[ { "id": "authors:cshym-emz06", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "cshym-emz06", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20220913-957160400", "type": "article", "title": "Growing up before the Rebellion: Merchant Organization and Local Administration in Chongqing", "author": [ { "family_name": "Dykstra", "given_name": "Maura", "orcid": "0000-0001-6036-6440", "clpid": "Dykstra-M" } ], "abstract": "Something happened because of the war. Scholars of the Qing agree that the fate of the dynasty was fundamentally altered by the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). In the scramble to defend the empire, organizational and material resources were mobilized on a massive scale. Local actors that had not previously played a critical role in governance began to participate in more ambitious programs for defense, public services, and revenue rising. Across the post-Taiping Qing Empire scholars document broader engagement in local state activities and a multitude of public projects undertaken at the local level. They have generally interpreted the proliferation of ambitious local projects and the broadening of participation in their organization and management as a prelude to dynastic decline: a result of the weakening of the Qing state's political capacity.", "doi": "10.1353/late.2022.0003", "issn": "1086-3257", "publisher": "Project Muse", "publication": "Late Imperial China", "publication_date": "2022-06", "series_number": "1", "volume": "43", "issue": "1", "pages": "1-42" }, { "id": "authors:yk2yg-dkt94", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "yk2yg-dkt94", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20210525-160718593", "type": "article", "title": "Handbooks and Anthologies for Officials in Imperial China: A Descriptive and Critical Bibliography (2 vols), by Pierre-\u00c9tienne Will [Book Review]", "author": [ { "family_name": "Dykstra", "given_name": "Maura", "orcid": "0000-0001-6036-6440", "clpid": "Dykstra-M" } ], "abstract": "In November of 2013, Pierre-\u00c9tienne Will delivered a series of lectures at UCLA on administrative handbooks and anthologies in imperial China. Attending those talks fundamentally altered the trajectory of my research career. I had been working with materials from the Ba County collection at the Sichuan Provincial Archives for several years at that point. I considered myself no stranger to late imperial local administration. I had slowly and painstakingly worked from the yamen archive up to reconstruct both official and ad hoc county-level processes that linked the magistrate to the population he was charged to govern. In the course of a few days Will revealed to me how much more there was to learn. The questions he used to frame his lectures changed the way that I thought about my relationship to the yamen as mediated by the archive. How was information about administration disseminated, how was it organized, how did the substance of that information change over time, and how were the audiences or uses of that information identified, created, or reinforced by the many and distinct ways that these works circulated? A new world of research possibilities appeared suddenly before me.", "doi": "10.1163/15685322-10701006", "issn": "0082-5433", "publisher": "Brill Academic Publishers", "publication": "T'oung Pao", "publication_date": "2021-04", "series_number": "1-2", "volume": "107", "issue": "1-2", "pages": "197-204" }, { "id": "authors:6mcr1-h6791", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "6mcr1-h6791", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200305-084030951", "type": "article", "title": "The Law and Economics of Confucianism [Book Review]", "author": [ { "family_name": "Dykstra", "given_name": "Maura", "orcid": "0000-0001-6036-6440", "clpid": "Dykstra-M" } ], "abstract": "Taisu Zhang's first book offers a new and insightful perspective on a topic that many scholars have debated in the last generation: the reasons for the Great Divergence of the economic trajectories of China and England. Zhang's contribution brings together several long-standing theses to offer a novel proposal: China's failure to develop an industrial economy in the eighteenth century was the result of its more equitable property distribution. He makes this argument even more provocative by adding that the most fundamental cause of the historical differences between the economies of England and China must ultimately be attributed not to any particular institution (the most common medium of comparative history today), but rather to culture. Zhang directly states that the existing \"noncultural divergence theories. . . are simply logically incomplete\" (6). If this ambitious claim gives some readers initial pause, they will be rewarded with a novel perspective if they forge ahead. For in pressing such a large thesis, the author has synthesized a wide range of arguments into a single framework to provide scholars of legal development, economic history, and Chinese history alike with a new perspective on the developmental trajectory of the late empire.", "doi": "10.1017/s0738248019000634", "issn": "0738-2480", "publisher": "Cambridge University Press", "publication": "Law and History Review", "publication_date": "2019-11", "series_number": "4", "volume": "37", "issue": "4", "pages": "968-971" }, { "id": "authors:2778x-rkq04", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "2778x-rkq04", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20190809-085055792", "type": "article", "title": "Cross-Jurisdictional Trade and Contract Enforcement in Qing China", "author": [ { "family_name": "Dykstra", "given_name": "Maura", "orcid": "0000-0001-6036-6440", "clpid": "Dykstra-M" } ], "abstract": "This article argues that claims about the different economic trajectories of early modern Europe and late imperial China have incorrectly focused on the importance of formal contract enforcement mechanisms. As a first step toward more productive conversations about the history of economic development across world regions, this article provides a look at the factors in the development of the late imperial Chinese economy that led to the emergence of contract enforcement mechanisms not based on codified contract law. Several case studies from the Qing dynasty Chongqing archives are presented to illustrate how the mechanisms of contract enforcement operated.", "doi": "10.1017/s1479591419000123", "issn": "1479-5914", "publisher": "Cambridge University Press", "publication": "International Journal of Asian Studies", "publication_date": "2019-07", "series_number": "2", "volume": "16", "issue": "2", "pages": "99-115" }, { "id": "authors:9sqzt-bxc25", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "9sqzt-bxc25", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20161111-084022005", "type": "article", "title": "The Order of Places: Translocal Practices of the Huizhou Merchants in Late Imperial China, written by Yongtao Du, 2015 [Book Review]", "author": [ { "family_name": "Dykstra", "given_name": "Maura", "orcid": "0000-0001-6036-6440", "clpid": "Dykstra-M" } ], "abstract": "Book review of: The Order of Places: Translocal Practices of the Huizhou Merchants in Late Imperial China. (Sinica Leidensia vol. 119.) By Yongtao Du. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Viii + 269 p. Ill.", "doi": "10.1163/15685322-10213P15", "issn": "0082-5433", "publisher": "Brill Academic Publishers", "publication": "T'oung Pao", "publication_date": "2016", "series_number": "1-3", "volume": "102", "issue": "1-3", "pages": "262-269" }, { "id": "authors:p8pkg-ypq47", "collection": "authors", "collection_id": "p8pkg-ypq47", "cite_using_url": "https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20190506-152510963", "type": "article", "title": "Beyond the Shadow of the Law: Firm Insolvency, State-Building, and the New Policy Bankruptcy Reform in Late Qing Chongqing", "author": [ { "family_name": "Dykstra", "given_name": "Maura", "orcid": "0000-0001-6036-6440", "clpid": "Dykstra-M" } ], "abstract": "This paper modifies the historical assessment of the 1906 Qing Bankruptcy Code by proposing a new approach to the history of commercial dispute resolution. It argues that the Qing bankruptcy reform cannot be understood by evaluating only published sources, and that a thorough understanding of dispute mediation techniques must serve as a foundation for assessing the historical importance of the law. It offers a description of Qing insolvency dispute practices by providing an analysis of cases from the Ba county archives. The results of that analysis suggest that, although the Qing Bankruptcy Code was repealed soon after its introduction, the reform ambitions behind the new legislation were realized through the implementation of another New Policy reform, which allowed chambers of commerce to resolve bankruptcy disputes differently. This conclusion suggests that the basic vision of the Qing economic reforms of the New Policy movement had more of a lasting impact than has been assumed to date.", "doi": "10.3868/s020-002-013-0028-8", "issn": "1673-3525", "publisher": "Brill Academic Publishers", "publication": "Frontiers of History in China", "publication_date": "2013-01", "series_number": "3", "volume": "8", "issue": "3", "pages": "406-433" } ]