Peter Perdue, “Writing Histories” and part of “State Building in Europe and Asia” (book chapters

from China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia and reproduced in the
courseware). Please answer the following question in 250 to 300 words.

Certain Chinese dynasties pursued territorial expansion and established empires. In the
eighteenth century, the Qing Empire sent armies westward into Central Asia and, along with
the Russian Empire, crushed the independent remnants ‘states’ of the nomadic Mongols.

According to Peter Perdue, how has nationalism biased the way historians from Russia and
China written about this episode of imperialism?

Nationalism (A shared group feeling in the significance of a geographical and sometimes

demographic region seeking independence for its culture and/or ethnicity that holds that group
together)

Imperialism (A policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, use of
military force, or other means)

Russian perspective on Qing Empire's imperialism

 Russia was not a dependant state

 Russian writers call the Qing an aggressive, expanding empire
o Look for signs of class struggle in Mongolian nationalist resistance against the
feudal Qing state
o Russians justify the expansion of their empire too without trying to claim that
Siberians "always belonged" to Russia
 For Russians, Qing "aggression" means expansion beyond the current borders of the PRC
 Presence of Russian empire in Siberia rendered Qing-steppe relations radically different
from those in any earlier period
 Russians were 1/10 the sizze of Qing empire

Chinese perspective on Qing Empire's imperialism

 Qing emperors convinced of divine support and natural forces

o "heaven endowed" mission to unite many of the cultures under a single gaze
 China's sense of historical destiny by dominating Central Eurasia
 For Chinese, "aggression" (by Russians) means the violation of these virtual boundaries
even before they have been negotiated
 Nationalists histories view the Qing as the inexorable culmination of earlier imperial
projects
  Asian states had less difficulty adopting nationalism than Europe due to their
homogenous nature
o European countries were more divided by culture and language
 Wong's description of Chinese imperial ideology (which Perdue agrees with)
o Imperial ideology as holding the same orientation from classical, pre-imperial
times up through the nineteenth century

Other notes

 Nations and their people define themselves by opposition

 Wei Yuan
o Chinese scholar
 Defense of secure border (China) should take precedence over spreading civilized
culture
o Ensure obedience within borders>promoting culture
 Late 18th century, western views of china shifted from admiration to contempt
 Twentieth century Chinese nationalists regarded the Manchus as alien, backward rulers
of the Han race
o Manchu autocracy held back powers of the united Chinese people
 Perdue argues that Qing expansion represented a sharp break with the strategic aims
and military capabilities of the Ming dynasty
o Expansion had long lasting effects on the Qing's socioeconomic structures,
administrative institutions, and self-concept
 Nationalists built on the legacy left by the Qing official historians to create the version of
China's history that predominates today
 Russian, Chinese, and Mongolian scholars drastically disagree about the meaning of the
defeat of the Zunghars
o Chinese regard Xinjiang as always been Chinese territory
 Zunghars as mere rebels
 Ignore the fact that Xinjiang was never permanently controlled by a
Chinese dynasty until the Qing
o Mongolian scholars assert essential unity of the Mongolian people from earliest
times
o All nationalist perspectives
 Nationalists must claim the Qing boundaries as eternally fixed
 Dai Yi
o Focuses on the creation of unity, not the expansion of territory
o Highly anti-Russian emphasis
  "our county's Mongols"
 Mongolian historians insist that Chinese and Mongols always were completely distinct
political, geographical, and cultural units of equal status
 Zunghars were able to hold out against Qing juggernaut because of mobility and
distance