Ch'ing Panels at the 1966 AAS Meeting

11 Ch'lng Panels at the 1966 AAS Meeting Thanks to the generosity of the Program Committee of the assol âtion for Asian Studies, our society will have the opportunity to present two panels at the annual meeting of the AAS, to be held April 4-6, 1966, at the Americana Hotel, New York City. The program for the two panels, which is given below, is sponsored jointly by the AAS and the Society for Ch'lng Studies and will be so labelled: Joint Session with the Society for Ch' ing Studies, I THE CH'ING PERIOD: PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION Chairman: Mary C. Wright. Yale University The Significance of the Ch' ing Period in Chinese History^. Ping-ti Ho, University of Chicago The K'ang-hsi Reign, Jonathan Spence, Yale University The Ch'ien-lung Reign. Harold L. Kahn. School of Oriental and African Studies. London University Discussants: Chao-ying Fangf Ming Biographical History Project David S. Nivison, Stanford University Joint Session with the Society for Ch'lng Studies, II NEW VIEWS ON THE SELF-STRENGTHENING MOVEMENT Chairman: John K. Fairbank, Harvard University Li Hung-chang, 1870-1894, Kwang-Ching Liu. University of California. Davis The Sino-French War as a Stimulus to Reform, Lloyd Eastman. Connecticut College Liu Ming-ch'uan, 1885-1891, William M. Speidel, Yale University Discussant: Stanley Spector» Washington University 12 In deciding on the topics for the two panels, we have been influenced by the following considerations: 1.It is high time that people became accustomed to viewing the history of the Ch' ing dynasty as a whole. The "dynastic cycle" is, after all, a problem to be reckoned with. How can we be certain of the "Chinese tradition" as of the nineteenth century without a full view of the conditions in the seventeenth and eighteenth? Moreover, the Manchus brought into Chinese institutions certain features that were peculiar to the period since 1644. Some of our colleagues will argue that we cannot understand Ch' ing institutions without going back to the Ming or even to the Sung. But since we have to begin somewhere, we should perhaps at least begin with the beginning of the Ch* ing, without barring whatever Insight we can obtain from earlier Chinese history. Professor Ping-ti Ho' s paper will, in fact, provide just such perspective. The other two papers will offer fresh interpretations of two major reigns of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 2.While the early and middle Ch'lng £s perhaps one of the least developed areas in Chinese history, one must not forget that there are serious gaps in scholarship on the so-called modern period. Where do we find a good general work on the period between 1870 and 1900? Where is there an equivalent for Carlton J.H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism. 1871-1900. or R. C. K. Ensor, England. 1870-1914? Such synthesis is hardly possible, since monographic works are so scanty. But without adequate coverage of the last decades of the nineteenth century, how can we proceed with confidence to the study of the revolution of the twentieth century? 13 It is distressing, for example, that there is as yet no monograph on the intellectual change in China from the 1870* s through the reform movement of the 1890* s. Nor do we have an adequate study of such a great topic as the Reform of 1898 itself. With these thoughts in mind, we are sponsoring a panel on the Selfstrengthening Movement, which began in the I860' ß. All three papers will presumably stress the innovations in policy made under the slogan "selfstrengthening ," and attempt to analyze the numerous factors that favored or handicapped these early efforts to build up China's "wealth and strength." Looking ahead to another year, other members of the society may want to organize further panels on the early and middle Ch'lng, discussing such neglected topics as the Yung-cheng and the Chia-ch'ing reigns. We hope that there will be panels on the reformers of the late nineteenth century and on the Reform of 1898. We should also promote panels on topics in Ch'lng social and economic history--for example, the problems of...