Li Li 李立 & Shi Qing 史青, Qingdai Yunnan ‘Yiren tushuo’ yanjiu 清代雲南「夷人圖說」研究 (Research on Qing Dynasty Ethnographic Albums from Yunnan Province), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2021. ISBN 9787101153354, 164 pages, 68 RMB.
Reviewed by Li Yutong 李雨桐 (Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg)
This book provides a comprehensive examination of ethnographic albums in Yunnan during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). The authors Li Li (Yunnan Normal University) and his co-author Shi Qing (Yunnan Forestry Technical College) focus on two central aims. The first is to concentrate on the content depicted and documented in the ethnographic albums. In order to achieve the goal, the authors illustrate the intricate details of the characteristics and customs of diverse ethnic groups in Yunnan during the Qing dynasty. The second aim revolves around the motivations of the illustrators. The book endeavors to uncover the underlying rationales that drove the creation of these ethnographic albums. Whether their motivations stemmed from a scholarly desire to document the diversity of ethnicities or whether they were swayed by political, social, and cultural conditions in frontier regions, the illustrator’s intentions added layers of complexity to the local history of Yunnan.
Everybody working in the field of new religious groups in late imperial China will be familiar with Cao Xinyu’s 曹新宇 essential contributions, especially the 2012 donation of a cache of northern Chinese religious images and texts he received from an elderly lady in Wanquan 萬全 County (in the far north of Hebei Province) who wanted to ensure that her cultural inheritance ended up in the right hands. The complete find was published in Taiwan the following year and thus became generously available to international scholars (p. 1–7).
Chang Jianhua’s Policies on Governance and People’s Livelihood in the Early Qing Period represents a growing interest and trend among Chinese scholars in revisiting Qing (1644–1911) history in recent years. It includes eighteen essays, all of which were previously published in various Chinese academic journals between 2008 and 2020, by the author on topics ranging from the political consolidation of the Qing to the dynasty’s economic policies. The compilation is one of eleven volumes from the fourth edition of the ‘Collected Papers of Nankai Historians’ (南开史学家论丛).
In 1592 the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598), who had only recently politically unified a Japan ravaged by more than a century of civil war, decided to invade Korea, which at that time was ruled by the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1897). The Koreans were not prepared to resist the Japanese onslaught, the largest amphibious landing in world history up to that point. Around 150,000 Japanese soldiers participated in the operation, with another 140,000 joining in a second landing in 1597.