Devin Fitzgerald 冯坦风
A specialist in western and East Asian book history and a bibliographer, I completed my Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University in 2020. I was a 2015 Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Critical Bibliography and received additional training at both the University of Virginia and California Rare Book Schools....see more
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This paper explores elite and imperial touring and composition in Shaanxi during the Boxer Rebellion in order to explain the relationship between landscapes as sites of memory and the construction of Qing imperial identity and legitimacy. Throughout the Qing, official and elite activities at Shaanxi’s places reinforced the continuity of the Manchu empire with the past. At the end of the dynasty, the landscape produced variable readings. The sites patronized by the court in 1900 were reread by revolutionaries in 1911 to create a “Chinese” identity that rejected the earlier interpretations of Shaanxi’s landscapes articulated during the court’s time of exile.
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Despite the totality of the violence in Shaanxi, the Hui of Xi’an survived. In this paper, I will consider their remarkable survival by examining the diary of a contemporary witness. The diary reveals that Hui elites and Qing government officials worked to overturn the cycle or rumor and violence. Peace seeking groups of Imams and government officials met in Xi’an and traveled as emissaries to outside groups. Despite their efforts, they only preserved the Xi’an Hui, and they were only able to protect them due to the strength of government power in the city. Through reconsidering this conflict in light of government power, I hope to further our understanding of the nature of fear and violence as experienced in the context of Qing state power.
This paper explores elite and imperial touring and composition in Shaanxi during the Boxer Rebellion in order to explain the relationship between landscapes as sites of memory and the construction of Qing imperial identity and legitimacy. Throughout the Qing, official and elite activities at Shaanxi’s places reinforced the continuity of the Manchu empire with the past. At the end of the dynasty, the landscape produced variable readings. The sites patronized by the court in 1900 were reread by revolutionaries in 1911 to create a “Chinese” identity that rejected the earlier interpretations of Shaanxi’s landscapes articulated during the court’s time of exile.
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Despite the totality of the violence in Shaanxi, the Hui of Xi’an survived. In this paper, I will consider their remarkable survival by examining the diary of a contemporary witness. The diary reveals that Hui elites and Qing government officials worked to overturn the cycle or rumor and violence. Peace seeking groups of Imams and government officials met in Xi’an and traveled as emissaries to outside groups. Despite their efforts, they only preserved the Xi’an Hui, and they were only able to protect them due to the strength of government power in the city. Through reconsidering this conflict in light of government power, I hope to further our understanding of the nature of fear and violence as experienced in the context of Qing state power.
In this paper, I move our attention away from the court and into the realm of individuals. Through considering a recently discovered Manchu student's notebook, interlinear notes in Manchu language textbooks, and the diary of a Manchu language teacher, I will widen our perspectives on the relationship between Manchu language and Manchu identity. By considering individual agents and their relationship to language learning, we can begin to gain clearer perspective on the role of Manchu language in the formation and maintenance of Manchu identity.
Despite Xi’an’s cosmopolitan credentials, its late imperial diversity has never received scholarly attention. Situated far removed from both the coast and the capital, the city has avoided recognition as a major center of Qing culture. This paper examines Qing Xi’an to further explore concepts of diversity and cosmopolitanism in late imperial China. The first half considers the development of Xi’an as a site of Qing universalism. In the second half, I explore the end of religious and ethnic tolerance that accompanied the fall of the Qing. In 1911, we find that the importance of Xi’an’s cosmopolitanism to the Qing imperial project is clearly visible in the massacre of the 20,000 Manchus and Mongols who called the city home. Their slaughter cleansed the city and returned it to its imagined Han purity.
Through juxtaposing these divergent accounts of the Xi’an massacre, this presentation will consider how the Revolution has been witnessed and re-witnessed over the last one hundred years. Shock, guilt, loyalty, and denial permeate memoirs and historical sources about 1911. These emotions brought about by the trauma of the Xi’an massacre permeate primary sources about 1911 to varying degrees, complicating our understanding of the revolution in general and of Xi’an in particular. In considering issues relating to the most sanguinary event of 1911, I will demonstrate that violence, or its absence, should be essential in our understanding of the revolution.