scholarly journals THINKING ABOUT “MINGCHINA” ANEW: THE ETHNOCULTURAL SPACE IN A DIVERSE EMPIRE —WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE “MIAO TERRITORY”

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonglin Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Modern Identity ◽  
Chinese Empire

AbstractBy examining the cultural identity of China's Ming dynasty, this essay challenges two prevalent perceptions of the Ming in existing literature: to presume a monolithic socio-ethno-cultural Chinese empire and to equate the Ming Empire withChina(Zhongguo, the “middle kingdom”). It shows that the Ming constructedChinaas an ethnocultural space rather than a political entity. In essence,Chinawas defined as a Han domain that the Han people inhabited and where Han values were produced, practiced, and preserved in contrast to those of non-Han “barbarians,” be they domestic or foreign. The “Great Ming”—the dynastic title—cannot be confused withChina, the ethnocultural space. For the Ming ruling elite, the “Miao territory” in western Huguang and eastern Guizhou provinces represented a land “beyond the pale of civilization” (huawai), which was outside and different fromChina. The Ming construction of the ethnoculturalChinaconnects the imperial heritage to China's modern identity.

Writing Practices in El-Lahun Papyri during the Middle Kingdom

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 96-116
Author(s):  
Mohamed A. Nassar
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Blank Space ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Scribal Habits

El-Lahun papyri have fixed writing systems concerning their form, layout, formulae, orthography, and paleography. Reasons for this are the cultural identity of the scribe, writing practices, scribal habits, and the level of the scribe’s education. In this paper, we discuss the writing practices and scribal habits during the Middle Kingdom in El-Lahun society through the hieratic and the cursive hieroglyphic papyri by studying writing materials, the reuse of papyrus, and traces of palimpsest, layout, traditions of corrections and additions, verse points, blank space, guidelines and borderlines, and check marks.

Russian old-timers of the Yenisei district in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries: economic and cultural appearance

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 8-20
Author(s):  
A.P. Dvoretskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Economic Management ◽  
Festive Culture ◽  
The North ◽  
Russian North ◽  
Survival Skills ◽  
Modern Identity ◽  
Harsh Conditions

The modern identity of the Russians of the Yenisei North is inextricably linked with the old-timers culture of Siberians, which has developed in difficult natural and climatic conditions. The Yenisei area is the territory of the primary settlement of Russians in the Yenisei Siberia. For nearly four centuries, the old-timers of this region have developed unique survival skills and created their own cultural and economic type, adapted to the conditions of the north. Traditions rooted in the Russian North have spread throughout the Yenisei Siberia. They ideally corresponded to the harsh conditions of Eastern Siberia and manifested themselves not only in the methods of farming, the typology of settlements and the types of their development, the architecture of the dwelling, the layout of the estate, some elements of clothing and footwear, but also in the features of the Orthodox culture. Russians adapted to the environment without changing their ethno cultural identity (lifestyle, language, religious beliefs) and, to a large extent, retaining their anthropological type. In the Yenisei area, two types of the old-timer culture of the Kezhmars and peasants of the Yenisei district developed. The first was dominated by the North Russian components, which became archaized due to isolation. However, over the centuries, it also absorbed elements of the local autochthonous culture of the Evenk people, which manifested itself in many features of economic management, material culture. The second, more syncretic, absorbed not only the North Russian components, but also the traditions of other places of origin, for example, the south of Russia, which was especially manifested in the festive culture of the old-timers.

Trade by Rulers and States

2020 ◽  
pp. 226-248
Author(s):  
Ron Harris
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Geographic Scale ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Chinese Empire

This chapter examines the formation, weaknesses, and demise of two ruler-owned trade enterprises. It describes the mercantile endeavors of early Ming China and sixteenth-century Portugal. The two were radically different. The Chinese state was based on Confucian ideology, on extensive learned bureaucracy, on a worldview of being the Middle Kingdom, and on its huge geographic scale and huge population. In many eras the Chinese Empire had no ambitions with respect to overseas trade, and in others it allowed either foreign or local merchants to trade but was not involved in trade directly. Portugal was a small and young kingdom on the margins of the Iberian Peninsula. Its state capacity was limited, but its exposure to seafaring was significant due to its location on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

Other Voices for the Conflict: Three Spanish texts about the Manchus and Their conquest of China

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 35-64
Author(s):  
Anna Busquets i Alemany
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Xvii Century ◽  
Chinese Empire ◽  
The Ming Dynasty

The entry of the Manchus in the Chinese Empire introduced a new subject matter into the works about China that had been circulating in Europe until that time. In the second half of the XVII century, the Jesuits inundated the European scene with different publications centred on this historical event. In Spain, there were also texts that covered the changes in the Chinese dynasty right from the start. Specifically, information about the fall of the Ming dynasty basically came from three sources: the text by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Historia de la conquista de China por el Tártaro (1670, posthumous edition); the Hechos de la Orden de Predicadores en el Imperio de China (1667), by the Dominican Victorio Riccio, and the news collected by another Dominican, Fernández de Navarrete, in his Tratados históricos, políticos, éticos y religiosos de la monarquía de China (1676). The objective of this essay is to present these three authors and their works, analysing the information that they offer about the entry of the Manchus in China and the relation between them.

scholarly journals Discourses on Hamlet's Journey in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
Hilal ERKAZANCI DURMUŞ
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
The West ◽  
Image Construction ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Major Motive ◽  
Constructed Self ◽  
Modern Identity ◽  
Late Ottoman

This study seeks to scrutinize extratextual discourses which frame the Turkish translations and post-translation rewritings of Hamlet as an instrument of national self-imagining and projecting Turkey’s self-image in different socio-political and historical contexts. The study points out that various discourses see image construction as the major motive behind the different versions of Hamlet in Turkey. It also underlines that the extratextual material surrounding the retranslations and rewritings focus on various contextual dynamics that reveal how Turkey is torn between dualities that frame its image in line with the narratives of modernity and tradition, secularism and religion, easternness and westernness. In this context, the study emphasizes that theatre translation, and particularly the translations of Hamlet, formed significant part of the late Ottoman Empire’s and modern Turkey’s westernization efforts. Ultimately, the study concludes that discourses on the Hamlet renderings have foregrounded what is and what is not part of Turkey’s historically constructed self-image by bringing the West alongside the East, centering on how the retranslations and rewritings promote Turkey’s Western (secular and modern) identity against a largely negative representation of its eastern cultural identity.   Key words: Hamlet, Turkey, retranslation, post-translation rewriting, image

scholarly journals The Death, which saved the Heavenly Empire, or the “Iron Lame’s” last campaign

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-780
Author(s):  
A. Sh. Kadyrbayev
Keyword(s):  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Military Campaign ◽  
Chinese Empire ◽  
The Ming Dynasty

The article deals with the events of the 14thcent., when the Ruler of Samarqand, Timur Leng started a military campaign against Chinese Empire (under the Ming Dynasty). The Empire was saved from conquest by the death of the “Iron Lame”.

Right concept, wrong country

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Babones
Keyword(s):  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Word ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Central State ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
Interstate System

For most of its history, China was at the center of an East Asian interstate system, the Chinese tianxia. The Chinese word for China, Zhongguo, even means "central state" (or "middle kingdom"). By contrast, the modern interstate system is usually understood as an anarchic system of competing states. In reality, the 21st century interstate system is a central state system like the Ming Dynasty Chinese tianxia, but centered on the United States, not on China. The American-centered system began to form much earlier than is usually understood, and was clearly described by many intellectuals in the aftermath of World War One. It is now in its prime, not its decline. Like the historical Chinese tianxia, the current American Tianxia is strongly hierarchical, but unlike the Chinese tianxia, it is not relational. This calls into question the key conceit of Westphalian sovereignty, the sovereign equality of states. But it is also responsible for the relatively peaceful conduct of international relations under the American Tianxia.

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