COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
intégral part of Chinese impérial history, he also traces close to the sources
the change in the évaluation of the earlier alien dynasties and their use for
non-Chinese empirebuilding from Nurhaci to Hong Taiji - in a way until
now not realized, by me at least. After mis article by Elliott, I am sure, we
hâve to be still more careful in appraising the true degree of Chineseness
or Manchuness of the Qing.
Roger Des Forges looks at how the élite of the Central Plain coped
with the Qing conquest. For them the Yuan pattern, the change from Song
to Yuan, could not, in most cases, be acceptable. So, they delved deeper
into Chinese history, to the Tang, the Han, and to Zhou to find other
precedences and analogies which might facilitate reconciliation between
the conquered and the conquerors.
JaHyun Kim Haboush and Johan Elverskog try to tackle the same
problem of accommodation from the fringes of the proper Chinese world,
from the Korean and Mongol point of view. Kim Haboush enlarges with
new évidence and enlightening insights our knowledge of the Korean
attitude towards the Qing and the Koreans' rôle as lantern bearers of a
genuine Chinese (Ming) orthodox tradition, while Elverskog shows how
the Mongols as junior partners of the Manchus tried to keep up a Mongol
tradition and time keeping, while being pushed more and more into a
Tibetan Buddhist time scale under the Qing. His seems to me an important
contribution. It makes us realize once more that the Mongol world was not
a monolithic one and mat its move into the Manchu fold was slow and by
many byways. Especially in connection with Elverskog's article - but also
with the Eurasian part of Qing Formation - di Cosmo's and Dalizhabu
Bao's volume can be used to advantage. Its very direct approach to history
by presenting documents in mil with sparing annotations and a short interprétative
introductory essay revives the early graduai incorporation into
the nascent Manchu state accompanied by ever new irritations on the part
of the Mongols in the period before the décisive defeat of the Caqar. If we
look at the Mongol tribute missions and their présents we can use them to
prove, how economically globalized the Mongol tribes were at that time.
We can use the letters to find out about how - if at ail - they were dated,
about the nuances in the use of the language, or from their content and
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