The Chinese History Podcast

Wang Yangming and the School of Mind: An Interview with Professor George L. Israel

Wang Yangming 王陽明 (born Wang Shouren 王守仁, 1472-1529) is one of the most famous pre-modern Chinese intellectuals and the founder of the School of Mind (心學) of Neo-Confucianism, which was hugely influential in the later half of the Ming Dynasty. In addition to being philosopher, he was also an accomplished statesman, military leader, and calligrapher. In this episode, we speak with Professor George L. Israel, an expert on the study of Wang Yangming, who will introduce us to Wang's life and career, his thoughts and tenants, and his reception in the Ming and the Qing, as well as in neighboring Korea and Japan, and how Wang is viewed in China today.

We apologize for some audio issues with this recording.

Contributors

Professor George L. Israel

Professor George L. Israel is a Professor of History at Middle Georgia State University. His research is primarily on Ming intellectual history and Neo-Confucianism, with a particular focus on the famous Ming Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming, and he has published extensively about that subject in both English and Chinese.  

Yiming Ha

Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Credits

Episode no. 11

Release date: May 1, 2022

Recording location: Los Angeles, CA/Macon, GA

Transcript

Bibliography courtesy of Professor Israel

Images

Cover Image: An official portrait of Wang Yangming (Image Source)

Grand Hall of Wang Yangming's former residence in Shaoxing (Image Source)

Wang Yangming's tomb at Shaoxing (Image Source)

A copy of Wang Yangming's calligraphy, currently held at Princeton University (Image Source)

References

Bresciani, Umberto. Reinventing Confucianism: The New Confucian Movement. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 2001.

Ching, Julia. The Records of Ming Scholars. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.

Chow, Kai-wing. The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Chung, So-yi. “Korean Yangming Learning.” In Dao Companion to Korean Confucian Philosophy, 253-284. Edited by Young-chan Ro. Springer, 2019.

Israel, George L. Studying Wang Yangming: History of a Sinological Field. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2022.

____. “The Renaissance of Wang Yangming Studies in the People’s Republic of China.” Philosophy East and West 66, no. 3 (Jul. 2019): 1001-1019.

Jiao Kun 焦堃. Yangming xinxue yu Mingdai neige zhengzhi 陽明心學與明代内閣政治 (The Yangming school of mind and the politics of the grand secretariat during the Ming dynasty). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2021.

Ogyū Shigehiro 荻生茂博. “The Construction of ‘Modern Yōmeigaku’ in Meiji Japan and Its Impact on China.” Translated, with an introduction, by Barry D. Steben. East Asian History no. 20 (December 2000): 83–120.

Qian Ming 錢明. Wang Yangming ji qi xuepai lun kao 王陽明及其學派論考 (Verification of theories of Wang Yangming and his school of thought). Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 2009.

Zhang Kunjiang 張崑將. Yangmingxue zai dongya: quanshi, jiaoliu yu xingdong 陽明學在東亞:詮釋, 交流與行動 (Yangming learning in East Asia: interpretation, exchange, and action). Taipei: Guoli Taiwan Daxue Chuban Zhongxin, 2011.

 

Diplomacy, War, and Interstate Order in the Late 13th century East Asia: A Reconsideration of the Mongol Invasions of Japan

The two Mongol-Yuan invasions of Japan (1274 and 1281) were important events in Japanese history. The two typhoons that destroyed the Mongol fleet, known as "divine wind," (shinpū 神風, better known today as kamikaze) would forever be etched into Japanese historical memory, directly influencing the so-called kamikaze suicide bombers of World War II. Most scholarship on the topic has focused primarily on the military aspect, but before and after the invasions there was also an intense diplomatic effort behind the scenes involving the Mongol-Yuan, Kamakura Japan, and Koryŏ Korea in an attempt to integrate Japan peacefully into the Mongol world order. In this episode, Greg speaks to USC PhD candidate Lina Nie about her dissertation research on this diplomatic effort. Lina will share with us some new perspectives on why the Mongols wanted to engage and ultimately invade Japan, what the diplomatic negotiations can tell us about the interstate order of East Asia during that time, and how her research both complements existing scholarship and adds a new layer in our understanding of the Mongol invasions of Japan.

Contributors

Lina Nie

Lina Nie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Southern California. She graduated from the Hong Kong University with double majors in Chinese History and Japanese Studies and received her MA from Harvard University. Her research interests are on maritime, diplomatic, military, and cultural exchanges among China, Korea, and Japan. She is also interested in global history and comparative history in a broader geographical context that goes beyond East Asia. Her Japanese article discussing the traditions of Japanese culture won the second runner-up in the annual essay contest held by the Japanese Consulate General in New England in 2017.

Greg Sattler

Gregory Sattler is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, with a particular consideration of their place in society, their trade networks, and their relationships with government officials. Gregory has recently published an article titled “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127” (Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6) and he is currently working on two additional manuscripts. He has received degrees in Taiwan and Japan, and is a proficient speaker of both Chinese and Japanese.

Credits

Episode no. 10

Release date: April 3, 2022

Recording location: Los Angeles, CA

Transcript

Bibliography courtesy of Lina Nie

Images

Cover Image: The famous battle scene depicting the samurai Takezaki Suenaga escaping the Mongol forces. (Image Source)

Map of the two Mongol invasions. (Image Source)

A 1266 letter Khubilai sent to Japan. (Image Source)

Japanese samurai boarding a Yuan ship during the 1281 invasion. (Image Source)

References

Andrade, Tonio. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Conlan, Thomas. In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga’s Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2001. 

Fukuokashi maizō bunka zai 福岡市埋蔵文化財年報. Ed. Fukuokaken Kyoiku Iinkai福岡県教育委員会, vol. 274, 2019.

Kamakura ibun鎌倉遺文. Ed. Takeuchi Rizō竹内理三. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 2008.

Cambridge History of Japan: Medieval Japan (vol. 3), eds. John Hall, Marius Jansen, Madoka Kanai, and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990.

Kim Gu 金坵. Chipojip 止浦集. Han’guk munjip ch’onggan 韓國文集叢刊. Seoul: Minjok Munhwa Ch’ujinhoe, 1991.

Kuraki kaitei iseki hakkutsu chōsa gaihō 倉木崎海底遺跡発掘調査概報. Ed. Ukenson Kyoiku Iinkai宇検村教育委員会. 1993.

Mass, Jeffery. Yoritomo and the Founding of the Kamakura Bakufu. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995.

Robinson, David. Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia Under the Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Yenching Monograph, 2009.

Cambridge History of China vol.6: Alien Regimes and Border States, eds. Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1994.

Rossabi, Morris. Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Shultz, Edward. Generals and Scholars: Military Rule in Medieval Korea. Honolulu: University of Hwaii Press. 2000.

Wang, Sixiang. “What Tang Taizong Could Not Do: The Korean Surrender of 1259 and the Imperial Tradition.” T'oung Pao (2018), pp.338-383.

Yamauchi Shinji 山内晋次. Nichisō bōeki to iō no michi 日宋貿易と「硫黄の道」.Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2009. 

Rediscovering and Reconnecting: The Intellectual Exchange of Hui Muslims in the 19th and 20th Centuries

In the study of 19th and 20th century Chinese history, there is often focus on the intense Christian missionary activities happening in China. Yet at the same time, members of China's Hui (or Sino-Muslim) community were also beginning to reconnect with their co-religionists overseas. Armed with knowledge of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and trained in Western orientalist discourses in new religious schools overseas, these Hui scholars began to "rediscover" aspects of Islam and in the process rewrite the history of Islam in China both for audiences within China and for a non-Chinese audience overseas. In this episode, we are joined by Professor Nile Green of UCLA to talk about how and why these exchanges took place and some of the implications of these exchanges.

Please also be sure to check out Professor Green's podcast "Akbar's Chamber" for monthly episodes on the history of Islam. Available on Apple Podcasts and all other major podcast platforms.

Contributors

Professor Nile Green

Professor Nile Green is a Professor of History and the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. He works on the Islamic history of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, publishing numerous monographs and articles and editing seven books on a wide range of topics related to the history of Islam. His recent research interest is on the global history of Islam and Muslims, focusing on intellectual and technological interchange between Asia and Europe; Muslim global travel writings; the transnational genealogy of Afghan modernism; and the world history of 'Islamic' printing. He was a founding director of UCLA's Program on Central Asia and serves on many association and editorial boards. He is also the host of Akbar’s Chamber, a podcast that offers a non-political, non-sectarian and non-partisan space for exploring the past and present of Islam.

Yiming Ha

Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Credits

Episode no. 9

Release date: March 13, 2022

Recording location: Los Angeles, CA

Bibliography courtesy of Professor Green

Images

Cover Image: Masjid at the Aligarh Muslim University (formerly Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College) in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was founded by Sir Thomas Arnold and was (and still is) a major center of Islamic learning (Image Source).

A view of the Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow, India, an Islamic seminary where Hai Weiliang* studied (Image Source).

Sir Thomas Walker Arnold (1864-1930), a renowned British orientalist and Islamic scholar who wrote the famous The Preaching of Islam and The Encyclopedia of Islam. He founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University) and taught Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, who was the teacher of Hai Weiliang (Image Source).

Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (1884-1953), the teacher and educational patron of Hai Weiliang (Image Source).

* Sadly, no pictures of Hai Weiliang can be found.

References

Green, Nile. How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding. New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming 2022.

Benite, Zvi Ben-Dor. The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005.

Benite, Zvi Ben-Dor. “Taking ʿAbduh to China: Chinese-Egyptian Intellectual Contact in the Early Twentieth Century.” In James Gelvin and Nile Green (eds.), Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print, edited by James Gelvin and Nile Green, 249-267. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.

Chen, John. “‘Just Like Old Friends’: The Significance of Southeast Asia to Modern Chinese Islam.” SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 31, no. 3 (2016): 685–742.

Chen, John. “Islam’s Loneliest Cosmopolitan: Badr al-Din Hai Weiliang, the Lucknow-Cairo Connection, and the Circumscription of Islamic Transnationalism.” ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies 3/2 (2018): 121-139. 

Chung, Tan & Ravni Thakur (eds). Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1998.

Henning, Stefan. “God’s Translator: Qu’ran Translation and the Struggle over a Written National Language in 1930s China.” Modern China 41, no. 6 (2015): 631-655.

Jahn, Karl. China in der islamischen Geschichtsschreibung. Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1971.

Lipman, Jonathan N.  Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Mao, Yufeng. “A Muslim Vision for the Chinese Nation: Chinese Pilgrimage Missions to Mecca during World War II.” The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 2 (2011): 373–395.

Murata, Sachiko. “The Muslim Appropriate of Confucian Thought in Eighteenth-Century China.” Comparative Islamic Studies 7, no. 1-2 (2012): 13–22.

O’Sullivan, Michael. “Vernacular Capitalism and Intellectual History in a Gujarati Account of China, 1860–68.” The Journal of Asian Studies 80, no. 2 (2021): 267–292.

Park, Hyunhee. Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Petersen, Kristian. Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Sen, Tansen. India, China, and the World: A Connected History. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Thum, Rian. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Sino-Japanese Diplomatic Encounters from the 1st to the 9th Century

In this prequel to our first interview, UCLA Ph.D. student Greg Sattler talks about the diplomatic/tribute embassies that peoples and polities from the Japanese Archipelago dispatched to China from the 1st to the 9th centuries. While Japanese tribute embassies to China mainly evoke the missions that Japan dispatched to Tang China in the 8th and 9th centuries, diplomacy between China and Japan had been going on well before then. Greg talks about the evidence for these earlier embassies, why they happened, the role of the Korean Peninsula in facilitating exchange, why the Japanese decided to dispatched embassies to learn from Tang China, and why these embassies stopped in the late 9th century.

Contributors

Greg Sattler

Gregory Sattler is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, with a particular consideration of their place in society, their trade networks, and their relationships with government officials. Gregory has recently published an article titled “The Ideological Underpinnings of Private Trade in East Asia, ca. 800–1127” (Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University 6) and he is currently working on two additional manuscripts. He has received degrees in Taiwan and Japan, and is a proficient speaker of both Chinese and Japanese.

Yiming Ha

Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Credits

Episode no. 8

Release date: February 13, 2022

Recording location: Los Angeles, CA

Transcript

Bibliography courtesy of Greg

Images

Cover Image: A 6th century Chinese depiction of a Wa (Wo) envoy from Japan (Image Source).

The golden seal, discovered in Kyushu, bearing the same inscriptions as one described in Chinese textual sources that was bestowed upon a Wa (Wo) embassy by Emperor Guangwu of Eastern Han in 57 CE (Image Source).

Bronze mirrors (Shinjū-kyō) uncovered in Japan. These mirrors are referenced in Chinese historical sources as gifts to the embassy of Himiko (Image Source).

A model of the type of ships that the Japanese dispatched to Tang China (Image Source).

References

Barnes, Gina L. State Formation in Japan: Essays on Yayoi and Kofun Period Archaeology. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003.

Fogel, Joshua A. Japanese Historiography and the Gold Seal of 57 CE: Relic, Text, Object, Fake. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Holcombe, Charles. The Genesis of East Asia, 221 BC-AD 907. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.

Kidder, Edward J. Himiko and Japan's Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007.

Saeki, Arikiyo. Treatise on the People of Wa in the Chronicle of the Kingdom of Wei: The World's Earliest Written Text on Japan. Trans. Joshua A. Fogel. Portland: Merwin Asia, 2018.

Sui shu 隋書. Comp. Wei Zheng 魏徵. 85 vols. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/隋書.

Suzuki Yasutami 鈴木靖民. “Wa to Chōsen Sankoku to Kaya” 倭と朝鮮三国と加耶. In Nihon kodai kōryūshi nyūmon 日本古代交流史入門, ed. Suzuki Yasutami 鈴木靖民, Kaneko Shūichi 金子修一, Tanaka Fumio 田中史生, and Ri Sonshi 李成市. Bensei Shuppan, 2017.

Wang, Zhenping. Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005.

Wang, Zhenping. Tang China in Multi-Polar Asia: A History of Diplomacy and War. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013.

 

New Narratives on the Late Ming Military: An Interview with Professor Kenneth Swope

For a long time, Ray Huang's influential book 1587: A Year of No Significance has colored our imagination of the Late Ming, painting the Ming as a state that was stagnant and in decline. Traditional historiography usually focuses on the poor finances of the Ming state, its inability to pay troops, its poor military performance against the peasant rebels and the Manchus, and its factionalism. While all these are true to an extent, more recent scholarships have also uncovered another side to the late Ming - one of military success and military innovation. Professor Kenneth Swope, an expert on Ming military history and author of numerous monographs and articles on the topic, joins us to talk about these new narratives of the late Ming's successes and failures.

Contributors

Professor Kenneth Swope

Professor Kenneth Swope is a Professor of History & Senior Fellow of the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is an expert on Chinese military history, particularly Ming military history and has published numerous monographs, articles, and book chapters on the topic. His major publications include A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592-1598, The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-1644, and On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China During the Ming-Qing Transition. In addition, he serves as the book review editor for The Journal of Chinese Military History and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Chinese Military History Society.

Yiming Ha

Yiming Ha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Credits

Episode no. 7

Release date: January 29, 2022

Recording location: Hattiesburg, MS/ Los Angeles, CA

Transcript

Bibliography courtesy of Professor Swope

Images:

Cover Image: Battle of Sarhu, 1619. Note the use of gunpowder weapons. (Image Source)

Battle of Liaoyang, 1621. Note the use of gunpowder weapons. (Image Provided by Professor Swope)

Gate at Shanhai Pass (Photograph by Professor Swope)

Ming rocket-propelled arrows and launching tube and cart, from the Wubei zhi (for more images of Ming gunpowder weapons, see here)

A type of Ming warship from the Chouhai tubian, note the gunner operating a cannon on the lower deck.

References

Andrade, Tonio. Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Fan Shuzhi 樊樹志. Wan Ming shi 晚明史 2 vols. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2015.

-----.  Wanli zhuan 萬歷傳. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2020.

Parsons, James B.  Peasant Rebellions of the Late Ming Dynasty. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1993.

Struve, Lynn A.  The Southern Ming, 1644-1662. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

Swope, Kenneth M.  On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China during the Ming-Qing Transition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

-----.  The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty. London: Routledge, 2014.

-----.  A Dragon’s Head & a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592-1598. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.

Wakeman, Jr., Frederic W.  The Great Enterprise. 2 Vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.