Abstract:
This lecture introduced the concept of the “distributed imperial archive” of the Ming and Qing Chinese bureaucracy. This information-centered mapping of the administration of the late empires will provide a new perspective from which to consider the histories of centralization, decentralization, corruption, and modernization in the Qing dynasty.
Biography:
Maura Dykstra is an Assistant Professor at Caltech. A historian of law, economy, bureaucracy, and the state, she has held fellowships at the Taiwan Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Tokyo Law School, the Max Planck Institute for Legal Theory and Legal History, the Harvard Fairbank Center, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.