Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T14:42:33.921Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Early Chinese Press and the Agency of Its Readers: The Dynamics of the Transcultural Spread of the “Press” as an Institution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2020

Rudolf Wagner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Habermas saw the public sphere as coterminous with the national space. Anderson dreamed of newspaper readers facing the same paper for breakfast forming an “imagined community,” which he saw as vital for supplementing the subjective side of nationhood. Historical evidence supports neither proposition. Both remain locked in a nation-state focused history and have to sideline large and crucial parts of the record. This article studies two early Chinese-language periodical publications characterised by their radical difference to the standard European models, the East Western Monthly Magazine (1833–1838) and the Shenbao (1872–1949), and considers the implications of these examples for dominant conceptual frameworks.

Keywords

Early Chinese pressEast Western Monthly MagazineShenbaopublic spheretranscultural dynamics
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 44 , Special Issue 2: Colonial Public Spheres and the Worlds of Print , August 2020 , pp. 412 - 434
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Rudolf Wagner was Senior Professor, University of Heidelberg, and an Associate of the Fairbank Center, Harvard University. He passed away on 25 October 2019.

References

Akira, Matsuura, Keiichi, Uchida, and Guowei, Shen, eds. Xiaer guanzhen, fu jieti, suoyin. Shanghai: Cishu chubanshe, 2005.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. London: Verso, 2016.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. Under Three Flags. Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination. London: Verso, 2005.Google Scholar
Bacot, Jean-Pierre. La Presse Illustrée au XIXe Siècle: Une Histoire Oubliée. Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2005.Google Scholar
Baker, Keith Michael. “Memory and Practice: Politics and the Representation of the Past in Eighteenth-Century France,” Representations 11 (1985), 134–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darnton, Robert. The Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Dumas (Pere), Alexandre. Mémoires d'un médécin: Joseph Balsamo. Paris: Dufour, Mulat et Boulanger, 1959.Google Scholar
Ford, Edwin, and Emery, Edwin, eds. Highlights in the History of the American Press: A Book of Readings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954.Google Scholar
Gentz, Natascha. “Useful Knowledge and Appropriate Communication: The Field of Journalistic Production in Late Nineteenth-Century China.” In Joining the Global Public: Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870–1910, edited by Wagner, Rudolf, 47–104. Albany: SUNY, 2007.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. Strukturwandel der Őffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der Őffentlichkeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1962.Google Scholar
Hanan, Patrick. “The Missionary Novels of Nineteenth-Century China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 60:2 (2000), 413–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, David. Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Hanqi, Fang. Zhongguo jindai baokan shi [History of the modern Chinese press], 2 vols. Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1981.Google Scholar
Henningsmeier, Julia. “The Foreign Sources of Dianshizhai huabao, a Nineteenth-Century Shanghai Illustrated Magazine.” Ming Qing yanjiu (1998), 59–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaul, Chandrika, ed. Media and the British Empire. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. Kritik und Krise, ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt. Freiburg: K. Alber, 1959.Google Scholar
Lazich, Michael C. “Placing China in Its ‘Proper Rank among the Nations’: The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China and the First Systematic Account of the United States in Chinese.” Journal of World History 22:3 (2011), 527–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutz, Jessie Gregory. Opening China: Karl F. A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827–1852. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2008.Google Scholar
Mittler, Barbara. A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity, and Change in Shanghai's News Media 1872–1912. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004.Google Scholar
Shijian, Huang. “<Dong Xi yang kao meiyue tongji zhuan> yingyinben daoyan,” in Dong Xi yang kao meiyue tongji zhuan, 3–35. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G. “Asymmetry in Transcultural Interaction.” In Engaging Transculturality: Concepts, Key Terms, Case Studies, edited by Abu-Er-Rub, Laila et al. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G. “Don't Mind the Gap: The Foreign-Language Press in Late-Qing and Republican China.” China Heritage Quarterly 30/31 (June–September 2012), http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?searchterm=030_wagner.inc&issue=030.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G. “The Free Flow of Communication between High and Low: The Shenbao as Platform for Yangwu Discussions on Political Reform, 1872–1895.” T'oung Pao 104:1–3 (2018), 116–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G. “Joining the Global Imaginaire: The Shanghai Illustrated Newspaper Dianshizhai huabao.” In Joining the Global Public: Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870–1910, edited by Wagner, Rudolf, 105–73. Albany: SUNY, 2007.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G. “Living up to the Image of the Ideal Public Leader: George Washington's Image in China.” The Journal of Transcultural Studies 10: 2 (Winter 2019), 18–77.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G. “The Moral Center and the Engine of Change: A Tale of Two Chinese Cities.” In Peking Shanghai Shenzhen. Städte des 21. Jahrhunderts / Beijing Shanghai Shenzhen: Cities of the 21st Century, Edition Bauhaus, vol. 7, edited by Vöckler, Kai and Luckow, Dirk, 452–9. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2000.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf G. “The Shenbao in Crisis: The International Environment and the Conflict between Guo Songtao and the Shenbao.” Late Imperial China 20:1(1999), 107–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Sam, and Wong, Valerie. “The Role of the Guangbao in Promoting Nationalism and Transmitting Reform Ideas in Late Qing China.” Modern Asian Studies 51:5 (2017), 1469–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, Cai 蔡武. “Tantan <Dongxi yang kao meiyue tongji zhuan>, Zhongguo jingnei diyizhong xiandai Zhongwen qikan” (Disquisitions about the East Western Monthly Magazine, the first modern Chinese-language journal within China's borders). Guoli Zhongyang Tushuguan Guankan 2:4 (1968–69), 23–46.Google Scholar