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dc.contributor.authorDunstan, Helen
dc.date.accessioned2020-09-23T15:17:00Z
dc.date.available2020-09-23T15:17:00Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.identifierONIX_20200923_9780472901463_36
dc.identifier.urihttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/41840
dc.description.abstractConflicting Counsels to Confuse the Age translates and analyzes thirty-eight memorials to the throne and other Qing documents dealing with important issues of Chinese political economy, providing thoughtful and provocative commentary. Subjects covered by the texts include water control, mining, grain trade, pawnshops, brewing, and commercial shipping. The documents also contain detailed discussions of how the state should control wealth, self-interest, profit, hoarding, and the market. In translating these primary sources, Helen Dunstan invites fellow specialists in Chinese studies, including Qing historians, to watch Qing officials and others thinking through problems of political economy and developing arguments to persuade colleagues or superiors. By emphasizing their rhetorical nature and genre conventions, Dunstan offers a reminder that it is improper to use the “information” in such texts without attention to the author’s purpose, and without grasping the rhetorical structure of the text as a whole. As a model for close reading, Conflicting Counsels aims to induce greater sensitivity to the nature of Qing records. The second purpose of Conflicting Counsels is to help dispel the notion that economic liberalism is necessarily a Western, “modern” phenomenon. Many of the texts translated record areas of tension and controversy in eighteenth-century approaches to a central project of Confucian paternalist administration, “nourishing the people” (yangmin). Although Dunstan attempts to present both sides fairly, some materials included present the opinion that, in certain vital matters, it was better for the state to stand aside, and leave society’s own economic institutions, trade in particular, to handle things. While not a majority, the texts that build some kind of market mechanism argument should be of greatest interest to Qing historians.
dc.languageEnglish
dc.relation.ispartofseriesMichigan Monographs In Chinese Studies
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropologyen_US
dc.subject.otherSociology and anthropology
dc.titleConflicting Counsels to Confuse the Age
dc.title.alternativeA Documentary Study of Political Economy in Qing China, 1644–1840
dc.typebook
oapen.identifier.doi10.3998/mpub.19174
oapen.relation.isPublishedBye07ce9b5-7a46-4096-8f0c-bc1920e3d889
oapen.relation.isFundedBy0314e571-4102-4526-b014-3ed8f2d6750a
oapen.relation.isFundedBy0cdc3d7c-5c59-49ed-9dba-ad641acd8fd1
oapen.imprintU OF M CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES
oapen.series.number73
oapen.pages365
oapen.place.publicationAnn Arbor
oapen.grant.number[grantnumber unknown]
oapen.grant.number[grantnumber unknown]
peerreview.anonymityDouble-anonymised
peerreview.idd98bf225-990a-4ac4-acf4-fd7bf0dfb00c
peerreview.open.reviewNo
peerreview.publish.responsibilityScientific or Editorial Board
peerreview.review.decisionYes
peerreview.review.stagePre-publication
peerreview.review.typeFull text
peerreview.reviewer.typeExternal peer reviewer
oapen.review.commentsThe proposal was selected by the acquisitions editor who invited a full manuscript. The full manuscript was reviewed by two external readers using a double-blind process. Based on the acquisitions editor recommendation, the external reviews, and their own analysis, the Executive Committee (Editorial Board) of U-M Press approved the project for publication.


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