ual i oa 702 ‘The Journal of Asian Studies Yangtze delta region's relative neglect during the Maoist era, they might have attached greater significance to the region’ long history of artisanal and commercial and Shanghai's position as a burgeoning capitalist center during the Re In so doing, they might have given more weight to the preexisting though culture and played down their claim of the endogenous emergence of economic institutions latent enter- Yuv-watt Caw Department of Sociology, Hong Kong Baptist Untversity ywehu@hkhu.edushk; yinwehu@gmail.eom ‘The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth= Century China, By Dacian Scrrsren, Chicago: University of Chieago Press, 2011. vii, 344 pp. $45.00 (cloth) doi:10,1017/8002191 1813000764 Being able to distinguish between the government’ tax boats, tavelers’“wave-riding boats.” and officials’ luxurious “mizzen sailboats” was important pragmatic knowledge for those living along the Yangzi River. So was understanding whence peaels and jade, coal and charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur came, or how artisans made dyes and paints, processed salt, sesame cil, and gunpowder, and produced fine silks and elegant porcelains, These were ‘among the numerous topies that the minor official Song Yingxing (1587-1666?) addressed in his famous The Works of Heaven and the Inception of Things (Hangong kaiwu, pt. 1631), ionally regarded as a landmark text in the history of Chinese technology. ng himself did not consider Works of Heaven as a separate monograph on technology. Rather, he wrote itas the final part of a politically motivated magnum opus comprising si clistinet titles. [twas eighteenth-century scholars who first detached Works of Heaven From its five more explicitly political companion texts and celebrated its unique technical achievernents. Nineteenth-century compilers later related Song’s eightocs flclds of practical knowledge to agriculture, statecraft, and technology, and subsequent generations of historians of Chinese science and technology have continued to interpret the text more or less within these three domains. Bucking this century-long trend, Dagmar Schiifer reintegrates Works of Heaven into Song's original vision, revealing the historical catalysts that inspired it. At the same time, Schiifer's deft rehistoricization uses Works of Heaven to ilkuminate Song's broader intellectual, social, and political world, Bom in 1587, Ray Huang’ “Year of No Significance,” Song Yingxing’s life spanned the end of the Ming, the transition to Manchu rule, and the first two decades of the Qing dynasty. Schafer shows that his writings must be understood as a failed official's intellectual response to the end of Ming crises. The six core chapters of the book are orga nized around the concept of affairs: the private affairs of Song’ life history: the “allair of honor” in 1636 that motivated Song to use his writings to bring a better order to the world; the publie affairs that formed his career trajectory; the written affairs that ilhami- nate his textual responses; the affairs of nature that Song, articulated as complex trans- formations of gi; and finally, a concluding chapter on acoustical phenomenon, a specific dimension of the affairs of nature. This microhistory approach makes Schiifer’sBook Reviews—China 703 analysis a Far neore illuminating window onto early seventeenth-eentury Chinese eon ceptions of nature than all previous efforts lo cherry pick the contents of Works of Heaven for evidence of China's technological know-how. As such it is comparable to Carlo Ginzhurg’s exemplary mierohistory, The Cheese und the Worms: The Casinos of « Sisteenth- Century Miller (London: Rontledge, 3980), in its excavation of the rmigue concepiulizations of an otherwise unremarkable memher of the local elite, nether by situating Song. Yingsing’s scholarship within his politcal-soctal-ntellectead Schuller allows his life story to be productively read along with those of the better Jnnown playwrights (e.g, Kong Shangren), novelists (og. Li Yn), historians (eg, Zhang Dai), snd avtists (eg, Li Riliua) of seventecnth-centiny China In addition to unpacking every known dimension of Song’s life and He's wosk, Schiter also imovatively uses Works of Heaven as a special lens through which t0 view craftsmanship, craft knowledge production, and concepts about natural processes during the seventeenth century. Her hook, however, is neither on the crafting of things, as the title suggests, nor even on technical inowledge in China per se. For details on technological know-how in imperial China, readers woul! do better to revisit Joseph Needham’ monumental Seience aud Civilisation in China. Rather, itis about how one scholar took otherwise marginalized exalt and teelmologieal knowledge and gave it greater political and cultural signifieanee than anyone else had previonsly done. Schiifer shows that Song wrote Works of Heaven as the final product of a politically motivated writing campaign in response ta the empezor appotnting a brash anlitary off- cial (whose criticisms Song nonetheless agreed with) disectly toa high-level metwopolitan position in 1636, ‘Technical knowledge wus important in Songs campaign beeanse it was rounded in conerete transformations of i. Schiifer thus elneidates Songs complex thought processes hy interpreting how he used discowses on gf, yin-yang, and the five phases to reconcephalize natusal processes and craft production as a nevr fowndation for philosophical reflection By taking this appruach to the sociology of scientific knowledge in China, Shier brings Song and his book out of the narrower history of Chinese technology to integrate hint into the broader Bele of Chinese history as well as the global history of science hoyond East Asia. For these and other qualities, the History of Science Society awarded this books their 2012 Plizer Award for most outstanding book on the history of science. Just as Songs Works of Meacen opens up the world of enifismen’s knowledge in sewenteenth-century China, Schitfers Crafting 10,000 Things arguably exemplifies an ithr- minating approach to the exalt of writing on the global history of seiones in the present Manta Hansow Johns Hopkins University mbansond@jhmiedt ‘Merchants of Canton and Macao: Polities and Stratugies In Bightcenth-Contury Chinese Trade, By Pawn, A. Vaw Dyke, Hong Kong; Hong Kong University Press, 2011, sei, 545 pp, $80.00 (cloth). {10,101 725002191 181 3000776 Senior scholars in the field of the maritinie history of Asia have recently produced a number of nmultivolume studies, notably those by Roderich Ptak, Peter Borsehherg, and