Analysis: Was The Qing Dynasty To Be Considered Chinese?

The argument of this essay poses the question: was the Qing dynasty to be considered Chinese? According to the “New Qing History” scholars argue that the Manchu rulers maintained their ethnic identities and thus the Manchu-centered Qing was fundamentally different from the proceeding Chinese dynasties. However, I support the argument that the Qing dynasty was a real Chinese dynasty through semantics alone despite their success through sinicization, if not the prime example of a Chinese dynasty.
To start this essay I would like to present the argument that our Spence book, our primary reading material, does not touch on this subject to the extent that required to make the core argument of this essay work. Partly because we have only made it about half of the way through, but there are a lot of important questions to consider when addressing this argument. …show more content…
The essay question cites a specific school of thought, the “New Qing History”, and to properly examine that we need to look far beyond the class materials and discussion. After all, our reading materials don’t touch at all on the issue of this new interpretation. So, while the remainder of this essay is supposedly based on the citations we bring from our readings, I will attempt to bring the full circle of reasoning behind this conflict. An example of the importance of clarification and semantics is looking at who exactly is viewing this interpretation of “Chinese” and “China” and the difference between these terms, do we take a western view? If so, at what time period? Beyond this, we need to consider the audience. Is it obvious to assume that we should take the western point of