COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
nothing of "China," Sinim is largely of linguistic interest as the possible
origin of Modem Israeli Hebrew "Sin" (meaning China).
Before proceeding further with the substance of this chapter, it is
worth noting the numerous errors that crop up in it. Some may consider
this nitpicking, but I think that, although we ail are subject to lapses and
mistakes, a pattern of consistent errors offers dues to the depth and
soundness of one's scholarship. Thus, for example, we learn several times
that "in the Wade-Giles romanization system" the dynastie name Qin is
rendered "Chin" (p. 78); this should, of course, be Ch'in. Later, the city of
Canton is given in pinyin as Zhuangzhou (p. 103); this should, of course,
be Guangzhou. And, for some unexplained reason, the Zongli yamen, the
Qing dynasty's first foreign ministry, is often given in Wade-Giles
transcription, Tsungli yamen (p. 107), and sometimes in pinyin. However,
thèse are meaningful errors only because of their frequency 3 . A more
significant error is the statement (p. 75) that the "Qing rulers were from
the nomadic Manchu tribes of the North who had overthrown the Ming
dynasty and imposed their impérial rule on the native population in 1644."
First of ail, the Manchus were semi-nomadic, not nomadic (like the
Mongols), as they engaged in a limited amount of agriculture even if they
preferred not to. Far more important, though, is the glaring historical fact
that the Manchus did not conquer the Ming (although this is a widespread
perception). The rebel Li Zicheng (1606-1645) brought down the Ming
dynasty and had himself installed as emperor, albeit with a rather short
half-life. The Manchus reached accord with the Ming gênerai Wu Sangui
(1612-1678) and were invited into China.
This is not simply an error, though, for it betokens the larger thème
of this book - namely, that the Chinese hâve always been victims of others:
Westerners, northern peoples ("nomadic... tribes"), and later Japanese.
Just when scholarship was returning agency to historically disenfranchised
groups and examining how peoples hâve negotiated gender, ethnicity,
nationality, and the like, Liu argues that the largest and most populous
empire on the globe was a victim. Even when forced to admit that Chinese
who confronted Westerners in the sixteenth-through-nineteenth centuries
used a number of deprecatory expression for them - such as fangui HJ^L
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