REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY
23
This may violate some of the basic principles of the historian's craft. It means going beyond the documents, or at least reading into them interpretations which the documents per se may not warrant. It means reading between the lines. It may even mean attributing significance to the fact that a document does not exist. It means applying the principles of anthropology, sociology, agricultural economics, even psychology to events which occurred many years ago.
....a tricky procedure at best.
But it may, in the end, bring us closer to what "really happened" than has heretofore been the case.
NOTES
1 Ch'ü Tung-tsu, Local Government under the Ch'ing, Cambridge, 1962.
2 Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, Seattle, 1960.
3 These are the districts (hsien) of Nan-hai, P'an-yü #, Hsun-teh 顺德, Tung-kuan 东莞, Hsin-an 新安, and Hsiang-shan 香山,
4 Cf. M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, London, 1951; P. C. Kuo, A Critical Study of the Opium War, New York, 1935; H. P. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, Cambridge, 1964; etc.
5 For account of this pirate's exploits see C. F. Neumann, History of the Pirates Who Infested the South China Sea from 1807 to 1810, London, 1831. This is a translation of a Chinese work entitled Ching-hai fen-chih 靖海氛志 by Yuan Yung-lun 阮永纶
6 The Indo-Chinese Gleaner, July, 1821,
7 The Canton Register, July 26, 1828.
8 The Chinese Repository, June, 1834, p. 83.
9 The Canton Register, February 18, 1828,
10 Ibid., October 3, 1829.
11 Ibid., December 12, 1829 and September 6, 1830.
12 The Chinese Repository, June, 1832, p. 80.
13 The Canton Register, March 8, 1828.
14 The Chinese Repository, April, 1836, p. 566.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Kwang-chou fu chih (广州府志), Canton, 1879 ed., chuan 81, p. 286.
18 The Canton Register, June 18, 1829,
19 For details see pertinent issues of The Chinese Repository, The Chinese Courier; The Canton Register; Kwang-chou fu chih, p. 306.