Suchergebnisse

"Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes provides a unique view of the underside of China's history and culture as revealed through the eyes of ordinary men and women. The author takes an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates history, anthropology, folk studies, and literature to examine the sociocultural and symbolic worlds of gangsters, Triads, sorcerers, tricksters, and prostitutes in late imperial and modern China"--

Unruly People shows that in mid-Qing Guangdong banditry occurred mainly in the densely populated core Canton delta where state power was strongest, challenging the conventional wisdom that banditry was most prevalent in peripheral areas. Through extensive archival research, Antony reveals that this is because the local working poor had no other options to ensure their livelihood. In 1780 the Qing government enacted the first of a series of special laws to deal specifically with Guangdong bandits who plundered on land and water. The new law was prompted by what officials described as a spiralin

This volume describes and critically analyzes piracy and smuggling in the Greater China Seas region from the 16th century to the present. It takes a radical departure from the standard terra-centred histories by placing the seas at the centre rather than at the margins of our inquiries

In the period from 1500 to 1800 the problem of violence necessitated asking fundamental questions and formulating answers about the most basic forms of human organisation and interactions. Violence spoke to critical issues such as the problem of civility in society, the nature of political sovereignty and the power of the state, the legitimacy of conquest and subjugation, the possibilities of popular resistance, and the manifestations of ethnic and racial unrest. It also provided the raw material for profound meditations on humanity and for examining our relationship to the divine and natural worlds. The third volume of The Cambridge World History of Violence examines a world in which global empires were consolidated and expanded, and in which civilisations for the first time linked to each other by trans-oceanic contacts and a sophisticated world trade system.