Ronald Chung-yam Po, Heidelberg University

Conceptualizing the World in Eighteenth Century China

This article attempts to examine the evolution of the Chinese worldview in the eighteenth century. Throughout the course of Chinese imperial history, spanning from the Han Empire to the Qing era, Chinese had long been frenzy to organize and arrange the known space of the globe. For several centuries the Chinese worldview was shaped around the axis of the so called “Han ethnicity.” This mono-cultural approach forms a dichotomous relationship between China and the rest of the world. By the Qing period, however, the ethnic attachment of the Chinese worldview was challenged by serious evidential researches (kaozhengxue考證學) and professionalized geo-historical studies ( shidixue史地學). Chinese cultural elites, especially the geo-historians, of the eighteenth century began to conceive China as a multi- instead of a mono-cultural nation. They could no longer shut their eye to the “new” world and refuse to refine their worldview. The gradual transformation of Chinese literati’s Weltanschauung was shown in their changing attitudes towards national minorities within the empire and European sea powers in the Asian Sea. By investigating the Chinese geographical awareness of frontier regions in the eighteenth century, which resulted from the interaction of Confucian philology (jingxue經學), historical studies with practical values (jingshi shixue經世史學), evidential research, and chorography (fanzhixue方志學), I seek to scrutinize how Chinese cultural elites in the early modern period (re)conceptualized the world in a way which is different from the previous dynasties.