A Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch'ing History Author(S): Pamela Kyle Crossley and Evelyn S

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

A Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch'ing History Author(S): Pamela Kyle Crossley and Evelyn S Harvard-Yenching Institute A Profile of The Manchu Language in Ch'ing History Author(s): Pamela Kyle Crossley and Evelyn S. Rawski Source: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jun., 1993), pp. 63-102 Published by: Harvard-Yenching Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2719468 . Accessed: 19/05/2011 12:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=hyi. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Harvard-Yenching Institute is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. http://www.jstor.org A Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch'ing History PAMELA KYLE CROSSLEY, DartmouthCollege EVELYN S. RAWSKI, Universityof Pittsburgh \/J ANCHU was the imperial language of the Ch'ing dynasty. lVI It was the fundamental medium of communications within the imperial family, and within the court it was used for worship, ideological expression, address to the bannermen and nobility, and confidential political and military communications. From the eigh- teenth century on, Manchu also became a cultural emblem, a marker of Manchu identity and status, and an artifact of the univer- salism of the Ch'ien-lung emperor. Early Ch'ing policy required that selected civilians as well as bannermen and nobles acquire literacy in Manchu. This state interest in generalizing the function of Manchu had an impact on eighteenth-century scholarship, par- ticularly as it affected and was affected by the "Four Treasuries" (ssu-k'uch 'uan-shu) project. Ultimately the tradition of literati train- ing in Manchu produced a private field of Manchu-oriented scholar- ship.' ' The authors wish to thank Eugene Wu, Tim Connor, Sidney Tai, and the staff of the Harvard-Yenching Library; Tony Marr, Martin Heijdra, and the staff of the Gest Oriental Library, Princeton University; Monique Cohen and the staff of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; James Cheng, of the Han Yii-shan Collection, University of California, Los Angeles; Chuang Chi-fa and the late Chiang Fu-ts'ung, of the National Palace Archives (Ku-kung po- wu-kuan), Taipei; R. Po-chia Hsia for information on the archives of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel. For technical suggestions we are indebted to Gertraude Roth 63 64 PAMELA CROSSLEY AND EVELYN RAWSKI Both as a political instrument and as a natural language, Manchu had a variety of roles to play in Ch'ing life. It also plays a variety of roles in the extant documentation available to students of Ch'ing history. Nineteenth-century Western scholars emphasized the signi- ficance of Manchu in the Ch'ing order, although after the fall of the dynasty some Ch'ing specialists questioned the necessity of ac- quiring literacy in the language.2 In recent years access to Manchu materials has increased dramatically, and a reassessment of the im- portance of Manchu for Ch'ing research is in order. In this essay we review the functions of Manchu under the Ch'ing dynasty and how those functions are reflected in known extant documentation. We do not intend to repeat the historiographical and bibliographical work of generations of scholars. For such information we refer readers to essays on Manchu documents,3 and to published Li, Cheryl Boettcher, and Robin Kornman. Thomas G. Rawski has provided computer assistance, and Hyong-muk Lee has aided in editorial tasks. We are particularly grateful to Gertraude Roth Li and Susan Naquin for their trenchant critiques of an earlier form of this article. Because of space constraints, we include Chinese characters only for terms and titles that would not be easily identified by HJAS readers. Where phrases or titles are cited in both Manchu and Chinese, Manchu precedes. We generally adhere to the M6llendorf system. However, we have adopted practices suggested by Cheryl Boettcher, who was kind enough to show us a draft of her "Standard Romanization of Manchu: A Recommendation," and we hope that these modifications will aid in consistent representation of etymology and case. Manchus and Mongols conventionally did not use a clan or lineage (mukzun)name during the dynasty, but because lineage names are significant to the historian, we have placed them in brackets. 2 For well over a century the necessity of studying Manchu for purposes of research on the Ch'ing period has been the subject of occasional hortatory pronouncements. For glimpses of the debate see Thomas Taylor Meadows's introduction to Translationsfrom theManchu with the OriginalTexts (Canton: S. Wells Williams, 1849); A. V. Grebenscikov, Man'Jzury:ichjazyki pis'mennost'(Vladivostok, 1912); Erich Hauer, "Why the Sinologue Should Study Man- chu," Journal of the North China Branchof the Royal Asiatic Society61 (1930): 156-64; Erich Haenisch's introduction to his Mandschu-Grammatikmit Lesestiickenund 23 Texttafeln(Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopadie, 1961); Beatrice S. Bartlett, "Books of Revelations: The Impor- tance of the Manchu Language Archival Record Books for Research on Ch'ing History," Late ImperialChina 6.2 (1986): 25-36; Hukjintai's address to the Fifth East Asian Altaistic Conference, "Manju bithe kemuni oyonggo" (now published in the Proceedings[Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 1980]); and the passages from the work of Joseph F. Fletcher, Jr., quoted at the end of this essay. 3 A body of foundation literature, though now out of date, still contains important com- mentary and deserves acknowledgment. See particularly, Paul Georg von Mollendorf, "Essay on Manchu Literature," Journalof theNorth China Branch of theRoyal Asiatic Society 24 MANCHU SOURCES FOR CH'ING HISTORY 65 catalogues of important holdings throughout the world.4 We hope to provide a useful guide to opportunities now available for research on Chinese history and culture through the Manchu language. THE ROLE OF MANCHU IN CH'ING POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY Manchu has a long and complex history as a vernacular (1889-1890): 1-45; Berthold Laufer, "Skizze der Manjurischen Literatur," KeletiSzemle 8 (1908): 1-53, reprinted in Hartmut Walravens, ed., KleinereSchriften von BertholdLaufer (Wiesbaden- Franz Steiner, 1976); and Walter Fuchs, Beitragezur MandjurischenBibliographie und Literatur(Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Natur- und Volkerkunde Osta- siens, 1936). For more current work see Louis Ligeti, "A propos de l'ecriture manchoue," AOASH 2 (1952): 235-98; Denis Sinor, Introductionto ManchuStudies, American Council of Learned Societies, Research and Studies in Uralic and Altaic Languages, Project no. 104 (Micro photo, 1963), Joseph F. Fletcher, Jr., "Manchu Sources," in Donald D. Leslie, Colin Mackerras and Wang Gungwu, eds., Essays on the Sourcesfor ChineseHistory (Canberra: Australian National University, 1973), pp. 141-46; Cheryl M. Boettcher, "In Search of Man- chu Bibliography" (C.A.S. thesis, University of Illinois, 1989). 4 See for example the new catalogue of the Manchu collections in the People's Republic of China compiled by Huang Jun-hua ! et al., Ch'ian-kuoMan-wen tzu-liao lien-ho mu-lu (Peking: Shu-mu ch'u-pan-she, 1992). Also suggestive is the catalogue of Manchu materials in the 1930s in the National Palace Museum archives: Li Te-ch'i 4:,)@, comp., Kuo-li Pei- p 'ing t 'u-shu-kuanku-kung po-wu-yuan t 'u-shu-kuanMan-wen shu-chi lien-ho mu-lu (Peiping: Ku- kung po-wu-yiian, 1933); with its aid some materials may be traced to present archives. On other collections see Walter Simon and Howard G. H. Nelson, comp., ManchuBooks in Lon- don:A UnionCatalogue (London: British Museum, 1977); Nicholas Poppe, Leon Hurwitz, and Hidehiro Okada, Catalogueof theManchu-Mongol Section of the Toyo Bunko(Toyo Bunko, 1964); Martin Gimm, "Zur den mandjurischen Sammlungen der Sowjetunion, I," TP 54.1-3 (1963): 147-79; Jeanne-Marie Puyraimond, CataloguedufondsMandchou: BibliothequeNationale, departementdes manuscrits, division des manuscrits orientaux (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1979); Giovanni Stary, OpereMancesi in Italia e in Vaticano(Wiesbaden: Komissionsverlag Otto Har- rassowitz, 1985); IkegamiJiro t4E?--A, "Y6roppa ni aru Manshugo bunken ni tsuite," TG 45.3 (1962): 105-21; and "Y6roppa ni aru Manshulgo bunken ni tsuite (hoi)," TG 47.3 (1964): 144-46; for holdings in other European countries, seeJoseph Fletcher's review of the Simon and Nelson catalogue in HJAS 41.2 (1981): 657-58. The best recent guide to studies of archival collections, and to other aspects of Manchu studies, is Giovanni Stary, Manchu Studies:An InternationalBibliography (Wiesbaden: Kommissionsverlag Otto Harrassowitz, 1990). For collections in the United States, see Hartmut Walravens, "Vorlaufige Titelliste der Mandjurica in Bibliotheken der USA," in ZentralasiatischeStudien 10 (1976): 551-613; MatsumuraJun, "A Catalogue of the Manchu Books in the Library of Congress," TG 57.1- 2 (1976): 230-53; Ning Chia, "The Manchu Collection in the Johns Hopkins University," Centraland InnerAsian Stud,ies6 N 999 34-43. 66 PAMELA CROSSLEY AND EVELYN RAWSKI language. It has a demonstrable relationship to both its ancestral language, Jurchen, and its contemporaneous languages and dialects of Northeast Asia; it has a rich oral literature; and it has a doc- umented connection to the political concepts and religious life of Inner Asia.
Recommended publications
  • Manchus: a Horse of a Different Color
    History in the Making Volume 8 Article 7 January 2015 Manchus: A Horse of a Different Color Hannah Knight CSUSB Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making Part of the Asian History Commons Recommended Citation Knight, Hannah (2015) "Manchus: A Horse of a Different Color," History in the Making: Vol. 8 , Article 7. Available at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making/vol8/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in History in the Making by an authorized editor of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Manchus: A Horse of a Different Color by Hannah Knight Abstract: The question of identity has been one of the biggest questions addressed to humanity. Whether in terms of a country, a group or an individual, the exact definition is almost as difficult to answer as to what constitutes a group. The Manchus, an ethnic group in China, also faced this dilemma. It was an issue that lasted throughout their entire time as rulers of the Qing Dynasty (1644- 1911) and thereafter. Though the guidelines and group characteristics changed throughout that period one aspect remained clear: they did not sinicize with the Chinese Culture. At the beginning of their rule, the Manchus implemented changes that would transform the appearance of China, bringing it closer to the identity that the world recognizes today. In the course of examining three time periods, 1644, 1911, and the 1930’s, this paper looks at the significant events of the period, the changing aspects, and the Manchus and the Qing Imperial Court’s relations with their greater Han Chinese subjects.
    [Show full text]
  • The Jesuit Role As “Experts” in High Qing Cartography and Technology∗
    臺大歷史學報第31期 BIBLID1012-8514(2003)31p.223-250 2003年6月,頁223~250 2003.1.7收稿,2003.5.29通過刊登 The Jesuit Role as “Experts” in High Qing Cartography and Technology∗ Benjamin A. Elman∗∗ Abstract Earlier accounts have generally overvalued or undervalued the role of the Jesu- its in Ming-Qing intellectual life. In many cases the Jesuits were less relevant in the ongoing changes occurring in literati learning. In the medical field, for example, before the nineteenth century few Qing physicians (ruyi 儒醫) took early modern European “Galenic” medicine seriously as a threat to native remedies. On the other hand, the Kangxi revival of interest in mathematics was closely tied to the introduc- tion of Jesuit algebra (jiegen fang 借根方), trigonometry (sanjiao xue 三角學), and logarithyms (duishu 對數). In the midst of the relatively “closed door” policies of the Yongzheng emperor and his successors, a large-scale effort to recover and col- late the treasures of ancient Chinese mathematics were prioritized in the late eight- eenth and early nineteenth century. Despite setbacks during the early eighteenth century Rites Controversy, the Jesuits in China remained important “experts” (專家) in the Astro-Calendric Bureau (欽天監) and supervisors in the Qing dynasty’s imperial workshops. Earlier Adam Schall (1592-1666) and Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688) had not only championed the role of mathematics in Christianizing literati elites, but they also produced in- struments and weapons at the behest of both the Ming and Qing dynasties. The tech- nical expertise of the Jesuits in the China mission during the eighteenth century also ranged from translating Western texts and maps, introducing surveying methods to producing cannon, pulley systems, sundials, telescopes, water-pumps, musical in- struments, clocks, and other mechanical devices.
    [Show full text]
  • Hartmut Walravens Letters of A. Schiefner About V.P. Vasil'ev
    Hartmut Walravens Letters of A. Schiefner about V.P. Vasil’ev The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences had many members of German extraction like Wilhelm Radloff1 (1837–1918), Wilhelm Barthold2 (1869–1930) and S.F. Oldenburg3 (1863–1934) to quote just a few well-known names. Another scholar seems less known — in spite of the fact that he did ground-breaking research, published prolifically and pro- moted Russian scholarship abroad: Anton Schiefner4 (1817–1879) who served as a curator of the 2nd Section of the Academic Library (since 1848), adjunct for Tibetan (since 1852), and Academician extraordinary (since 1854). From 1856–1878, he was also director of the Ethnological Museum and, in 1860–1879, head of the 2nd section of the Academic Library. There is an entry in the Russian Biographical Dictionary5 but Schiefner’s name is only briefly mentioned in historical works — usually listing some of his publications6 but without giving much further information. There is no reference to Schiefner’s papers in uguevskij’s useful bibliography7 in spite of the fact that the Academy should have mate- rials on such a prominent and industrious member in its archives. Schiefner was a scholar of wide interests — having grown up in Revel (Tallinn) and being proficient in German (his mother tongue), Estonian, Russian, and Finnish. He knew Greek and Latin so well that he became a professor of the classical languages in St. Peters- burg. He studied Indology at Berlin university and specialized in Tibetan; so he became Isaak Jakob Schmidt’s8 successor at the Academy. He was one of the few dedicated linguists among the Orientalists at the time, and he published voluminous Ausführliche 1 Temir A.
    [Show full text]
  • Bannerman and Townsman: Ethnic Tension in Nineteenth-Century Jiangnan
    Bannerman and Townsman: Ethnic Tension in Nineteenth-Century Jiangnan Mark Elliott Late Imperial China, Volume 11, Number 1, June 1990, pp. 36-74 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/late.1990.0005 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/late/summary/v011/11.1.elliott.html Access Provided by Harvard University at 02/16/13 5:36PM GMT Vol. 11, No. 1 Late Imperial ChinaJune 1990 BANNERMAN AND TOWNSMAN: ETHNIC TENSION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY JIANGNAN* Mark Elliott Introduction Anyone lucky enough on the morning of July 21, 1842, to escape the twenty-foot high, four-mile long walls surrounding the city of Zhenjiang would have beheld a depressing spectacle: the fall of the city to foreign invaders. Standing on a hill, looking northward across the city toward the Yangzi, he might have decried the masts of more than seventy British ships anchored in a thick nest on the river, or perhaps have noticed the strange shapes of the four armored steamships that, contrary to expecta- tions, had successfully penetrated the treacherous lower stretches of China's main waterway. Might have seen this, indeed, except that his view most likely would have been screened by the black clouds of smoke swirling up from one, then two, then three of the city's five gates, as fire spread to the guardtowers atop them. His ears dinned by the report of rifle and musket fire and the roar of cannon and rockets, he would scarcely have heard the sounds of panic as townsmen, including his own relatives and friends, screamed to be allowed to leave the city, whose gates had been held shut since the week before by order of the commander of * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Manchu Studies (Manzokushi kenkyùkai) at Meiji University, Tokyo, in November 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • New Qing History: Dispute, Dialog, and Influence
    Faculty Scholarship Collection The faculty at Allegheny College has made this scholarly article openly available through the Faculty Scholarship Collection (FSC). Article Title The Social Construction and Deconstruction of Evil Landlords in Contemporary Chinese Fiction, Art, and Collective Memory Author(s) Guo Wu (Allegheny College) Journal Title Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Citation Wu, Guo. 2013. "The Social Construction and Deconstruction of Evil Landlords in Contemporary Chinese Fiction, Art, and Collective Memory." Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 25, no. 1: 131-164. Link to additional information on http://u.osu.edu/mclc/journal/abstracts/wu-guo/ publisher’s website Version of article in FSC Published version Link to this article through FSC https://dspace.allegheny.edu/handle/10456/37714 Date article added to FSC March 18, 2015 Information about Allegheny’s Open Access Policy is available at http://sites.allegheny.edu/scholarlycommunication/ For additional articles from this collection, visit https://dspace.allegheny.edu/handle/10456/34250 The Chinese Historical Review ISSN: 1547-402X (Print) 2048-7827 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ytcr20 New Qing History: Dispute, Dialog, and Influence Guo Wu To cite this article: Guo Wu (2016) New Qing History: Dispute, Dialog, and Influence, The Chinese Historical Review, 23:1, 47-69, DOI: 10.1080/1547402X.2016.1168180 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1547402X.2016.1168180 Published online: 09 Jun 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 325 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ytcr20 Download by: [Allegheny College] Date: 19 December 2016, At: 07:28 The Chinese Historical Review, 23.
    [Show full text]
  • Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette
    COMMUNICATION, EMPIRE, AND AUTHORITY IN THE QING GAZETTE by Emily Carr Mokros A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland June, 2016 © 2016 Emily Carr Mokros All rights Reserved Abstract This dissertation studies the political and cultural roles of official information and political news in late imperial China. Using a wide-ranging selection of archival, library, and digitized sources from libraries and archives in East Asia, Europe, and the United States, this project investigates the production, regulation, and reading of the Peking Gazette (dibao, jingbao), a distinctive communications channel and news publication of the Qing Empire (1644-1912). Although court gazettes were composed of official documents and communications, the Qing state frequently contracted with commercial copyists and printers in publishing and distributing them. As this dissertation shows, even as the Qing state viewed information control and dissemination as a strategic concern, it also permitted the free circulation of a huge variety of timely political news. Readers including both officials and non-officials used the gazette in order to compare judicial rulings, assess military campaigns, and follow court politics and scandals. As the first full-length study of the Qing gazette, this project shows concretely that the gazette was a powerful factor in late imperial Chinese politics and culture, and analyzes the close relationship between information and imperial practice in the Qing Empire. By arguing that the ubiquitous gazette was the most important link between the Qing state and the densely connected information society of late imperial China, this project overturns assumptions that underestimate the importance of court gazettes and the extent of popular interest in political news in Chinese history.
    [Show full text]
  • Plurality in Qing Imperial Medicine: Examining Institutional Formations
    Asia Pacific Perspectives ∙ Fall/Winter 2013–14 Plurality in Qing Imperial Medicine: Examining Institutional Formations Beyond the Imperial Medical Bureau Sare Aricanli, Princeton University Abstract This article illustrates the value of using the lens of institutional history to study imperial medicine. Identifying and incorporating a range of organizations and posts into the narrative of imperial medicine in eighteenth-century China shows the breadth of medical activity during this time. The most familiar institution of imperial medicine is the Imperial Medical Bureau, and this study argues that we can greatly benefit from including the history of other formations such as the Imperial Pharmacy and the Ministry of Imperial Stables, Herds, and Carriages. Such an outlook reveals the overlapping spheres of institutions, practitioners, and medicinals between human and equine medicine, implies that ethnicity may have been a factor in the organization of medicine, and points to a wider range of medical practitioners and patients within the imperial realm. Furthermore, multiplicity did not only exist among institutions and practitioners, but also on the linguistic level, as evidenced by the divergence in the meaning of some Manchu and Chinese terminology. Finally, these pluralities suggest that an understanding of imperial medicine as being limited to the Imperial Medical Bureau greatly underestimates the diversity of institutions, posts, ethnicities, and languages within the eighteenth-century Chinese imperial medical world. Keywords: imperial medicine, Imperial Medical Bureau, Imperial Pharmacy, equine care Introduction The history of Chinese medicine has benefited greatly from narratives that rest http://www.usfca.edu/pacificrim/perspectives/ on the textual tradition. Chinese medicine is, however, reflected quite differently through the lenses of textual and institutional history.
    [Show full text]
  • The Translation and Dissemination of Chu Ci in Europe Nan Chen, Chuanmao Tian
    International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 5(5) Sep-Oct 2020 |Available online: https://ijels.com/ The Translation and Dissemination of Chu Ci in Europe Nan Chen, Chuanmao Tian School of Foreign Studies, Yangtze University, Hubei, 434023 PRC China Abstract—This paper combs through the translation and dissemination forms of Chu Ci in Europe from the perspective of time. Before the twentieth century is the early stage and its major dissemination form develops from reference translation to systemic one. Representative works of this stage includes the translation of Pfizmaier and Denys. The modern stage is divided by the first half of the twentieth century and Chu Ci began to treated as an subject in European Universities. Research perspectives on Chu Ci started to expand. From the later half of twentieth century to the presentis the contemporary stage.Complete translation versions of Chu Ci had appeared. Eastern Europe emerged as a new force in the translation of Chu Ci. At the end, major translation achievements and research angles will be summarized. Keywords—Chu Ci; translation; Europe; Sinology. I. INTRODUCTION of Chu Ci in Europe will also be involved. Unlike The Book of Songs and The Analects of Confucius, which are Chinese famous classic literature, the translation II. THE EARLY STAGE:FROM REFERENCE and dissemination of Chu Ci are less concentrated in TRANSLATION TO SYSTEMIC TRANSLATION Europe(Guo 2013; Wei 2014; Yan 2013; Guo & Cao 2014). When it comes to the origin of the translation and Early work in the translation study of Chu Ci tended to focus dissemination in Europe, there are always different voices.
    [Show full text]
  • Depicting Cassowaries in the Qing Court
    Transcultural Studies 2013.1 7 Images, Knowledge and Empire: Depicting Cassowaries in the Qing Court Lai Yu-chih, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Translated by Philip Hand Originally published in Chinese under the title “Tuxiang, zhishi yu diguo: Qinggong de shihuoji tuhui 圖像, 知識與帝國:清宮的食火雞圖繪,” The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly, 29:2 (2011). Introduction: Where the new Qing history meets art history The new Qing history studies have been one of the most widely noticed and fruitful developments in the last decade or so of Chinese historical research.1 The Qing was previously seen as an extension of Chinese dynastic rule, but the new Qing history studies stress that despite being the ruling house of China, the dynasty was established and led by the Manchus. The importance of research into “Sinicisation” is greatly deemphasised; in its place is a focus on the difference of Manchu rule.2 Examples include the martial culture of the Qing and their policies toward the border regions of Tibet, Mongolia, and Central Asia. Of particular interest is the fast expansion of the Qing Empire, which nearly tripled its territory in one short century (1660-1760). On this basis, the writers of the new Qing history have raised a challenge to the description of the Qing in traditional historical writing as a closed, stagnant victim of western imperialism. From the perspective of comparative and global history, they have drawn comparisons between the Qing and other modern empires such as the Russian, the British, and the Ottoman. They have attempted to argue that the dynasty, particularly the high Qing, was an expansionist colonial empire in the modern sense.3 In other words, the expansion and rule of the 1 For more on this historiographical movement, see Evelyn S.
    [Show full text]
  • Historical Romance and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Cultural Fantasies
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Genre and Empire: Historical Romance and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Cultural Fantasies Yuanfei Wang University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the History Commons Recommended Citation Wang, Yuanfei, "Genre and Empire: Historical Romance and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Cultural Fantasies" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 938. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/938 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/938 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Genre and Empire: Historical Romance and Sixteenth-Century Chinese Cultural Fantasies Abstract Chinese historical romance blossomed and matured in the sixteenth century when the Ming empire was increasingly vulnerable at its borders and its people increasingly curious about exotic cultures. The project analyzes three types of historical romances, i.e., military romances Romance of Northern Song and Romance of the Yang Family Generals on northern Song's campaigns with the Khitans, magic-travel romance Journey to the West about Tang monk Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India, and a hybrid romance Eunuch Sanbao's Voyages on the Indian Ocean relating to Zheng He's maritime journeys and Japanese piracy. The project focuses on the trope of exogamous desire of foreign princesses and undomestic women to marry Chinese and social elite men, and the trope of cannibalism to discuss how the expansionist and fluid imagined community created by the fiction shared between the narrator and the reader convey sentiments of proto-nationalism, imperialism, and pleasure.
    [Show full text]
  • Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Germany)
    ROCZNIK ORIENTALISTYCZNY, T. LXXII, Z. 2, 2019, (s. 152–164) DOI 10.24425/ro.2019.132996 HARTMUT WALRAVENS (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Germany) The Manchu Collection in the Jagiellonian University Library Abstract The present paper describes the Manchu Collection in the Jagiellonian University Library in Cracow which was a part of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin. The historical Manchu collection comprised over 300 items (call numbers, including “duplicates” of the same title). The paper offers a historical sketch of the forming of the collection as well as short description of some interesting items. Keywords: Manchu, book collection, Prussian State Library in Berlin, Jagiellonian Library A considerable portion of the collections of the former Prussian State Library (today: Berlin State Library, Prussian Cultural Foundation) was moved away from Berlin and stored for safekeeping in castles and mansions East of the Oder River during World War II. After the War, this territory became Polish and the books came into the custody of the Jagiellonian University Library where they are still today. This was fortunate because the collection escaped destruction and neglect. “Collection” here just means “a large number of books”, not books on the same subject. Thus it was not the complete older Manchu section that found its way to Cracow – another portion was stored in the Western zones, still another part in the Russian zone of post-war Germany. Eventually, the Manchu books were consolidated in Marburg (West Germany, later transferred to West Berlin), and East Berlin (German State Library, GDR). The surviving catalogue files were kept in East Berlin, and during the period of cold war access to this important information was practically impossible.
    [Show full text]
  • Mark C. Elliott Curriculum Vitae
    Mark C. Elliott Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Department of History Director, John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 telephone 617 496 5343 / facsimile 617 496 6040 [email protected] Curriculum vitae wEducation Ph.D., History, University of California, Berkeley, 1993 Senior Advanced Research Student, People’s University of China, Beijing, 1990 Research Student, Institute for the Study of the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, 1987-1990 M.A., East Asian Studies, Yale University, New Haven, 1984 General Research Student, Liaoning University, Shenyang, 1982-1983 Inter-University Program in Chinese Language Studies, Taipei, 1981-1982 B.A., History, summa cum laude, Yale University, New Haven, 1981 wProfessional experience 2013- Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies 2010-2011 Acting Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies 2010-2011 Acting Chair, Harvard China Fund 2004- Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University (joint appointment in Department of History in 2013) 2003-2004 Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University 2002-2003 Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2000-2001 Visiting Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University 1999-2003 Associate Professor, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara 1993-99 Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara wPublications Books Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World. Library of World Biography series.
    [Show full text]