published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

This thesis examines the medical case records of the Imperial Qing Palace. The case records were examined with a view to see how Chinese medicine was practised in the Qing period in China. I also analysed the role of medical cases as another way of adding to an understanding of history. My primary sources were the archive medical case records of the Qing Imperial Palace as compiled by Chen Keji. I also used selected secondary sources, particularly research by Chang Che-Chia on the Qing cases. I concentrated my research on selected emperors and the Empress Dowager. I analysed the case records of Kangxi, Qianlong, Tongzhi, Guangxu and Cixi. Each of these figures were analysed using medical analysis and historical analysis. Using clinical knowledge, I analysed each of these political figures considering the historical and social context of the time. While analysing selected cases I also analysed the medical approach and style of one doctor of the nineteenth century, Ma Peizhi. This physician was selected as representative of elite doctors in China in the late Qing period. Using the methodology of textual analysis I supplemented analysis of the primary sources with examination of secondary sources such as biographies and other journals. In medical terms, I found that the practice of Chinese medicine changes according to social and historical circumstances. In line with the social norms of the elite at the time in Qing China, medicine was practised with the approach of gentleness and balance. This distinctive style, practised by Ma Peizhi, saw the root of physical disease in mental unease. In historical terms, I found that the medical records provided primary evidence for trends in Qing history. The Kangxi emperor looked askance at Chinese medicine, while avidly practising his Manchu shamanic rituals. His grandson, Qianlong, in contrast, presented himself as a patron of Chinese classical learning, of which he saw Chinese medicine as an important component. This was evidence that the sinification of the Manchu conquerors was almost complete. A key finding of the thesis was that the realities of the Qing emperors and the Empress Dowager Cixi differed from the personas they had projected to the public. The Qing emperors and the Empress Dowager were, on the whole, frail in health, psychologically vulnerable and suffering from chronic anxiety, if not depression. The Qing images of power did not fit the reality.

This thesis examines the medical case records of the Imperial Qing Palace. The case records were examined with a view to see how Chinese medicine was practised in the Qing period in China. I also analysed the role of medical cases as another way of adding to an understanding of history. My primary sources were the archive medical case records of the Qing Imperial Palace as compiled by Chen Keji. I also used selected secondary sources, particularly research by Chang Che-Chia on the Qing cases. I concentrated my research on selected emperors and the Empress Dowager. I analysed the case records of Kangxi, Qianlong, Tongzhi, Guangxu and Cixi. Each of these figures were analysed using medical analysis and historical analysis. Using clinical knowledge, I analysed each of these political figures considering the historical and social context of the time. While analysing selected cases I also analysed the medical approach and style of one doctor of the nineteenth century, Ma Peizhi. This physician was selected as representative of elite doctors in China in the late Qing period. Using the methodology of textual analysis I supplemented analysis of the primary sources with examination of secondary sources such as biographies and other journals. In medical terms, I found that the practice of Chinese medicine changes according to social and historical circumstances. In line with the social norms of the elite at the time in Qing China, medicine was practised with the approach of gentleness and balance. This distinctive style, practised by Ma Peizhi, saw the root of physical disease in mental unease. In historical terms, I found that the medical records provided primary evidence for trends in Qing history. The Kangxi emperor looked askance at Chinese medicine, while avidly practising his Manchu shamanic rituals. His grandson, Qianlong, in contrast, presented himself as a patron of Chinese classical learning, of which he saw Chinese medicine as an important component. This was evidence that the sinification of the Manchu conquerors was almost complete. A key finding of the thesis was that the realities of the Qing emperors and the Empress Dowager Cixi differed from the personas they had projected to the public. The Qing emperors and the Empress Dowager were, on the whole, frail in health, psychologically vulnerable and suffering from chronic anxiety, if not depression. The Qing images of power did not fit the reality.

This study highlights the influence of the Ming-Qing transition on legal justice in China. According to mainstream sinicisation (Hanhua ..) theory, Manchu was assimilated into the Han majority and ruled China using the old Ming government system. This study proves otherwise via an extensive examination of the transition’s effect on legal justice, particularly the abolition of the prefectural judge (tuiguan..) position during the early Qing Dynasty. In the Yuan and Ming eras, judges emerged as unique officials specialising in juridical responsibilities and demonstrating the sophistication of legal justice. However, institutional reform during the Qing Dynasty pushed local administrators (prefects; zhifus..) into taking over prefectural judiciary responsibilities, gradually blurring the functional line between justice and civil executives until prefectural judges were ultimately banished from service. This study investigates the reasons behind the elimination of the prefectural judge position and the decline of legal professionalism in sixteenth and seventeenth century China. The findings demonstrate the great differences between the Ming and Qing legal systems and an alternative perspective for assessing the significance of the Ming-Qing transition is proposed.

The final decade of the Qing Dynasty, 1901-1911, witnessed a proliferation of works of fiction that incorporated, to a large extent for the first time, themes and images relating to material and technological progress. These "science fantasies" of global and interplanetary peregrination and travel across epochal time have typically been situated along various degrees of confederacy with the values and ideology of modernising China at large. This study however addresses the complex and oft-obfuscated relationship between much of this speculative fiction and the late-Qing tabloid press, which is more closely associated with the satirical, grotesque, narcotic and libidinal. By investigating the subverting and distorting of nominally positivist images like imagined futures, space travel and utopia, the dissertation explicates the possibility for these works of fiction to express a cynical and critical subjectivity toward the ideology of "modern China" that was taking shape at this time. The study incorporates new perspectives on oft-encountered novels, like Wu Jianren's New Story of the Stone, alongside more marginal texts, like the popular sequels to the classics authored by Lu Shi'e, and several unattributed pseudonymous works of short experimental fiction. Through close analysis of these texts, I argue that the arena of "tabloid speculative fiction" was thematically united at the level of their "grotesque fantasies," in which the images of fantasy and the values of modernity were subverted by sexuality, lassitude and boredom. In highlighting this critical grotesquery, the study stresses the internal discontinuities that undergird the superficial homogeneity often attributed to late-Qing speculative fiction.

中國歷代政府均視地方治安為重要的政治議題，治安議題也就成為治史者瞭解古代中國政治運作的一門路徑。過去有關「明清基層社會與治安」的研究，向為中外學者頗感興趣的課題。本文的重點是討論明清之際基層社會的治安管理情況，為此提出了四個既是獨立但又環環相扣的問題。有別於過往研究，本文將以捕役這類普遍存在於明清基層社會，而又備受現今學者忽略的基層公務員為切入點，首先重新梳理他們在明清之際出現的原因以及演變過程，解釋他們在明中後期才成為專門的治安人員，並釐清包括捕役在內的應捕人專責維持社會秩序。其次, 闡述捕役在基層社會中的職能，指出他們擁有頗大的治安和司法權力。接著討論捕役機制存在待遇差劣以及人手編排不足等制度性問題，因而促使捕役濫用職權，從而達到經濟和治安目的。至於捕役犯罪情節的內容和影響，本文摒棄傳統以小說內容入手的做法，改以多部判牘內有關捕役犯罪的真實個案着手，得出「誣良為盜」和「屈打成招」是他們最常見的犯罪行為的結論，這些罪行對基層社會的治安和司法運作造成重大問題。最後把焦點從治安人員轉移到管理這些群體的地方官員上，透過地方官員對待捕役的態度，反映官員在治安管理上的困難和理解。他們一方面面對統治者的治安要求，另一方面又受制度上及資源上的限制，所以只能以加重懲罰的高壓方法來提高捕役完成治安任務的可能和減低他們犯罪的機會。這種態度表層意義反映他們只視捕役為「治安工具」，更深層意義是揭示地方官員對治安管理的終極理解──完成治安任務。要言之，本文透過捕役以及管理這些治安人員的地方官員，帶出地方治安管理的政策和問題，以另一個角度，瞭解明清之際基層社會的治安情況和特色。study focuses on the social public order and management of the local society during the Ming-Qing transition. Four independent but related questionsare raised for discussions to achieve such aims. First of all, this thesis focuses onthe buyi (捕役, literally local constables). They were a type of grass-root civilservant which permeates the local society of the Ming-Qing period, but long beenignored by the modern historians. In order to understand how they becameindispensable public security staffs and to clarify their responsiblities, their rolesand deeds in the transition period between Ming and Qing, as well as theirtransformation process in the due course are discussed. Secondly, the functions ofbuyi in the local society are explored to point out the great power on security andjudicial aspect they had seized. After that the institutional issues including a lackof manpower and low remuneration level are discussed, as such issues had pushedthe buyi to misuse their power to seek for their own benefits. The third questionrelated to the criminal committed by the buyi. In this chapter the crimes of thebuyi are reconstructed from judicial casebooks rather than the late Ming novels.From such cases the most common crimes of those buyi are fallen into thecatergories of Accused on innocent person and Tortured for confessions . Suchcrimes were serious problem to the local judiciary as well as the social order. Atlast our focus is shifted from those local security staff to those local officials. Inorder to reveal the difficulties and understanding on maintaining local social orderfrom the viewpoint of officials, how they treated those buyi is thoroughlydiscussed. On one hand the officials had to obey the nationwide policies imposedto them by the imperial authority, on the other hand they were restricted by thelocal institutions and resources, therefore the officials could only raise the level ofpenalties so as to lower the possibility of those buyi to commit crimes, and also toimprove their willingness to fulfil their duty. Such difficulties of the officialsmade them to treat the buyi as tools for social order maintenance . Incidentally, itrevealed that the ultimate understanding of Ming-Qing local officials on socialorder maintenance was to accomplish on surface their missions of social orderissued from their seniors, other than establish solutions to uproot sources ofcrimes or to build an effective and uncorrupted force of local constables.To conclude, this thesis asks us to pay attention to the policies and issues onlocal social order of late imperial China by exploring the buyi and the localofficials whom managing them.

No description available.

No description available.