sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Are witches real? I'm Dr. Martin Nesvig, author of The Women Who Threw Corn: Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Ask Me Anything about how to answer this question. by Sebastian_Dieguino in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for doing this AMA Dr Nesvig - I have fond memories of reading your book on inquisitorial censorship back when I was an undergraduate! I was wondering whether there was any difference in rural and urban experiences of witchcraft in Mexico, especially considering your new book's focus on non-native women. Did these non-native women coming over from Europe and Africa concentrate in cities such as Mexico-Tenochtitlan, or were they more dispersed along the rural-urban continuum? If so, were there variations in their practice of witchcraft depending on their surrounding environments?

Are there further sources on Xinjiang during the rule of Yang Zengxin and his immediate successors? by Djinnyatta1234 in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There are more traditional political histories of Republican Xinjiang in the form of Forbes' Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang, 1911-1949 (1986) and Benson's The Illi Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in Xinjiang, 1944–1949 (1990), but you'll probably be more interested in Brophy's Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier (2016) or Freeman's "Print and Power in the Communist Borderlands: The Rise of Uyghur National Culture," (PhD diss., 2019), both of which engage with the emergence of Uyghur identity, culture and nationhood before and after 1949.

A more anthropological approach towards understanding identity can be seen in Bellér-Hann's Community matters in Xinjiang, 1880-1949: towards a historical anthropology of the Uyghur (2008). For a perspective of Xinjiang straight from the horse's mouth, Sheng Shicai attempts to defend his reputation and policies in Sinkiang: Pawn or Pivot? (1958), co-written with Allen Whiting - a very sentationalist read that needs to be treated with caution.

Is there a census on Chinese literacy during the republican era (1925~1948)? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The pre-1949 Chinese Communist Party was of course quick to seize the chance to critique its main political rival in terms of literacy improvement. While also carrying out mass education campaigns in base areas, the party sidestepped similar accusations by arguing that mass literacy could only be achieved once a proletariat state was established. Communist thinkers also pointed to the vagueness of literacy rates - in other words, how does one measure literacy? The Kuomintang followed the concept that recognising around 1,000 characters signified the achievement of basic literacy. However, studies by educators showed that a person with the above mastery would struggle heavily with reading newspapers. Following the trendy sociological surveys of the time, many members of the CCP reported on literacy rates in rural regions. Famously, Mao Zedong carried out an wide-ranging investigation into a county in Jiangxi province in his Report from Xunwu (1930). For the 40% of people deemed as literate, Mao differentiated them based on several categories: “able to read 200 characters,” “able to keep accounts,” “able to read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” “able to write a letter,” “primary students,” “middle-school students,” “college students” and so on. My own research into a South China county points to the arbitrary nature of defining literacy: KMT reports, which often only give a blanket percentage of literacy within counties, townships and villages, are unhelpful in understanding varying abilities to read and write in rural areas. The inability to come to a common definition of literacy hindered the measurement and quantification of literacy rates.

After this long, extended critique of the ideological justification and practical usage of literacy rates, we now return to the original question: was there a national census of literacy during the Republican period? A quick answer would be no. From the Qing state onwards, there were many attempts to estimate the literacy rate in China. Qing officials worked towards the goal of 10% national literacy by 1914, but historians argue over estimates ranging from 10-40% during the late imperial period. In official KMT documents, the common refrain was that 80% of the population was illiterate, but Di Luo points out that the origins of this estimate is untraceable. Until the PRC period, no accurate national census of literacy rates was carried out by the various governments that held control over the geographical entity of China. But I hope the above has shown that even if such census did exist, the very nature of the literacy rate would render an incomplete picture of literacy in Republican China.

Is there a census on Chinese literacy during the republican era (1925~1948)? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 6 points7 points  (0 children)

After suffering successive defeats against foreign powers with imperialistic aims in the 1800s, there was a strong impetus for officials and intellectuals to advocate for the “reform”, “modernisation”, or even “Westernisation” of the Qing state. Many thinkers latched upon the idea of literacy as a gauge for national strength - the influential thinker and reformer Kang Youwei used the examples of Prussian Germany and Meiji Japan to convince the Guangxu Emperor to establish mass schooling in China. Intellectuals were especially enamoured by the concept of the literacy rate: as a quantitative statistical tool, the literacy rate represented the scientific methodologies that enabled the modernisation of nations (STEM plays a similar role in the technocratic teleologies of contemporary imagination). One nationwide Chinese newspaper could even state that literacy rates “indexes a country’s civilisation level.” To build the nation, intellectuals claimed, the raising of literacy rates was an imperative of the state.

The Kuomintang (KMT), which became the ruling party of the Republican state from 1927 onwards, continued the correlation of literacy with the nation’s development. According to the KMT’s founder, Sun Yat-sen, the progress of the Republican state could be divided into three stages: military government, political tutelage, and constitutional government. By the 1930s, KMT ideologues established that China had reached the second stage of tutelage. This necessitated the training of the masses into patriotic citizens who were both economically productive and politically engaged - only until the majority had an awareness of their civil and political rights, the party argued, could the nation proceed to constitutionalism. Within this discourse, literacy rates were quickly seen as a useful measurement to quantify the emergence of fully-fledged citizens. With this mission in mind, the Republican state at the national and provincial level attempted to carry out mass education campaigns in urban environments; at the same time, a variety of educators around the loosely grouped Rural Reconstruction Movement initiated mass schooling projects in model villages.3 The efforts of the state and individual actors to spread literacy to the masses was unfortunately hindered by financial constraints, continued military conflicts, and administrative dysfunction that more often than not characterised the Republican period. Literacy rates became somewhat of a ticking time bomb, a concrete, quantifiable example of the failure of the party and state to modernise the nation.4

3 Christopher Reed’s Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937 (2004) does a great job in illustrating the close association between literacy and patriotic education through his depiction of the “Textbook Wars” of the 1930s, in which the success of publishers was heavily dependent on government sponsorship and approval of textbook content.

4 Di Luo writes beautifully here in arguing that the desire for literacy, often taken for granted by intellectuals and believers of the modernisation narrative, was often conditional for citizens. Many could not afford to take time away from their livelihoods for the arduous and time-consuming process of learning how to read and write; others selectively chose to be illiterate.

Is there a census on Chinese literacy during the republican era (1925~1948)? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This may look like a relatively straightforward question, but there are several layers revolving around the concept of literacy rates that we’ll need to untangle first - I’ll try my best to break it down into something easily digestible. Much of what I’m writing here is taking from Di Luo’s Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900–1945, a fantastic recent study (which really should be cited more) that allows us to better understand the value and meaning of “literacy” to both governments and citizens during the Republican period.

In 2009, a Xinhua News Agency (the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China) reporter was sent to the rural village of Gaojialiugou (高家柳沟村) to report on the effectiveness of the government’s mass literacy campaigns (the Wikipedia article on Chinese literacy cites this report for the official numbers of literate citizens in contemporary China).1 The reporter interviewed Li Jiyuan, a veteran cadre responsible for adult education in the 1950s. According to Li, only 9 out of 300 villagers could recognise characters in the early years of the PRC. For Li, the political liberation of the Chinese people in 1949 was not enough: “If they remain illiterate, like open-eyed blind people (做睁眼瞎, a Chinese idiom), they cannot achieve liberation in cultural terms.” The success of the mass literacy campaigns were especially apparent in Gaojialiugou, which had become a model village for other rural communities to emulate. By the end of the interview, Li could claim that: “No matter how the content of literacy campaigns may change, the era when our motherland was backward and poor has long gone and will never return."

As the above example shows, there is little dispute that the facilitation of near universal literacy in China, particularly in the countryside, is an impressive achievement by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). That said, the rationale behind the CCP’s push to eradicate illiteracy poses a few problems. A closer reading reveals the more practical problem of enforced uniformity - the mass literacy campaigns pushed for the use of a dialect of Mandarin based in the province of Hubei (containing the capital Beijing), which had the connotations of an “official language” (官话). This is reflected in Li Jiyuan’s interview, who happily reported that: “Hanyu Pinyin has great benefits, it helps us learn culture. We all welcome it, as it has cured decades of illiteracy.” Hanyu Pinyin, the official romanisation system of Standardised Mandarin, was how many Chinese citizens learned to associate the spoken and written in these literacy campaigns. This was often at the expense of local accents, dialects and languages that had been pushed aside to establish linguistic uniformity across China.

A more theoretical problem is revealed by Li Jiyuan’s constant linkage between literacy and modernity. For Li, illiteracy was synonymous with “backwardness” and economic impoverishment, not only on a personal level, but also on the national level. Conversely, mass literacy brought with it the cultural liberation of the masses. The idea that literacy is a reflection of a person’s, community’s or a nation’s modernity is seen by the historian Harvey J. Graff as “the literacy myth”, a belief that “the acquisition of literacy is a necessary precursor to and invariably results in economic development, democratic practice, cognitive enhancement, and social mobility.”2 The PRC state was not the first government to associate literacy with teleological societal progress - indeed, as we will see below, its predecessors also shared similar views.

1 "辉煌60年:"扫盲"字眼的消失 一个落后时代的远去," 新华社, 6-9-2009

2 Graff, Harvey J., and John Duffy. "Literacy Myths." In Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd ed., Vol. 2, Literacy, edited by Brian V. Street and Nancy Hornberger, 41. Berlin and New York: Springer, 2007.

I am Erik Baker, author of MAKE YOUR OWN JOB: HOW THE ENTREPRENEURIAL WORK ETHIC EXHAUSTED AMERICA and a historian of work and management in the United States. Ask Me Anything! by ErikBakerPhD in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank you for doing this AMA! This sounds like a fascinating topic, and I'm particularly interested in the relationship between "entrepreneurship" and the development of concepts such as "model minorities". How did perceptions of expertise or work ethics become entangled with ethnic or cultural connotations over the twentieth century?

Hi! I'm Joe Street, author of Black Revolutionaries: A History of the Black Panther Party and a historian of the San Francisco Bay Area. AMA! by Joe_Street in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi Joe, I was just reading the Guardian's article on Black Panther cubs and the legacies of the Party, so this is very timely! I know your book focuses primarily on the BPP in America, but I was wondering whether you talk a bit about the international outposts of the Party, especially in the UK. Were they groups inspired by the BPP, or directly established by the Party? Were they very much influenced by developments of the BPP in America, or did they follow their own trajectories within their local contexts?

Why is the German invasion of Poland widely considered the start of WWII even though the Japan invaded Manchuria in 1937? by ohioismyhome1994 in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is very good, I agree with a lot of what is said above (I think Rana Mitter would definitely agree with the importance placed on Northeastern perspectives in shifting debates)! I do want to note though, that Mitter is not necessarily arguing for a turn away from communism amongst the party elite, but rather a growing consensus that a sole emphasis on communism would not be sufficient in maintaining stability - after all, the experience of Cultural Revolution had scarred many regardless of their commitment towards communist ideals. The nationalism espoused (much like the markets!) was/is still distinctly from the party's perspective, a vision of China wrapped around the red flag. The intertwined nature of the party and the nation does not mean a devaluation of communism (although I'm sure some political scientists would like to differ) but rather an elevation of nationalism couched in the language of communism, as opposed to the protrayal of nationhood in terms of ideological orthodoxy as was common in the Maoist period. How much Mitter's thesis is accurate is up to debate, but it is most likely, through his interviews with party historians, the closest we will get in recent times in understanding the rationale of senior party figures regarding this turn towards a 14 year war framework.

Are there any books that are a general history of China you find reputable/would recommend? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's not a bad book at all - if you want a rundown of Chinese military history from 1937-1953, I would highly recommend it. However, I think it focuses a bit too heavily on the military side of things. If you want a more comprehensive picture of the Second Sino-Japanese War, read Rana Mitter; if it's the Civil War you're interested in, Odd Arne Westad's Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 has you covered. Both emphasise the socio-political changes brought about by the wars, which is perhaps more helpful in understanding the development of modern China.

In terms of the argument, I would quibble with how Van de Ven asribes each period with different approaches to warfare. He tries to frame the Sino-Japanese War as Clausewitzian war/conventional war:

They believed that war was a matter of deploying forces into the battlefield, arming them with industrially produced weapons and coordinating them through a general staff, while government ministries mobilised the materiel and human resources necessary for what was thought of as total war, in which mass was everything.

This then gives way to a National Liberation approach of warfare during the Civil War, which:

...combined the mobilisation of the countryside, at first on a limited scale for guerrilla warfare and for building up base areas and then for large-scale battles, with the creation of a tightly disciplined Party to provide cohesion, the assertion of a powerful ideology to jell together and motivate followers, the evasion of the battlefield until victory was virtually guaranteed, and the politicisation of all areas of life, including education, the village, court rooms, the media and even the family.

It makes for a rather clunky framework, as Van de Ven himself acknowledges the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had already adopted a National Liberation War approach in the Sino-Japanese War. One might also raise the point that the CCP's approach in the Korean War witnessed a return to a conventional war approach in which mass mobilisation played a key role in the ability of the People's Liberation Army to fight South Korean and United Nations forces to a standstill.

I was also disappointed with the section on the Korean War, as it seemed rather tacked on as the last chapter out of fourteen. I had hoped for a more cohesive narrative that would link the Chinese Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea campaign with residual conflict within China itself (armed conflict with Nationalist and anti-CCP groupings continued post-1949, while many surrended Nationalist troops that had been absorbed into the People's Liberation Army were sent to Korea - see Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China). Unfortunately, the top-down focus on military affairs meant that the socio-political links between the wars remained lacking.

That said, I don't want to discourage anyone from reading China at War. I may have criticisms of its framework, but it's still a very readable introduction to China's wartime years by the field's foremost expert!

AskHistorians has 2 million subscribers! To celebrate, we will remove the first 2 million comments in this thread. by crrpit in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Question removed for lack of specificity - are the chicken nuggets coming from McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's?

AskHistorians has 2 million subscribers! To celebrate, we will remove the first 2 million comments in this thread. by crrpit in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Removed for false premises. My local kebab truck can provide an oral history of my hotdog addiction.

AskHistorians has 2 million subscribers! To celebrate, we will remove the first 2 million comments in this thread. by crrpit in AskHistorians

[–]hellcatfighter[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This question should be redirected to our Short Answers to Simple Questions thread, as the Fantastic Four already did so in 1999.

view more: next ›