New Qing History

The New Qing History (simplified Chinese: 新清史学派; traditional Chinese: 新清史學派, sometimes abbreviated as NQH) is a historiographical school that gained prominence in the United States in the mid-1990s by offering a major revision of history^[1] of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China.^[2]

While orthodox historians tend to emphasize the power of the Han people to "sinicize" their conquerors in their thought and institutions, a handful of American scholars began to learn Manchu in the 1980s and early 1990s and took advantage of archival holdings in this and other non-Chinese languages that had long been held in Taipei and Beijing but had previously attracted little scholarly attention to gain new insight onto the Qing as a state founded by a people who did not initially see themselves as "Chinese" and were originally perceived by Han elites as "barbarians". This research provided a new, arguably more emic, perspective on Qing rule, which found that the Manchu rulers were savvy in manipulating the image of the dynasty and adjusting their claims to legitimacy differentially according to the expectations of various subject populations. From the 1630s at least through to the early 19th century, emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used traditional Han Chinese culture and Confucian models to rule the core parts of the empire, while blending with Central Asian models from other ethnic groups across the vast realm.

According to some scholars, at the height of their power, the Qing regarded China (proper) as only a part, although a very important part, of a much wider empire that extended into the Inner Asian territories of Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria and Xinjiang.^[3] However, Mark Elliott, a prominent scholar of the New Qing History school emphasizes that while it is a popular view in many places that the New Qing History separates the Qing dynasty from China, he thinks this is a misunderstanding. Instead, the school simply raised a question about the relationship between the Qing dynasty and "China" — with the word "China" in inverted commas because the concept of "China" has been changing, not fixed. The school hoped to understand the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, and how it was used during the period, which is a question worth studying, but did not hold that Qing dynasty is not China.^[4]

Some scholars like Ping-ti Ho have criticized the approach for exaggerating the Manchu character of the dynasty, while scholars like Zhao Gang have argued from the evidence that the Qing dynasty self-identified as China. Some Chinese scholars accuse the American historians in the group of imposing American concerns with race and identity or even of imperialist misunderstanding to weaken China. Still others in China agree that this scholarship has opened new vistas for the study of Qing history.^[5][6] Inspired by New Qing History studies, the so-called "New Ming History" studies have also emerged, which similarly attempts to draw attention to the Inner Asian characteristics of the preceding Ming dynasty, and illustrates the existence of such characteristics in Chinese dynasties before the Qing dynasty.^[7]

The use of "New Qing History" as an approach is to be distinguished from the unpublished multi-volume history of the Qing dynasty that the State Council of the People's Republic of China sponsored between 2002 and 2023, which is also occasionally called "New Qing History" in English.^[8] Nevertheless, this state project, a revision of the 1928 Draft History of Qing, was said to be written primarily to refute the New Qing History.^[9] In November 2023, Zhang Taisu [zh], a professor at Yale Law School specializing in legal history, stated that he had learned the manuscript ultimately failed to pass political review due to being "too influenced by" what has been termed "foreign New Qing History", even while many working on project were vocal opponents of the movement. Due to this, Zhang considered the association made between the project as a whole and New Qing History as being unwarranted.^[10]

Prominent scholars who have been associated with the New Qing History, including Evelyn Rawski, Mark Elliott, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Laura Hostetler, Peter C. Perdue, Philippe Forêt, and others, despite differing among themselves on important points, represent an "Inner Asian" and "Eurasian" turn. They date the founding of the empire from 1636, when the dynasty was proclaimed, rather than from 1644, when the Qing took control of the Ming capital Beijing. The historians argued that "Manchu" identity was deliberately created only after the takeover of China and that the new racial identity was important but "fungible," easily exchanged for others. The first rulers of the dynasty played the Confucian role of Son of Heaven but at the same time, often behind the backs of their ethnic Han ministers, adopted other roles to rule other ethnic groups. Some argued that the Qing saw itself as a Manchu or a universal empire, a multi-national polity, which with Han China as only the most central and economically important component. According to Mark Elliott, New Qing historians merely raised a question about the relationship between the Qing dynasty and "China" and encouraged studying the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, by carefully looking at the Qing archives and original materials in order to see how such concept and terminology were used and understood at that time. This does not contend that the Qing dynasty is not China.^[4]

The military expansion of frontiers were sometimes expensive and drained resources from the rest of China. Some seemed to have argued that the Manchu-ruled Qing was more comparable to the Ottoman, Mughal, and Romanov (Russian) Empires across the Eurasian landmass than most earlier Chinese dynasties. They argued that the Qing Empire was not only a victim of imperialism but also practiced imperialism itself. For example, Peter C. Perdue had described the Qing as a "colonial empire" that ruled over a collection of peoples and deserves comparison with other contemporary empires, whereas traditionalist historians reject the comparison of Imperial China to imperialist powers.^[11] Some of the New Qing historians followed Evelyn Rawski calling the Qing "Early Modern," rather than "late imperial," on the grounds that the Manchus created a centralized empire (with a much larger territory and population) that the Ming could not have created.^[12]

Mark Elliott points out that the most critical academic propositions of the New Qing History are the following:

1. Discovers the Inner Asian dimension under Manchu rule
2. Advocates the use of non-Chinese historical materials (especially Manchu-language documents)
3. Pays attention to the context of global history

The origins of the New Qing History lie in Inner Asian Studies. A Harvard historian, Joseph Fletcher, studied the languages and culture of Central Asia. He was among those to discredit the idea that nearly all Manchu documents were translations from Chinese and that they would add little to the record. He wrote in 1981, "Qing scholars who want to do first-class work in the archives must, from now on, learn Manchu and routinely compare the Manchu and Chinese sources for their topics of research." Beatrice Bartlett, a Yale historian who had studied Manchu with Fletcher, reported in an article, 'Books of Revelation', that the archives in Taiwan and Beijing revealed many secrets, which required knowledge of Manchu.^[13]

The Grand Council of the Yongzheng emperor, for instance, operated only in Manchu until the 1730s, and many other important edicts and memorials did not have Chinese translations. Official use of Manchu, she argued, did not decline during the 19th century. She concluded that the archives of Manchu materials were more likely to be complete, as they were less likely to have been raided, weeded or lost.^[14]

The New Qing History took on distinct form in the mid-1990s. In 1993, Crossley and Rawski summarized the arguments for using Manchu-language materials, which they and others had explored in the newly opened archives in Beijing and were beginning to use in their publications.^[15] Evelyn Rawski's presidential address, "Re-envisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History," at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in 1996, particularly criticized the question of the "sinicization" of the Qing that had been raised by Ping-ti Ho in his 1967 article "The Significance of the Ch'ing Period in Chinese History." Rawski's thought was based on a Manchu-centric concept of history and indicated that the reason the Qing rulers could successfully govern China for nearly 300 years was not the result of sinicization, adopting the characteristics of Han Chinese rule and culture, but by their focus on retaining the characteristics of Manchu culture. They used such characteristics to strengthen relations with other nationalities to build a multiracial empire that included Manchu, Han, Mongol, Tibetan, Uyghur and other nationalities.^[16] For better governing his multiethnic empire, for instance, the Kangxi emperor located his summer residence in the Chengde Mountain Resort, north of the Great Wall. That became the historical core of city of Chengde, which the Qianlong emperor enlarged considerably, including a replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa.^[17]

In response, Ping-ti Ho published "In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski's 'Re-envisioning the Qing'". He argued that the pattern of Chinese history was for a conquest dynasty to adopt Chinese ways of rule and culture and attacked Rawski for Manchu-centrism.^[18]

The school that is now known as the "New Qing History" developed after the debate.^[19] In 2011, historian Huang Pei published a monograph that developed the objections stated by Ho Ping-ti. ^[20]

There are differences among the scholars in the loose group. For example, Evelyn Rawski's Re-envisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History in 1996 regarded the Qing as a Manchu empire, with China being only one part. Nevertheless, Pamela Kyle Crossley sees the empire not as a Manchu empire but as a "simultaneous" system in which the rulership is not subordinate to the Chinese or any other single culture. She criticized the new "Manchu-centered" school for romanticism and a reliance upon disproved theories about "Altaic" language and history, but she seems to include herself in the Qing empire school, which she calls "Qing Studies."^[21] Mark Elliott states that while he agrees with such views to some extent, because he thinks it helps to make people more acutely aware that the Qing Empire and the Republic of China (or the People's Republic of China) are different political entities with different political goals, but he admits that he also worries about drawing too sharp a line between Qing dynasty and China.^[22] He wrote that it was under the Qing that "China" transformed into a definition of referring to lands where the "state claimed sovereignty", rather than only the territories inhabited by the people of the Central Plains (or the Han Chinese) by the end of the 18th century.^[23] Evelyn Rawski also wrote in 2015 that while the term Zhongguo (i.e. China) was "never part of the formal name of a Chinese state until the twentieth century", the Manchus who founded the Qing dynasty succeeded in expanding the meaning of Zhongguo (China) to encompass the territories of the Qing empire, thus "creating the foundation for the modern concept".^[24]

American historian Richard J. Smith reported that an interpretive "middle ground" had emerged between the views of Rawski and Crossley, on one hand, and Ho and Huang, on the other. Smith indicated that based on the idea that "Qing empire" and "China" might not be the same thing the Qing had to be placed in a context that included Inner Asia in general and that saw China in a global field. The less "sinocentric" view, Smith continued, which placed less emphasis on "sinicization," had won over most China scholars in the West (and increasingly also in China), in spite of debates over "matters of degree."^[25] Nevertheless, he pointed out "China proper" (often designated 内地 meaning "inner territory" in Chinese) refers to the core eighteenth provinces of the Qing dynasty, but from a Manchu perspective, however, the concept of “China” (Chinese: Zhongguo; Manchu: Dulimbai Gurun) embraced the entire empire, including Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet.^[26]

The New Qing History inspired scholarly studies on a number of points, including the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, and the Inner Asian characteristics of the Han Chinese dynasties like the preceding Ming dynasty.

The scholar Zhao Gang used both Manchu and Han sources to interrogate the relationship between Qing and "China". He pointed out the Qing court's creative reinterpretation of the concept of "China" (中國, Zhongguo) as a composite of Han and non-Han peoples in the empire, and that China proper and Han people (漢人) were not synonymous with "China" (Zhongguo) under the Qing view.^[27] While earlier Han Chinese dynasties (like the Ming dynasty) used Zhongguo to refer only to Han areas, the Qing dynasty reinvented the definition of Zhongguo to refer to non-Han areas of the empire as well.^[27] Zhao Gang cited Qing documents used the Manchu term "Dulimbai Gurun" (a direct translation of Zhongguo; "Middle Kingdom") in Manchu texts and Zhongguo in Chinese texts to refer to the entire Qing including Manchuria, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet as "China", in official documents, edicts, treaties,^[28] in texts like the Treaty of Nerchinsk,^[29] the Convention of Kyakhta (1768),^[30] a 1755 pronouncement by the Qianlong Emperor,^[27] a Manchu language memorial on the conquest of Dzungaria,^{[31][32][33][34]} and other Qing documents.^{[note 1]}

William T. Rowe wrote that the name "China" (Zhongguo or Zhonghua) was apparently understood to refer to the political realm of the Han Chinese during the Ming dynasty, and this understanding persisted among the Han Chinese into the early Qing dynasty, and the understanding was also shared by Aisin Gioro rulers before the Ming-Qing transition. The Qing, however, "came to refer to their more expansive empire not only as the Great Qing but also, nearly interchangeably, as China" within a few decades of this development. Instead of the earlier (Ming) idea of an ethnic Han Chinese state, this new Qing China was a "self-consciously multi-ethnic state". Han Chinese scholars had some time to adapt this, but by the 19th century, the notion of China as a multinational state with new, significantly extended borders had become the standard terminology for Han Chinese writers. Rowe noted that "these were the origins of the China we know today". He added that while the early Qing rulers viewed themselves as multi-hatted emperors who ruled several nationalities "separately but simultaneously", by the mid-19th century the Qing Empire had become part of a European-style community of sovereign states and entered into a series of treaties with the West, and such treaties and documents consistently referred to Qing rulers as the "Emperor of China" and his administration as the "Government of China".^[37]

Joseph W. Esherick observes that while the Qing Emperors governed frontier non-Han areas in a different, separate system under the Lifan Yuan and kept them separate from Han areas and administration, it was the Manchu Qing Emperors who expanded the definition of Zhongguo (中國) and made it "flexible" by using that term to refer to the entire empire.^[38] Similarly, Elena Barabantseva has also noted that the Manchu referred to all subjects of the Qing empire regardless of ethnicity as "Chinese", and they used the term Zhongguo as a synonym for the entire Qing empire but used "Hanren" to refer only to the core area of the empire, with the entire empire viewed as multiethnic.^[39]

Russian scholar Sergius L. Kuzmin wrote that despite the Qing dynasty's usage of the term "China" to refer to the entire empire, empires centered on China (including conquest dynasties like the Yuan and Qing) were known officially by their respective dynastic name (e.g. "Great Yuan" and "Great Qing", respectively). Non-Han peoples considered themselves as subjects of these empires and did not necessarily equate them to "China". This resulted from different ways of their legitimization for different peoples in these dynasties.^[40][41] Qing emperors were referred to as "Khagan of China" (or "Chinese khagan") by their Turkic Muslim subjects (now known as the Uyghurs),^[42] as "Bogda Khan" or "(Manchu) Emperor" by their Mongol subjects, and as "Emperor of China" (or "Chinese Emperor") and "the Great Emperor" (or "Great Emperor Manjushri") by their Tibetan subjects, such as in the 1856 Treaty of Thapathali.^[43][44][45] It is pointed out that Tibetan subjects traditionally regarded the Qing as Chinese, unlike the Yuan which was founded by Mongols.^[46]

Inspired by New Qing History studies, the name "New Ming History" has also appeared which refers to the emerging Ming-centred studies that give emphasis on the Inner Asian characteristics under the rule of the preceding Ming dynasty. It has been pointed out that examining the history of a dynasty from the Inner Asian perspective is also applicable to dynasties established by the Han Chinese, including the Ming dynasty (and earlier dynasties), rather than being exclusive to dynasties established by non-Han people like the Qing dynasty.^[7]

Early Ming emperors sought to project themselves as "universal rulers" to various peoples such as Central Asian Muslims, Tibetans, and Mongols.^[47][48] The Yongle Emperor cited Emperor Taizong of Tang as a model for being familiar with both China and the steppe people.^[49] Like the Qing emperors, the Ming emperors also had an important influence on Tibetan Buddhism. The Yongle Emperor had promoted the idea that he was the earthly manifestation of Manjushri and styled himself the wheel-turning king after the fall of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.^[50] Some scholars pointed out that even up to the early years of the Shunzhi Emperor, the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper, some non-Han followers of the Tibetan Buddhism still regarded Ming emperors as the incarnation of Manjushri. Only after this the Qing emperors replaced the Ming emperors as the incarnation of Manjushri for them.^[7]

Some scholars have also argued that the Ming regarded "China" (Zhongguo) as only a part of the Ming empire and as an ethnocultural space (rather than a political entity), challenging the prevalent perceptions of the Ming. In essence, during the Ming dynasty "China" was defined as the domain of the Han Chinese inhabited by the Han people (漢人), where Han Chinese ideals were created, upheld, and practiced in contrast to those of non-Han "barbarians", whether they were domestic or foreign; the dynastic title “Great Ming” should not be confused with "China", the ethnocultural space.^[51] Other scholars pointed out that the Ming dynasty used the term "China" politically to refer to the entire country but culturally to refer to only Han areas of the empire.^[52]

Scholars have disagreed on whether or how much the Manchu rulers used new forms of imperial ritual to display new forms of empire or continued rituals from the Ming to show that they saw themselves as heirs of a Han Chinese empire. Roger Des Forges' review of David M. Robinson's Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court criticized scholars of conquest dynasties and New Qing History and disagreed with the idea that the "Royal hunt" was a differing factor between Han Chinese and non-Han dynasties. He noted that the martial themed Ming dynasty Grand Review was copied by the Qing and disagreed with those who sought to present it as a Qing feature. He praised Robinson in differing from scholars who selected certain Ming and Qing emperors to contrast their difference and for not conflating Han with "Chinese" and not translating the term "Zhongguo".^[53]

The New Qing History, according to Tristan G. Brown, writing in 2011, did not explore the example of Islam and Muslims to test their argument that the early Qing emperors aspired to be universal monarchs. Brown finds that an inscription by the Qianlong emperor showed that he wanted to incorporate both Xinjiang and Islam into his empire and that this inscription, along with the "inventive structural duality of Chinese-Islamic architecture with Central Asian Turkish-Islamic architectural forms," makes the "most compelling case" that New Qing History is also applicable to Chinese Islam.^[54]

In the journal Chinese Social Sciences Today, an official publication of the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Li Zhiting, a scholar working on the National Qing Dynasty Compilation Committee and affiliated with Renmin University of China,^[55] charged that "'New Qing History' is academically absurd, and politically does damage to the unity of China...." He sought to "expose its mask of pseudo-academic scholarship, eliminating the deleterious effect it has had on scholarship in China." Li went on to charge that the "whole range of views [New Qing History scholars] express are cliches and stereotypes, little more than dusted off versions in a scholarly tone of the Western imperialism and Japanese imperialism of the 19th century". American scholars such as Evelyn Rawski, Mark Elliott, Pamela Kyle Crossley, and James Millward, Li continued, "view the history of China from an imperialist standpoint, with imperialist points of view and imperialist eyes, regarding 'traditional' China as an 'empire', regarding the Qing dynasty as 'Qing dynasty imperialism'."^[56]

Zhong Han, a Chinese scholar and researcher of Manchu and early Qing history, argues that the concept of "simultaneous emperorship" is incoherent, and charges the school with putting politics in the way of scholarship. Zhong argues against the characterization of the Qing as a Western-style colonial empire, and against the non-identity of the Qing and China. In support of the latter argument, he follows the school in employing sources in non-Chinese language, but concludes that these affirm the Qing's self-identification with China rather than refute it.^[57]

• Pamela K. Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
• Mark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
• Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
• James A. Millward, Ruth W. Dunnell, Mark C. Elliott, and Philippe Forêt (eds.), New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde. London: Routledge, 2004.
• James A. Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
• Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.
• Evelyn S. Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

• Sinicization of the Manchus
• Later Jin (1616–1636)
• Conquest dynasty
• Qing dynasty in Inner Asia
• Names of the Qing dynasty
• Legacy of the Qing dynasty
• Debate on the Chineseness of the Yuan and Qing dynasties

• Biran, Michal (2017) "The Non-Han Dynasties," in M. Szonyi, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Chinese History (Oxford: Willey Blackwell): 129–143. Reviews the historiography of non-Han dynasties, highlighting the New Qing History.
• Crossley, Pamela Kyle; Rawski, Evelyn S. (1993). "A Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch'ing History". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 53 (1): 63–102. doi:10.2307/2719468. JSTOR 2719468.
• Crossley, Pamela. "Beyond the culture: my comments on New Qing history," Chinese Social Science Today November 24, 2014
• Ding, Yizhuang (2009). "Reflections on the "New Qing History" School in the United States". Chinese Studies in History. 43 (2): 92–96. doi:10.2753/CSH0009-4633430208. S2CID 161545950.
• Guy, Kent (2002). "Who Were the Manchus? Review Article: Crossley, Translucent Mirror; Elliott, The Manchu Way; Rawski, The Last Emperors; Rhoads, Manchus and Han". Journal of Asian Studies. 61 (1): 151–164. doi:10.2307/2700193. JSTOR 2700193.
• Elliott, Mark C. (Aug 2000). "The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies" (PDF). The Journal of Asian Studies. 59 (3): 603–646. doi:10.2307/2658945. JSTOR 2658945. S2CID 162684575. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-12-17.
• Fan, Xin. "The anger of Ping-Ti Ho: the Chinese nationalism of a double exile." Storia della storiografia 69.1 (2016): 147–160.
• Ho, Ping-ti (1998). "In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski's "Reenvisioning the Qing"". The Journal of Asian Studies. 57 (1): 123–155. doi:10.2307/2659026. ISSN 0021-9118. JSTOR 2659026.
• Huang, Pei (2011). Reorienting the Manchus: A Study of Sinicization, 1583-1795. Ithaca, N.Y.: East Asia Program, Cornell University. ISBN 9781933947228.
• Rawski, Evelyn (1996). "Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History". Journal of Asian Studies. 55 (4). doi:10.2307/2646525. JSTOR 2646525. S2CID 162388379.
• Rowe, William T. (2009). China's Last Empire: The Great Qing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674036123.
• Smith, Richard J. (2015). The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture. Lantham, Boulder, New York and London: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 9781442221925.
• Sen, Sudipta (2002). "The New Frontiers of Manchu China and the Historiography of Asian Empires: A Review Essay". The Journal of Asian Studies. 61 (1): 165–177. doi:10.2307/2700194. JSTOR 2700194.
• Wu, Guo (2016-01-02). "New Qing History: Dispute, Dialog, and Influence". The Chinese Historical Review. 23 (1): 47–69. doi:10.1080/1547402X.2016.1168180. ISSN 1547-402X. S2CID 148110389.
• Waley-Cohen, Johanna (2004). "The New Qing History". Radical History Review. 88 (1): 193–206. doi:10.1215/01636545-2004-88-193. S2CID 144544216.
• Zhao, Gang (January 2006). "Reinventing China Imperial Qing Ideology and the Rise of Modern Chinese National Identity in the Early Twentieth Century". Modern China. 32 (1): 3–30. doi:10.1177/0097700405282349. JSTOR 20062627. S2CID 144587815.