A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology

"Another problem of understanding these empires is that they are poly-ethnic or multicultural. We always talk about the Roman Empire. Of course it is the Roman Empire in a sense, but there are all sorts of other cultures within it. For instance, there’s a huge Greek speaking elite situated around the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. They maintain their Greekness under Roman rule. It’s reshaped by Roman rule, but it’s certainly still Greek, and they’re very proud of being Greek—or Hellenes as they called themselves. Pamela Crossley is looking at the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Traditionally we just refer to them as Chinese emperors. But Crossley persuasively argues that we have to take their background as Manchus seriously. The Qing dynasts were very, very keen on cultivating their Manchu-ness. In fact, they claim multiple roles. In addition to being Manchus, they also insist that they are Mongol overlords in the traditions of the Steppe. To this they then added the title of a Confucian ‘Huangdi’ who governed the rice and wheat fields of the main areas of what we understand as China. She formulates a notion of emperorship as being a sort of parallel rulership. I started off as a Roman historian, so much of my comparative thinking has developed through me trying to learn from other historiographies about Rome. And then I’ve seen patterns that are bigger than Rome emerge and I have broadened out. One of the other books I could have mentioned, would be Fergus Miller’s book, The Emperor in the Roman World from the 1970s, which was a kind of precursor for the notion of government without bureaucracy. One of the things in that book, which emerges clearly, is that, for many people in the Roman Empire, the Roman emperor was treated, fashioned and constructed as a Greek, Alexander-like King. They engaged with him as a Greek monarch. That phenomenon is what Pamela Crossley describes in a much more articulate way; that most rulers of these big, vast territorial empires had to preside over such diverse populations—and especially diverse elites—that they had to cultivate different formats, in order to embrace their different constituencies. They had to be like chameleons that could change their appearance, depending on whom they were going to talk to. She was very keen on the multiple versions of the Chinese Emperor, and the Roman Emperor would certainly also both be a Roman republican magistrate in some respects, but he would also have to be a Greek ‘basileus’ in another respect. And, although he doesn’t normally present himself like this, in Egyptian temples built still in Pharaonic style under the Romans, the Roman Emperor is appropriated and depicted as a pharaoh because he had to serve in the role of the pharaoh in these temple cults. Exactly. And a successful empire is actually one that is eventually taken over by the localities. In my book I’ve tried, a little provocatively, to say that Roman history could be written as a history of waves of reconquest. First you have the Romans conquering the Mediterranean. Then, in the third century, you’ll normally have the civil war when the Roman Empire threatens to break up. How is it saved? It’s saved by provincial elites that reconquer the Empire. One of the most famous rivalries from that period is between the Palmyrean queen, Zenobia, who is very integrated into the Roman elite, and Aurelian, backed by an army from the Danube, and Aurelian ends up conquering Zenobia. But there was no strong Italian general. They were coming from the provinces with provincial soldiers, and they were reconquering the Empire. “In a world history perspective, European colonisation is actually surprisingly short-lived” At the end, we have Diocletian and Constantine, both of them provincials who reconquered the Empire. And again, with the break-up phase of the Empire, what really happens is that the recruitment patterns of the imperial army changes. There is a tendency to recruit from the frontier regions, it is actually that frontier army that reconquers the Empire. And in some parts the pre-existing structure holds, and in other parts you see a break-up into provincial monarchies, but still visibly shaped by the late Roman world with Roman Christianity and Latin used, albeit to a lesser degree. The successful empire is characterised by being reconquered constantly from within itself."