Speaking of Profit: Bao Shichen and Reform in Nineteenth-Century China pdf

威廉·罗是一位研究现代中国的社会史学家，从“社会”和“现代”两个词的广泛意义上讲，他的工作也集中在文化、知识、经济和政治史方面。 他的前两本书涉及中国一个主要内陆贸易城市的 19 世纪历史； 第二个获得了城市历史协会令人印象深刻的奖项，并让他参与了“公民社会”和“公共领域”问题的辩论。 他还撰写了关于相对繁荣的 18 世纪清朝统治精英的意识以及七个世纪以来在饱受战争蹂躏的中国省份惯常发生的农业暴力模式的书籍。 最近，他写了一部清朝的一般释经史，题为《中国最后的帝国》。

Speaking of Profit: Bao Shichen and Reform in Nineteenth-Century China pdf 威廉·罗

In the first half of the nineteenth century the Qing Empire faced a crisis. It was broadly perceived both inside and outside of government that the “prosperous age” of the eighteenth century was over. Bureaucratic corruption and malaise, population pressure and food shortages, ecological and infrastructural decay, domestic and frontier rebellion, adverse balances of trade, and, eventually, a previously inconceivable foreign threat from the West seemed to present hopelessly daunting challenges. This study uses the literati reformer Bao Shichen as a prism to understand contemporary perceptions of and proposed solutions to this general crisis. Though Bao only briefly and inconsequentially served in office himself, he was widely recognized as an expert on each of these matters, and his advice was regularly sought by reform-minded administrators. From examination of his thought on bureaucratic and fiscal restructuring, agricultural improvement, the grain tribute administration, the salt monopoly, monetary policy, and foreign relations, Bao emerges as a consistent advocate of the hard-nosed pursuit of material “profit,” in the interests not only of the rural populace but also of the Chinese state and nation, anticipating the arguments of “self-strengthening” reformers later in the century.