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4 - The Flowering of Chinese Imperial Urban Civilization (1402–1799)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Toby Lincoln
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
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Summary

Chinese late imperial urban civilization was made up of loose regional economies with a few large cities supported by lots of market towns. The Grand Canal remained its backbone, and China’s most prosperous cities were distributed along its length, and international maritime connections to the early modern global economy saw the growth of the Pearl River Delta. Elsewhere defence was important. Ming Dynasty coastal cities faced threats from pirates. Then as the Qing Dynasty expanded into the northwest, cities in the new province of Xinjiang developed around military garrisons. Walls remained a primary characteristic of Chinese urban form, and they surrounded large commercial and administrative cities, as well as those built for defensive purposes. All cities were now governed by a mixture of state and private interests, including the newly established merchant societies. The Ming and Qing Dynasties saw the flowering of late imperial urban culture. The cities of the Lower Yangzi Delta set the standards of style and taste, but the movement of gentry, merchants, and other urban residents brought this urban culture to the farthest corners of the empire. They produced travel guides, urban histories, prose, and poetry that recorded all aspects of urban life in minute detail.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Brook, Timothy. Confusions of Pleasure Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Brook, Timothy Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Fei, Siyen. Negotiating Urban Space: Urbanization and Late Ming Nanjing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009.Google Scholar
Marmé, Michael. Suzhou Where the Goods of All the Provinces Converge. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naquin, Susan. Peking Temples and City Life, 1400–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Rowe, William T. China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Skinner, G. William, ed. Cities in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Xu, Yinong. The Chinese City in Space and Time: The Development of Urban Form in Suzhou. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000.Google Scholar

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