In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Buried in the annals of English theater history is an obscure play by Elkanah Settle, The Conquest of China, By the Tartars (1676), perhaps most notable for its resounding failure with Restoration audiences. As an eighteenth-century critic remarked, the play was terribly acted and “the plot is (with exception of the historical part) romantic, and the dialogue badly written.”1 One “romantic” element was the character of a provincial Chinese warrior queen who, disguised as a male, fought valiantly to save her otherwise powerless country from the onslaught of Tartar enemies from the north as well as domestic bandits intent on usurping the throne of China’s effeminate “King.” Along with several other love intrigues, the play features her doomed romance with a virtuous Tartar prince who is unaware of her double life as a soldier. When they fight each other on behalf of their respective countries, she is killed, only to magically revive once the king of China accedes defeat. In the end, the Tartar is welcomed to the throne and she assumes the place of his wife. Despite the aesthetic shortcomings of the play, the female masculinity of this Chinese Amazon named Amavanga offers a surprisingly multifaceted and gendered interpretation of a recent world historical event: the cataclysmic fall of China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644). I will return later to the formal and ideological import of the play’s many shortcomings; for now, I want to highlight the unusual and productive placement of this female warrior. Amazons as such are not usually associated with China, and yet this hybrid heroine, far from a mere instance of exotic histrionics, indicates a particular discursive lineage of translating Chinese history for English audiences. Settle’s play is thus consequential, not for its poetic sophistication or popularity but for its manipulation of historical sources into stage spectacle. China’s history of regime change was scripted into the heroic ideals of European history-writing and Restoration English literature, at the same time that the example of China subtly reconfigured Western traditions of heroism, and in particc h a p t e r o n e Heroic Effeminacy and the Conquest of China Heroic Effeminacy and the Conquest of China 33 ular its representations of gender and effeminacy. The Amazon, an embodiment of alternative masculinity, exemplifies a much larger process of interpreting the pitfalls and potentials of warring empires according to their perceived sexual and cultural mores. Continually reinvented as figures of cultural translation and ethnographic voyeurism, Amazons perform the ideological work of representing ethnic differences and establishing universal standards of moral and commercial virtue. As such, they register the early modern ambivalence toward a Chinese empire of seemingly spectacular contradictions: ancient and modern, feminine and masculine, despotic and heroic. In mid-seventeenth-century England, China was a contradictory example of a powerful empire, in part because of its much-admired antiquity. The idealized image of a continuous, Asiatic monarchy of extraordinary size and duration was challenged—although, interestingly enough, not disproved—by the fall of the Ming dynasty. News of the conquest of China traveled westward through diplomatic and religious channels in the decades that followed, and detailed histories of China proliferated in mid-seventeenth-century Europe on an unprecedented scale.2 These works presented an ancient empire with a remarkable ability to preserve its customs and manners despite being attacked and even conquered repeatedly by “Tartar” nations from the north. Two landmark invasions came to symbolize China’s resiliency: one by the Mongols in the thirteenth century; the other, the conquest of “Peking” in 1644 by the Manchus, founders of the new Qing dynasty. Though twice defeated, the Chinese were seen to have maintained their cultural infrastructure, to the degree that they became a much-cited paradox of conquered conquerors, ostensibly absorbing and even civilizing their Tartar invaders.3 Of the irrepressible spirit of the Chinese, the philosopher Baruch Spinoza wrote, “[They] are a Famous Example, who . . . have thereby preserved themselves so many thousand Years, that their Antiquity exceeds all other Nations , they have heretofore recovered their lost Empire, and without doubt will do so again, when the Courage of the Tartars, hath lain a while longer buried in Wealth, Luxury and Sloth.”4 Such an image of political stability had special appeal to a Europe plagued by frequent crises of royal succession, internecine wars, and, as a result, massive expenditures and monetary deficits.5 In England alone, the second half of the seventeenth century saw a staggering number of...

Share