Wei Yuan
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Wei Yuan (Chinese: 魏源; Pinyin: Wèi Yuán; 1794-1856). Chinese scholar from Shaoyang in Hunan province, moved to Yangzhou in 1831, where he remained for the rest of his life. Wei obtained the provincial degree (juren) in the Imperial examinations and subsequently worked in the secretariat of several prominent statesmen, such as Lin Zexu. Wei was deeply concerned with crisis facing China at the early nineteenth century, but while he remained loyal to the Qing dynasty, he also sketched a number of proposals for the improvement of the administration of the empire.
From an early age, Wei espoused the New Text school of Confucianism and he also became a vocal member of the statecraft school, which advocated practial learning in opposition to the allegedly barren evidentiary scholarship as represented by scholars like Dai Zhen. Among other things, Wei advocated sea transport of grain to the capital instead of using the Grand Canal and he also advocated a strengthening of the Qing Empire's frontier defense. In order to alleviate the demographic crisis in China Proper, Wei also spoke in favor of large scale emigration of Han Chinese into Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang)
Later in his career he became increasingly concerned with the threat from the Western powers and maritime defense. Military history of the Qing Dynasty (Shèngwu ji 聖武記) and a narrative work on the Opium War (Daoguang yangsou zhengfu ji 道光洋艘征撫記). Today, he is mostly known for his work from 1844, Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms (Hǎiguó túzhì 海國圖志), which consisted of Western material collected by Lin Zexu during and after the First Opium War.
[edit] References
- Hummel, Arthur William, ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644-1912). 2 vols. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1943.
- Leonard, Jane Kate. Wei Yüan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, 1984.
