Professor Xin Zhang's academic lecture at Nankai University on September 18, published by Source: The Paper （澎湃）∙ Private History on 2025-09-28. This is translated by Grok.

 

The Development Trajectory and Theoretical Evolution of Historical Research Since Modern Times

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"Why do Westerners study history?" In the 19th century, Western scientists studied human history primarily to find the laws of human social development, hoping to grasp social development and future changes by understanding these laws. People live in "local" environments, facing natural and social relationships; understanding history means understanding relationships between people and between people and nature. People hope to control their surroundings, but society is constantly changing. Studying history helps people understand past living environments, thereby choosing current ways of survival.

This desire to find laws guided European scholars to create modernization ideology, which became mainstream around the 1950s. Modernity theory posits that societies transition from traditional to modern, with modern society defined using Western society as a template, featuring characteristics such as bureaucratic politics, private property, industrialization, law, and rationalism. Books on modernization theory written by European scholars all aim to prove the modernity, scientific, and theoretical nature of the modern rise of the West. However, modernity theory has problems, such as judging modernization by using Western countries as models, assuming the whole world will follow their development mode. A typical representative is dependency theory, which emerged in the late 1960s, arguing that non-Western countries rely on the West to achieve modernization, which evidently erases the unique social and natural characteristics of non-Western countries.

 

 

In the 1950s, influenced by the end of World War II, a new discipline—social science— emerged among Western countries, and by the 1960s and 1970s, a trend of studying local history appeared, further shaking the foundations of Eurocentrism. In the 1980s, postmodernism in historiography was born. Postmodernist thought first appeared in France and Germany, where holders of postmodernist theory began to doubt that truth and reality are subjective human constructs, proposing that cognition itself may not be objective and expressing doubts about the truthful writing of history. Postmodernist theory

 

greatly impacted modernity theory, and with the emergence of new research topics such as colonial history, social history, women's history, and LGBTQ history, people's gaze on world history gradually shifted downward, giving more attention to the lives of ordinary people at the bottom.

 

 

History flows endlessly like a long river, and the social environment in which people live is constantly changing; the river of history is also a river of transformation. The basic point of historiography lies in finding the laws of social development based on past experiences.

Postcolonial studies led people to pay attention to non-Western-centered countries and colonies, thereby giving rise to global history. After the emergence of global history, many scholars studying world history began to transform. Kenneth Pomeranz's "The Great Divergence" holds significant importance in global history research, as it pioneered new methods by comparing the Yangtze Delta with Britain, drawing attention to Asia and other countries. Human society has fluidity, and transnationalism observes connections among people across borders. American scholar Akira Iriye was the first to propose the concept of studying transnational history, emphasizing the importance of non-state actor connections.

 

 

Why is the "Global" Embedded in the "Local"? The Steam Age Stories of an Inland River Town

 

 

The wave of globalization is not only present in the grand landscapes of coastal metropolises but is also deeply embedded in the everyday life of inland towns. Zhenjiang is located at the intersection of the Yangtze River trade system. In the 19th century, Zhenjiang served as both a gateway to Nanjing and an important fulcrum for Shanghai's rise. Through Zhenjiang, one can illustrate modern China's tributary trade system by using a point to represent the whole. British merchant ships brought not only the opium trade but also transformations in local commercial networks; the introduction of Western technology changed traditional shipping and economic models; and the late Qing government's responses to the external world were reshaped in the games among local elites. According to Hamashita Takeshi's theory of the Asian economic circle, Asia had long had a tributary trade system centered on China, independent of Western economic systems. After China's ports opened in the 20th century, treaty ports replaced the trade cities under the previous tributary system, forming a trade network centered on Shanghai. Hamashita denies the previous notion that European capitalist expansion impacted and opened China's doors;

 

instead, he argues that after the ports opened, Chinese merchant guilds connected Shanghai with Tokyo through British steamships and cotton trade, thereby promoting the transformation of the modern tributary trade system and forming a new Asian trade circle. This trade circle mainly connected with Japan, replacing part of Hong Kong's status. This change led to the disintegration and reorganization of China's traditional trade system. By studying Zhenjiang, one can see the operational methods of China's traditional trade system, such as the important roles of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal routes in trade. To examine how Zhenjiang repositioned itself amid the transformation of the trade system, Professor Zhang Xin believes that connections should be established between Zhenjiang's commerce and the East Asian trade network, and the impact of Western technology dissemination on modern China should be explored.

 

 

"Grinding In: The Globalization Journey of Modern Zhenjiang" focuses on the theme "The Steam Age Stories of an Inland River Town," leading readers back to 19th-century Zhenjiang to listen to a global history symphony composed of the roar of steam engines, the waves of the Yangtze River, and the livelihoods of ordinary people. This book is not a traditional grand narrative but reveals a delicate and moving historical scroll through a large number of dusty private diaries, memoirs, and local archives, allowing us to explore and reflect: How is global history written by ordinary people? How does technological change reshape our lives? In the fissures of great era changes, how should individuals position themselves and move forward? In the book, Professor Zhang Xin connects local changes with global changes, identifying three main trends in world development—war, commerce and economic changes, and technological changes—and combines them with Zhenjiang's specific situation for research. The content is divided into three parts: Zhenjiang in the Opium War, how global economy led to Zhenjiang's economic transformation, and the acceptance of global technology dissemination in Zhenjiang, understanding and experiencing globalization from a local perspective.

 

 

During the First Opium War, British forces once sailed up the river to attack Zhenjiang, aiming to cut oi the Grand Canal waterway and threaten the Qing court. The first part of the book introduces the preparations and reactions of local government, civilians, and troops to the British invasion. After the Opium War, Zhenjiang gradually lost its status as a regional trade center. Realizing that the external environment was undergoing strong changes, Zhenjiang's local society did not adopt a passive or confrontational attitude.

Instead, they quickly responded by actively participating to find a way out. After Shanghai opened as a port, Hankou and Tianjin became the most important ports. How Zhenjiang

 

adapted to this change, shifting from Grand Canal trade to Yangtze River trade, and then joining the Asian trade circle through Yangtze trade, is the main content of the subsequent second and third parts of the book.

 

 

In the case of Zhenjiang, Professor Zhang Xin introduces how local society accepted and utilized steamboat (i.e., small steamship) technology. This technology was an external impact, used by Western invaders. So how did local society view new technology, and what did they do in action? The term used by Professor Zhang is "grinding in" (Negotiate). The experience of grinding in could be entirely negative, such as grinding in with modern imperialism. Professor Zhang Xin studied correspondence files between Qing oiicials and the court, plus diaries from British forces and local people, restoring a large number of historical details. When British forces invaded Zhenjiang, the pain of local grinding in reached a peak instantly. In the summer of 1842, as British forces assembled outside the city, panic swept Zhenjiang. Local residents were already suspicious of foreigners, and they had heard of the suiering caused by British forces in Zhapu two months earlier. What followed was a wave of suicides and mercy killings: to prevent family members from falling into invaders' hands, hundreds of women chose to commit suicide and kill their children or died at the hands of male family members. A prominent feature of the Zhenjiang defense battle was the large number of female suicides, becoming part of the city's painful memory. British observers attributed this to the ritual suicide tradition in "Oriental culture." In Professor Zhang Xin's view, however, it was actually a unique event—a tragic result of the collision and friction between 19th-century Chinese local forces and global forces.

 

 

The grinding-in process was painful but by no means purely passive. After paying huge sacrifices and costs, local society had to learn to deal with invaders and various external forces. In this process, local society often had to overcome obstructions from oiicials and existing concepts. For example, with steamboat technology, oiicials provided no professional or financial support but instead demanded bribes from merchants. And once incidents like steam engine explosions, shipwrecks, collisions, and drownings occurred, local society would be drawn into doubts and controversies about the new technology, with oiicials and foreign forces intervening. Grinding in involves mobilizing internal forces to resolve external threats, thereby making local society participants in globalization rather than mere acceptors, accommodators, or adapters in the eyes of outsiders.

 

Drawing on primary sources including handwritten diaries, the book presents a grassroots perspective of this city's experience with globalization. Unlike traditional global history research, Professor Zhang Xin emphasizes that local society is not a passive recipient but an active shaper. In the face of changes brought by globalization, locals may lack resources and complete understanding, but their responses to impacts can be proactive. Through a large amount of local historical materials, it reveals how Zhenjiang people flexibly adjusted strategies amid the tides of international trade, war, and technological development to seek survival and even prosperity. How ordinary civilians coped with traumatic experiences in the Opium War; how Zhenjiang intermediaries provided financial support for Shanghai's rise as a world-class commercial center; how merchants first used small steamships to transport goods to markets; how Zhenjiang's shipping guilds not only accepted Western banking systems but also used them to expand their commercial influence in the Yangtze River basin; how local oiicials, in dealings with Western forces, did not fully compromise but tried to leverage the international environment for local benefits. All these cases challenge the long-held stereotypical impression in Western academia of "passive acceptance," allowing us to see the complex agency of Chinese local society in the globalization process. As the author describes in the Zhenjiang case, Chinese people were by no means passive recipients; they skillfully used, resisted change, and created changes and opportunities for themselves. From the book, we discover not how local communities were wary of external forces, inward-looking and closed to protect traditions, but rather their curiosity about global factors. They actively adapted, identified and seized opportunities, striving to enter globalization networks and benefit from them.

 

 

Reconstructing 19th-Century China's Position in Global History

 

 

In previous global history research, 19th-century China is often seen as a period of "passive beating," with narratives of the Opium Wars, ceding territory and paying indemnities, and the Self-Strengthening Movement filled with colors of failure. However, "Grinding In" provides a diierent perspective: while globalization's pressures certainly brought challenges, they also drove changes in local society and even shaped certain characteristics of modern China. As a medium-sized city, Zhenjiang's economic and social changes are not only closely related to metropolises like Shanghai but also become key links in understanding China's overall transformation. One of the book's greatest highlights is its demonstration of globalization's "glocalization" process through specific individuals and local events. How Zhenjiang merchants used Western banking systems to contribute capital to Shanghai becoming the Far East financial center; how local shipping industry

 

adjusted business models under competition from foreign steamships; how ordinary Zhenjiang people displayed dual strategies of resistance and adaptation when facing external cultural impacts. When the Opium War's gunfire blasted open the national gates, when the modern commercial network centered on Shanghai continuously expanded, when steamships sailed upstream into inland rivers, Zhenjiang and its people along the Yangtze River did not passively accept fate's arrangements. With astonishing resilience, wisdom, and adaptability, they participated in this unprecedented global change and, inadvertently, became promoters of China's modernization process. Globalization is not a unidirectional Western expansion but a complex process of interaction, negotiation, and transformation at the local level.

 

 

In previous world history narratives, the narrative subjects are often Western colonizers or observers, mostly adopting Western perspectives and lacking detailed records from within local societies. In the book, Professor Zhang Xin abandons the overall narrative mode, attempting to understand globalization's impact from a local perspective, starting from trade to comprehend the changes globalization brought to Zhenjiang. Steamboats originated from Western invention and were already a mature technology when they arrived in Zhenjiang. But in Zhenjiang, the process from acceptance to adoption of steamboat technology, trying suitable usage environments and overcoming technical diiiculties, constituted a unique process that is part of global history. The intent is to explore the specific impacts of Western technology on the daily lives of people in non-European countries since modern times. The book shifts from world history to global history, breaking Eurocentrism, providing facts of local occurrences and observations of local social changes. Professor Zhang Xin ingeniously adopts both "top-down" and "bottom-up" dual perspectives in global history, cleverly linking changes in the world pattern with the daily practices of local society. This book is not only a local chronicle of Zhenjiang but also an outstanding case for understanding how globalization "takes root" at the local level.

Through the perspective of Zhenjiang, this medium-sized city in the Jiangnan region, it reconstructs how China groped forward in the great changes of globalization from the 19th to early 20th century. Britain's gunboats, Shanghai's rise, the rumbling of steamships— these themes that seem grand and abstract in history books are transformed in this book into specific people and stories. The "bottom-up" global history perspective allows us to see how Zhenjiang people redefined their destinies under the impacts of war, commerce, and technology.

 

Professor Zhang Xin believes that the global and the local are in a symbiotic relationship, a continuum, and a whole; the global is embedded in the local, and global changes penetrate the local through interactive grinding in, integrating the global and the local into one. This view is similar to that of Professor Dominic Sachsenmaier in "Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled," both emphasizing the close connection between global history and microhistory or local history. Regarding the distinctions and breakthroughs between transnational history theory and local history or regional history, he mentions the concept of "translocalism," describing it as using transnational history methods to study the local, believing that localities also have circulation, and transnational history methods can be applied to study the local, but one cannot be confined to the local; the local must be connected to the global. For the problem that microhistory research may lead to fragmentation, Professor Zhang Xin believes that research cannot be confined to small incisions but must start from a grand vision, grasp the big direction, use local research to explain major historical issues, and find key points from seemingly fragmented things to explore history.

 

 

"Grinding In" is undoubtedly a model for the combined research of global history and microhistory, prompting us to rethink the essence of globalization. Globalization has never been a one-sided expansion but the result of interactions between local societies and global forces. In 19th-century Zhenjiang, what we see is not passive acceptance but adaptation, resistance, innovation, and reshaping. In today's world, we are still experiencing collisions between globalization and local forces—whether it's the impact of multinational corporations on regional economies or the shocks of emerging technological trends on traditional cultures, all remind us that globalization is far from a top-down process, but a history jointly shaped by every place and every individual. Professor Zhang Xin's book is not only a profound exploration of 19th-century China but also provides a mirror, deeply inspiring us to think about the current global changes.

 

 

(This article is compiled based on Professor Zhang Xin's academic lecture at Nankai University on September 18, focusing on the research methods of "Grinding In: The Globalization Journey of Modern Zhenjiang" and its implications for historical research. Hosted by Associate Professor Xing Chengji of Nankai University School of History, with scholars including Professor Bian Li, Professor Liu Xiaoqin, Professor Wang Meiping, Associate Professor Luo Xuan, Associate Professor Teng Kaiwei, Associate Professor Wang Wenlong, Associate Professor Chen Tuo, and more than 50 undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students from various majors in the School of History participating in the dialogue.)

 

 

Responsible Editor: Yu Shujuan

Picture Editor: Zhang Ying

Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang

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