Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; A note on conventions; Reigns of Ming and Qing emperors; Introduction; 1. Death and the state in imperial China: continuities; 2. The reorientation of Ming attitudes toward mourning; 3. The early Qing transformation of mourning practice; 4. The bureaucratization of the Confucian li; 5. The death of Xiaoxian and the crisis of Qianlong rule; 6. Death and Chinese society; Select bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

Kutcher's study of mourning demonstrates how Qing China's Manchu leaders quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system.

Reviews

"Noman Kutcher has written an engaging and provocative book about personal and political aspects of mouring in seventeenth and eighteenth- century China...This book should be read by all who are interestes in late imperial culture and politics." Amer His Rev