The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions
by Taisu Zhang.
Cambridge University Press, 421 pp., $127.00
Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China
by Wenkai He.
Cambridge University Press, 308 pp., $34.99
The Qing, China’s last imperial rulers (1644–1912), had doubled the empire’s size by 1800, while its population roughly tripled. Later, however, they were routinely blamed by Westerners, Chinese nationalists, and many modern scholars for stunting Chinese “development” by being too strong—or too weak. During the Cold War the more common complaint was of excessive strength. China, the story said, lacked constitutional checks, so the Qing had ruled despotically, causing intellectual, social, and economic stagnation. That argument fit comfortably with longstanding Orientalist stereotypes and backward projections of Maoist authoritarianism. But it…
