Description
Book SynopsisDavid C. Porter traces how the hereditary Eight Banner system created a service elite, exploring the Qing approach to one of the fundamental challenges of early modern state-building.
Trade ReviewPorter effectively develops an analytic framework to understand the importance of "service elites" in empires. His analysis of how the Qing empire promoted the banner system to create a loyal elite, a status group that was inclusive of diversity to extend the empire’s military, social, and political administration, is brilliant. His work adds to the best of the scholarship on China. -- Karen Barkey, author of
Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative PerspectivePorter’s far-reaching book has many virtues. Perhaps most important is that features that have sometimes been portrayed as opaquely "ethnic" in character are illuminated here as imperial—that is, as produced by processes of conquest, occupation, and responses to fiscal challenges. This rescues the idea of empire and the history of the Qing empire in particular from the ahistorical and occasional romanticized encumbrances of primary and fixed cultural orientations and provides a platform for comparison to similar phenomena across early modern Eurasia. -- Pamela Kyle Crossley, author of
A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial IdeologyAs soldiers, administrators, and advisors, Chinese members of the Eight Banners—the Hanjun—were a keystone of Qing control over China. In this pathbreaking study, Porter shows that the shifting fortunes of the Hanjun hold the key not only to understanding Qing conceptions of identity, ethnicity, and service but also to placing the empire’s statecraft in comparative Eurasian perspective. -- Matthew W. Mosca, author of
From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing ChinaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Qing Status System
2. Who Belonged in the Banners? The Makeup of the Qing Service Elite
3. Duty, Service, and Status Performance
4. Privilege and State Support
5. A Female Service Elite: Status, Ethnicity, and Qing Bannerwomen
6. A Comparative History of Service Elites
7. Challenging the Service Elite Model
8. Expulsion, Resistance, and the Return of the Service Elite
Conclusion
Appendix: Reign Names, Dates, and Abbreviations
Source Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
