The Ming Open Archive and the Global Reading of Early Modern China

Abstract

In this dissertation I demonstrate the entangled relationship between the information practices of the Ming state and the global circulation of information about China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This dissertation shows that the domestic context for information production and consumption during the Ming influenced how different actors around the globe understood Chinese empire and planted the seeds for the development of a global field of Sinology.

Part one of this dissertation, consisting of Chapters One through Four, argues that the Ming information order contributed to the rise of different forms of compilations of state documents written to addresses problems of governance in the Ming empire. In the first two chapters, I demonstrate how the central state established new standards for government compilations. These standards came to be adapted by scholars who imagined themselves as authors who represented the state’s interests. In Chapters Three and Four, I argue that the late Ming publishing boom during a period open factional conflict undermined the ability of scholars to collate and confirm information from different compilations about the state. The inability to confirm information led to the erosion of trust in documentary ‘truth,’ and contributed the emergence of early Qing narratives which blamed factionalism for the end of the empire.

Part two of the dissertation demonstrates how texts produced within the Ming about the empire spread around the globe during the sixteenth and seventh centuries to provide some of the majors sources of information about “China.” Chapters Five and Six show how Chinese texts circulated in the early modern world. As these texts circulated, ideas about China gradually converged around contemporary understanding of the Ming empire. Scholars in Korea, Europe, and Japan viewed China as a “Confucian” state which was home to ethnic Chinese who were constantly threatened by steppe invaders. Chapters Seven and Eight describe how these discourses about China informed global reactions to the Manchu invasion of the empire. I show how Ming Sino-centricity created the context for Korean and Japanese rejection of Qing legitimacy, while the Qing use of Ming institutions convinced European scholars that the new dynasty was further evidence of China’s “ancient” institutions persevering in the face of change. The convergences and divergences around the idea of China were the result of the emergence of an early global field of Sinology.