Synopses & Reviews
In this landmark exploration of the origins of nationalism and cultural identity in China, Pamela Kyle Crossley traces the ways in which a large, early modern empire of Eurasia, the Qing (1636-1912), incorporated neighboring, but disparate, political traditions into a new style of emperorship. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, including Manchu, Korean, and Chinese archival materials, Crossley argues that distortions introduced in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historical records have blinded scholars to the actual course of events in the early years of the dynasty. This groundbreaking study examines the relationship between the increasingly abstract ideology of the centralizing emperorship of the Qing and the establishment of concepts of identity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before the advent of nationalism in China.
Concluding with a broad-ranging postscript on the implications of her research for studies of nationalism and nation-building throughout modern Chinese history, A Translucent Mirror combines a readable narrative with a sophisticated, revisionary look at China's history. Crossley's book will alter current understandings of the Qing emperorship, the evolution of concepts of ethnicity, and the legacy of Qing rule for modern Chinese nationalism.
Synopsis
IN THIS LANDMARK EXPLORATION of the origins of nationalism and concepts of racial identity in China, Pamela Kyle Crossley traces the shifting ideologies of a large, early modern land-based empire, the Qing (1636-1912). Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, Crossley argues that motifs introduced under the Qing in the eighteenth century -- part of the crystallizing categories of identity that the Qing themselves promoted -- continue to distort the modern understanding of Qing origins. What has often been repudiated by nationalist foes of empire, it turns out, is frequently itself a creation of empire.
As the empire was formed, Crossley suggests, the complex or simultaneous rulership needed to address itself to increasingly discrete, abstract, genealogically constructed, and historicized audiences. She finds that these identities, some of which were adopted wholesale by nationalist spokesmen of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, bore at best a loose resemblance to the factual contours of the Qing period.
Concluding with a broad-ranging postscript on the implications of her research on studies of nationalism and nation-building in modern Chinese history, A Translucent Mirror will be indispensable for scholars and students.
About the Author
Pamela Kyle Crossley is Rosenwald Research Professor of History, Dartmouth College; author of Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World (1990) and The Manchus (1997); and coauthor (with Richard Bulliet and Dan Headrick) of The Earth and Its Peoples (1997).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes to Readers
Introduction
I. Identity at the Heart of Empire
1. Ethnicity in the Qing Eight Banners
Mark C. Elliott
2. Making Mongols
Pamela Kyle Crossley
3. "A Fierce and Brutal People": On Islam and Muslims in Qing Law
Jonathan N. Lipman
II. Narrative Wars at the New Frontiers
4. The Qing and Islam on the Western Frontier
James A. Millward and Laura J. Newby
5. The Cant of Conquest: Tusi Offices and China's Political Incorporation of the Southwest Frontier
John E. Herman
III. Old Contests of the South and Southwest
6. The Yao Wars in the Mid-Ming and their Impact on Yao Ethnicity
David Faure
7. Ethnicity and the Miao Frontier in the Eighteenth Century
Donald S. Sutton
8. Ethnicity, Conflict, and the State in the Early to Mid-Qing: The Hainan Highlands, 1644-1800
Anne Csete
IV. Uncharted Boundaries
9. Ethnic Labels in a Mountainous Region: The Case of She "Bandits"
Wing-hoi Chan
10. Lineage, Market, Pirate, and Dan: Ethnicity in the Pearl River Delta of South China
Helen F. Siu and Liu Zhiwei
Conclusion
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Glossary of Characters
Index