Minority Language Policy in China, with Observations on the She Ethnic Group (original) (raw)
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For about half of its recorded history, parts or all of imperial China were ruled by non-Han peoples, mainly from Manchuria or Mongolia. The dynasties they founded (mainly the Liao, Jin, Xia, Yuan, and Qing) contributed greatly to the shaping of late imperial and modern China's boundaries and ethnic composition. Yet until recently these non-Han dynasties were treated as the stepchildren of Chinese history, and were studied mainly through the prism of Sinicization, namely when and how they embraced the allegedly superior Chinese culture. The chapter reviews the reasons for the marginalization of these dynasties and the historiographical turns—in terms of both sources and historical frameworks—that, especially since the 1990s, led to their study in their own Inner Asian terms. Highlighting the 'New Qing History' that led this change, the chapter discusses the common political culture of the Inner Asian dynasties and reviews directions of current and future research.
Empires and Diversity: On the Crossroads of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History, Gregory G. Indrisano (ed.), 2013
Empires.indb 164 2/25/13 3:32 PM e x p a n s i o n o f t h e c h i n e s e e m p i r e i n t o i t s n o r t h e r n f r o n t i e r 165 mobile pattern of occupation before integration, as suggested by ancient as well as recent interpretations of the texts, but also integration did not result in the swift adoption of an imperial Chinese-style agricultural economy. What was provoked, however, was a mixed pastoral-agricultural lifeway on the margins of the settlement pattern. This chapter 1 does not question that the Chinese political apparatusbeginning in the middle of the first millennium BCE under the states of Qin, Wei, Zhao, and Yan and then under the imperial rulers of the Qin and Hanexpanded into the areas north of the Central Yellow River basin, or Northern Zone, 2 but it does offer a new understanding of the process of imperial expansion. We test the models used previously to explain the changes brought about by expansion by applying data collected during archaeological surface surveys conducted in the summers of 2002 and 2004 in Liangcheng County, in south-central Inner Mongolia . The currently accepted model for this expansion suggests that both the initial expansion into the Northern Zone that occurred during the Warring States period (ca. 475-221 BCE) and the consolidation of this region by the imperial system that took place during the Qin (ca. 221-207 BCE) and Han (202 BCE-220 CE) dynastic periods Table 6.1. Chronology used in this settlement pattern study. The left half of the table lists the traditional historical chronology of the Central Plain and right half of the table lists the archaeological chronology used here.