In the past two decades, increasing attention has been paid to the significance of the fiscal capacity of the premodern state to promote or retard economic growth. In particular, scholarship on economic history has stressed the positive impact the emergence of the “fiscal state” had in enhancing economic growth in early modern Europe. Comparative studies have contrasted the administrative efficiency of the emerging European fiscal state with contemporary Asian empires (the Ottomans, Mughals, and the Ming and Qing empires in China). But the Ming-Qing state represents only one version of Chinese state formation under the Chinese empire. This article identifies four basic types of fiscal state that appeared between the Qin unification and the Ming-Qing era, analyzes their ideological foundations, and assesses their implications for economic growth.

During the centuries after the fall of the Han dynasty, dozens of states rose and fell in geographic China, which was not only politically divided but also home to multiple separately named population groups, some of which were speakers of languages unrelated to Chinese. Yet, a single written language was used throughout the region, broadly common institutions were everywhere in place, and there was a widely shared collective historical memory. This memory included an assumed single line of legitimate sovereigns stretching back to the Sage Kings of legendary antiquity. Differently named population groups could adopt that written language, institutions, and historical memory, and their rulers could potentially even join that line of legitimate sovereigns. It was therefore relatively easy for the Sui and Tang dynasties, having militarily unified the geographic space of the old Han empire, to successfully depict themselves as heirs to a unitary China rooted in ancient memory.

This article engages critically with William Rowe's notion of an “alternative economic discourse” linking the market-consciousness shown in some aspects of Dong Wei's approach to famine relief in the Song dynasty to that which informed many subsistence-policy discussions and some aspects of bureaucratic practice during the high Qing. The longevity of the discursive tradition is shown to be understated if we start with Dong Wei, but it is also taken as an interpretative challenge. Comparison with the case of ancien régime France is used to suggest an alternative conceptualization that enables us to differentiate between (1) a mainstream tradition of conventionally accepted market-conscious prescriptions that were not perceived as challenging Confucian moralism, and (2) avant-garde departures. A review of the arguments used down the centuries to justify distributing famine relief in monetary form is used to pinpoint one such departure and to reflect on its significance in a multi-century perspective.

Historians disagree about the role of literacy in Ming society. Certainly, the stone inscriptions that littered the Chinese landscape displayed elaborate essays showing the gentry author's erudition and compositional skill. Yet steles for shrines to living officials also sent political messages. They authorized and amplified the voice of “the common people,” embodying and explicitly arguing for a popular voice in the evaluation of magistrates and prefects. How were these texts on public monuments understood by the many Ming people with only basic literacy? The Late Imperial Primer Literacy Sieve is a digital tool that sifts a target text, such as a commemorative stele, leaving only the characters found in one or more primers. The Sieve may bring us closer to understanding not only what was written, but what was read. The article argues that the message of premortem steles about popular participation could indeed come across.

This article explores information management in the Qing government, and the challenges confronted by the Qing authorities, through the prism of imperial maps of Xinjiang. To ensure that newly gathered geographical knowledge of Xinjiang was usable for the emperor and senior officials, technocrats and artisans in the Imperial Household Department collaborated with the Jesuits and border officials to produce maps that materialized it. Because of their utility in military campaigns and everyday governance, these maps were carefully maintained by the Imperial Household Department, which discreetly distributed them to a small coterie of Manchu and Mongol statesmen. Nevertheless, information leakage from the lower echelons of the bureaucracy challenged the department's monopoly and popularized knowledge of Xinjiang among the Han literati.

Chinese conservatism is often reduced to a cultural movement the main concern of which is the preservation of traditional culture. This article proposes a new framework with which to analyze modern Chinese conservatism. It identifies late Qing culturalist nationalism, which incorporates traditional culture into concrete political reforms inspired by modern Western politics, as the origin of conservatism in the Republican era. Conservatism in this period was a reaction against New Culture activists’ denial of the political utility of this culturalist nationalism and constituted a response to World War I, leading some to question the merits of Western civilization. As a result, tradition no longer unitarily evoked the cultural elements corresponding to modern Western politics. Adopting a typological approach in order to distinguish different types of conservatism by differentiating various political implications of traditional culture, it divides the Chinese conservatism of the Republican era into four typologies: liberal conservatism, antimodern conservatism, philosophical conservatism, and authoritarian conservatism.

Instead of assuming “warlords” as a homogeneous counter-force to the May Fourth enlightenment while imagining Chinese intellectuals as a natural alliance for the “anti-warlordism” National Revolution, this article examines the prevailing idea exchange and political collaboration between Chen Jiongming, the Cantonese military strongman, and the May Fourth intellectual within and beyond regional borders. Between 1919 and 1922, Chen Jiongming not only fostered his anarcho-federalist blueprint, but also garnered support from prominent thinkers hailing from across different ideological camps such as Liang Bingxian, Chen Duxiu, and Hu Shi. Focusing on the ideological and intellectual aspects of warlord rule, this article attempts to situate the study of warlordism against the backdrop of the Chinese enlightenment, to downplay the differences between the man of guns and the man of letters, and thereby to redefine, re-characterize, and reappraise “warlords” as active agents—the initiators—of China's renewals during this formative period.