Comments on: China and the Middle Ground http://www.froginawell.net/china/2010/02/china-and-the-middle-ground/ The China History Group Blog Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:35:30 -0800 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: Robert Fried http://www.froginawell.net/china/2010/02/china-and-the-middle-ground/comment-page-1/#comment-166974 Robert Fried Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:58:05 +0000 http://www.froginawell.net/china/?p=1643#comment-166974 Based on the graph, income distribution seems to be improving. China's capitalist march toward communism... Based on the graph, income distribution seems to be improving. China’s capitalist march toward communism…

]]> By: Alan http://www.froginawell.net/china/2010/02/china-and-the-middle-ground/comment-page-1/#comment-166877 Alan Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:50:02 +0000 http://www.froginawell.net/china/?p=1643#comment-166877 Nice post and it sounds like a nice conversation. I would almost think China would be a great place to expand the Middle Ground by looking away from geographic borderlands. Obviously it is an idea which can be helpful in those places, but what about 19th century Shanghai? Calling it a Middle Ground does not really do anything, and the issue of who controls the territory was pretty settled, but there were a lot of examples of people who “tried to argue with one another based upon their understanding of the other sides’ cultural premises” Missions almost always work like that. Compradors as well. James Legge and Wang Tao. Some of these are not things that people have written much about lately, in part I think because denouncing compradors as imitation foreign devils seems pointless, and if you don’t do that how do you think about them? Reading White might help. Nice post and it sounds like a nice conversation. I would almost think China would be a great place to expand the Middle Ground by looking away from geographic borderlands. Obviously it is an idea which can be helpful in those places, but what about 19th century Shanghai? Calling it a Middle Ground does not really do anything, and the issue of who controls the territory was pretty settled, but there were a lot of examples of people who “tried to argue with one another based upon their understanding of the other sides’ cultural premises” Missions almost always work like that. Compradors as well. James Legge and Wang Tao. Some of these are not things that people have written much about lately, in part I think because denouncing compradors as imitation foreign devils seems pointless, and if you don’t do that how do you think about them? Reading White might help.

]]> By: Jonathan Dresner http://www.froginawell.net/china/2010/02/china-and-the-middle-ground/comment-page-1/#comment-166861 Jonathan Dresner Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:32:11 +0000 http://www.froginawell.net/china/?p=1643#comment-166861 Very interesting stuff. I particularly like how carefully bounded the theory is: It would be very easy to abuse this as a kind of "gateway drug" to a world systems theory version of Imperialism (and I'm sure it's not unrelated) but White is very careful, apparently, to avoid that kind of glib linkage. There are places and times where it might well be useful (what we now call Manchuria has, I think, been a Middle Ground at times). The idea of the destruction of memory that comes with the clarification of categories is a very important one, a trap that even historians have difficulty finding their way through much of the time. Very interesting stuff. I particularly like how carefully bounded the theory is: It would be very easy to abuse this as a kind of “gateway drug” to a world systems theory version of Imperialism (and I’m sure it’s not unrelated) but White is very careful, apparently, to avoid that kind of glib linkage. There are places and times where it might well be useful (what we now call Manchuria has, I think, been a Middle Ground at times).

The idea of the destruction of memory that comes with the clarification of categories is a very important one, a trap that even historians have difficulty finding their way through much of the time.

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