The Qing Dynasty and Its Neighbors

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-304
Author(s):  
Victor Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
Forward Movement ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Symbolic Resources ◽  
Imperial Expansion

Peter C. Perdue'sChina Marches Westargues that the Qing dynasty's ability to break through historical territorial barriers on China's northwestern frontier reflected greater Manchu familiarity with steppe culture than their Chinese predecessors had exhibited, reinforced by superior commercial, technical, and symbolic resources and the benefits of a Russian alliance. Qing imperial expansion illustrated patterns of territorial consolidation apparent as well in Russia's forward movement in Inner Asia and, ironically, in the heroic, if ultimately futile, projects of the western Mongols who fell victim to the Qing. After summarizing Perdue's thesis, this essay extends his comparisons geographically and chronologically to argue that between 1600 and 1800 states ranging from western Europe through Japan to Southeast Asia exhibited similar patterns of political and cultural integration and that synchronized integrative cycles across Eurasia extended from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries. Yet in its growing vulnerability to Inner Asian domination, China proper—along with other sectors of the “exposed zone” of Eurasia—exemplified a species of state formation that was reasonably distinct from trajectories in sectors of Eurasia that were protected against Inner Asian conquest.

scholarly journals Strange Parallels: Patterns in Eurasian Social Evolution

2011 ◽  
pp. 538-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Turchin
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
General Trend ◽  
World History ◽  
State Building ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
State Breakdown

Most professional historians have abandoned the search for general patterns and laws of history, but not Victor Lieberman. Strange Parallels II (SP II), following on SP I, proposes that similar mechanisms governed state building in such different, and distant, regions as Southeast Asia, China, Western Europe, and Russia. During the period covered by Lieberman (c.800–1830) the general trend within these regions of Eurasia was towards increasing political and cultural integration. This overall trend was not monotonic; it was periodically interrupted by interregna – periods of state breakdown and territorial fragmentation. However, as time unfolded the interregna became shorter and less disruptive. Remarkably, during the second millennium cycles of political integration and disintegration became increasingly correlated between the widely separated Eurasian regions. Lieberman’s bold thesis is combined with truly encyclopedic scholarship and a breathtaking scope. SP II is a major achievement in comparative world history that will take future researchers years to fully digest. This review essay aims to make a first step in this direction.

‘Ancestral Voices Prophesying War’

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-62
Author(s):  
Chris Murray
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Opium War ◽  
Imperial Expansion

Edward Gibbon and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were uneasy about the prospect of a British Empire, fearing overreach and collapse. Historical precedents such as the Roman Empire and Kublai Khan’s China made imperial expansion appear unwise. To Coleridge these predecessors served as warnings to Britain, but to Macartney they offered evidence that the Qing Dynasty was doomed. The Macartney Embassy attempted to recreate aspects of Marco Polo’s reception at Kublai Khan’s court: Macartney, like Gibbon and Coleridge, felt that histories could be replicated. In light of Britain’s fruitless embassies to China in 1793 and 1816, Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ draws on Gibbon’s account of the Khans for prophetic effect. Like Macartney’s journal, Coleridge’s poem articulates a perception that war between Britain and China was likely some decades before the First Opium War occurred.

Collecting the Pei Cen Stele in Qing China

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-278
Author(s):  
Weitian Yan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Han Dynasty ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Cultural Relic

Abstract This article investigates three vignettes in the collecting of the Pei Cen Stele during the eighteenth century. A Han-dynasty monument in Barköl, Xinjiang, the Pei Cen Stele tells of an unrecorded military achievement against the Xiongnu in 137. I begin by discussing how court officials used this artefact to support the Qing imperial expansion into central Asia. The second episode identifies four major types of copies of the Pei Cen Stele—facsimiles, replicas, tracing copies, and forgeries—and examines their varied functions to the epigraphic community at the time. The final section analyses the transitional style of this inscription through calligraphers’ innovative transcriptions. Appropriations of the Pei Cen Stele in these political, social, and artistic contexts, I argue, pinpoint the idea of collecting as a form of invention in the Qing dynasty. Collectors invented the Pei Cen Stele as a symbol of prosperity, a cultural relic, and a calligraphy exemplar.

The Solon Sable Tribute, Hunters of Inner Asia and Dynastic Elites at the Imperial Centre

Inner Asia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-63
Author(s):  
Ning Chia
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Demand ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Cultural Importance

Abstract This article discusses the political and cultural importance of the Qing sable tribute for the expression and maintenance of imperial authority by focusing on the Solon, the largest sable-hunting group of the Qing dynasty in Heilongjiang. The political use of fur tribute items at the Qing centre reveals how the privilege of wearing fur defined the boundaries of the ruling hierarchy and, therefore, why sable tribute throughout the dynasty was a mechanism for maintaining relations between the Manchu court and the hunting population. The high demand for sable and other furs by the Qing emperor and other members of the political elite explains why the Qing empire needed the hunting population and their native places in the borderlands.

‘Treasures of the Golden Chest Brought to Light…’: Revisiting the Sources and Purport of the ‘Truthful Record of the Qing Dynasty’

2018 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Boris V. Bazarov ◽  
◽  
Ekaterina V. Sundueva ◽  
Chingis Ts. Tsyrenov ◽  
Evgenii V. Nolev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Source Studies ◽  
Tibetan Studies

The article analyzes a corpus of sources that formed the basis of the most notable record of the Qing Empire, the ‘Truthful Record of the Qing Dynasty’ (Qingshilu). The analysis is based on a careful study of Russian, Chinese and Mongolian scholarship. A historical treatise ‘Truthful Record of the Mongols under the Qing Dynasty’ based on the Qingshilu and written in the Old Mongolian script was published in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China in 2013. A team of researchers from the Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) has been working on its translation, source studies and historical analysis, as its materials supplement the available data on the purport and sources of the Qingshilu. Review of its sources allows a better assessment of the veracity of the historical data of the ‘Truthful Record of the Qing Dynasty’ and a deeper understanding of its rich historical material on the Manchu dynasty ruling China, as well as Inner Asia during the Qing period. The article reviews the sources of the Qingshilu as listed in the ‘Truthful Record of the Mongols under the Qing Dynasty.’ Information on the Man Wen Lao Dang (‘The Old Archive of the Manchu Language’) is amassed and analyzed. The Man Wen Lao Dang was one of the sources used in compiling of early chronicles of the deeds of the first Manchu rulers into the ‘Truthful Record.’ The official historiographical and record-keeping tradition was then emerging in China under the Manchu dynasty. The authors assess the purport of the ‘Truthful Record of the Qing Dynasty’ throughout the spectrum of historical and political functions of the treatise. Analyzing of the sources of the ‘Truthful Record of the Qing Dynasty,’ including official documents untainted by compilers’ interpretation, and studying the import of the text in the political life allows to contend great value and veracity of the Qingshilu. The authors see new possibilities for studying international relations in the history of Inner Asia.

Grammatical Descriptions in Manchu Grammar Books from the Qing Dynasty

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
Takashi Takekoshi
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The 19Th Century

In this paper, we analyse features of the grammatical descriptions in Manchu grammar books from the Qing Dynasty. Manchu grammar books exemplify how Chinese scholars gave Chinese names to grammatical concepts in Manchu such as case, conjugation, and derivation which exist in agglutinating languages but not in isolating languages. A thorough examination reveals that Chinese scholarly understanding of Manchu grammar at the time had attained a high degree of sophistication. We conclude that the reason they did not apply modern grammatical concepts until the end of the 19th century was not a lack of ability but because the object of their grammatical descriptions was Chinese, a typical isolating language.

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