The Late Qing Shanghai: Western Material And New Knowledge Groups (1843-1894), The Modern Experience

Taking as point of departure the experience of modernity of the late Qing Dynasty intellectual community in Shanghai, the present dissertation analyzes the enlightening effect of modern material civilization on modern Chinese thought, in an effort to explain why an important group of thinkers in modern Chinese history, namely the Westernizationists, came into existence in the city of Shanghai.The present paper dwells on the experience of modernity of modern West em civilization of the modem-minded intellectuals of the Late Qing Dynasty by analysis of travelogues, pictorials, poems and newspapers of that time, and by delineation of such experience, comes to the conclusion that modern Western civilization was transformed from social resources into thought resources and then elevated to experience of modernity through the process of experience, imagination, enlargement, comparison , choice and finally the genesis of experience of modernity.The value of the present paper lies in the discovery of the role of enlightenment Shanghai played in the Late Qing Dynasty. The experience of modernity brought by the appearance of modern Western civilization in that city provided the quantum leap in thought that was requisite for the birth of the Wester nizationist group which played a crucial part in the history of modern Chinese thought.