The Evolving History of the Qing Empire: The New Nineteenth Century with Pamela Kyle Crossley

This is the 2023 Samuel C. Chu Memorial Lecture in East Asian Studies. The study of the Qing empire (1636-1912) has been shaped in recent decades by changing perspectives--and perhaps the greatest influence over those changing perspectives has been the return of China to its historical role as the most influential economy on earth. From the 1960s, when Samuel C. Chu's Reformer in Modern China: Chang Chien, 1853-1926 was published, the nineteenth century in particular has been the key to understanding modern China. In 1960s and 1970s, the questions of why Qing reforms failed, why the country was beset by rebellion and revolution, and how the nineteenth century set China up for a Communist Revolution in 1949 were all central. Today, the Qing empire is seen in English-language historiography as one of the great land empires of the early modern period--conquest powers that established the terms by which international relations, military power and social hierarchies in the modern world are ordered. All underwent crises in the nineteenth century, and experienced nationalist upheavals that had some parallels. But from this new perspective, contemporary China is not a newcomer attempting to conform to, or to disrupt, an international power structure of European making. Instead, it is returning to the center of an order it created.
About the Speaker:
Pamela Kyle Crossley is Collis Professor of History, Emerita, Dartmouth College. She is a specialist on the history of the Qing empire, and also writes on modern China, global history, and horse history. Her forthcoming book is China's Global Empire: Qing, 1636-1912 from Cambridge University Press. Recent books include Hammer & Anvil: Nomad Rulers at the Forge of the Modern World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800 (Wiley & Sons, 2010).