Wang - Pirates and publishers: a social history of copyright in modern China

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GROWING UP in a small family-run publishing house, I had books as my earliest playmates. For a long time, I was determined to become a writer, an editor, or a publisher, so that I could play a part in the magic of book production. Instead, I ended up becoming a historian studying the sociocultural making of publishing industry, as the reality behind my childhood fantasy of a magical book world is more enchanting.

One thing Ive learned since my childhood by watching my parents writing and publishing their works is that no author can make his or her book alone. This book would not have been completed without the unstinting help and encouragements I have received since I began to work on this project as a graduate student. At the University of Chicago, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my dissertation adviser Guy Alitto, for his endless support and mentorship over the years. Adrian Johns inspired me to work on piracy and copyright. Without his thought-provoking feedback, the project would not have been able to take its shape. Prasenjit Duara and Susan Burns taught me how to situate my project in a more comparative and transregional framework. A Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for History of Economics at the University of Cambridge offered me a unique opportunity to expand my intellectual horizon beyond Chinese history and book history. I am deeply grateful to Emma Rothschild for her generous support, warm guidance, and insightful comments about the history of law and economic life; she inspires me to become a better historian.

I benefited immensely from many scholars, colleagues, and friends around the world who lent their hands during my research and took time to discuss parts of the manuscripts with me. They include L Fangshang, Wang Fansen, Li Hsiao-ti, Wang Taisheng, Yamamoto Eishi, Hisatsugu Kusabu, Xiong Yuezhi, Wu Zhou, Hans van de Ven, Adam Chau, James Raven, Bill Cornish, Gareth Stedman Jones, Tim Harper, Cynthia Brokaw, Yuming He, Judith Zeitlin, William Alford, and Billy So, among others. I am grateful to Noto Hiroyoshi for helping me read Fukuzawa Yukichis petitions in our premodern Japanese tutorial class. I learned a lot from the long conversations Joseph McDermott and I had at St. Johns about the social and economic aspects of Chinese books. Joshua A. Fogel kindly read the first chapter and made constructive suggestions. Special thinks to Rob Culp and Jennifer Altehenger for letting me read their unpublished manuscripts when I extended my research to the post-1949 period. I was also privileged to discuss my project with the late T. H. Tsien (19102015) and Zhu Weizheng (19362012). Their incisive advice was invaluable, and I hope this book lives up to their expectations.

Thank you to the staff of Shanghai Municipal Archives; Shanghai Library; China No. 1 Archives; Diplomatic Records Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan; Archives in the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica; Academia Historica; National Archives and Records Administration College Park; National Taiwan University Library; Yale University Library; Harvard-Yenching Library; National Diet Library in Tokyo; Waseda University Library; Keio University Library; Fukuzawa Yukichi Research Center; Guo Tingyi Library; Fu Ssu-nien Library; Cambridge University Library; and the Baker Library at Harvard Business School. I am particularly grateful to Yuan Zhou and the staff of the East Asian Library at the University of Chicago for allowing me to work as a student clerk while exploring the wonderful Chinese collection in the Regenstein at the same time.

The extensive research would not have been possible without the support of the American Bibliographical Society, the Department of History and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, the Michael and Ling Markovitz Dissertation Fellowship, the Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge, and the Department of History at Indiana University. The Scholarly Writing Program at Indiana University held me accountable when I revised the manuscript. Without the encouragement and emotional support of Laura Plummer and my fellow writers in the faculty writing groups, I might never have been able to finish the manuscript.

The editors of the Histories of Economic Life series encouraged me to think critically about the interplay of knowledge production, intellectual property rights, and the cultural economy. I benefited enormously from the thoughtful and extensive comments of the two readers for Princeton University Press. It was a great pleasure to work with Quinn Fusting, Amanda Peery, and Eric Crahan, and I am thankful for the great care they gave to this manuscript. I am grateful to Thalia Leaf, Pamela Weidman, and Lauren Lepow for their editorial assistance and to Cynthia Col for producing its index. Thank you, Eugenia Lean, for introducing me to the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute series, and Kenneth Ross Yelsey for making it possible for this book to be in two different book series.

Ive learned tremendously from the knowledgeable audiences when I presented parts of this book at the following venues: East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law School; the Joint Center for History and Economics at Harvard University; the History and Economics seminar at the University of Cambridge; the China Research Seminar at the University of Cambridge; the Department of History at Indiana University; the Department of History at Duke University; the China studies lecture series at Ohio State University; the Tidings Lecture Series; the Center for Law, Society, and Culture, Mauser School of Law at Indiana University; the Modern East Asian Law workshop at Columbia University; the Academia Historica in Taiwan; the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica in Taipei; the Department of History and the College of Law at National Taiwan University in Taipei; the Institute of History at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences; the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies; the annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History; the World Congress of Economic History; and the Business History Conference.