Description
Book SynopsisDaniel Barish explores debates surrounding the education of the final three Qing emperors, showing how imperial curricula became proxy battles for divergent visions of how to restabilize the country. Through the lens of the education of young emperors, Learning to Rule develops a new understanding of the late Qing era.
Trade ReviewIt is a classic problem in Qing history: How in the aftermath of the profound devastation of the Taiping War did the Qing empire not only survive but also initiate a degree of reform and transformation? Daniel Barish suggests an intriguing explanation: The education of the Xianfeng emperor and his successors provided an effective synthesis of traditional ethics and novel, reformist political theories (particularly relating to constitutional monarchy), undergirded by new media of print and photography, could have allowed the emperors to become modernizing public figures. It suggests a comparative context encompassing other reforming monarchies in a global “late imperial” era. The emperors and their courts could not sustain the dynasty beyond 1912, but the ruler as a public presence as shaped in these last Qing decades continued as a subliminal model for post-imperial leaders from Sun Yatsen to Mao. In this way, Barish demonstrates the far-reaching impact of the late nineteenth-century Qing emperors on ruling style and presentation in twentieth-century China. -- Pamela Kyle Crossley, author of
Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World and
The Wobbling Pivot: China Since 1800Eschewing stale teleologies of nineteenth-century decline, this highly original and well-crafted study of late Qing reforms thoughtfully probes what happens to imperial politics and national ambitions when the emperor is a child and his tutors the most powerful men in the land. -- Mark C. Elliott, author of
The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial ChinaIn Barish’s study of imperial education, Empress Dowager Cixi emerges as a skillful coalition builder, open to diverse policy stances, who participates in the global movement toward nationalizing monarchies.
Learning to Rule offers readers a fresh, complex vision of Qing rule in its last decades. -- Evelyn S. Rawski, author of
The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial InstitutionsBased on a wide range of sources, Daniel Barish’s eminently readable investigation of the people and issues surrounding the education of the three child-emperors of the late Qing dynasty is deeply insightful. He offers key new perspectives on the survival of the Qing into the twentieth century, the evolving political views of the educated classes, and the global forces at work in an era of nationalizing monarchies. -- Peter Zarrow, author of
Educating China: Knowledge, Society, and Textbooks in a Modernizing World, 1902–1937Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. New Forms of Learning for a New Age of Imperial Rule, 1861–1874
2. The Malleability of Youth: Guangxu in the Classroom, 1875–1890
3. Putting Lessons Into Practice: Guangxu on the Throne, 1891–1898
4. Cixi’s Pedagogy: Female Education and Constitutional Governance, 1898–1908
5. Learning to Be a Constitutional Monarch, 1908–1912
Conclusion: Emperor and Nation in Modern China
Character Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
