Urban History in Later Imperial China

The modern study of cities and towns in Chinese history has taken several forms. Best established in traditional scholarship, but not without important recent examples as well, are the ANTIQUARIAN studies (antiquarian is a word not used by this author in a disparaging sense) of memorable associations of persons with events and places which make heavy use of belletristic as well as standard historical documentation to recreate the city that exists, or until recently still existed, in the shared consciousness of its inhabitants. In some instances that “shared consciousness” was or is shared far beyond the particular site, to become an important constituent of the regional or national sense of the living past. It could contribute multifariously to the way people lived their lives. In addition to accomplishing that primary, nowadays increasingly obsolescent purpose, it is important to note that the antiquarian studies also can be drawn upon for the verification of all kinds of facts pertinent to other research foci. (A different point implicit in the foregoing is that China's cultural loss – the population's, including the new elite's starkly reduced knowledge about their civilization – during the last half-century is now almost beyond comprehension, and that it affects all fields of research on China; this is not a matter of concern only for “antiquarians,” or for urban historians.)

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · China · Civilization · Comprehension · Consciousness · Elite · Epistemology · History of China · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Population · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Demography · History · Law · Philosophy

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