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Pamela Kyle Crossley

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Pamela Kyle Crossley (born 18 November 1955) is a historian of modern China , northern Asia, and global history and is the Charles and Elfriede Collis Professor of History, Dartmouth College . She is a founding appointment of the Dartmouth Society of Fellows.

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188-476: She is author of The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800: An Interpretive History (2010), as well as influential studies of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and leading textbooks in global history. Crossley is known for an interpretation of the source of twentieth-century identities . In her view overland conquest by the great empires of early modern Eurasia produced a special form of rulership which gave high priority to

376-514: A 1755 pronouncement by the Qianlong Emperor , a Manchu language memorial on the conquest of Dzungaria , and other Qing documents. According to Zhao, the Qing emperors accepted their own Chinese identity, but it was not passive assimilation, as they actively changed old China from a Han-centered cultural notion to a multi-ethnic political entity. In other words, Manchu rulers gave a new meaning to

564-462: A "Chinese" face was provided to Han Chinese subjects by the pragmatic Qing emperors, while different ethnic faces were presented to the various non-Han subjects (including Manchus, Mongols and Tibetans) in other regions of their expansive multicultural empire. Nevertheless, he pointed out " China proper " (often designated 内地 meaning "inner territory" in Chinese) refers to the core eighteenth provinces of

752-540: A "Manchu-centered" school and another group who view the Qing empire as a "historical object" in its own right (not only a phase in Chinese history). She criticized the "Manchu-centered" school for romanticism and relying on disproved theories about "Altaic" language, culture and history. She also argued that the analyses used by the group called "New Qing Historians" by Waley-Cohen and later popular with Chinese historians were various and conflicting, and that "New Qing History" as

940-554: A "responsible cabinet" led by Yikuang , Prince Qing. However, it became known as the " royal cabinet ", as five of its thirteen members, were part of or related to the royal family. The Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911 set off a series of uprisings. By November, 14 of the 22 provinces had rejected Qing rule. This led to the creation of the Republic of China , in Nanjing on 1 January 1912, with Sun Yat-sen as its provisional head. Seeing

1128-454: A "school" could not reasonably be extended beyond the small group who actually called themselves writers of "New Qing History." On the other hand, she seems to have included herself in the Qing empire school, which she calls "Qing Studies." She sees the Qing empire not as a Manchu empire but as a "simultaneous" system (like many other historical empires) in which the emperor is not subordinate to any single culture. Of Crossley's books, only What

1316-608: A Han revolt in 1623, Nurhaci turned against them and enacted discriminatory policies and killings against them. He ordered that Han who assimilated to the Jurchen (in Jilin) before 1619 be treated equally with Jurchens, not like the conquered Han in Liaodong. Hong Taiji recognized the need to attract Han Chinese, explaining to reluctant Manchus why he needed to treat the defecting Ming general Hong Chengchou leniently. Hong Taiji incorporated Han into

1504-480: A campaign to unify the nearby tribes . By 1616, however, he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou so as to be able to proclaim himself Khan of the Later Jin dynasty in reference to the previous Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty . Two years later, Nurhaci announced the " Seven Grievances " and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship in order to complete the unification of those Jurchen tribes still allied with

1692-482: A charismatic quality with no basis in fact. She disagreed with earlier scholars that Manchus had been "sinicized", but she did not argue that Manchu culture in modern China was the traditional culture of Manchuria. Rather, it was a new culture of individual Manchu communities in China, what she called "the sense of difference that has no outward sign". Many historians such as Joanna Waley-Cohen have named Crossley as related to

1880-508: A collection of peoples and deserves comparison with other contemporary empires, whereas traditionalist historians reject the comparison of Imperial China to imperialist powers. Some of the New Qing historians followed Evelyn Rawski calling the Qing "Early Modern," rather than "late imperial," on the grounds that the Manchus created a centralized empire (with a much larger territory and population) that

2068-637: A desperate situation, the Qing court brought Yuan Shikai back to power. His Beiyang Army crushed the revolutionaries in Wuhan at the Battle of Yangxia . After taking the position of Prime Minister he created his own cabinet , with the support of Empress Dowager Longyu . However, Yuan Shikai decided to cooperate with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries to overthrow the Qing dynasty. New Qing History The New Qing History ( simplified Chinese : 新清史学派 ; traditional Chinese : 新清史學派 , sometimes abbreviated as NQH )

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2256-412: A direct threat to the throne. So much so that upon his death he was bestowed the extraordinary posthumous title of Emperor Yi ( 義皇帝 ), the only instance in Qing history in which a Manchu "prince of the blood" ( 親王 ) was so honored. Two months into Shunzhi's personal rule, however, Dorgon was not only stripped of his titles, but his corpse was disinterred and mutilated. Dorgon's fall from grace also led to

2444-644: A disappointed civil service examination candidate who, influenced by reading the Old Testament in translation, had a series of visions and announced himself to be the son of God, the younger brother of Jesus Christ, sent to reform China. In 1851, Hong launched an uprising in Guizhou and established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with himself as its king. Within this kingdom, slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium smoking, footbinding, judicial torture, and

2632-599: A former minor Ming official, who established a short-lived Shun dynasty . The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor , committed suicide when the city fell to the rebels, marking the effective end of the dynasty. Li Zicheng then led rebel forces numbering some 200,000 to confront Ming general Wu Sangui , stationed at Shanhai Pass of the Great Wall to defend the capital against the approaching Manchu-led armies. Wu, to survive, had to ally with one of his adversaries against

2820-518: A handful of American scholars began to learn Manchu in the 1980s and early 1990s and took advantage of archival holdings in this and other non-Chinese languages that had long been held in Taipei and Beijing but had previously attracted little scholarly attention to gain new insight onto the Qing as a state founded by a people who did not initially see themselves as "Chinese" and were originally perceived by Han elites as " barbarians ". This research provided

3008-520: A line between Qing dynasty and China. He wrote that it was under the Qing that "China" transformed into a definition of referring to lands where the "state claimed sovereignty", rather than only the territories inhabited by the people of the Central Plains (or the Han Chinese) by the end of the 18th century. Evelyn Rawski also wrote in 2015 that while the term Zhongguo (i.e. China) was "never part of

3196-510: A misunderstanding that Manchus were afraid of water. Han bannermen carried out the fighting and killing, casting conquest of the Mingdoubt on the claim that fear of the water led to the coastal evacuation and ban on maritime activities. Even though a poem refers to the soldiers carrying out massacres in Fujian as "barbarians", both Han Green Standard Army and Han bannermen were involved and carried out

3384-483: A new, arguably more emic, perspective on Qing rule, which found that the Manchu rulers were savvy in manipulating the image of the dynasty and adjusting their claims to legitimacy differentially according to the expectations of various subject populations. From the 1630s at least through to the early 19th century, emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used traditional Han Chinese culture and Confucian models to rule

3572-449: A patron of Tibetan Buddhism to establish legitimacy as a ruler of the Mongols and Tibetans. Kangxi's reign began when the young emperor was seven. To prevent a repeat of Dorgon's monopolizing of power, on his deathbed his father hastily appointed four regents who were not closely related to the imperial family and had no claim to the throne. However, through chance and machination, Oboi ,

3760-446: A professor at Yale Law School specializing in legal history, stated that he had learned the manuscript ultimately failed to pass political review due to being "too influenced by" what has been termed "foreign New Qing History", even while many working on project were vocal opponents of the movement. Due to this, Zhang considered the association made between the project as a whole and New Qing History as being unwarranted. The origins of

3948-444: A question about the relationship between the Qing dynasty and "China" and encouraged studying the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, by carefully looking at the Qing archives and original materials in order to see how such concept and terminology were used and understood at that time. This does not contend that the Qing dynasty is not China. The military expansion of frontiers were sometimes expensive and drained resources from

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4136-478: A series of edicts and plans were made to reorganize the bureaucracy, restructure the school system, and appoint new officials. Opposition from the bureaucracy was immediate and intense. Although she had been involved in the initial reforms, the Empress Dowager stepped in to call them off , arrested and executed several reformers, and took over day-to-day control of policy. Yet many of the plans stayed in place, and

4324-478: A short, but hard-fought campaign. She fled to Xi'an . The victorious allies then enforced their demands on the Qing government, including compensation for their expenses in invading China and execution of complicit officials, via the Boxer Protocol . The defeat by Japan in 1895 created a sense of crisis which the failure of the 1898 reforms and the disasters of 1900 only exacerbated. Cixi in 1901 moved to mollify

4512-776: A short-lived proto-state known as the Zheltuga Republic (1883–1886) in the Amur River basin, which was however soon crushed by the Qing forces. In 1884, Qing China obtained concessions in Korea , such as the Chinese concession of Incheon , but the pro-Japanese Koreans in Seoul led the Gapsin Coup . Tensions between China and Japan rose after China intervened to suppress the uprising. The Japanese prime minister Itō Hirobumi and Li Hongzhang signed

4700-624: Is Global History? has been successfully translated and published in China. On April 20, 2015, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published a criticism by historian Li Zhiting of historians he called a "New Qing History" faction, accusing former Association for Asian Studies President Evelyn Rawski , Crossley, Mark C. Elliott and James A. Millward personally as being apologists for imperialism, producing fraudulent history and encouraging "splittism" in border areas. This followed Internet criticism by Chinese posters of Crossley's 2011 editorial in

4888-600: Is Manchu Studies, and the other is the study of the Qing as an empire. At the same time, Crossley argued that the label "New Qing History" overlooks the different approaches among the scholars involved. For example, Evelyn Rawski's Re-envisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History in 1996 regarded the Qing as a Manchu empire, with China being only one part. Nevertheless, Crossley sees

5076-593: Is a historiographical school that gained prominence in the United States in the mid-1990s by offering a major revision of history of the Manchu -led Qing dynasty of China. The Qing dynasty was not founded by the Han people , but by the Manchus. While orthodox historians tend to emphasize the power of the Han people to " sinicize " their conquerors in their thought and institutions,

5264-400: Is associated with fire within the Chinese zodiacal system , while Qīng ( 清 ) is associated with water, illustrating the triumph of the Qing as the conquest of fire by water. The name possibly also possessed Buddhist implications of perspicacity and enlightenment, as well as connection with the bodhisattva Manjusri . Early European writers used the term "Tartar" indiscriminately for all

5452-509: Is not "global" since it would bring together Chinese and European history but isolate the histories of Africa, Australia, and North and South America. Crossley is a software author, and has created applications for use by teachers, professors, community organizers to manage web pages. The free applications are specially designed for display of all "horizontally-written" scripts, and integrate functions needed for instant web page management. A widely used app aids students in study and memorization of

5640-449: Is nothing we lack..." Since China had little demand for European goods, Europe paid in silver for Chinese goods, an imbalance that worried the mercantilist governments of Britain and France. The growing Chinese demand for opium provided the remedy. The British East India Company greatly expanded its production in Bengal. The Daoguang Emperor , concerned both over the outflow of silver and

5828-413: Is to avoid the once common assumptions of 'sinicization', or 'sinification', an established notion already challenged by several case studies and interpretative essays." For them, the main problem of the narrative of sinicization was the reduction of Chinese history into "assimilation in a single direction" combined with "convergences of and divergences from heterogeneous sources". They essentially considered

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6016-614: The Battle of Shanhai Pass on 27 May 1644. The newly allied armies captured Beijing on 6 June. The Shunzhi Emperor was invested as the " Son of Heaven " on 30 October 1644. The Manchus, who had positioned themselves as political heirs to the Ming, held a formal funeral for the Chongzhen Emperor. However, completing the conquest of China proper took another seventeen years of battling Ming loyalists, pretenders and rebels. The last Ming pretender, Prince Gui , sought refuge with Pindale Min ,

6204-828: The Beiyang Army , and the purchase of armament factories from the Europeans. The dynasty gradually lost control of its peripheral territories. In return for promises of support against the British and the French, the Russian Empire took large chunks of territory in the Northeast in 1860. The period of cooperation between the reformers and the European powers ended with the 1870 Tianjin Massacre , which

6392-617: The British Royal Navy . British soldiers, using advanced muskets and artillery, easily outmaneuvered and outgunned Qing forces in ground battles. The Qing surrender in 1842 marked a decisive, humiliating blow. The Treaty of Nanjing , the first of the " unequal treaties ", demanded war reparations, forced China to open up the Treaty Ports of Canton , Amoy , Fuzhou , Ningbo and Shanghai to Western trade and missionaries, and to cede Hong Kong Island to Britain. It revealed weaknesses in

6580-670: The Convention of Tientsin , an agreement to withdraw troops simultaneously, but the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895 was a military humiliation. The Treaty of Shimonoseki recognized Korean independence and ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan. The terms might have been harsher, but when a Japanese citizen attacked and wounded Li Hongzhang, an international outcry shamed the Japanese into revising them. The original agreement stipulated

6768-601: The Counter-Enlightenment , post-modern discourse, thus resulted in a similar skepticism of one-way and linear cultural assimilation and political unification. Similar internalization and skepticism of specific given values were initially experienced by many New Qing historians, who ultimately shared a number of tenets. Additionally, the claim of Manchu uniqueness was a postmodern intellectual endeavor to pinpoint "difference and heterogeneity in postindustrial Western societies." Prominent scholars who have been associated with

6956-665: The Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in western China led to the deaths of over 20 million people, from famine, disease, and war. The Tongzhi Restoration in the 1860s brought vigorous reforms and the introduction of foreign military technology in the Self-Strengthening Movement . Defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 led to loss of suzerainty over Korea and cession of Taiwan to the Empire of Japan . The ambitious Hundred Days' Reform in 1898 proposed fundamental change, but

7144-578: The Dzungars in Outer Mongolia . The Kangxi Emperor expelled Galdan 's invading forces from these regions, which were then incorporated into the empire. In 1683, Qing forces received the surrender of Formosa (Taiwan) from Zheng Keshuang , grandson of Koxinga , who had conquered Taiwan from the Dutch colonists as a base against the Qing. Winning Taiwan freed Kangxi's forces for a series of battles over Albazin ,

7332-572: The Great Qing , was a Manchu -led imperial dynasty of China and the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history . The dynasty, proclaimed in Shenyang in 1636, seized control of Beijing in 1644, which is considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty lasted until the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 led to the abdication of the last emperor, February 12, 1912. In Chinese historiography ,

7520-536: The Ming could not have created. Scholars Mark Elliott and Ding Yizhuang pointed out that the most critical academic propositions of the New Qing History are the following: Several important works developed the main ideas of the school, although there are also differences among the scholars in the loose group. Scholar Pamela Kyle Crossley, who is usually listed as a member of the school, observed its two tendencies: one

7708-453: The Ming-Qing transition , the emperors inherited all the Ming lands and people, and in the meantime the concept of Zhongguo was also expanded to encompass Inner Asian regions such as Manchuria . He added that the Qing emperors were able to reinterpret the concept of China by claiming their own Chineseness because Zhongguo was a fluid term. Russian scholar Sergius L. Kuzmin wrote that despite

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7896-677: The Qing Empire . More specialists subsequently adopted this practice. Crossley is a Guggenheim fellow, an NEH fellow (2011–2012) and a recipient of the Association for Asian Studies Joseph Levenson Book Prize for A Translucent Mirror . Dartmouth students have given her the Goldstein Prize for teaching. Crossley resides in Norwich, Vermont . Most recently Crossley has published The Wobbling Pivot: China Since 1800, An Interpretive History which takes

8084-652: The Revolt of the Three Feudatories , which lasted for eight years. Kangxi was able to unify his forces for a counterattack led by a new generation of Manchu generals. By 1681, the Qing government had established control over a ravaged southern China, which took several decades to recover. To extend and consolidate the dynasty's control in Central Asia, the Kangxi Emperor personally led a series of military campaigns against

8272-568: The Sacred Edict of 1670 effectively extolled Confucian family values. His attempts to discourage Chinese women from foot binding , however, were unsuccessful. The second major source of stability was the Inner Asian aspect of their Manchu identity, which allowed them to appeal to the Mongol, Tibetan and Muslim subjects. The Qianlong Emperor propagated an image of himself as a Buddhist sage ruler ,

8460-800: The Shanhai Pass to the Qing army, which defeated the rebels , seized the capital, and took over the government in 1644 under the Shunzhi Emperor and his prince regent . Resistance from Ming rump regimes and the Revolt of the Three Feudatories delayed the complete conquest until 1683. As a Manchu emperor, the Kangxi Emperor (1661–1722) consolidated control, relished the role of a Confucian ruler, patronised Buddhism (including Tibetan Buddhism ), encouraged scholarship, population and economic growth. Han officials worked under or in parallel with Manchu officials. To maintain prominence over its neighbors,

8648-406: The Shunzhi Emperor , with Dorgon as regent and de facto leader of the Manchu nation. Meanwhile, Ming government officials fought against fiscal collapse, against each other, and against a series of peasant rebellions . They were unable to capitalise on the Manchu succession dispute and the resulting boy emperor. In April 1644, Beijing was sacked by a contentious rebel coalition led by Li Zicheng ,

8836-492: The Tsardom of Russia . However, during the 18th century, European empires gradually expanded across the world and developed economies predicated on maritime trade, colonial extraction, and technological advances. The dynasty was confronted with newly developing concepts of the international system and state-to-state relations. European trading posts expanded into territorial control in what is now India and Indonesia. The Qing response

9024-583: The Uyghurs ), as " Bogda Khan " or "(Manchu) Emperor" by their Mongol subjects, and as " Emperor of China " (or "Chinese Emperor") and "the Great Emperor" (or "Great Emperor Manjushri ") by their Tibetan subjects, such as in the 1856 Treaty of Thapathali . It is pointed out that Tibetan subjects traditionally regarded the Qing as Chinese, unlike the Yuan which was founded by Mongols. Scholar Yuanchong Wang wrote that

9212-510: The Wall Street Journal , in which she contrasted the international foundations of the 1911 revolution in China with the narrow nationalism of the hundred-year celebration in 2011. Possibly Li Zhiting used some criticisms that Crossley herself had written in a 2008 essay which was translated into both Korean and Chinese in 2009 and 2010. The criticisms by Li were followed by an interview with associate professor Zhong Han (Minzu University) in

9400-578: The Xianfeng Emperor agreed to the Treaty of Tientsin , which contained clauses deeply insulting to the Chinese, such as a demand that all official Chinese documents be written in English and a proviso granting British warships unlimited access to all navigable Chinese rivers. Ratification of the treaty in the following year led to a resumption of hostilities. In 1860, with Anglo-French forces marching on Beijing,

9588-668: The Yuan dynasty after the defeat of the last Khagan of the Mongols, Hong Taiji renamed his state from "Great Jin" to "Great Qing" and elevated his position from Khan to Emperor , suggesting imperial ambitions beyond unifying the Manchu territories. Hong Taiji then proceeded to invade Korea again in 1636. Meanwhile, Hong Taiji set up a rudimentary bureaucratic system based on the Ming model. He established six boards or executive level ministries in 1631 to oversee finance, personnel, rites, military, punishments, and public works. However, these administrative organs had very little role initially, and it

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9776-571: The queue hairstyle which was worn by Manchu men, on pain of death. The popular description of the order was: "To keep the hair, you lose the head; To keep your head, you cut the hair." To the Manchus, this policy was a test of loyalty and an aid in distinguishing friend from foe. For the Han Chinese, however, it was a humiliating reminder of Qing authority that challenged traditional Confucian values. The order triggered strong resistance in Jiangnan . In

9964-569: The "New Qing History" school. William T. Rowe of Johns Hopkins University describes Crossley as the "pioneer" of these new ways of thinking about Qing history. Earlier, political commentator Charles Horner pointed to Crossley as one of the most important current historians in the reconceptualization of the Qing period and its significance, which he did not refer to as "New Qing History.". In publications in Korea and China since 2008 Crossley has written that there are two trends that are often conflated, one

10152-442: The "most compelling case" that New Qing History is also applicable to Chinese Islam. In the journal Chinese Social Sciences Today , an official publication of the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences , Li Zhiting, a scholar working on the National Qing Dynasty Compilation Committee and affiliated with Renmin University of China , charged that "'New Qing History' is academically absurd, and politically does damage to

10340-418: The 1727 Treaty of Kyakhta to solidify the diplomatic understanding with Russia. In exchange for territory and trading rights, the Qing would have a free hand in dealing with the situation in Mongolia. Yongzheng then turned to that situation, where the Zunghars threatened to re-emerge, and to the southwest, where local Miao chieftains resisted Qing expansion. These campaigns drained the treasury but established

10528-409: The 19th century. She concluded that the archives of Manchu materials were more likely to be complete, as they were less likely to have been raided, weeded or lost. According to Mark Elliot , while the renascence of interest in Manchu studies among historians in the United States was not so much shaped by the inspiration of foreign scholarship, Japanese researchers have been at the forefront of studying

10716-425: The British government, sent a diplomatic mission to China led by Lord Macartney in order to open trade and put relations on a basis of equality. The imperial court viewed trade as of secondary interest, whereas the British saw maritime trade as the key to their economy. The Qianlong Emperor told Macartney "the kings of the myriad nations come by land and sea with all sorts of precious things", and "consequently there

10904-429: The Cambridge histories. She is widely published both in academic journals and in periodicals such as London Review of Books , Wall Street Journal , The New York Times Literary Supplement , The New Republic , Royal Academy Magazine , Far Eastern Economic Review, Calliope , and in the online editorial spaces of the BBC. She has participated in A&E 's "In Search of..." series ("The Forbidden City"). In January 2012

11092-470: The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Crossley pointed out that Manchu language, religion, documents, and customs remained of great importance to the Qing until the middle nineteenth century. Her book Orphan Warriors was the first to develop a sustained critique of conventional assumptions of " sinicization ." She agreed that assimilation and acculturation were part of China's history, but considered "sinicization" to be something that historians had imbued with

11280-436: The Chinese classic Daxue 大學. Other software makes this famous reference work Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period used by students who do not know the Wade–Giles system accessible, and also integrates to Harvard University GIS database. It is available to the public (link) both as a web interface and as a desktop internet application. Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( / tʃ ɪ ŋ / CHING ), officially

11468-413: The Eight Banners, giving them social and legal privileges. Han defectors swelled the ranks of the Eight Banners so greatly that ethnic Manchus became a minority – only 16% in 1648, with Han bannermen dominating at 75% and Mongol bannermen making up the rest. Gunpowder weapons like muskets and artillery were wielded by the Chinese Banners. Normally, Han Chinese defector troops were deployed as

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11656-526: The End of the Qing World (Princeton University Press, 1990); The Manchus (Blackwells Publishers, 1997); A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (University of California Press, 1999). She is also a co-author of the best-selling global history textbooks, The Earth and its Peoples (Houghton Mifflin, 5th edition, 2009; 6th edition, 2014) and Global Society: The World since 1900 (Houghton Mifflin, 2nd edition, 2007; 3rd edition, 2012). Her work has appeared in two separate series of

11844-432: The French. A French invasion of Taiwan was halted and the French were defeated on land in Tonkin at the Battle of Bang Bo . However Japan threatened to enter the war against China due to the Gapsin Coup and China chose to end the war with negotiations. The war ended in 1885 with the Treaty of Tientsin and the Chinese recognition of the French protectorate in Vietnam. Some Russian and Chinese gold miners also established

12032-406: The Great Qing but also, nearly interchangeably, as China" within a few decades of this development. Instead of the earlier (Ming) idea of an ethnic Han Chinese state, this new Qing China was a "self-consciously multi-ethnic state". Han Chinese scholars had some time to adapt this, but by the 19th century, the notion of China as a multinational state with new, significantly extended borders had become

12220-422: The Han people (漢人), where Han Chinese ideals were created, upheld, and practiced in contrast to those of non-Han " barbarians ", whether they were domestic or foreign; the dynastic title “Great Ming” should not be confused with "China", the ethnocultural space. Other scholars pointed out that the Ming dynasty used the term "China" politically to refer to the entire country but culturally to refer to only Han areas of

12408-410: The Han people. The New Qing History inspired scholarly studies on a number of points, including the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, and the Inner Asian characteristics of the Han Chinese dynasties like the preceding Ming dynasty , along with other minor points. Scholar Zhao Gang used both Manchu and Han sources to interrogate the relationship between Qing and "China". He pointed out

12596-410: The Jurchen and Khorchin nobilities, while those who resisted were met with military action. This is a typical example of Nurhaci's initiatives that eventually became official Qing government policy. During most of the Qing period, the Mongols gave military assistance to the Manchus. Nurhaci died in 1626, and was succeeded by his eighth son, Hong Taiji . Although Hong Taiji was an experienced leader and

12784-447: The Jurchen polity as citizens obligated to provide military service. By 1648, less than one-sixth of the bannermen were of Manchu ancestry. Hong Taiji died suddenly in September 1643. As Jurchen leaders were chosen by a council of nobles, there was no clear successor. The leading contenders for power were Hong Taiji's oldest son Hooge and Hong Taiji's half brother Dorgon . A compromise installed Hong Taiji's five-year-old son, Fulin, as

12972-406: The Kangxi emperor located his summer residence in the Chengde Mountain Resort , north of the Great Wall . That became the historical core of city of Chengde , which the Qianlong emperor enlarged considerably, including a replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa . In response, Ping-ti Ho published "In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski's 'Re-envisioning the Qing'". He argued that

13160-527: The Manchu and Chinese sources for their topics of research." Beatrice Bartlett , a Yale historian who had studied Manchu with Fletcher, reported in an article, 'Books of Revelation', that the archives in Taiwan and Beijing revealed many secrets, which required knowledge of Manchu. The Grand Council of the Yongzheng emperor, for instance, operated only in Manchu until the 1730s, and many other important edicts and memorials did not have Chinese translations. Official use of Manchu, she argued, did not decline during

13348-447: The Manchu elites' rule in China using ethnicity as an analytical framework, contending that although the cultural gap between Manchus and Han Chinese had shrunk, ethnic boundaries still existed and that embracing Chinese institutions did not equate to "becoming Chinese" in a theoretical sense. These scholars tend to use the term "acculturation", which simply means cultural modification and adaptation. Some New Qing historians deconstructed

13536-495: The Manchu referred to all subjects of the Qing empire regardless of ethnicity as "Chinese", and they used the term Zhongguo as a synonym for the entire Qing empire but used "Hanren" to refer only to the core area of the empire, with the entire empire viewed as multiethnic. Scholar Yang Nianquan attempted to interpret the origins of the Zhongguo concept, and contended that the concept had a long history of combining many groups, which

13724-495: The Manchu-ruled empire into a modernised Han Chinese state. The Guangxu Emperor died on 14 November 1908, and Cixi died the following day. Puyi , the oldest son of Zaifeng, Prince Chun , and nephew to the childless Guangxu Emperor, was appointed successor at the age of two, leaving Zaifeng with the regency. Zaifeng forced Yuan Shikai to resign. The Qing dynasty became a constitutional monarchy on 8 May 1911, when Zaifeng created

13912-505: The Manchus had entered "South of the Wall" because Dorgon had responded decisively to Wu Sangui's appeal, then, instead of sacking Beijing as the rebels had done, Dorgon insisted, over the protests of other Manchu princes, on making it the dynastic capital and reappointing most Ming officials. No major Chinese dynasty had directly taken over its immediate predecessor's capital, but keeping the Ming capital and bureaucracy intact helped quickly stabilize

14100-569: The Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles, he relocated his capital from Hetu Ala to successively bigger captured Ming cities in Liaodong: first Liaoyang in 1621, then Mukden (Shenyang) in 1625. Furthermore, the Khorchin proved a useful ally in the war, lending the Jurchens their expertise as cavalry archers. To guarantee this new alliance, Nurhaci initiated a policy of inter-marriages between

14288-407: The New Qing History and sinicization theory, in the hope to avoid a binary opposition between them. He prefers the term "Hua-ization" to "sinicization" by arguing that it represents a blending process of a diverse ethnic community. American historian Richard J. Smith reported that an interpretive "middle ground" had emerged between the views of Rawski and Crossley, on one hand, and Ho and Huang, on

14476-489: The New Qing History lie in Inner Asian Studies . A Harvard historian, Joseph Fletcher , studied the languages and culture of Central Asia. He was among those to discredit the idea that nearly all Manchu documents were translations from Chinese and that they would add little to the record. He wrote in 1981, "Qing scholars who want to do first-class work in the archives must, from now on, learn Manchu and routinely compare

14664-404: The New Qing History reveals its contributions to the field of China studies, including its generation of debates of the sinicization theory and heated debates about what China ( Zhongguo ) and Chinese ( Zhongguoren ) meant in history. He also noted that while it is arguable that "sinicization" is a descriptive term for a historical event that occurs in specific times and settings with various causes,

14852-532: The New Qing History, including Evelyn Rawski , Mark Elliott , Pamela Kyle Crossley , Laura Hostetler , Peter C. Perdue , Philippe Forêt, Edward Rhoads, and others, despite differing among themselves on important points, represent an " Inner Asian " and " Eurasian " turn. The most prominent feature of the studies has been characterized by a renewed interest in the Manchus and their relationship to China and Chinese culture , as well as that of other non-Han tribes ruled by Beijing . In general, New Qing historians date

15040-554: The Qing as a Manchu dynasty, as well as the territories of Inner Asia , using non-Chinese texts and concentrating on Manchu materials. The New Qing History took on distinct form in the mid-1990s. In 1993, scholars Pamela Kyle Crossley and Evelyn Rawski summarized the arguments for using Manchu-language materials, which they and others had explored in the newly opened archives in Beijing and were beginning to use in their publications. Evelyn Rawski's presidential address, "Re-envisioning

15228-520: The Qing constituted an "empire" and should be examined as such, scholar Wu Qine argued that Chinese traditional imperialism differed from modern Western colonialism. Furthermore, Tibetologist Melvyn Goldstein had used the term "passive hegemony" to describe the relationship between Qing China and Tibet, although he believed it was apparent that the Qing intended to "control" Tibet as a dependency to serve its dynastic goals. The New Qing History, according to Tristan G. Brown, writing in 2011, did not explore

15416-448: The Qing court's creative reinterpretation of the concept of "China" (中國, Zhongguo ) as a composite of Han and non-Han peoples in the empire, and that China proper and Han people (漢人) were not synonymous with "China" ( Zhongguo ) under the Qing view. While earlier Han Chinese dynasties (like the Ming dynasty ) used Zhongguo to refer only to Han areas, the Qing dynasty reinvented the definition of Zhongguo to refer to non-Han areas of

15604-410: The Qing drew on both Chinese and Inner Asian political traditions, and that the Qing took difference for granted and used different methods of rule for different groups of subjects. Meanwhile, according to Mark Elliott , a prominent scholar of the New Qing History school, it is not the case that the New Qing History separates the Qing dynasty from China. Instead, the school simply raised a question about

15792-403: The Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China . The multi-ethnic Qing dynasty assembled the territorial base for modern China . It was the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China and in 1790 the fourth-largest empire in world history in terms of territorial size. With over 426 million citizens in 1907 , it was the most populous country in

15980-606: The Qing dynasty's usage of the term "China" to refer to the entire empire, empires centered on China (including conquest dynasties like the Yuan and Qing) were known officially by their respective dynastic name (e.g. "Great Yuan" and "Great Qing", respectively). Non-Han peoples considered themselves as subjects of these empires and did not necessarily equate them to "China". This resulted from different ways of their legitimization for different peoples in these dynasties. Qing emperors were referred to as "Khagan of China" (or " Chinese khagan ") by their Turkic Muslim subjects (now known as

16168-417: The Qing dynasty, but from a Manchu perspective, however, the concept of “China” (Chinese: Zhongguo ; Manchu: Dulimbai Gurun ) embraced the entire empire, including Manchuria , Mongolia , Xinjiang , and Tibet . According to Professor Guo Wu, the New Qing History encompasses a number of viewpoints and presumptions influenced by postmodern history. These have led to a number of important concerns, including

16356-426: The Qing dynasty. Early Ming emperors sought to project themselves as " universal rulers " to various peoples such as Central Asian Muslims, Tibetans , and Mongols . The Yongle Emperor cited Emperor Taizong of Tang as a model for being familiar with both China and the steppe people. Like the Qing emperors, the Ming emperors also had an important influence on Tibetan Buddhism . The Yongle Emperor had promoted

16544-415: The Qing emperors replaced the Ming emperors as the incarnation of Manjushri for them. Some scholars have also argued that the Ming regarded "China" ( Zhongguo ) as only a part of the Ming empire and as an ethnocultural space (rather than a political entity), challenging the prevalent perceptions of the Ming. In essence, during the Ming dynasty "China" was defined as the domain of the Han Chinese inhabited by

16732-503: The Qing empire school, which she calls "Qing Studies." Mark Elliott states that while he agrees with such views to some extent, because he thinks it helps to make people more acutely aware that the Qing Empire and the Republic of China (or the People's Republic of China ) are different political entities with different political goals, but he admits that he also worries about drawing too sharp

16920-412: The Qing government and provoked rebellions against the regime. The Taiping Rebellion (1849–1864) was the first major anti-Manchu movement . Amid widespread social unrest and worsening famine, the rebellion not only posed the most serious threat to Qing rule, but during its 14-year course, between 20 and 30 million people died. The rebellion began under the leadership of Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864),

17108-677: The Qing leveraged and adapted the tributary system employed by previous dynasties, enabling their continued predominance in affairs with countries on its periphery like Joseon Korea and the dynasty in Vietnam, while extending its control over Inner Asia including Tibet , Mongolia , and Xinjiang . The High Qing era reached its apex during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1735–1796), who led Ten Great Campaigns of conquest, and personally supervised Confucian cultural projects . After his death,

17296-762: The Qing, most notably in the Miao Rebellion (1854–1873) in Guizhou , the Panthay Rebellion (1856–1873) in Yunnan , and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The Western powers, largely unsatisfied with the Treaty of Nanjing, gave grudging support to the Qing government during the Taiping and Nian rebellions. China's income fell sharply during the wars as vast areas of farmland were destroyed, millions of lives were lost, and countless armies were raised and equipped to fight

17484-507: The Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History," at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in 1996, particularly criticized the question of the "sinicization" of the Qing that had been raised by Ping-ti Ho in his 1967 article "The Significance of the Ch'ing Period in Chinese History." Rawski's thought was based on a Manchu-centric concept of history and indicated that

17672-629: The West, and such treaties and documents consistently referred to Qing rulers as the " Emperor of China " and his administration as the "Government of China". Joseph W. Esherick observes that while the Qing Emperors governed frontier non-Han areas in a different, separate system under the Lifan Yuan and kept them separate from Han areas and administration, it was the Manchu Qing Emperors who expanded

17860-591: The Xinhai Revolution. The abdication of the Xuantong Emperor on 12 February 1912 brought the dynasty to an end. Hong Taiji proclaimed the Great Qing dynasty in 1636. There are competing explanations as to the meaning of the Chinese character Qīng ( 清 ; 'clear', 'pure') in this context. One theory posits a purposeful contrast with the Ming: the character Míng ( 明 ; 'bright')

18048-517: The abolition of the imperial examination system. Sun Yat-sen and revolutionaries debated reform officials and constitutional monarchists such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao over how to transform the Manchu-ruled empire into a modernised Han state. After the deaths of the Guangxu Emperor and Cixi in 1908, Manchu conservatives at court blocked reforms and alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911 led to

18236-477: The approach for exaggerating the Manchu character of the dynasty, while scholars like Zhao Gang have argued from the evidence that the Qing dynasty self-identified as China. Some Chinese scholars accuse the American historians in the group of imposing American concerns with race and identity or even of imperialist misunderstanding to weaken China. Still others in China agree that this scholarship has opened new vistas for

18424-509: The capital of Tibet, and installed a Dalai Lama sympathetic to the Qing. The reigns of the Yongzheng Emperor ( r.  1723–1735 ) and his son, the Qianlong Emperor ( r.  1735–1796 ), marked the height of Qing power. However, the historian Jonathan Spence notes that the empire at the end of Qianlong's reign was "like the sun at midday". Despite "many glories", "signs of decay and even collapse were becoming apparent". After

18612-532: The cession of Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, but Russia, with its own designs on the territory, along with Germany and France, in the Triple Intervention , successfully put pressure on the Japanese to abandon the peninsula. These years saw the participation of Empress Dowager Cixi in state affairs. Cixi initially entered the imperial palace in the 1850s as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor, and became

18800-413: The commander of two Banners, the Jurchens suffered defeat in 1627, in part due to the Ming's newly acquired Portuguese cannons . To redress the technological and numerical disparity, Hong Taiji in 1634 created his own artillery corps, who cast their own cannons in the European design with the help of defector Chinese metallurgists. One of the defining events of Hong Taiji's reign was the official adoption of

18988-468: The compilation of the Siku Quanshu , the largest collection of books in Chinese history. Nevertheless, Qianlong used the literary inquisition to silence opposition. Beneath outward prosperity and imperial confidence, the later years of Qianlong's reign were marked by rampant corruption and neglect. Heshen , the emperor's handsome young favorite, took advantage of the emperor's indulgence to become one of

19176-464: The concept of sinicization and approached the Qing as an Inner Asian rather than Chinese empire. They argued that the Qing saw itself as a Manchu or a universal empire, a multi-national polity , which with Han China as only the most central and economically important component, and the multi-faceted Qing ruler presented himself differently to different groups of his subjects. On the other hand, according to Mark Elliott, New Qing historians merely raised

19364-527: The conquest. Han bannermen made up the majority of governors during the early Qing, stabilizing their rule. To promote ethnic harmony, a 1648 decree allowed Han Chinese civilian men to marry Manchu women from the Banners with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners, or with the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. Later in

19552-408: The core parts of the empire, while blending with Central Asian models from other ethnic groups across the vast realm. According to some scholars, at the height of their power, the Qing regarded China (proper) as only a part, although a very important part, of a much wider empire that extended into the Inner Asian territories of Mongolia , Tibet , Manchuria and Xinjiang , as they argued that

19740-435: The country for corruption, failing to keep the famine relief granaries full, poor maintenance of roads and waterworks, and bureaucratic factionalism. There soon followed uprisings of "new sect" Muslims against local Muslim officials, and Miao tribesmen in southwest China. The White Lotus Rebellion continued until 1804, when badly run, corrupt, and brutal campaigns finally ended it. During the early Qing, China continued to be

19928-478: The damage that opium smoking was causing to his subjects, ordered Lin Zexu to end the opium trade. Lin confiscated the stocks of opium without compensation in 1839, leading Britain to send a military expedition the following year. The First Opium War revealed the outdated state of the Chinese military. The Qing navy, composed entirely of wooden sailing junks , was severely outclassed by the modern tactics and firepower of

20116-480: The death of the Kangxi Emperor in the winter of 1722, his fourth son, Prince Yong ( 雍親王 ), became the Yongzheng Emperor. He felt a sense of urgency about the problems that had accumulated in his father's later years. In the words of one recent historian, he was "severe, suspicious, and jealous, but extremely capable and resourceful", and in the words of another, he turned out to be an "early modern state-maker of

20304-453: The definition of Zhongguo (中國) and made it "flexible" by using that term to refer to the entire empire. For example, the English version of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1858 Treaty of Tientsin refers to "His Majesty the Emperor of China" while the Chinese refers both to "The Great Qing Emperor" ( Da Qing Huangdi ) and to Zhongguo as well. Similarly, Elena Barabantseva has also noted that

20492-434: The definitions of China and Zhongguo , the character of the Qing dynasty, the meaning of imperialism, and assimilation vs acculturation. Due to its deconstruction of various concepts including the modern Chinese master narrative of nation-building , the debate has thus become somewhat emotional and politicized given China's strong sense of victimization and vulnerability. He argued that a de-politicized and unbiased analysis of

20680-581: The dynasty back on its feet financially and instituted the Self-Strengthening Movement , which adopted Western military technology in order to preserve Confucian values.Their institutional reforms included China's first unified ministry of foreign affairs in the Zongli Yamen , allowing foreign diplomats to reside in the capital, the establishment of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service , the institution of modern navy and army forces including

20868-629: The dynasty faced internal revolts, economic disruption, official corruption, foreign intrusion, and the reluctance of Confucian elites to change their mindset. With peace and prosperity, the population rose to 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, soon leading to a fiscal crisis. Following China's defeat in the Opium Wars , Western colonial powers forced the Qing government to sign unequal treaties , granting them trading privileges, extraterritoriality and treaty ports under their control. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) and

21056-419: The dynasty the policies allowing intermarriage were done away with. The first seven years of the young Shunzhi Emperor's reign were dominated by Dorgon's regency. Because of his own political insecurity, Dorgon followed Hong Taiji's example by ruling in the name of the emperor at the expense of rival Manchu princes, many of whom he demoted or imprisoned. Dorgon's precedents and example cast a long shadow. First,

21244-494: The early 17th century. Nurhaci may have spent time in a Han household in his youth, and became fluent in Chinese and Mongolian languages and read the Chinese novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin . As a vassal of the Ming emperors, he officially considered himself a guardian of the Ming border and a local representative of the Ming dynasty. Nurhaci embarked on an intertribal feud in 1582 that escalated into

21432-569: The emperor and his court fled the capital for the imperial hunting lodge at Rehe . Once in Beijing, the Anglo-French forces looted and burned the Old Summer Palace and, in an act of revenge for the arrest, torture, and execution of the English diplomatic mission. Prince Gong , a younger half-brother of the emperor, who had been left as his brother's proxy in the capital, was forced to sign the Convention of Beijing . The humiliated emperor died

21620-571: The emperor's control of the military and military finance. When the Yongzheng Emperor died in 1735, his son Prince Bao ( 寶親王 ) became the Qianlong Emperor. Qianlong personally led the Ten Great Campaigns to expand military control into present-day Xinjiang and Mongolia , putting down revolts and uprisings in Sichuan and southern China while expanding control over Tibet. The Qianlong Emperor launched several ambitious cultural projects, including

21808-516: The emperor's de facto cabinet for the rest of the dynasty. He shrewdly filled key positions with Manchu and Han Chinese officials who depended on his patronage. When he began to realize the extent of the financial crisis, Yongzheng rejected his father's lenient approach to local elites and enforced collection of the land tax. The increased revenues were to be used for "money to nourish honesty" among local officials and for local irrigation, schools, roads, and charity. Although these reforms were effective in

21996-405: The empire as well. Zhao Gang cited Qing documents used the Manchu term "Dulimbai Gurun" (a direct translation of Zhongguo ; "Middle Kingdom") in Manchu texts and Zhongguo in Chinese texts to refer to the entire Qing including Manchuria, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet as "China", in official documents, edicts, treaties , in texts like the Treaty of Nerchinsk , the Convention of Kyakhta (1768),

22184-512: The empire not as a Manchu empire but as a "simultaneous" system in which the rulership is not subordinate to the Chinese or any other single culture, which she termed "culturally null" in her work A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology . She criticized the new "Manchu-centered" school for romanticism and a reliance upon disproved theories about " Altaic " language and history, but she seems to include herself in

22372-472: The empire. Scholars have disagreed on whether or how much the Manchu rulers used new forms of imperial ritual to display new forms of empire or continued rituals from the Ming to show that they saw themselves as heirs of a Han Chinese empire. Roger Des Forges' review of David M. Robinson 's Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court criticized scholars of conquest dynasties and New Qing History and disagreed with

22560-533: The ensuing unrest, some 100,000 Han were slaughtered. On 31 December 1650, Dorgon died suddenly, marking the start of the Shunzhi Emperor's personal rule. Because the emperor was only 12 years old at that time, most decisions were made on his behalf by his mother, Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang , who turned out to be a skilled political operator. Although his support had been essential to Shunzhi's ascent, Dorgon had centralised so much power in his hands as to become

22748-473: The example of Islam and Muslims to test their argument that the early Qing emperors aspired to be universal monarchs. Brown finds that an inscription by the Qianlong emperor showed that he wanted to incorporate both Xinjiang and Islam into his empire and that this inscription, along with the "inventive structural duality of Chinese-Islamic architecture with Central Asian Turkish-Islamic architectural forms," makes

22936-465: The far eastern outpost of the Tsardom of Russia . The 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk was China's first formal treaty with a European power and kept the border peaceful for the better part of two centuries. Galdan was ultimately killed in the Dzungar–Qing War ; after his death, his Tibetan Buddhist followers attempted to control the choice of the next Dalai Lama . Kangxi dispatched two armies to Lhasa ,

23124-422: The field of world or global history Crossley is known primarily for arguing, in agreement with a certain number of other historians of China, that not only material but also cultural and political trends produced an "early modern" period across Eurasia from about 1500 to about 1800. She has commented that while a Eurasian chronology that could be used for teaching is possible (as in the example of early modernity), it

23312-445: The first order". First, he promoted Confucian orthodoxy and cracked down on unorthodox sects. In 1723, he outlawed Christianity and expelled most Christian missionaries. He expanded his father's system of Palace Memorials , which brought frank and detailed reports on local conditions directly to the throne without being intercepted by the bureaucracy, and he created a small Grand Council of personal advisors, which eventually grew into

23500-466: The following year at Rehe. Following the death of the Xianfeng Emperor in 1861, and the accession of the 5-year-old Tongzhi Emperor , the Qing rallied. In the Tongzhi Restoration , Han Chinese officials such as Zuo Zongtang stood behind the Manchus and organized provincial troops. Zeng Guofan , in alliance with Prince Gong, sponsored the rise of younger officials such as Li Hongzhang , who put

23688-618: The foreign community, called for reform proposals, and initiated the Late Qing reforms . Over the next few years the reforms included the restructuring of the national education, judicial, and fiscal systems, the most dramatic of which was the abolition of the imperial examination system in 1905. The court directed a constitution to be drafted , and provincial elections were held, the first in China's history. Sun Yat-sen and revolutionaries debated reform officials and constitutional monarchists such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao over how to transform

23876-632: The formal name of a Chinese state until the twentieth century", the Manchus who founded the Qing dynasty succeeded in expanding the meaning of Zhongguo (China) to encompass the territories of the Qing empire, thus "creating the foundation for the modern concept". There is a trend of sidestepping the sinicization thesis among New Qing historians. For example, the book Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China by Crossley et al explicitly stated that "our first task

24064-474: The founding of the empire from 1636, when the dynasty was proclaimed, rather than from 1644, when the Qing took control of the Ming capital Beijing. They argued that "Manchu" identity was deliberately created only after the takeover of China and that the new racial identity was important but " fungible ", easily exchanged for others. The first rulers of the dynasty played the Confucian role of Son of Heaven but at

24252-887: The goals of reform were implanted. Drought in North China, combined with the imperialist designs of European powers and the instability of the Qing government, created background conditions for the Boxers . In 1900, local groups of Boxers proclaiming support for the Qing dynasty murdered foreign missionaries and large numbers of Chinese Christians, then converged on Beijing to besiege the Foreign Legation Quarter. A coalition of European, Japanese, and Russian armies (the Eight-Nation Alliance ) then entered China without diplomatic notice, much less permission. Cixi declared war on all of these nations, only to lose control of Beijing after

24440-522: The hegemonic imperial power in East Asia. Although there was no formal ministry of foreign relations, the Lifan Yuan was responsible for relations with the Mongols and Tibetans in Inner Asia, while the tributary system , a loose set of institutions and customs taken over from the Ming, in theory governed relations with East and Southeast Asian countries. The 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk stabilized relations with

24628-409: The history of China from an imperialist standpoint, with imperialist points of view and imperialist eyes, regarding 'traditional' China as an 'empire', regarding the Qing dynasty as 'Qing dynasty imperialism'." Zhong Han, a Chinese scholar and researcher of Manchu and early Qing history, argues that the concept of "simultaneous emperorship" is incoherent, and charges the school with putting politics in

24816-531: The idea that he was the earthly manifestation of Manjushri and styled himself the wheel-turning king after the fall of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty . Some scholars pointed out that even up to the early years of the Shunzhi Emperor , the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper, some non-Han followers of the Tibetan Buddhism still regarded Ming emperors as the incarnation of Manjushri. Only after this

25004-431: The idea that the "Royal hunt" was a differing factor between Han Chinese and non-Han dynasties. He noted that the martial themed Ming dynasty Grand Review was copied by the Qing and disagreed with those who sought to present it as a Qing feature. He praised Robinson in differing from scholars who selected certain Ming and Qing emperors to contrast their difference and for not conflating Han with "Chinese" and not translating

25192-424: The imperial house's Manchu ethnicity, especially after 1644, when the name "Chinese" took on a multiethnic meaning. Scholar Hui Wang noted that the recognization of the Qing dynasty as China by neighbouring dynasties and European states was also accompanied by the Qing's conscious effort to position itself as a Chinese dynasty and to inherit Chinese dynasties' role in the world. Inspired by New Qing History studies,

25380-581: The institutionalization of cultural identity . Crossley suggests that these concepts were encoded in political practice and academic discourse on " nationalism ," and prevailed till the end of the twentieth century. Crossley was born in Lima, Ohio , and attended high school in Emmaus, Pennsylvania . After leaving high school she worked as an editorial assistant and writer on environmental subjects for Rodale Press . In 1977 she graduated from Swarthmore College , where she

25568-442: The king of Burma , but was turned over to a Qing expeditionary army commanded by Wu Sangui, who had him brought back to Yunnan and executed in early 1662. The Qing had taken shrewd advantage of Ming civilian government discrimination against the military and encouraged the Ming military to defect by spreading the message that the Manchus valued their skills. Banners made up of Han Chinese who defected before 1644 were classed among

25756-575: The land does not." The introduction of new crops from the Americas such as the potato and peanut improved nutrition as well, so that the population during the 18th century ballooned from 100 million to 300 million people. Soon farmers were forced to work ever-smaller holdings more intensely. In 1796, the White Lotus Society raised open rebellion, saying "the officials have forced the people to rebel". Others blamed officials in various parts of

25944-511: The lands of the Qing state (including, among other areas, present-day Northeast China, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet) as "China" in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, defining China as a multi-ethnic state, and rejecting the idea that only Han areas were properly part of "China". The government used "China" and "Qing" interchangeably to refer to their state in official documents, including the Chinese-language versions of treaties and maps of

26132-405: The last decade of the dynasty. Meanwhile, Mark Elliott highlighted the significance of both ethnic divergence and acculturation, contending that the Manchu rulers' "acculturation" and "differentiation" were essential to the accomplishment of their prolonged rule of the empire. According to him, although the Manchus were acculturated, they were never fully integrated into Chinese society. He approached

26320-411: The mainstream explorations of the concept of "sinicization" have much focused on the Manchu ethnic identity. Rather, he used the term "sinicization" in a different sense, in the hope to show how the Manchu regime, instead of the ethnic Manchus, promoted itself as the exclusively civilized Middle Kingdom or Zhongguo . According to him, the Qing's depiction of itself as a Chinese empire was not hindered by

26508-493: The most corrupt officials in the history of the dynasty. Qianlong's son, the Jiaqing Emperor ( r.  1796–1820 ), eventually forced Heshen to commit suicide. Population in the first half of the 17th century did not recover from civil wars and epidemics, but the following years of prosperity and stability led to steady growth. The Qianlong Emperor bemoaned the situation by remarking, "The population continues to grow, but

26696-497: The most junior of the four, gradually achieved such dominance as to be a potential threat. In 1669, Kangxi disarmed and imprisoned Oboi through trickery – a significant victory for a fifteen-year-old emperor. The young emperor faced challenges in maintaining control of his kingdom, as well. Three Ming generals singled out for their contributions to the establishment of the dynasty had been granted governorships in southern China. They became increasingly autonomous, leading to

26884-521: The mother of the future Tongzhi Emperor. Following the his accession at the age of five, Cixi, Xianfeng's widow Empress Dowager Ci'an , and Prince Gong (a son of the Daoguang Emperor), staged a coup that ousted several of the Tongzhi Emperor's regents. Between 1861 and 1873, Cixi and Ci'an served as regents together; following the emperor's death in 1875, Cixi's nephew, the Guangxu Emperor , took

27072-879: The murders as a pretext for a naval occupation of Jiaozhou Bay . The occupation prompted a Scramble for China in 1898, which included the German lease of Jiaozhou Bay , the Russian lease of Liaodong , the British lease of the New Territories of Hong Kong , and the French lease of Guangzhouwan . In the wake of these external defeats, the Guangxu Emperor initiated the Hundred Days' Reform in 1898. Newer, more radical advisers such as Kang Youwei were given positions of influence. The emperor issued

27260-522: The name "Manchu" for the united Jurchen people in November 1635. In 1635, the Manchus' Mongol allies were fully incorporated into a separate Banner hierarchy under direct Manchu command. In April 1636, Mongol nobility of Inner Mongolia, Manchu nobility and the Han mandarin recommended that Hong as the khan of Later Jin should be the emperor of the Great Qing. When he was presented with the imperial seal of

27448-542: The name "New Ming History" has also appeared which refers to the emerging Ming-centred studies that give emphasis on the Inner Asian characteristics under the rule of the preceding Ming dynasty . It has been pointed out that examining the history of a dynasty from the Inner Asian perspective is also applicable to dynasties established by the Han Chinese, including the Ming dynasty (and earlier dynasties), rather than being exclusive to dynasties established by non-Han people like

27636-402: The new educational platform The Faculty Project announced that Crossley would produce a video course on Modern China for their site. Unusually, Crossley maintains an errata page for her publications, including exchanges with translators. Crossley is noted for her work in what has been called either New Qing History or Qing Studies, which has come under attack by Chinese scholars associated with

27824-443: The north, in the south and lower Yangtze valley there were long-established networks of officials and landowners. Yongzheng dispatched experienced Manchu commissioners to penetrate the thickets of falsified land registers and coded account books, but they were met with tricks, passivity, and even violence. The fiscal crisis persisted. Yongzheng also inherited diplomatic and strategic problems. A team made up entirely of Manchus drew up

28012-506: The other. Smith indicated that based on the idea that "Qing empire" and "China" might not be the same thing the Qing had to be placed in a context that included Inner Asia in general and that saw China in a global field. The less " sinocentric " view, Smith continued, which placed less emphasis on "sinicization", had won over most China scholars in the West (and increasingly also in China), in spite of debates over "matters of degree." According to him,

28200-400: The other; one was a Han Chinese peasant army twice his size, but he chose the other. Wu may have resented Li Zicheng's attack on officials and the social order; Li had taken Wu's father hostage and it was said that Li took Wu's concubine for himself. On the other hand, the Manchus had adopted a Chinese-style form of government and promised stability. Wu and Dorgon allied to defeat Li Zicheng in

28388-431: The page. Subsequently, Liu Wenpeng denounced the concept of "Inner Asia" as used by "New Qing" historians, apparently following Crossley's 2009 discussion of the history of the Inner Asian term. Criticism of Crossley, Rawski and "New Qing" historians, particularly Elliott and Millward, continues in the Chinese press, possibly reinforcing campaigns against "Western culture" encouraged by the current Chinese government. Crossley

28576-406: The pattern of Chinese history was for a conquest dynasty to adopt Chinese ways of rule and culture and attacked Rawski for Manchu-centrism. The school that is now known as the "New Qing History" developed after the debate. Historian Huang Pei later published a monograph that developed the objections stated by Ho Ping-ti. According to Professor Guo Wu, the skepticism of Eurocentrism , as part of

28764-557: The peoples of Northern Eurasia but in the 17th century Catholic missionary writings established "Tartar" to refer only to the Manchus and " Tartary " for the lands they ruled—i.e. Manchuria and the adjacent parts of Inner Asia , as ruled by the Qing before the Ming–Qing transition . After conquering China proper , the Manchus identified their state as "China", equivalently as Zhōngguó ( 中國 ; 'middle kingdom') in Chinese and Dulimbai Gurun in Manchu. The emperors equated

28952-433: The purge of his family and associates at court. Shunzhi's promising start was cut short by his early death in 1661 at the age of 24 from smallpox . He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who reigned as the Kangxi Emperor . The Manchus sent Han bannermen to fight against Koxinga's Ming loyalists in Fujian. They removed the population from coastal areas in order to deprive Koxinga's Ming loyalists of resources. This led to

29140-504: The reason the Qing rulers could successfully govern China for nearly 300 years was not the result of sinicization, adopting the characteristics of Han Chinese rule and culture, but by their focus on retaining the characteristics of Manchu culture. They used such characteristics to strengthen relations with other nationalities to build a multiracial empire that included Manchu , Han , Mongol , Tibetan , Uyghur and other nationalities. For better governing his multiethnic empire, for instance,

29328-537: The rebels. In 1854, Britain tried to re-negotiate the Treaty of Nanjing, inserting clauses allowing British commercial access to Chinese rivers and the creation of a permanent British embassy at Beijing. In 1856, Qing authorities, in searching for a pirate, boarded a ship, the Arrow , which the British claimed had been flying the British flag, an incident which led to the Second Opium War . In 1858, facing no other options,

29516-422: The regime and sped up the conquest of the rest of the country. Dorgon then drastically reduced the influence of the eunuchs and directed Manchu women not to bind their feet in the Chinese style. However, not all of Dorgon's policies were equally popular or as easy to implement. The controversial July 1645 Queue Order forced adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and comb the remaining hair into

29704-411: The relationship between the Qing dynasty and "China" — with the word "China" in inverted commas because the concept of "China" has been changing, not fixed. The school hoped to understand the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, and how it was used during the period, which is a question worth studying, but did not hold that Qing dynasty is not China. Some scholars like Ping-ti Ho have criticized

29892-468: The resilience and coherence of local communities in China as a theme for interpreting the transition from the late imperial to the modern era. Crossley's previous books are What is Global History? (Polity Press, 2008), an examination of narrative strategies in global history that joins a new series of short introductory books inspired by E.H. Carr 's What is History? . Crossley's books on Chinese history include Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and

30080-594: The rest of China. Some New Qing historians have argued that the Manchu-ruled Qing was more comparable to the Ottoman , Mughal , and Romanov ( Russian ) Empires across the Eurasian landmass than most earlier Chinese dynasties . They argued that the Qing Empire was not only a victim of imperialism but also practiced imperialism itself. For example, Peter C. Perdue had described the Qing as a " colonial empire " that ruled over

30268-421: The same CASS online journal, severely attacking both Crossley's methodologies and her interpretations. In a subsequent essay Zhong continued his attack on Crossley, citing errors in an article of hers that had been translated into Chinese. Crossley maintains a voluminous errata site linked to her faculty page since 1995; in a tweet, she pointed out that Zhong had missed the "good stuff" and recommended that he visit

30456-461: The same time, often behind the backs of their ethnic Han ministers, adopted other roles to rule other ethnic groups, including Bogda Khan for the Mongols and the wheel-turning king for Tibetan Buddhists . Edward Rhoads argued that the Manchus' integration into Han culture should be viewed as a reciprocal acculturation process. He further claimed that the Manchu identity was actually reinforced in

30644-411: The sinicization paradigm Han-centric. In his work China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Euroasia , Peter Perdue offered his rebuttal to Ho’s sinicization thesis by raising two main points, including the separateness of the Manchu elite and Han mass, and the difference and non-uniformity among the subject population. On the other hand, scholar Yang Nianqun tried to analyze the weaknesses of both

30832-480: The stability of their dynasty. The first was the bureaucratic institutions and the neo-Confucian culture that they adopted from earlier dynasties. Manchu rulers and Han Chinese scholar-official elites gradually came to terms with each other. The examination system offered a path for ethnic Han to become officials. Imperial patronage of the Kangxi Dictionary demonstrated respect for Confucian learning, while

31020-419: The standard terminology for Han Chinese writers. Rowe noted that "these were the origins of the China we know today". He added that while the early Qing rulers viewed themselves as multi-hatted emperors who ruled several nationalities "separately but simultaneously", by the mid-19th century the Qing Empire had become part of a European-style community of sovereign states and entered into a series of treaties with

31208-417: The study of Qing history. Inspired by New Qing History studies, the so-called "New Ming History" studies have also emerged, which similarly attempts to draw attention to the Inner Asian characteristics of the preceding Ming dynasty , and illustrates the existence of such characteristics in Chinese dynasties before the Qing dynasty. The use of "New Qing History" as an approach is to be distinguished from

31396-518: The term "Zhongguo". Scholar Yang Nianquan observed that some New Qing historians tended to place the Qing in the context of world history and interpret it using empire building theory; however, he argued that Peter Perdue's study of the Qing expansion to the Northwest frontier as "colonization" is an "over-interpretation" and an inaccurate analogy between Chinese history of unification and European colonial experiences. Although scholars appear to agree that

31584-406: The thesis may not be viewed as a static and unidirectional concept of Chinese ethnogenesis . He added that Chinese scholars contributed to refining the definition of China from Chinese perspectives in response to the somewhat overly radical approach of some New Qing historians, who have attempted, wittingly or unwittingly, to reduce "China" ( Zhongguo ) to China proper and "Chinese" ( Zhongguoren ) to

31772-599: The throne in violation of the custom that the new emperor be of the next generation, and another regency began. Ci'an suddenly died in the spring of 1881, leaving Cixi as sole regent. From 1889, when Guangxu began to rule in his own right, until 1898, the Empress Dowager lived in semi-retirement, spending the majority of the year at the Summer Palace . In 1897, two German Roman Catholic missionaries were murdered in southern Shandong province (the Juye Incident ). Germany used

31960-572: The unity of China...." He sought to "expose its mask of pseudo-academic scholarship, eliminating the deleterious effect it has had on scholarship in China." Li went on to charge that the "whole range of views [New Qing History scholars] express are cliches and stereotypes, little more than dusted off versions in a scholarly tone of the Western imperialism and Japanese imperialism of the 19th century". American scholars such as Evelyn Rawski, Mark Elliott, Pamela Kyle Crossley, and James Millward, Li continued, "view

32148-525: The unpublished multi-volume history of the Qing dynasty that the State Council of the People's Republic of China sponsored between 2002 and 2023, which is also occasionally called "New Qing History" in English. Nevertheless, this state project, a revision of the 1928 Draft History of Qing , was said to be written primarily to refute the New Qing History. In November 2023, Zhang Taisu  [ zh ] ,

32336-406: The vanguard, while Manchu bannermen were used predominantly for quick strikes with maximum impact, so as to minimize ethnic Manchu losses. This multi-ethnic force conquered Ming China for the Qing. The three Liaodong officers who played key roles in the conquest of southern China were Shang Kexi, Geng Zhongming, and Kong Youde, who governed southern China autonomously as viceroys for the Qing after

32524-579: The word "China" while becoming Chinese. William T. Rowe wrote that the name "China" ( Zhongguo or Zhonghua ) was apparently understood to refer to the political realm of the Han Chinese during the Ming dynasty, and this understanding persisted among the Han Chinese into the early Qing dynasty, and the understanding was also shared by Aisin Gioro rulers before the Ming-Qing transition . The Qing, however, "came to refer to their more expansive empire not only as

32712-476: The world at the time. Nurhaci , leader of the House of Aisin-Gioro and vassal of the Ming dynasty, unified Jurchen clans (known later as Manchus) and founded the Later Jin dynasty in 1616, renouncing the Ming overlordship. His son Hong Taiji was declared Emperor of the Great Qing in 1636. As Ming control disintegrated, peasant rebels captured the Ming capital Beijing, but the Ming general Wu Sangui opened

32900-410: The world. The term 'Chinese people' ( 中國人 ; Zhōngguórén ; Manchu: ᡩᡠᠯᡳᠮᠪᠠᡳ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ ‍ᡳ ᠨᡳᠶᠠᠯᠮᠠ Dulimbai gurun-i niyalma ) referred to all the Han, Manchu, and Mongol subjects of the Qing Empire. When the Qing conquered Dzungaria in 1759 , it proclaimed within a Manchu-language memorial that the new land had been absorbed into "China". The Qing government expounded an ideology that it

33088-439: The worship of idols were all banned. However, success led to internal feuds, defections and corruption. In addition, British and French troops, equipped with modern weapons, had come to the assistance of the Qing army. Nonetheless, it was not until 1864 that Qing forces under Zeng Guofan succeeded in crushing the revolt. After the outbreak of this rebellion, there were also revolts by the Muslims and Miao people of China against

33276-433: The worst slaughter. 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers were used against the Three Feudatories in addition to the 200,000 bannermen. The 61-year reign of the Kangxi Emperor was the longest of any emperor in Chinese history, and marked the beginning of the High Qing era , the zenith of the dynasty's social, economic and military power. The early Manchu rulers established two foundations of legitimacy that help to explain

33464-464: Was a co-author of The Earth and its Peoples, which was a revolutionary text in 1997. She was invited to write What is Global History? in a Polity Press series of short texts introducing historical genres to undergraduates. It is a study of "narrative strategies" used by historians from many cultures, over history, to attempt to tell "a story without a center," which Crossley regards as the defining quality of "global history." In her own research work in

33652-399: Was a student of Yu Ying-shih and Parker Po-fei Huang , and wrote a dissertation under the direction of Jonathan D. Spence . She joined the Dartmouth College faculty in Hanover, New Hampshire , in 1985. After David Farquhar, Gertraude Roth Li , and Beatrice S. Bartlett , Crossley was among the first scholars writing in English to use Manchu-language documents to research the history of

33840-423: Was bringing the "outer" non-Han peoples—such as various populations of Mongolians, as well as the Tibetans—together with the "inner" Han Chinese into "one family", united within the Qing state. Phraseology like Zhōngwài yījiā ( 中外一家 ) and nèiwài yījiā ( 內外一家 )—both translatable as 'home and abroad as one family'—was employed to convey this idea of Qing-mediated trans-cultural unity. The Qing dynasty

34028-413: Was contradictory to the Hua–Yi distinction ideology. He wrote that the Qing rulers' viewpoint was constrained by this inclusive cultural Zhongguo , which had a longer history dating back to the Han dynasty , making it unattainable and reluctant for them to create an independent worldview focused on Inner Asia. Scholar Guo Chengkang wrote that when the Qing established its control in inland China following

34216-420: Was editor-in-chief of The Phoenix ; her fellow students included David C. Page , Robert Zoellick , Ben Brantley , Wing Thye Woo , Robert P. George , Jacqueline Carey and David G. Bradley . At Swarthmore she was a student of Lillian M. Li and Bruce Cumings , and as an undergraduate began graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania with Hilary Conroy . She later entered Yale University , where she

34404-437: Was founded not by Han Chinese , who constituted a majority of the population, but by Manchus , a sedentary farming people descended from the Jurchens , a Tungusic people who lived in the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang . The early form of the Manchu state was founded by Nurhaci , the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribe – the Aisin-Gioro – in Jianzhou in

34592-414: Was incited by the murder of French nuns set off by the belligerence of local French diplomats. Starting with the Cochinchina Campaign in 1858, France expanded control of Indochina. By 1883, France was in full control of the region and had reached the Chinese border. The Sino-French War began with a surprise attack by the French on the Chinese southern fleet at Fuzhou. After that the Chinese declared war on

34780-457: Was not until the eve of completing the conquest ten years later that they fulfilled their government roles. Hong Taiji staffed his bureaucracy with many Han Chinese, including newly surrendered Ming officials, but ensured Manchu dominance by an ethnic quota for top appointments. Hong Taiji's reign also saw a fundamental change of policy towards his Han Chinese subjects. Nurhaci had treated Han in Liaodong according to how much grain they had. Due to

34968-412: Was poorly executed and terminated by the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) in the Wuxu Coup . In 1900, anti-foreign Boxers killed many Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries; in retaliation, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China and imposed a punitive indemnity . In response, the government initiated unprecedented fiscal and administrative reforms , including elections, a new legal code, and

35156-429: Was quoted in Kyodo New Service as saying, "We are not the targets," and that Chinese historians using non-Chinese documents and dealing with the history of Qing empire conquests were the real targets. In a 2024 interview with The Wall Street Journal , Crossley stated that "[a]ccording to Xi Jinping , there have been no conquests in Chinese history. Only happy unifications with people aspiring to be Chinese." Crossley

35344-399: Was to establish the Canton System in 1756, which restricted maritime trade to Guangzhou and gave monopoly trading rights to private Chinese merchants . This was successful for a time, and the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company had long before been granted similar monopoly rights by their governments. In 1793, the British East India Company, with the support of

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