First JESHO Lecture on Asian History - Mark Elliott (Harvard University) "Was China an Empire?" Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, October 13, 2015 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rethinking the IR theory of empire in late imperial China
International relations scholars have recently taken increased interest in empire. However, research has often focused on European colonial empires. This article aims to evaluate imperialism in a non-Western historical setting: Late Imperial China. The article first compares extant international relations (IR) accounts of empire (one broad and one narrow) to theories of the East Asian hierarchical international system. Second, to further specify analysis, I evaluate IR theories of empire against the historical record of the Ming and Qing dynasties, addressing Chinese relations with surrounding ‘tributary’ states, conquered imperial possessions, and other neighboring polities. I argue that while IR theories of empire capture much of the region's historical politics, they nonetheless underspecify it. Theories of East Asian hierarchy suggest additional mechanisms at work. The historical cases suggest extensive variation in how empires expand and consolidate. I conclude that there is room for further theory building about empire in IR and suggest possible areas of emphasis.
How did the Chinese state become what it was before 1949? How did China maintain continuities in its territorial, demographic, and administrative patterns throughout the Qing, Republican, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) eras? Addressing all these questions, Huaiyin Li's The Making of the Modern Chinese State: 1600-1950 offers a systematic account of the making of the modern Chinese state from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Drawing on studies of late imperial and modern China, as well as archival records, memoirs, and officials' works, Li traces the mechanics of the Chinese state's geopolitical setting, fiscal constitution, and identity building. He argues that the distinctive formation of the Qing state was essential to the continuity of China's territoriality and ethnic composition. Challenging the perception that China's transformation from the Qing to the Republican era was a disruptive transition from an empire to a nation-state, Li contends that this painstaking process should be viewed as a transformation from a territorial state into a sovereign state (pp. xi, 48-50). The Qing, to Li, was not an "empire" because it was "neither a typical expansionist empire nor an emerging fiscal-military state resembling its counterparts in early modern Europe and beyond." Instead, it was an "early-modern territorial state," as it "had stable frontiers and effectively controlled its territory that had fixed borders clearly demarcated with the neighboring states" (p. 11). While the Qing departed from the preceding Chinese dynasties by creating a large state encompassing both the Han population and the frontiers of the Inner Asian nomads, its military expeditions beginning in the late seventeenth century were primarily defensive, and its geopolitical goal was to safeguard its strategic security instead of demanding taxes or tributes from the frontiers (p. 9-10). Chapter 2 analyzes the dynamics and limits of the Qing's territorial expansion. As Li demonstrates, it was driven primarily by the imperial rulers' pursuit of geopolitical security (pp. 23-29). The Qing rulers considered the ideological, social, and geopolitical contexts of both the frontier and interior regions and developed different policies and strategies to govern the diverse populations (pp. 31-44). Chapter 3 further reveals how the Qing's "low-level equilibrium"-a static and rigid structure of regular revenues and routine expenditures-helped fulfill the state's geopolitical goals and maintain its military operation. Yet, as Li argues, when this equilibrium lost balance and became increasingly unfavorable to the state in the late eighteenth century, it also determined the limits of the Qing's war efforts and caused a decrease in the government's capacity of handling interior and frontier crisis (pp. 53-69, 77-79). Chapter 4 examines how the Qing managed to survive the devastating wars and even doubled its officially reported revenues in the three decades following the Taiping
The Qing Empire (China), Imperialism, and the Modern World
History Compass, 2011
China has become the subject of increasing attention in the study of world history. However, many world history texts still place the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing, in the category of the 'losers': victims of Western imperialism whose inability to adjust to the times led to their demise. A re-examination of the Qing Empire reveals a dynamic, expansionistic empire worthy of comparison with the largest empires of the West. The Qing Empire's experiences in the nineteenth century shed light on the practice of informal imperialism or semi-colonialism. The treaty-port system established in China became the template for similar practices of informal imperialism in Japan and Korea; it also demonstrated similarities to imperialist practices across the world. Despite being a victim of Western (and later) Japanese imperialism, the Qing Empire was also an able practitioner of both informal imperialism (in Korea) and the extension and consolidation and its formal imperialism in places such as Turkestan (Xinjiang) and Tibet. Unlike many of the empires to which it is often compared (including the Ottoman, Hapsburg, Mughal Empires), China successfully made the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. Chinese leaders, both Republican and Communist, successfully worked to dismantle Western informal imperialism in China and maintain the borders claimed by the Qing Empire. Looking back from the perspective of the twentieth century, the Qing Empire ⁄ China is easily among the ranks of the most successful and durable empires of the modern period.
The problem of statehood with regard to relations between China, Yuan and Qing states and dynasties is analyzed in comparative historical context. It is hard to accept the concept of one China (single or divided), during many centuries ruled by different dynasties and never incorporated in other states. Self-names of states and declarations of their succession, as such, do not create historical succession. The concept of China under different circumstances has been used for different purposes: national liberation of the Chinese people from enslaving by foreigners, justifying of internecine fights and/or centralization of the state, the right of a foreign state to conquered China, the right of creation of a world empire or subjection of other states and peoples. Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing should be considered not as "dynasties of China established by minority nationalities", but as multinational empires established by non-Chinese peoples: Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols and Manchus, to whom the conquered China or its part was joined. The Song and Ming empires, ROC and PRC represent the state of China in different historical times. However, the formation, structure, sociocultural concepts, ways of legitimization, governing, and national policy differ the Yuan and Qing empires from China, which was only a part of them. Declarations of the Manchus and the Chinese, that their empire is the main state in the world, Zhongguo, are analogous to declarations of German, Ottoman, Russian and some other monarchs about their succession to the Roman Empire. The Chinese worldview underwent serious changes in the course of history. These changes can be better explained as occurring in different (Chinese and non-Chinese) states with different understanding of the Zhongguo principle, than in one state led by Chinese and conquest dynasties.
AHP 40 REVIEW: CHINA FROM EMPIRE TO NATION-STATE
Review of: Wang Hui (Michael Gibbs Hill, translator). 2014. China from Empire to Nation-State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674046955 (hardcover 29.95USD), ASIN B00O1SZEM6 (Kindle 21.49USD). xiv+179 pp. Translator’s Introduction, Index. Michael Gibbs Hill's excellent translation of the introduction to Wang Hui's four-volume opus, The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought provides a substantial contribution to scholars of China and intellectual historians by bringing another of Wang Hui's critical works into English (for other such examples, see Wang and Huters 2003 and 2011). The task of translating could not have been easy, as Wang Hui frequently cites works from Chinese antiquity and translated texts from abroad, making Hill's results truly exceptional. The translation is accessible and painstakingly executed, with many important phrases explained for non-specialists alongside transliterated key terms. The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought demonstrates the need for translation work in the fields of area studies by making the important works of non-English speakers available to Anglophone audiences. As Zhang Yongle pointed out in his review on the work in toto, "It can safely be said that nothing comparable to Wang Hui's work has appeared in China since the late Qing-early Republican period" (Zhang 2010:71). Wang Hui, while exploring the links between China and its past through the country's rich intellectual traditions, manages to deftly discuss China in global terms and historical contexts. ...
In the light of recent scholarship, this article revisits the conventional understanding of the origins of ‘Western’ imperialism in China. I argue, in particular, that global factors must be taken into account to explain the silver crisis that precipitated Qing China’s conflict with the ‘West’, as well as the British decision to go to war and ‘Western’ military performance in the two Opium Wars. Utilizing concepts from New Qing History, I will further demonstrate that although Britain and other imperialist powers tried to impose their concept of sovereign equality on the Qing Empire by force, the treaty port system that evolved from the Opium Wars also owed a great deal to Qing Imperial policies of border control and legal arrangements. Instead of Chinese passivity, I emphasize Qing agency in the establishment of ‘Western’ transnational imperialism in China.
China and the Asian World, 1500-1900 (in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History)
China's relations with the Asian world between 1500 and 1900 were shaped by a variety of political, economic, and cultural factors. A common denominator in these international relationships was a loose framework of ideological principles and administrative procedures later dubbed by scholars the "tributary system." This "system," first posited in the early 1940s, has remained the single most influential concept for interpreting the interactions of Ming and Qing China with Asian countries. However, in recent decades it has been critiqued from various perspectives, narrowed in the scope of its application, and modified by a greater focus on the actual course of specific cases rather than ideological principles. That is, historians have increasingly come to understand China's relations with the Asian world as influenced by pragmatic considerations and changing local dynamics, so that each relationship and the factors shaping it are best understood on their own terms. One approach to the study of Ming and Qing relations with the Asian world is to consider it within the framework of three regional groupings. China's interactions with its neighbors in Northeast Asia were shaped by its largely stable relations with Korea and the Ryukyu Kingdom, and its radically fluctuating relations with Japan, sometimes marked by conflict and sometimes by the deliberate avoidance of political contact. Early Ming political relations with maritime Southeast Asia atrophied as the role of European and private Chinese merchant intermediaries increased. Those with continental Southeast Asia (particularly Burma, Siam, and Vietnam), more enduring, were influenced by intense regional rivalries that occasionally impinged on the borderlands of China's southern provinces. In these two regions, the Ming-Qing transition, although particularly resented in Korea where it involved two invasions, did not radically alter existing patterns of international relations. By contrast, the vast territorial expansion of the Qing Empire did greatly change China's foreign relations to the north and west, where it encountered states that had not had relations with the Ming. In these regions the Qing government drew principles and practices from its foreign relations in the south and east, but modified them to fit new conditions. After 1800, and more intensively after 1850, European and later Japanese imperial power began to penetrate Central, South, Southeast, and ultimately East Asia, in each region undermining existing Qing relationships with Asian neighbors. By 1900, virtually all former Qing tributaries were under the direct or indirect control of the British, Russian, French, or Japanese empires.