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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Crossley, Pamela. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.
Main Argument: "…the monolithic identities of 'Manchu, "Mongol,' and 'Chinese' (Han) are not regarded as fundamentals, sources, or building blocks of the emergent order. In my view these identities are ideological productions of the process of imperial centralization before 1800" (3). The emperorship was constructed as simultaneous and universal, and the various images of the emperor were constructed to speak to various constituencies.
Argument, Sources, Examples The concept of Qing rulership evolved over the course of the empire; as Crossley puts it, "I describe the crafting and use of a China-oriented imperial persona in relation to progressive historicization of a 'Chinese' identity and attempt to place this process alongside a series of other processes that were equally fundamental to Qing rule" (18-19). This process reached its height during the Qianlong reign, in which the emperorship represented itself as universal and self-referencing (in the sense of self-authorizing), although its capacities declined quickly thereafter. In this ideology of the emperorship as claiming the capacity to contain worlds, and painting the emperor abstractly as universal man and emperor, the Qing was patently early modern. The evolution of the emperorship was also the process of ordering--and thereby reinforcing or dissolving--certain group identities, which Crossley argues were the ancestors of modern nationalisms. In the end, then, for the early modern emperorship, "the urge to control was paramount, and the universal capacity to nurture knowledge through education, publishing, libraries, and international communications was also the power to suppress it (as when Louis forbade the teaching of the dangerously dichotomous Descartes)" (51).
Critical assessment: Yes good.
Bibliographic Data: Perdue, Peter C. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Main Argument: The Qing conquests of central Eurasia were a world historical event because:
1) "for the empire's rulers and subjects, these victories fundamentally transformed the scale of their world";
2) "the expansion of the Qing state formed part of a global process in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nearly everywhere, newly centralized, integrated, militarized states pushed their borders outward by military conquest, and settlers, missionaries, and traders followed behind" i.e. 17thC crisis ==≥ 18thC stabilization;
3)
Argument, Sources, Examples Problems with nationalist historiography: teleology, moral evaluation, natural frontiers, and essentialized identities.
- "In short, a frontier perspective on Eurasia focuses on boundary definition and state building through mobilization of culture, commerce, and violence. This frontier culture, designed for expansion, affected the Qing empire's domestic political economy, its governing institutions, its legitimating rituals, and its conception of its place in the world. It not only helps to explain why the Qing grew; it can also explain why the empire fell" (546)--because after the military campaigns along the frontier were over, "the end to military challenges on the frontier let much dynamism ebb out of the bureaucracy. Its incentive to reform itself declined, and the will to control abuses slackened" after the mid-18thC (549). Not coincidentally, these problems became increasingly serious in the C19. Perdue outlines four factors that he thinks need to be a dded to the story: "accidents of timing of geopolitical relations, the misapplication of northwestern policies to southern environment, the power balance with localities of the Qing 'negotiated state,' and the impact of commercialization on social solidarity" (552).
Critical assessment: Whoever at the Belknap Press thought setting any part of this book in Papyrus was okay needs to be fired. Otherwise, this is a massive book and a true achievement that makes a number of very interesting claims about several important questions in historiography.
Main Argument: "…the monolithic identities of 'Manchu, "Mongol,' and 'Chinese' (Han) are not regarded as fundamentals, sources, or building blocks of the emergent order. In my view these identities are ideological productions of the process of imperial centralization before 1800" (3). The emperorship was constructed as simultaneous and universal, and the various images of the emperor were constructed to speak to various constituencies.
Argument, Sources, Examples The concept of Qing rulership evolved over the course of the empire; as Crossley puts it, "I describe the crafting and use of a China-oriented imperial persona in relation to progressive historicization of a 'Chinese' identity and attempt to place this process alongside a series of other processes that were equally fundamental to Qing rule" (18-19). This process reached its height during the Qianlong reign, in which the emperorship represented itself as universal and self-referencing (in the sense of self-authorizing), although its capacities declined quickly thereafter. In this ideology of the emperorship as claiming the capacity to contain worlds, and painting the emperor abstractly as universal man and emperor, the Qing was patently early modern. The evolution of the emperorship was also the process of ordering--and thereby reinforcing or dissolving--certain group identities, which Crossley argues were the ancestors of modern nationalisms. In the end, then, for the early modern emperorship, "the urge to control was paramount, and the universal capacity to nurture knowledge through education, publishing, libraries, and international communications was also the power to suppress it (as when Louis forbade the teaching of the dangerously dichotomous Descartes)" (51).
Critical assessment: Yes good.
Bibliographic Data: Perdue, Peter C. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Main Argument: The Qing conquests of central Eurasia were a world historical event because:
1) "for the empire's rulers and subjects, these victories fundamentally transformed the scale of their world";
2) "the expansion of the Qing state formed part of a global process in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nearly everywhere, newly centralized, integrated, militarized states pushed their borders outward by military conquest, and settlers, missionaries, and traders followed behind" i.e. 17thC crisis ==≥ 18thC stabilization;
3)
China's expansion marked a turning point in the history of Eurasia. Across the continent, the great empires founded by Central Eurasian conquerors in the wake of the disintegration of the Mongol empire had captured the heartlands of densely settled regions, used the resources of these regions to supply military forces, and pushed back from the heartlands into the core of the continent. When their borders met, they negotiated treaties that drew fixed lines through the steppes, deserts, and oases, leaving no refuge for the mobile peoples of the frontier.
The closing of this great frontier was more significant in world history than the renowned closing of the North American frontier lamented by Frederic Jackson Turner in 1893. It eliminated permanently as a major actor on the historical stage the nomadic pastoralists, who had been the strongest alternative to settled agrarian society since the second millennium BCE. (10-11)
Argument, Sources, Examples Problems with nationalist historiography: teleology, moral evaluation, natural frontiers, and essentialized identities.
Each of these four features contains a kernel of truth. All historians are present-minded in some sense; moral evaluation is an essential component of historical interpretation; state boundaries did matter in the eighteenth century; and there was some sense of ethnic identity among the Mongols But using these assumptions uncritically to describe inevitably outcomes of a universal historical process instead of contingent human creations gives us a highly misleading view. (515)Solution: reintroduce contingency and avoid anachronism; "take a more objective stance, giving equal weight to all the players, without preconceived judgments"; "see boundary consciousness as evolving and constructed, not naturally fixed"; "ethnic and tribal definitions were likewise historical products of contingent interactions. They were not 'primordial'"; "finally, material factors need close attention" (ibid).
- "In short, a frontier perspective on Eurasia focuses on boundary definition and state building through mobilization of culture, commerce, and violence. This frontier culture, designed for expansion, affected the Qing empire's domestic political economy, its governing institutions, its legitimating rituals, and its conception of its place in the world. It not only helps to explain why the Qing grew; it can also explain why the empire fell" (546)--because after the military campaigns along the frontier were over, "the end to military challenges on the frontier let much dynamism ebb out of the bureaucracy. Its incentive to reform itself declined, and the will to control abuses slackened" after the mid-18thC (549). Not coincidentally, these problems became increasingly serious in the C19. Perdue outlines four factors that he thinks need to be a dded to the story: "accidents of timing of geopolitical relations, the misapplication of northwestern policies to southern environment, the power balance with localities of the Qing 'negotiated state,' and the impact of commercialization on social solidarity" (552).
Critical assessment: Whoever at the Belknap Press thought setting any part of this book in Papyrus was okay needs to be fired. Otherwise, this is a massive book and a true achievement that makes a number of very interesting claims about several important questions in historiography.