| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Chen-main Wang. The Life and Career of Hung Ch'eng-ch'ou (1593–1665): Public Service in a Time of Dynastic Change. (Monograph and Occasional Paper Series, number 59.) Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies. 1999. Pp. xiv, 322.

The story of the decline and fall of the Ming Empire and the Qing conquest of China has been told from many perspectives in English as well as Chinese. The Ming failure to solve its monetary problems and deal with the dislocation and banditry arising from economic crisis is one part of the story. The Manchu ability to mobilize a highly disciplined fighting force, control the inner Mongols, and employ exceptionally able Han Chinese officials is another. The fractious politics of Ming scholar-officials and its role in the failure of Ming loyalist resistance is a third. The inability of local leaders and rebels to rally a supralocal opposition to unpopular and often corrupt imperial rule is a fourth. And the ultimate continuities of statecraft and philological scholarship alongside developing literary themes and talents under the early Qing regime is a fifth. Yet until Wang Chen-main's book, the absence of a thorough study in English of Hung Ch'eng-ch'ou, whose life and work may well throw more light on more parts of the story than any other single life could, is evidence of an amazing intellectual legacy. Seventeenth-century Ming loyalism, eighteenth-century Qing imperialist historiography, and twentieth-century Chinese nationalism have until now succeeded in keeping this view of the story from being told. . . .

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