Borders of Chinese Civilization

"Howland's cross-cultural studies approach to the study of China's worldview and images of Japan in the 1870s and 1880s offers a fresh insight into the decline of China's civilization over time. It definitely contributes to our understanding of how Japan changed the Chinese view of themselves and of others. . . . A splendid book." --Colin Mackerras, "Pacific Affairs" ""Borders of Chinese Civilization" succeeds admirably in its primary task of constructing the dynamics of a critical moment in the history of China's laborious march toward the twentieth century. By making well-considered use of contemporary theoretical strategies and by examining a variety of non-traditional source materials, Howland has brought fresh insight into a complex problem." --T. C. Russell," Journal of Contemporary Asia"

D. R. Howland is Associate Professor of History at DePaul University.

Acknowledgments vii Note ix Introduction 1 I. Encountering Japan 9 1. Civilization from the Center: The Geomoral Context of Tributary Expectations 11 Civilization and Proximity 13 The Bounds of Diplomatic Protocol 15 Japan in the Qing Record 18 An Aside: The Aborted Legacy of the Ming 26 The Matter of International Treaties 28 The Decision to Grant Japan a Treaty (1870) 31 Japanese Incident/Dwarf Intrusion (1874) 35 2. Civilization as Universal Practice: The Context of Writing and Poetry 43 Brushtalking 43 The Written Code: Hanwen/Kanbun 45 The Play of the Code 48 Tong Wen: Shared Writing/Shared Civilization 54 Playing the Code: Occasional Poetry 57 Celebrating Tong Wen: Poetry and History 62 The Value of Civilization in Japan 65 II. Representing Japan 69 Prologue: Geographical Knowledge 71 3. Journeys to the East: The Geography of Historical Sites and Self in the Travelogue 80 Images of the East 81 Recovering History through Geographical Sites 86 Travel Accounts 92 4. The Historiographical Use of Poetry 108 The Poems on Divers Japanese Affairs 110 The Epistemological Basis of the Poetry-History Homology 119 Poetry and Geography 129 Evidential Research 135 5. The Utility of Objectification in the Geographic Treatise 157 The Decade of Geographic Treatises on Japan 158 The Local Treatise as a Model 164 Utility as Means and End 173 Strategies of Objectification 176 III. Representing Japan's Westernization 195 6. Negotiating Civilization and Westernization 197 Analogy and Containment 200 The Precedence of Learning before Action 201 Western Learning and Western Ways 203 Alternative Approaches to World Order 222 Afterword 242 Notes 251 Bibliography 303 Glossary 323 Index 333