OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
During the mid-seventeenth century, the Manchu Qing State grew from an indigenous polity in Manchuria into a superpower in global politics. During this process, the court embarked on an ambitious project: compiling a comprehensive history in the Manchu language, followed by translations into Mongolian and Chinese. Out of this vision, by the 1650s, the Qing court had not only translated a vast portion of the Ming Veritable Records into Manchu but also completed the first draft of the Ming history in Manchu, titled Ming gurun i suduri. Unfortunately, all these intellectual outputs fell into oblivion beginning in the early eighteenth century and remain largely, if not entirely, unknown to the scholarly community today. Drawing on a wide range of previously untapped manuscripts in Manchu and Mongolian, this talk uncovers the Qing historiographical project of the mid-seventeenth century. As I will argue, this exploration offers unique insight into how the Qing court conceptualized homeland, statehood, and inter-polity relations. Ultimately, it invites us to reconsider the intellectual horizons of the global seventeenth century.