Joanna Waley-Cohen

The New Qing History

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, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Philippe Foret, Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000. Jonathan S. Hay, Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. James P. Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Evelyn S. Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Angela Zito, Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

China and Western technology in the late eighteenth century

BY THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, THE BALANCE OF EUROPEAN OPINION had tilted against China. Westerners, earlier in the century almost uncritical in their admiration, came to the conclusion that the Chinese seemed unwilling, or unable, to improve on their earlier inventions, such as gunpowder and the compass, which formed part of the foundation for Western development. The famous assertion of Chinese self-sufficiency quoted above, made in 1793 by the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-1795) in response to Lord Macartneys embassy from King George III, seemed to epitomize Chinese aloofness to the potential offered by Western knowledge.2 Europeans specifically equated this apparent lack of interest in what the West

Religion, War, and Empire-Building in Eighteenth-Century China

Manchu Qing empire reached its zenith in the eighteenth century. The three great rulers of the high Qing era (1681-1796) the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors were ambitious empire-builders, whose techniques of imperial expansion and domination rivalled in sophistication those of the European imperialists who later all but completely overwhelmed China and Chinese culture. In pursuit of their imperial goals, these Manchu rulers incorporated diverse peoples and cultures into the Qing polity and ruled them with a combination of patronizing severity and flexible pluralism.1 Although often conceptualized as a Chinese empire dominated by alien rulers, the Qing empire was, in fact, oriented as much towards its Inner and Central Asian dominions as it was towards China, which formed but one, albeit major, part of the whole. In this respect, the Qing empire resembled, on a smaller scale, that of the Mongols, who ruled China as part of their vast empire from 1276 to 1368. Although the Manchus were ready to invoke that precedent whenever it suited them, they had to proceed with care, as their plans for empire required that the Mongols of their own time submit to Manchu overlordship and become subject peoples of the Qing empire. This goal was achieved as much through diplomacy and manipulation as through military force, for when the Manchus first came to dominance in the seventeenth century, the Mongols were insufficiently united to pose an effective challenge. Among the significant wars of the high Qing were several that resulted either in imperial expansion or in the consolidation of Qing control over outlying territories. These included the wars against the Zunghars, a subgroup of the western Mongols with imperial ambitions of their own, which began with the Kangxi emperors campaigns of the 1690s and continued intermittently until 1759. Together with the Hi and Muslim campaigns of the late 1750s, the Qing wars against the Zunghars culminated in the

Commemorating War in Eighteenth-Century China

Reviewing his long reign in 1792, the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795) hailed his military triumphs as one of its central accomplishments. To underscore the importance he ascribed to these successes, he began to style himself ‘Old Man of the Ten Complete Victories’ ( Shi Quan Lao Ren ), after an essay in which he boldly declared he had surpassed, in ‘Ten Complete Military Victories’ ( Shi Quan Wu Gong ), the far-reaching westward expansions of the great Han (206 BCE–220 CE) and Tang (618–907) empires. Such an assertion, together with the program of commemoration discussed below, served to justify the immense expense incurred by frequent long-distance campaigning; to elevate all these wars to an unimpeachable level of splendor even though some were distinctly less glorious than others; and to align the Manchu Qing dynasty (16–191 i) with two of the greatest native dynasties of Chinese history and the Qianlong Emperor personally with some of the great figures of the past.

Food and China’s World of Goods in the Long Eighteenth Century

An exploration how consumer goods in eighteenth-century Qing and Ottoman empires furthered the expansion of social networks, the creation of alliances between rulers and regional elites, and particularly, the expression of elite, urban, and gender identities