The Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (review)

The Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology by Pamela Crossley is an important and challenging study of the evolution and changing contours of the Qing imperial ideologies of emperorship and the identities of its Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese constituencies. At the same time, it is a thought-provoking exploration of the interpretive categories and schemes that have characterized the scholarly study of the Qing imperium. Both aspects of this work are important and are discussed using a plethora of new analytical categories, definitions, and terminology with the goal of revising conventional usages in scholarly discourse on Qing history as well as mainstream interpretations of the nature and significance of Qing rule. Sometimes the language of the study is bewildering because of the ambitious range of new conceptual and interpretive issues that the author presents. In these cases, the challenge to the reader is worth the effort. At other times, the language and presentation are unclear because of organizational discontinuities and the unsuccessful mixing of more conventional styles of historical argumentation with those of a more literary-critical bent. In these cases, a more careful job of editing by the press and the author would have enhanced the accessibility of the work for advanced students and scholars alike. In the interests of clarity, this review will attempt to describe the scope and significance of the study in simple and interpretively neutral terms.

Crossley's central purpose is to analyze the Qing rulers' purposeful construction of the identities of its Manchu, Mongol, and Han constituencies and the parallel construction of a new ideology of universal kingship that served to bind the borderland and Han populations into one integrated empire that might be termed "Greater China." The author's treatments of the construction of identities and universal kingship are woven together contrapuntally to show that both were "productions of the process of imperial centralization" (p. 3). She argues that these two "ideologies," or manipulations of knowledge (p. 9), were developed in three stages from the rise of Nurgaci in 1616 to the mid-Qianlong reign.

Crossley analyzes the first stage in part 1 (chapters 1-3), which traces the gradual changes in the identities of the Liaodong-Nurgan population from 1616 to 1740. She argues convincingly that this population began as an amorphous, mixed, and mobile one that can only be described in the most general cultural terms as sinophone, Jurchen, or mixed (baisin). Yet, in response to the political needs of the new Jurchen regime, this polyglot population was gradually differentiated and divided, to emerge in 1740 as racially defined groups of Han and Manchus. In the first stage of this process, sinophone elements were divided into two groups, the Chinese-martial and the civilian sectors, which reflected the functional roles they played in the Nurgaci regime (1616-1626). Under Hong Taiji's leadership these roles were continued and expanded during the conquest of western Liaodong and North China, and later, during the Shunzhi (1644-1661) and early Kangxi (1662-1722) reigns, these individuals played a crucial role in the pacification and administration of newly occupied regions inside the Great Wall.

Crossley asserts that the Chinese-martial group might have remained in this privileged position (on a par with the "Manchu" elements of the regime) had it not been for three factors in the post-1644 period: first, the Kangxi emperor's appropriation of the rhetoric and style of the Chinese Confucian monarchy with its emphasis on loyalty; second, the worrisome acculturation of the Manchu banner population (which she does not describe as sinicization); and, third, the perceived threat posed by the Chinese-martial group after the Revolt of the Three Feudatories in 1673. These three factors worked to diminish the role of the Chinese-martial group in the Qing regime and to spark their social-political demotion into the ranks of the generalized Chinese population of China proper. Only...