The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time (Harvard East Asian Monographs) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674013999 ISBN 13: 9780674013995

Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004

Synopsis

For many years, the Ming and Qing dynasties have been grouped as “late imperial China,” a temporal framework that allows scholars to identify and evaluate indigenous patterns of social, economic, and cultural change initiated in the last century of Ming rule that imparted a particular character to state and society throughout the Qing and into the twentieth century. This paradigm asserts the autonomous character of social change in China and has allowed historians to create a “China-centered history.” Recently, however, many scholars have begun emphasizing the singular qualities of the Qing.

Among the eight contributors to this volume on the formation of the Qing, those who emphasize the Manchu ethos of the Qing tend to see it as part of an early modernity and stress parallel and sometimes mutually reinforcing patterns of political consolidation and cultural integration across Eurasia. Other contributors who examine the Qing formation from the perspective of those who lived through the dynastic transition see the advent of Qing rule as prompting attempts by the Chinese subjects of the new empire to make sense of what they perceived as a historical disjuncture and to rework these understandings into an accommodation to foreign rule. In contrast to the late imperial paradigm, the new ways of configuring the Qing in historical time in both groups of essays assert the singular qualities of the Qing formation.

About this title

About the Author:

Lynn A. Struve is Professor of Chinese History at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Review:

This is a thought-provoking work that combines various ‘macrohistorical perspectives’ with ‘microhistorical exploration,’ to use [Peter] Perdue’s words. It goes beyond descriptive and factual presentation to broach and discuss questions of broad importance such as the place of the Eurasian world in Chinese history, the early modern model, Manchu imperial ideology, and the military revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will thus be useful to those interested in seeing the events of the Qing transformation in a global context, both literally and conceptually. (Gang Zhao China Review International)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0674013999
• ISBN 13: 9780674013995
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Struve Lynn A.