Robert Hart and China's Early Modernization: His Journals, 1863-1866 [Hardcover]

Parks M. Coble (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1991

As the Ch'ing government's Inspector General of the Maritime Customs Service, Robert Hart was the most influential Westerner in China for half a century. These journal entries continue the sequence begun in Entering China's Service and cover the years when Hart was setting up Customs procedures, establishing a modus operandi with the Ch'ing bureaucracy, and inspecting the treaty ports. They culminate in Hart's return visit to Europe with the Pin-ch'un Mission and his marriage in Northern Ireland.

Smith, Fairbank and Bruner interleave the segments of Hart's journals with lively narratives describing the contemporary Chinese scene and recounting Hart's responses to the many challenges of establishing a Western-style organization within a Chinese milieu.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John King Fairbank was Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and Director of the East Asian Research Center at Harvard University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 492 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (June 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674775309
• ISBN-13: 978-0674775305
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,875,896 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard J. Smith is George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University in Houston, Texas. A specialist in modern Chinese history and traditional Chinese culture, with a strong interest in transnational, global and comparative studies, Smith has won twelve teaching awards while at Rice, including the Piper Professorship (1987), the George R. Brown Certificate of Highest Merit (1992), the Sarofim Distinguished Teaching Professorship (1994), the Nicholas Salgo Distinguished Teaching Award (1996), and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching "Texas Professor of the Year" Award (1998). Smith's books include Mercenaries and Mandarins: The Ever-Victorious Army in Nineteenth Century China (1978); Traditional Chinese Culture: A Brief Introduction (1978); Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society (1991); Chinese Almanacs (1992); China's Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912 (1994); Chinese Maps: Images of "All Under Heaven" (1996); Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching or Book of Changes) and Its Evolution in China (2008) and The I Ching: A Biography (forthcoming with the Princeton University Press). He has also co-edited or co-authored six volumes: Chinese Walled Cities (1979); Entering China's Service (1986); Robert Hart and China's Early Modernization (1991); Cosmology, Ontology, and Human Efficacy: Essays in Chinese Thought (1993); H. B. Morse, Customs Commissioner and Historian of China (1995); and Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China (2008). Smith is presently working on several articles and book chapters, as well as three books: (1) a thematically organized collection of some of his essays for a volume titled Mapping China and Managing the World: Cosmology, Cartography and Culture in Late Imperial Times); (2) a companion volume to Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World, titled Eternal Writ: The Globalization of the Yijing (I Ching or Book of Changes); and (3) a revised edition of China's Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912. Born in Sacramento, California in 1944, Smith had a brief flirtation with professional baseball before coming to his senses. He has been married to the long-suffering Lisa Smith for 43 years, and they have a delightful and talented son named Tyler.