The New Qing History (simplified Chinese: 新清史学派; traditional Chinese: 新清史學派, sometimes abbreviated as NQH) is a historiographical school that gained prominence in the United States in the mid-1990s by offering a major revision of history[1] of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China.[2]
While orthodox historians tend to emphasize the power of the Han people to "sinicize" their conquerors in their thought and institutions, a handful of American scholars began to learn Manchu in the 1980s and early 1990s and took advantage of archival holdings in this and other non-Chinese languages that had long been held in Taipei and Beijing but had previously attracted little scholarly attention to gain new insight onto the Qing as a state founded by a people who did not initially see themselves as "Chinese" and were originally perceived by Han elites as "barbarians". This research provided a new, arguably more emic, perspective on Qing rule, which found that the Manchu rulers were savvy in manipulating the image of the dynasty and adjusting their claims to legitimacy differentially according to the expectations of various subject populations. From the 1630s at least through to the early 19th century, emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used traditional Han Chinese culture and Confucian models to rule the core parts of the empire, while blending with Central Asian models from other ethnic groups across the vast realm.
According to some scholars, at the height of their power, the Qing regarded China (proper) as only a part, although a very important part, of a much wider empire that extended into the Inner Asian territories of Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria and Xinjiang.[3] However, Mark Elliott, a prominent scholar of the New Qing History school emphasizes that while it is a popular view in many places that the New Qing History separates the Qing dynasty from China, he thinks this is a misunderstanding. Instead, the school simply raised a question about the relationship between the Qing dynasty and "China" — with the word "China" in inverted commas because the concept of "China" has been changing, not fixed. The school hoped to understand the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, and how it was used during the period, which is a question worth studying, but did not hold that Qing dynasty is not China.[4]
Some scholars like Ping-ti Ho have criticized the approach for exaggerating the Manchu character of the dynasty, while scholars like Zhao Gang have argued from the evidence that the Qing dynasty self-identified as China. Some Chinese scholars accuse the American historians in the group of imposing American concerns with race and identity or even of imperialist misunderstanding to weaken China. Still others in China agree that this scholarship has opened new vistas for the study of Qing history.[5][6] Inspired by New Qing History studies, the so-called "New Ming History" studies have also emerged, which similarly attempts to draw attention to the Inner Asian characteristics of the preceding Ming dynasty, and illustrates the existence of such characteristics in Chinese dynasties before the Qing dynasty.[7]
The use of "New Qing History" as an approach is to be distinguished from the unpublished multi-volume history of the Qing dynasty that the State Council of the People's Republic of China sponsored between 2002 and 2023, which is also occasionally called "New Qing History" in English.[8] Nevertheless, this state project, a revision of the 1928 Draft History of Qing, was said to be written primarily to refute the New Qing History.[9] In November 2023, Zhang Taisu, a professor at Yale Law School specializing in legal history, stated that he had learned the manuscript ultimately failed to pass political review due to being "too influenced by" what has been termed "foreign New Qing History", even while many working on project were vocal opponents of the movement. Due to this, Zhang considered the association made between the project as a whole and New Qing History as being unwarranted.[10]