Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Beijing and trade for several days after their audiences with the Qing
emperor, and this trade was fabulously lucrative. Enfeoffment by the
Qing emperor often conferred legitimacy and prestige on royal fami-
lies in these nations and made challenging their power quite difficult;
it was no trifling matter to contemplate toppling a royal house that
had received a Qing patent. Implicit in these tributary arrangements
was also a guarantee of Qing military assistance in case of aggression
by a third power.
Contrary to popular opinion, not all nations of the world were
regarded as participants in the tribute system, which Harvard's John
K. Fairbank once labeled the “Chinese world order.” For instance, the
Qing never regarded Japan or India as tributary states. Some European
nations that wanted favorable trade relations with China seemed to
accept elements of the system, and the resulting misunderstanding
and friction led, in the nineteenth century, to war between China and
some Western European powers.
QING INTELLECTUAL TRENDS
The fall of the Ming was deeply troubling to many Chinese intellec-
tuals, and for the rest of the seventeenth century and beyond many
Chinese contemplated the reasons for the Manchu conquest. What
had gone wrong? Several scholars seem to have concluded that one
major problem was Neo-Confucianism itself. Perhaps, they specu-
lated, the Song and Ming Neo-Confucianists had not properly under-
stood Confucian thought after all; perhaps Neo-Confucianism was
too heavily tainted with Buddhist ideas, terminology, and analytical
categories.
An intellectual movement arose among many scholars who had res-
ervations about Neo-Confucianism. For them, the best way to recover
the authentic Confucian vision was a back-to-the-basics, back-to-the-
original-texts approach. They sought to look back into Chinese
antiquity before the Song Neo-Confucian thinkers to see what the texts
really said. Many scholars concluded that the compelling inner logic of
Neo-Confucianism had distracted scholars into neglecting basic tex-
tual scholarship. What did the texts themselves say apart from Neo-
Confucian commentaries and glosses?
Could the texts speak for themselves? Many concluded that they
could and devoted themselves to developing long-neglected textual
skills. Scholars poured their lives into careful philology, or the study
of origins, meanings, and authenticity of ancient texts. Some scholars
