Blood and History in China: The Donglin Faction and Its Repression, 1620-1627

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments . I F I R S T W I S H to thank Samuel Chu and the ACLS-sponsored conference he organized at the University of Hawai‘i in 1993. That conference, whose theme was “The Continuing Relevance of Traditional Chinese Institutions in the Context of Modern China,” prompted me to revisit the Donglin affair and to discover how much of that story had never been told. I also thank Wei Sheng, Peter Bol, Susan Naquin, Chün-fang Yü, and Carolyn Nelson for providing me the opportunity to present some of the ideas developed in this book to small but knowledgeable groups at Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, and the University of Kansas. Sabbatical leave from the University of Kansas in the fall of 1998 gave me time to draft most of the chapters. It has been a pleasure to work with Patricia Crosby of the University of Hawai‘i Press; and I also thank the readers for their helpful and constructive comments. v i i v i i i Map 2. Northeast China in the Late Ming x ...