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A Tender Voyage is the first full-length study of the history of childhood and children's lives in late imperial China. The author draws on an extraordinary range of sources to analyze both the normative concept of childhood—literary and philosophical—and the treatment and experience of children in China. The study begins with the history of pediatrics and newborn care and their evolution over time. The author moves on to the social environment of the child, including models of upbringing and expected behavior and the treatment of different kinds of children, including the rebellious and the "gentle" child. She examines the role of the mother, notably her close and complex relations with her sons, and the broader emotional world of children, their relationships with the adults around them, and the destructive power of death. The last section discusses concepts of childhood in China and the West. Throughout, the study keeps in view the issue of representation versus practice, the role of memory, and the importance of listening for what is not said.
What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilisation in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile this tale, which portrays China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as a dying giant that had outgrown its own strength, with the wealth of counterevidence affirming that the country remained rich, vigorous and powerful at least until the end of the eighteenth century? Does this seeming contradiction mean that the stagnatio...
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Scholars from the humanities and social sciences have repeatedly faced the challenge of writing history beyond the constraints and frameworks set by grand narratives and established historiographies. This book addresses the intentional invisibilization and concealment of people, knowledge, and ideas in historiography – both by historians and by the historical actors themselves – as an object of study. It does so through the lens of Asian bondage and dependency in modern and contemporary history. This collective work focuses on ‘concealment’, ‘self-concealment’ and ‘invisibility’ to analyze the asymmetrical agency involved in the act of hiding someone or something from being â...
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Tracking ideas of the child in Chinese society across the twentieth century, Kate Foster places fictional children within the story of the nation in a study of tropes and themes which range from images of strength and purity to the murderous and amoral.