Thank you very much, Frank, for the introduction.

So you can see here my topic.

Basically, weather proclamations in late imperial China.

My background is that China in the 17th, 18th centuries saw a series of varying climatic

conditions ranging from cold and unstable weather in the late 1600s to a more pleasant

and stable condition in the 1700s.

At this time, China had developed a strong political power and also authoritarian culture.

But in the end, everything depended on our culture, which in turn depends on the weather

and the climate.

So due to this immense importance of the climate to society, I will in this presentation look

at how people thought they could predict the weather and climate.

So I will approach this topic, which is basically weather proclamations, through these four

questions.

Where can we find sources to late imperial Chinese proclamations practices today?

Who used these proclamations practices?

In what way do they work?

And did these practices at all work?

At the end, I will also talk a little bit about my present research and how this research

can be placed within that.

This presentation will be placed within the research I'm doing here at the IKGF in Anlangen.

This presentation is based partially on my present research here.

It's also partially based on points taken from my PhD dissertation that I finished last

year.

Right, so I'll first say something about the background setting of my research.

First from my climatic point of view, I believe China through this period that I here defined

as 1600 to 1722, so covering the last decades of the Ming as well as the early Qing, since

I discovered that I actually use a couple of examples also from this period.

So we can see varying climate conditions.

First a period of cold and unstable weather from about 1600 to 1720.

I base myself here on the research of former scholars such as Mark Elvin and Robert Marx

and especially Li Bozhong for this simplified structure.

So first a period of cooling weather, which itself is a part of the so-called Little Ice

Age, which spans a larger period from about 1300 to perhaps 1850, followed by a type of

better warming weather, more amenable conditions from about 1730 to sometime in the 19th century,

maybe around 1830.

So we can find parallels between this climate history and the social and political history,

especially that in the beginning of the 17th century and in particular in the years about

1637 to 1645, we see some of the worst conditions in modern history with severe drought in large

parts of China.

It's believed that these conditions contributed to the collapse of the Ming dynasty, both

through contributing to rebellions, that people lose their livelihoods and thus are prone

to more extreme measures, and also at the same time through harming local administration

and making it more difficult for the authorities to govern the country.

So after this collapse of the Ming in the first half of the 17th century, we have the

state building by the new Qing dynasty, which also faces severe climatic challenges at different

points, for example in the 1690s, which was a particularly cold decade, but in general

manages this much better than the Ming dynasty had done, despite them climatic challenges.

So I will base myself mainly on sources from the first two Qing dynasty reigns, Xunzhi and

Kangxi, covering 1644 to 1722, but also using some examples from my PhD dissertation covering

the first half of the 17th century.