The End of Empire: Resistance, Nostalgia and Reinvention among “Feudal Remnants” in Post-1911 China

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

The end of the Qing empire ushered in a period of great change in China, one characterized by new culture, new ideas, and the birth of the republic. Current research seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of the period by shifting the conversation to how the end of empire affected those who had been closely aligned with the Qing. This panel examines how, as a new national identity was forming, Qing scholar officials, literati and palace eunuchs responded to these changes. Labeled as “feudal remnants,” how did these social groups survive post 1911? How did they find their grounding in the new political and social environment? In Hangzhou, “remnant” literati banded together to found the Xiling Seal Society, an institution steeped in nostalgia, but prefiguring the modern museum’s approach to cultural heritage. In Hunan, four elites provide a window into the lives of literati attempting to remake themselves into the era’s new political and military leaders among the shifting loyalties and power paradigms of the post 1911 landscape. For eunuchs, the republican era proved to be a precarious place, one in which their services were no longer needed and their physical qualifications were irrelevant. Last, for some Han elites, loyalty to the fallen Qing remained paramount as they exhibited their resistance to the republic in both words and actions. In sum, a reexamination of the post 1911 period is necessary in order to fully understand the end of empire on all of those involved, not just the winners.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Melissa Suzanne Dale, University of San Francisco

Chair

• Madeleine Yue Dong, University of Washington

Individual Presentations

• Remnant Subjects, Cultural Heritage, and the Modern Museum in China - Elizabeth Lawrence, Ball State University

• Power, Transformation, and Loyalty in Early Republican Hunan - Jonathan Ming-en Tang, University of California, Berkeley

• Surviving the Fall of the Qing: Chinese Eunuchs Post 1911 - Melissa Suzanne Dale, University of San Francisco

• Rejecting the New Chinese National Identity: Liu Dapeng’s Attachment to the Former Manchu Qing in the Early Republic Period - Gang Zhao, University of Akron

Discussant

• Michael Tsin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill