Leo Shin

This thesis presents a reappraisal of the intellectual development of the prominent seventeenth-century Chinese scholar Sun Qifeng 孫奇逢 (1585-1675). Born in North China during the waning years of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Sun was one of the most influential Neo-Confucian thinkers of the Ming-Qing transition. Most historians typically assert that Sun’s influence in Chinese intellectual history was derived from his attempt to alleviate sectarian debates within Confucianism in his seminal work, Transmission of the Lineage of the Learning of Principle (Lixue zong chuan 理學宗傳), but this thesis proposes to contextualize Sun’s legacy in an alternative way. Using Transmission of the Lineage of the Learning of Principle as a focal point, this project reexamines Sun’s vision of the Way (dao 道) through the lens of the interaction between learning and politics during the Ming-Qing transition and offers a fresh interpretation of the collaboration between northern and southern scholarly communities in seventeenth-century China.

View record

Piracy in Ming China during the 1560s and 1570s, while not frequently discussed, posed a unique maritime problem for officials to tackle. One threat they faced in this period was Lin Feng (active 1568–1580s), a pirate appearing on the coasts of Guangdong and Fujian provinces since the early Longqing period (1567–1572). Lin Feng was constantly seen clashing with the Ming military and had considerable influence; in 1574, he even sailed to Luzon, part of the modern-day Philippines, and appointed himself as the lord there. Eventually, he was evicted back to the Ming coasts, where the military suppressed his forces in 1576, early in the reign of the Wanli emperor (1572–1620). Previous scholars have noted Lin Feng’s trans-local impacts and portrayed him as a cultural broker between imperial China and the Philippines. What they neglected to do, however, was treat the conflicts and encounters he shared with officials as instances of Ming maritime governance. To revisit the case of Lin Feng from a political perspective, this thesis uses records from gazetteers, Ming shilu, memorials, legal codes, and letters. It places him with Longqing and Wanli officials to trace the complex processes through which officials reached their decisions. This thesis presents four seemingly separate incidents involving Lin Feng and various Ming officials that became the milestones of the Suppression of Lin Feng, the campaign to eliminate his forces. Each of the officials discussed in these examples came from diverse backgrounds with varying levels of prestige. Yet they were all, as this thesis argues, motivated by two kinds of factors interwoven with each other: structural—the broader political, geographic, social, and economic contexts as well as the experience of their predecessors—and personal—opportunities to keep their careers or elevate their statuses while gaining material benefits. Making this argument can help this thesis highlight the paramount roles that officials played in this campaign and, in doing so, offer new understandings of Lin Feng as a historical character and position county and provincial-level officials as being integral to creating and enforcing policies for Ming maritime governance.

View record

This thesis examines how the Government Central School (1862–1889) was a conducive site for building networks and fostering a conflicting Westernized Chineseness mentality among its Chinese and Eurasian graduates. As the early colony demanded personnel who could communicate in both Chinese and English, the Central School provided bilingual and Western education to train its students. However, the school also cultivated a global worldview in its students due to its multi-ethnicity. Centering on the fifteen elite who attended the 1938 alumni gathering as a case study, this work demonstrates that the poly-cultural Central School not only provided a social and intellectual ladder for its students to rise to elite status within the colony but also created an environment to nurture a shared social and cultural mentality. With the assistance of the network modelling tools, this thesis also studies the creation of concrete relationships among the elite alumni and the functions of their networks. Over time, these alumni formed intricate networks through intermarriage, business connections, political collaborations, and charitable partnerships. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the network extended to colonial officials and foreign merchants in the colony. Under the malleable nature of colonialism in Hong Kong, the local elites possessed the notion of Westernized Chineseness. This thesis will show that the elites manifested loyalty to the British Empire based on circumstantial opportunism while also recognising the Chinese regime for patriotic and nationalistic reasons. I contend that such a conflicting mentality was inherited from the education they received from the Central School and the mutual interests among their networks. To contextualize such a mentality, this research examines their contribution to the development of Hong Kong society and their role as pioneers of international experiences in the city. Through the Central School and the local elites, this thesis aims to present the social experience of colonization in early Hong Kong.

View record

As a Crown Colony, the Hong Kong government held particularly strong executive power—the Governor’s position afforded him seemingly unrestrained formal and informal powers. His power did have limits at times, however. This thesis shows how bureaucratic practices amongst the Governor, Colonial Office and Legislative Council and interactions with the mercantile elites demonstrated the delicate nature of Hong Kong’s colonial governance. Through examining the materials in connection to an everyday natural disaster like typhoon, this thesis offers a more nuanced and subtle picture of Hong Kong’s colonial governance at an everyday level, one in which the Governor’s power was constrained by the bureaucratic practices of both the Colonial Office and the Legislative Council, without being determined by the whims of European and Chinese mercantile elites. As a result, this thesis will serve as a case study into the workings of British colonialism on a day-to-day level.Colonial governance needs to be contextualized in its own time, place and form. The case of Hong Kong provides an example for comparative analysis in which colonial governance was conditioned by local context, especially within the Crown Colony system. This thesis will also show that, given the discrepancy of power between regulations and reality, the shared goal of stabilizing society and minimizing losses after typhoons further motivated all of the actors to fulfill their roles in the best light.Furthermore, as a devastating natural disaster, the 1906 typhoon also offers an entry point to look into how the unpredictability and uncontrolled nature of crises—or natural disasters in particular—mediated the governance and relations among actors. The role of natural disaster in governance has been largely ignored in the scholarship of Hong Kong history. Neither the 1906 typhoon nor the government’s response has been the subject of extensive research before. My thesis will fill both gaps: the government’s response will be evaluated at a structural level, and hence the response to the 1906 typhoon will be laid out more comprehensively, with the ultimate aim of achieving a fuller understanding of Hong Kong’s everyday colonial governance.

View record

A group of Qing court officials was ordered to compile a local gazetteer of the Western Regions, a vast stretch of land in present-day northwest China that was incorporated into the Qing empire (1644–1912) in 1759, and which in time became known as Xinjiang, or “New Territory.” The result of their efforts was the Qinding Huangyu Xiyu tuzhi (Imperially Commissioned Illustrated Gazetteer of the Western Regions of the Imperial Domain), or Xiyu tuzhi for short. This thesis examines the compilation of this first Qing government-sponsored gazetteer of Xinjiang and the cultural ideology that influenced the Qing-dynasty rule of the Western Regions in general. By studying the way in which the Xiyu tuzhi was compiled by the Qing empire, I argue that the compilers employed the Confucian rhetoric of music untraditionally to assert their agenda: incorporating the borderland through both differentiation and harmonization to legitimize Qing’s rule of the region. They differentiated local peoples and cultures to maintain diversities and harmonized the diversities of local characteristics in the Western Regions and made it universally accessible as part of the empire’s imperial knowledge. A better understanding of the functions that the knowledge of music in the Xiyu tuzhi served would be the starting point to lead us to a broader picture of the Qing’s expansion and how the Qing maintained the diverse local characteristics of the Western Regions instead of creating uniformity across the empire.

View record

This thesis examines and situates Hong Kong within the context of Jewish refugee transmigration between 1938 and 1941. The necessity for Austrian and German Jews to escape persecution in Europe meant that some fled across the globe to Shanghai. However, the dominant image of Shanghai as the sole Jewish refuge in East Asia downplays the role of intermediaries along the path to safety. Centering on Hong Kong, I argue that these sites facilitate the movement of refugee Jews but also acted as refuges, albeit temporarily. Furthermore, I argue that Hong Kong specifically cannot be easily categorized as either. In addition to its role as an inbetween place or transit point, Hong Kong was also a temporary refuge for a small minority of escapees. Responses towards Jewish refugees emphasized either the individual‘s Jewish-ness or German-ness, both unstable and fluid social categories. I argue that the charity provided by local Jewish leaders to their refugee co-religionists was a way to avoid reifying older stereotypes of Jewish migrants as destitute, and to maintain the privileges held by Jewish elites. In contrast, the Hong Kong government was apathetic towards these refugees, until the outbreak of the Second World War, after which these individuals were primarily viewed as Germans or enemy aliens. The eventual Internment of such Jewish refugees at La Salle College represented a major manifestation of the perceived German threat. Despite local officials knowing that Jewish refugees were among those interned, German-ness was constructed and linked to the individual‘s nationality and passport. Scrutiny over characteristics of German-ness by local officials intensified in June 1940 with controversial decision to expel all enemy aliens from Hong Kong. I contend that this action can only be understood by considering larger geopolitics. In light of the rapid occupation of France and the Low Countries by Nazi Germany, as well as the Japanese occupation of South China, Hong Kong officials panicked. I argue that Hong Kong was more than a transit point, but less than a permanent refuge.

View record

The Tang dynasty (618-907) captured scholars' attention as one of the most cosmopolitan empires in Chinese history because of its openness toward transcontinental and trans-regional cultural, economic, diplomatic and religious exchanges. The empire attracted a diverse group of foreign subjects within its political boundaries. To better understand the nature of the Tang dynasty, this thesis takes a close look at the dynasty’s foreign policies toward this special group of foreigners. More specifically, it examines the life trajectories of individuals who were born and originally lived outside of the boundaries of the Tang in the north and northwest but later served in very high positions in the Tang bureaucratic system. Conventional understanding of the Tang dynasty has long included the existence of such varieties of political and ethnic groups within the Tang. However, scholars diverge on the Tang dynasty’s criteria of incorporating and treating foreigners in the regime. By scrutinizing each individuals' lives, this thesis argues that despite the emphasis on ethnic differences and political loyalty in Tang discourses, the Tang dynasty accepted foreigners primarily based on pragmatic concerns, namely, whether individuals could prove themselves useful to the dynasty. Differences in genealogy, culture and political loyalty were mainly used as rhetorical weapons against foreigners when they were no longer useful to the dynasty. Through detailed studies of individuals’ lives, this thesis points out the pragmatic nature of the Tang dynasty’s foreign policies instead of the more conventional understanding of a tributary foreign policy that greatly emphasized cultural and ethnic superiority. It points out that even though there were clear-set boundaries of political identity, it was ultimately fluid and fungible as long as individuals, regardless of ethnic or cultural backgrounds, proved themselves useful to the dynasty.

View record

Focusing on Liaodong, a military region in Ming-dynasty China (1368-1644), this thesis examines some of the strategies the local population deployed to manage the imposition of the state. The argument is that, whether in dealing with tax obligations, labour services, or conflict resolutions, the military households in Liaodong were able to employ a wide range of strategies to “work the system to their minimum disadvantage”. The strategies examined not only demonstrate the ability of the Ming population to thrive under the domination of the Ming state but also indicate the vitality and resourcefulness of the Liaodong society. This thesis thus complements existing scholarship on other parts of China and adds to our understanding of state-society relations in the Ming dynasty.

View record

The Christian faith of Wang Tao 王韜 (1823-1897) has long been a focus of study among scholars. Throughout his life, Wang displayed different or even contradictory attitudes towards Christianity, at once praising and criticizing the religion to which he officially converted. Wang’s faith seemed to waver according to circumstances and hence he is often viewed as an opportunist. In addition, his wavering attitudes towards Christianity reflect the complexity witnessed in the dissemination of Christianity in late-Qing China and serve to underscore the problem of using “conversion” as a marker of one’s religious identity. Wang’s differing attitudes towards Christianity thus complicate our understanding of what it means to be a “true Christian” as well as what constitutes “faith” and one’s “religious identity.” Rather than treating religious identities as fixed entities, I argue that we should think of them as spectrums, along which individuals might locate themselves differently depending on their current circumstances.

View record

Departing from the vexed debate on the nature of the Sino-Tibetan relationship, this thesis examines the Fifth Karmapa Deshin Shegpa’s historic visit to the Chinese court in the early Ming era. By reading across Chinese and Tibetan language sources, in this thesis I reconstruct the entire trip of the Karmapa, a case of another dimension through which Tibetan Buddhism is perceived and the importance of the Tibetan hierarchs for the Ming to conduct its policy toward Tibetan Buddhism and the relation with the people of Inner Asia are illustrated. I argue that unlike those trips made by other Tibetan hierarchs, the trip of the Fifth Karmapa and his performance of Buddhist rituals were designed as a mean through which the Yongle emperor legitimized his controversial rise to power. From existing Tibetan and Chinese primary sources it becomes apparent that the Fifth Karmapa’s visit not only served to confirm and solidify the political power of the Yongle emperor through religious means but also brought tremendous financial benefits for the Karmapa and fostered the influence of his sect in Tibet and beyond.

View record