New Qing History

The New Qing History (simplified Chinese: 新清史学派; traditional Chinese: 新清史學派, sometimes abbreviated as NQH) is a historiographical school that gained prominence in the United States in the mid-1990s by offering a wide-ranging revision of history of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China. Orthodox historians tend to emphasize the power of the Han people to "sinicize" their conquerors in their thought and institutions. In the 1980s and early 1990s, American scholars began to learn Manchu and took advantage of newly opened Chinese- and Manchu-language archives. This research found that the Manchu rulers were savvy in manipulating their subjects and from the 1630s through at least the 18th century, emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used traditional Han Chinese culture and Confucian models to rule, while blending with models from other ethnic groups across the vast empire, including those from northern China, the Eurasian Steppe, and Inner Asia (or Central Asia).

According to some scholars, at the height of their power, the Qing regarded China (proper) as only a part, although a very important part, of a much wider empire that extended into the Inner Asian territories of Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria and Xinjiang. However, Mark Elliott, a prominent scholar of the New Qing History school emphasizes that while it is a popular view in many places that the New Qing History separates the Qing dynasty from China, he thinks this is a misunderstanding. Instead, the school simply raised a question about the relationship between the Qing dynasty and "China" — with the word "China" in inverted commas because the concept of "China" has been changing, not fixed. The school hoped to understand the concept of "China" during the Qing dynasty, and how it was used during the period, which is a question worth studying, but did not hold that Qing dynasty is not China.

Some scholars like Ping-ti Ho have criticized the approach for exaggerating the Manchu character of the dynasty, while scholars like Zhao Gang have argued from the evidence that the Qing dynasty self-identified as China. Some Chinese scholars accuse the American historians in the group of imposing American concerns with race and identity or even of imperialist misunderstanding to weaken China. Still others in China agree that this scholarship has opened new vistas for the study of Qing history. Inspired by New Qing History studies, the name "New Ming History" has also appeared which refers to the emerging Ming-centred studies that give emphasis on the Inner Asian characteristics under the rule of the preceding Ming dynasty. Some scholars have argued that the Ming regarded "China" as only a part of the Ming empire and as an ethnocultural space (rather than a political entity), challenging the prevalent perceptions of the Ming.

The use of "New Qing History" as an approach is to be distinguished from the unpublished multi-volume history of the Qing dynasty that the State Council of the People's Republic of China sponsored between 2002 and 2023, which is also occasionally called "New Qing History" in English. Nevertheless, this state project, a revision of the 1928 Draft History of Qing, was said to be written primarily to refute the New Qing History. In November 2023, Zhang Taisu, a professor at Yale Law School specializing in legal history, stated that he had learned the manuscript ultimately failed to pass political review due to being "too influenced by" what has been termed "foreign New Qing History", even while many working on project were vocal opponents of the movement. Due to this, Zhang considered the association made between the project as a whole and New Qing History as being unwarranted.