Pamela Kyle Crossley - "Qing Studies" and "New Qing History"

"Qing Studies" and "New Qing History"

Crossley is noted for her work in what has been called either New Qing History or Qing Studies, which argue that the Qing empire was not "sinicized," but combined Chinese values with those of Northeast Asia and Mongolia. She pointed out that Manchu language, religion, documents, and customs remained of great importance to the Qing until the middle nineteenth century. She disagreed with earlier scholars that Manchus had been" sinicized," but she did not argue that Manchu culture in modern China was the traditional culture of Manchuria. Rather, it was a new culture of individual Manchu communities in China, what she called "the sense of difference that has no outward sign"

Crossley's book Orphan Warriors was the first book to present a revisionist interpretation of the history of the Manchus under the Qing dynasty. Many historians such as Joanna Waley-Cohen have named Crossley as related to the "New Qing History" school. In publications in Korea and China since 2008 Crossley has written that there are two trends that are often confused together, one a "Manchu-centered" school and another group who view the Qing empire as a "historical object" in its own right (not a phase in Chinese history). She criticized the "Manchu-centered" school for romanticism and a reliance upon disproved theories about "Altaic" language and history. On the other hand she seems to have included herself in the Qing empire school, which she calls "Qing Studies." She sees the Qing empire not as a Manchu empire but as a "simultaneous" system in which the rulership is not subordinate to any single culture, not even Chinese. William T. Rowe's book China's Last Empire: The Great Qing'' (2009) describes Crossley as the "pioneer" of these new ways of thinking about Qing history. Earlier, political commentator Charles Horner pointed to Crossley as one of the most important current historians in the reconceptualization of the Qing period and its significance.