Biographical Traditions in Early Modern East Asia, 1500-1900

This edited collection is composed of four uniquely authored chapters, each of which examines collective identity in early modern East Asia through biography and historical accounts. In addition, an introductory chapter lays out the overall principles and concerns of biography in Early Modern East Asia. The book covers five civilizations (China, Japan, Ryukyu Kingdom, and Vietnam) while also touching on relations among these civilizations. This volume considers how biographies or life stories can help us better understand these civilizations. Each contributor explores shared concerns about biography, writing, group and individual identity, and the implications of these on the overall genre of biography in East Asia in the early modern period.

Ihor Pidhainy is a Lecturer in the Department of History and Geography at Georgia Gwinnett College, USA. Ann Waltner is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota, USA.

1. Ann Waltner; Introduction to Biography in East Asia in the Early Modern Period.- 2. Ihor Pidhainy; Finding Family through Chinese Biography: The Yangs of Xindu, Sichuan.- 3. Jolan Yi; Theory of Writing Biographies of Women in Eighteenth-Century China: A Case Study of Zhang Xue-cheng (1738-1801).- 4. Mark McNally; The Meiji-Qing Dispute Over Okinawa: Irredentism and the Ideological Potency of Royal Biography, 1872-1880.- 5. George Dutton; Pham Dinh Ho (1768-1839) and the Vietnamese Biographical Tradition.- 6. Sungoh Yoon; Countering Qing Intervention with the Legacy of Ming Emperor Hongwu: How Ming Loyalists Remained as Ideal Subjects in Nineteenth-Century Choson Korea.