Notes to Pages 87–114 163
CHAPTER 6
- Hongwu Emperor, “Dismissal of Excessive Local Staff Because of Their Crimes,”
trans. Lily Hwa, in Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Patricia Ebrey
(New York: Free Press, 1993), 207. - Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological
Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-fi rst Century, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2007), 80; Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, “Spanish
Profi tability in the Pacifi c: The Philippines in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries,” in Pacifi c Centuries: Pacifi c and Pacifi c Rim History since the Sixteenth
Century, ed. Dennis O. Flynn, Lionel Frost, and A. J. H. Latham (London:
Routledge, 1999), 23. - One recent estimate is that the population grew from 85 million in 1393 to 155
million in 1500, 231 million in 1600 and 268 million by 1650. Martin J. Heijdra,
“The Socio-economic Development of Ming Rural China (1368–1644)” (Ph.D.
diss., Princeton University, 1994), chap. 1, sec. 3, “Population.” Heijdra’s estimates
are well summarized, and explained as relatively conservative, by F. W. Mote,
Imperial China: 900–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999),
745. - Wang Yangming, “A Record for Practice” (Chuanxilu), quoted and translated
in Philip J. Ivanhoe, Readings from the Lu-Wang School of Neo-Confucianism
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2009), 142. - This name change helped justify the Manchu conquest of the Ming in terms of the
ancient Chinese philosophy of change in the fi ve-phase theory. Ming 明 (bright)
signifi es fi re, and Jin 金 (gold), being a metal would succumb to fi re. By contrast,
Qing清 (pure) has the water radical on its left side, and in fi ve-phase theory, water
quenches fi re. - Art historians today feel considerable ambivalence toward the Qianlong Emperor.
On the one hand, he did more than any other emperor to create the world’s largest
Chinese art collection, the Imperial Palace Collection (much of which was carried
to Taiwan in 1949 but part of which remains in Beijing). On the other hand, he
sometimes marred beautiful paintings with many of his red imperial seals and, in
some cases, with his mediocre calligraphy.
CHAPTER 7
- Qianlong edict to King George III, September, 1793, quoted in The Search for
Modern China: A Documentary Collection, ed. Pei-kai Cheng and Michael Lestz
(New York: Norton, 1999), 109. - Lord George Macartney, An Embassy to China, Being the Journal Kept by Lord
Macartney During his Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793–1794, ed.
J. L. Cramner-Byng (London, 1962), quoted in Raymond Dawson, The Chinese
Chameleon: An Analysis of European Conceptions of Chinese Civilization (London:
Oxford University Press, 1967), 205. - While the British were the main traders in opium, between 1800 and 1839
American merchants sold about 10,000 chests of opium in China as well. - He actually compensated the Western merchants with fi ve pounds of tea for every
pound of opium turned in. - Robert Hart, These from the Land of Sinim: Essays on the Chinese Question
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1903), 54–55. - “Poem to Xu Xiaoshu in Contemplation of Death,” quoted and translated in
Mary Backus Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in
Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1971), 1.