This first book-length study of gender relations in the Lower Yangzi region during the High Qing era (c. 1683-1839) challenges enduring late-nineteenth-century perspectives that emphasized the oppression and subjugation of Chinese women. Placing women at the center of the High Qing era shows how gender relations shaped the economic, political, social, and cultural changes of the age, and gives us a sense of what women felt and believed, and what they actually did, during this period.

Most analyses of gender in High Qing times have focused on literature and on the writings of the elite; this book broadens the scope of inquiry to include women's work in the farm household, courtesan entertainment, and women’s participation in ritual observances and religion. In dealing with literature, it shows how women's poetry can serve the historian as well as the literary critic, drawing on one of the first anthologies of women's writing compiled by a woman to examine not only literary sensibilities and intimate emotions, but also political judgments, moral values, and social relations.

After an introductory chapter that evaluates the historiography of Chinese women, the book surveys High Qing history, charts the female life course, and discusses women's place in writing and learning, in entertainment, at work, and in religious practice. The concluding chapter returns to broad historiographic questions about where women figure in space and time and why we can no longer write histories that ignore them.

'Anyone who has struggled to recover the extensive 18th-century discussion of human racial variation will welcome with enthusiasm Robert Bernasconi’s set. It is judicious in selection and ample in coverage. I especially welcome the decision to reprint a series of texts by Johann Blumenbach, documenting the crucial evolution of his position. Including not only early texts from Maupertuis and Buffon but also the texts of Kant’s debate with Georg Forster, the series offers a coherent backdrop for assessment of the interaction between Kant’s philosophy of science and the ongoing research in the life sciences at the close of the century. It will prove a valued resource to all historians of science, philosophy and culture of the 18th century.’
--John Zammito

Concepts of Race in the Eighteenth Century is an exciting new collection of rare primary source materials tracing the development of a scientific concept of race in the eighteenth century. With contributions from some of the most eminent scientists of the eighteenth century, this set is indispensable for a reassessment of the historical discussion of the concept of race. Over time, various misconceptions around the concept of race have developed including ideas about ‘race purity’, the effects of racial hybridization, ‘superior and inferior races’, race and mental differences, race and culture. This set examines the different viewpoints of influential eighteenth-century philosophical and scientific figures.

The opening two volumes offer contributions by Carolus Linnaeus (or Carl Linné, 1707--78), Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698--1759) and Count de Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc (1707--88). Their vagueness about the concept of race serves to highlight the critical importance of Immanuel Kant’s definition of race in his essay ‘Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen’. Both the 1775 and 1777 versions of this essay are included, as well as his two subsequent essays on race. An essay by Christoph Girtanner (1760--1800) is also included, a work which Kant himself recommended to scholars as an accurate reflection of his mature views on the subject. Contrary to the belief that Johann Blumenbach (1752--1840) was the founder of a scientific concept of race, a comparison of the three editions of Blumenbach’s De generis humani varietate nativa shows that he did not employ the concept of race until the third edition. Blumenbach was the first to divide the human race into five races: Caucasian, Ethiopian, American, Mongolian and Malay. With the reprinting of all four editions, a systematic study of the development of Blumenbach’s thought is now possible.

The English language discussion on the diversity of human types is represented here by Samuel Stanhope Smith’s(1750--1819) An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species and Charles White’s (1728--1813) An Account of the Regular Gradation of Man. With new introductory essays by Robert Bernasconi, these previously inaccessible crucial texts will provide an invaluable resource for scholars of science, philosophy and culture.

--rare and inaccessible texts tracing the development of scientific concepts of race in the late eighteenth century
--contains works by some of the most eminent scientists of the century, including Linnaeus, Maupertuis and Buffon
--presents some of the key texts needed in order to assess the roles of Kant and Blumenbach in the race debate

G. J. Barker-Benfield documents the emergence of the culture of sensibility that transformed British society of the eighteenth century. His account focuses on the rise of new moral and spiritual values and the struggle to redefine the group identities of men and women. Drawing on the full spectrum of eighteenth-century thought from Adam Smith to John Locke, from the Earl of Shaftesberry to Dr. George Cheyne, and especially Mary Wollstonecraft, Barker-Benfield offers an innovative and compelling way to understand how Britain entered the modern age.