quest for cultural centrality and its pronounced proclivity for periodic political change" (xv). He challenges the paradigms of modernization theory and its applicability to areas outside of Europe; questions the importance of economic forces in shaping cultural, political, and social phenomena; and even doubts that the concept of imperial China is a valid category for understanding China's past. He also seeks to fit patterns in Chinese history into larger patterns of world history, bringing modernization theory, subaltern studies, and world systems theory, among others, into a discussion of his own interesting, if nebulous, notion of a pattern of world history.

He locates five different "centers" of world civilization that each contributed in succession to today's increasingly integrated global civilization. This theory, however, does not appear until the book's conclusion; the bulk of the work is devoted to notions of cultural and political centrality in Chinese history. Chinese notions of centrality were deeply embedded in China's history and historiography. Des Forges' skillful way of demonstrating how historical events intertwined with historiographical representations to impact people's choices should be of special interest to readers of this journal.

He focuses on experiences in Henan province, an area south of modern Beijing, where several Chinese dynasties established their capitals. Invoking Bourdieu's concept of a habitus, or product of history, he suggests that Henan's residents "may have felt the active presence of past experiences" with greater intensity and believed in the "'correctness' of practices and their constancy over time" with greater fervor than other Chinese (14).¹ To test this hypothesis, he provides a comprehensive overview of the history of Henan province from ancient times and concludes with a detailed study of the activities of the peasant rebel Li Zicheng, who used Henan as a springboard for his conquest of the Ming (1368-1644) dynasty and the establishment of his own short-lived Shun regime.

After an introduction that argues, not always convincingly, for viewing Henan as the most significant province in Chinese history, the book continues with chapters about the state, the elite, gender, class and ethnicity, and the masses, before commencing with the account of Li Zicheng's rebellion. Des Forges is to be commended for his variety of primary sources—including diaries, local private histories, gazetteers, genealogies, and rare illustrated works. They allow him to paint a rich picture of late Ming Henanese society. On the other hand, the sheer amount of biographical detail about peripheral figures frequently detracts from the larger picture and makes for tedious reading. Furthermore, because many of the comparative issues raised in the preface are not revisited until the conclusion, those interested in making broad comparisons would best be served by reading the conclusion and consulting the various works cited therein.