The Chinese Sultanate


Book Description

The first historical examination of a Muslim-led rebellion in mid-nineteenth-century China which carved out an independent sultanate along China's southwestern border lasting nearly seventeen years.




The Panthay Rebellion


Book Description

A history of the Panthay Rebellion against the Chinese imperial court The Panthay Rebellion of 1856–1873 held the armies of the Qing dynasty at bay for nearly two decades. This account by David Atwill offers a remarkable panorama of the cosmopolitan frontier society from which the rebellion sprang. The rebel leader, Du Wenxiu, took the name of Sultan Suleiman, established a Muslim court at the ancient city of Dali and sought to unite the population against Manchu rule, with considerable success at a time when the Qing faced threats in all parts of the empire. Atwill offers the first detailed account of Du’s seventeen-year rule and upturns a historiography that filters the Panthay Rebellion through the political and military lenses of the Chinese centre. The insurrection was not rooted solely in Hui hatred of the Han Chinese, he argues, nor was it primarily Islamic in orientation. Atwill draws out the multitudinous complexities of Yunnan Province, China’s most ethnically diverse region and a crossroads for Tibetan, Chinese and Southeast Asian culture. The Panthay Rebellion was the last of a series of mid-century Chinese revolts to be suppressed. Its downfall marked the beginning of a renewed offensive by the imperial government to control its border regions and influence the cultures of those who lived there.




Sources in Chinese History


Book Description

Sources in Chinese History, now in its second edition, has been updated to include re-translations of over a third of the documents. It also incorporates nearly 40 new sources that work to familiarize readers with the key events, personages, and themes of modern China. Organized thematically, the volume examines China’s complex history from the rise of the Qing dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century through the formation of the People’s Republic of China up to the present. Each chapter begins with an annotated visual source followed by a chapter introduction and analysis of textual sources, allowing students to explore different types of sources and topics. Sources in Chinese History contextualizes the issues, trends, and challenges of each particular period. Special attention has been made to incorporate a variety of viewpoints which challenge standard accounts. Non-traditional documents, such as movie dialogues, are also included which aim to encourage students to reconsider historical events and trends in Chinese history. This volume includes a variety of sources, such as maps, posters, film scripts, memorials, and political cartoons and advertisements, that make this book the perfect introductory aid for students of Chinese history, politics, and culture, as well as Chinese studies after 1600.







Holy War in China


Book Description

In July 2009, violence erupted among Uyghurs, Chinese state police, and Han residents of Ürümqi, the capital city of Xinjiang, in northwest China, making international headlines, and introducing many to tensions in the area. But conflict in the region has deep roots. Now available in paperback, Holy War in China remains the first comprehensive and balanced history of a late nineteenth-century Muslim rebellion in Xinjiang, which led to the establishment of an independent Islamic state under Ya'qub Beg. That independence was lost in 1877, when the Qing army recaptured the region and incorporated it into the Chinese state, known today as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Hodong Kim offers readers the first English-language history of the rebellion since 1878 to be based on primary sources in Islamic languages as well as Chinese, complemented by British and Ottoman archival documents and secondary sources in Russian, English, Japanese, Chinese, French, German, and Turkish. His pioneering account of past events offers much insight into current relations.













Information, Territory, and Networks


Book Description

"The occupation of the northern half of the Chinese territories in the 1120s brought about a transformation in political communication in the south that had lasting implications for imperial Chinese history. By the late eleventh century, the Song court no longer dominated the production of information about itself and its territories. Song literati gradually consolidated their position as producers, users, and discussants of court gazettes, official records, archival compilations, dynastic histories, military geographies, and maps. This development altered the relationship between court and literati in political communication for the remainder of the imperial period. Based on a close reading of reader responses to official records and derivatives and on a mapping of literati networks, the author further proposes that the twelfth-century geopolitical crisis resulted in a lasting literati preference for imperial restoration and unified rule.Hilde De Weerdt makes an important intervention in cultural and intellectual history by examining censorship and publicity together. In addition, she reorients the debate about the social transformation and local turn of imperial Chinese elites by treating the formation of localist strategies and empire-focused political identities as parallel rather than opposite trends."




The China Bride


Book Description

According to Malay legend, Mansur Shah, the fifth Sultan of Melaka, took as his fifth wife a Princess of the Imperial Court of Ming China. And, as would be fitting, she was said to have arrived in the sultanate complete with a retinue of some 500 hand-picked youths, each one young and beautiful and of noble blood.The Melaka sultanate at the time was at the peak of its power and to the maximum extent of its empire. It was, by all accounts, a rollicking place with a vibrant polyglot community, refined and cultured nobility and a great deal of exuberance in its customs and celebrations. This period is seen as something of a Golden Age of Malay nationality, and so the legend of the Sultan's bride is a strongly embraced part of the national folklore.'The China Bride' takes the backdrop of actual events that struck the Melakan Empire in that period (mid to late 1400s) and explores what could had happened if the Sultan's fifth wife had indeed been a Ming Princess.As told in the Serhaja Melayo, Ming practice would dictate that she would be accompanied by a full household of attendants, companions and functionaries and protected by a dedicated force of military guards, with the expectation that they would establish a Chinese style palace suitable for a royal princess - and that the marriage would produce a Chinese Heir to the Melakan empire.But they had failed to take into account the nature and politics of the community they were going to, and quickly found themselves separated and absorbed into the community. Before long, there was trouble.But meanwhile, the princess Li-poh had been installed in the Sultan's compound and to their mutual joy, produced a prince - the Paduka Mimat. Would he be named heir? Could he be?As recorded in the Serhaja Melayu, a series of disasters strikes the Sultan's compound making this a significant question. However, issues in the town were coming to a head, cruel-ling the chances of the young Paduka and leading to the exile of the Princess. On his deathbed, the Sultan names his son by the daughter of the hereditary prime minister, then a child, to succeed him.