584 Book Reviews / JESHO 54 (2011) 537-626

Pei HUANG, Reorienting the Manchus: A Study of Sinicization, 1583-1795. Cornell East Asia Series 152. Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program, 2011. xxiv + 376 pp. ISBN: 978-1-933947-22-8 (hbk.); 978-2-933947- 52-5 (pbk.). $69.00 (hbk.) / $49.00 (pbk.).

Ever since the polemic launched fifteen years ago between Evelyn Rawski and Ping-ti Ho on the significance of Qing rule, the question of the sini- cization of the Manchus has been a topic of growing interest for historians of late imperial China. The sinicization question, in turn, is but one aspect of a broader development in the field, frequently referred to as the ‘New Qing History’, which attempts to place the study of the Qing into larger frameworks of Inner Asian history, the history of empire, and world his- tory generally. Among the central ideas of the ‘New Qing History’ are the belief that the specifically Manchu elements of Qing rule need to be taken seriously and that it is important to make use of non-traditional sources for the study of the Qing period, including Manchu-, Mongolian-, and Tibetan-language materials. Responses to the ‘New Qing History’ vary and it remains to be seen what the long-term impact of this new wave of scholarship will be. Many his- torians welcome what can fairly be described as a decentering project and find that a comparative approach based (at least in part) on non-Chinese- language sources has opened up new horizons for research and interpreta- tion. Others are more skeptical, preferring to downplay the importance of Manchu difference by emphasizing the degree to which Manchu elites and commoners took on Chinese characteristics. For these scholars, the new historiographical turn represents a threat to cherished narratives of the past; the similarities between Ming and Qing, and an underlying belief in China’s timeless and essential unity, override all other considerations. The present work, by a respected historian of eighteenth-century China, falls into this latter camp. To his credit, the author is quite clear about his position. Early in the book Professor Huang criticizes the ‘New Qing History’ for failing prop- erly to understand sinicization and takes issue with its being in any way chauvinistic or nationalistic. He adds that the need to adapt to Chinese culture and the goal of maintaining Manchu identity ‘were not in con- flict’, and that attempts by some historians to depict them as such are the result of a poor grasp of the process of ethnic change (7). He argues that ‘historical evidence has not confirmed [the] theory’ advanced by the ‘New Qing’ scholars that ‘there were close links between the Manchu ethnicity

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852011X611508 Book Reviews / JESHO 54 (2011) 537-626 585

[sic] and the Inner Asian regions’ (9) and that ‘”Inner Asian” commonality, especially of the Mongols, did not play an important role in the conquest of China’ (10). He goes on to say that, ‘as the “New Qing” historians speculate’, though the Manchu-language archives may be of some value, in the end they are irrelevant: ‘It is safe to say that once the contents of the Manchu archives are known to the scholarly community, the general pic- ture of the Qing dynasty will remain the same, even though certain specific aspects may change’ (8). Even more definitively, he avers that ‘the Manchu ethnicity or Inner Asian approach to the study of Qing history would unlikely change anything significantly about the Qing dynasty or about the status of the Manchus as an ethnic minority in China today’ (11). As someone who has taken part in the writing of the ‘New Qing His- tory’, and whose work is liberally referred to in the present book, I welcome Professor Huang’s examination of these and other related issues. I would be the first to agree with him that Manchu adaptation of Chinese political institutions, philosophical beliefs, and cultural practices, figures centrally in any account we would want to offer of Manchu history, and have said as much in print. At the same time, I would point out that much in the story Professor Huang tells contradicts the assertions he offers with such confidence early in the book. For instance, his steadfast insistence on the impossibility of ‘Manchu values’ surviving in the face of long residence in China—evident in many such statements as, ‘Chinese norms, mores, and values made inroads into their [i.e., the Manchus’] cultural heritage and thus weakened their ethnic solidarity’ (3)—flies in the face of his statement that the two were not opposed to one another. His contention that there is no evidence to support the claim of meaningful connections between the Manchus and the political, military, spiritual, and material culture of Inner Asia is undermined by his own references (e.g., 44-47, 70, 79) to the importance of the Mongol and Jurchen legacy to Manchu-Qing rule. And his allusion to the ultimate irrelevance of the ‘New Qing History’ and of sources in Manchu and other languages for research—which he believes will not affect our understanding of the Qing period in any significant way—is contradicted not only by the burgeoning scholarship of the last decade (very little of which has found its way into the outdated bibliogra- phy), but by the very fact that he felt the need to publish this book at all and address the conclusions advanced by myself and others. These and many other inconsistencies plague what to this reader is a very confusing account: The Manchus were ‘not really alien’ (1) in the first place, but were sinicized; they abandoned their language, in which anyway