Pamela Crossley. Orphan
Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
The orphan warriors of Pamela
Crossley's title are Manchu bannermen who started to suffer from economic
decline and social alienation as early as the first century of the Qing
dynasty. The book, centered around the journey of three eminent Manchus of the
Suwan Guwalgiya clan, Guancheng, his son Fengrui and his grandson, the
historian Jinliang, traces as its underlying theme the changes in criteria for
Manchu identity over time. In the seventeenth century, language, religion, and
martial arts such as archery and horseback riding provided a sufficient basis
for a Manchu identity. During the eighteenth century, the Qianlong court,
responding to confusing cultural, economic, and social changes throughout the
garrison communities, initiated measures to maintain and manage a Manchu
identity, emphasizing genealogy as a basis of identity. The turning point, in
the actual shaping of a sense of Manchu self-identification, according to
Crossley, was the nineteenth century Taiping War (1850-1864), combined with the
war's aftermath, official abandonment, and economic destitution, from which a
Manchu racial and cultural sensibility were forged. By the twentieth century,
this resulting Manchu "ethnic consciousness" (6), reinforced during
the 1911 Revolution and ensuing chaos, constituted a "choice of
identity" (161) and no longer relied on any external signs of Manchu-ness.
This trailblazing study of
Manchu social and cultural life during later years of the Qing offers a wider
view of modern Chinese history than just the typical Han perspective and
sensitizes readers to China's minority groups and their overall historical
significance. In doing so, she challenges the traditional
"sinicization" notion as propounded in Mary Wright's 1957 work, The
Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism. Crossley refutes the idea that Manchu
consciousness simply assimilated with the Han Chinese by 1865; instead the
Manchus had distinct political aims and cultural outlooks even throughout the
Tongzhi restoration and later political reform movements. Crossley's Manchu
factor thus complicates historical perspectives on the modernization process in
China.
Contemporary reviewers praised
this book for its original view of modern Chinese history and presentation of
the role of Manchus. Kent Guy went so far as to laud Crossley's discussions of
a changing Manchu identity as "definitive treatments" of these topics
(Journal of Asian Studies, 49,4:900). In general, reviewers found
Crossley's study thorough in documentation, vivid in narration, and innovative
in her interweaving approach to Manchu clan and Qing history. In fact,
reviewers were almost without negative comment, the exceptions being Tom Fisher
(Pacific Affairs, 64,3:397-9) and Giovanni Stary (Journal of Asian
History, 26,1:99-101), who complained about the author's inconsistent use
of Manchu and Chinese and her inexact reconstruction of Manchu names. Indeed,
while her approach is original, her argument can be difficult to follow
throughout the book's complex narrative, which combines elements of biography,
case study, and local history.
Additionally, Crossley's Manchu
identity is viewed from the perspective of elites; the question of how deeply
this new consciousness actually penetrated the thinking of other Manchus needs
to be answered for a better understanding of the role of Manchu identity in
modern Chinese history. An explanation of concepts such as "ethnic
consciousness" and "racial identity" in the context of Chinese
history would also serve to clarify her argument.
Despite these points, Orphan
Warriors pioneers an important but often neglected aspect of Chinese history,
that of minority groups, and invites further investigation of that history from
the perspective of a multi-cultural society.
Ellen Huang
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