ann
(Ann)
#1
During the Han imperial intervals between Inner Asian rule, particu-
larly during the Ming, a broader consensus on the inviolability of Han-
space could arise, but the necessity of explaining previous periods of
extended non-Han rule qualified even the most chauvinistic assertions.
So Ming Taizu could reject human agency in the face of the natural
conditions created by revolutions in“celestial fate.”Such problems were
confronted amid the loftiest peaks of historiographic inquiry during the
Ming and served to compel adaptation of the traditional discourse to
account for unprecedented“violations”of Hanspace and even for ethno-
genesis itself.
Hu Han, one of the Ming compilers of the official Yuan dynastic
history, augmented views similar to Yixing’s that seem definitive of the
contemporary state of Hanspace concepts. In his explanation of macro-
historical change, Hu stressed the importance of the topographic ethnic
divide embodied in“terrestrial strata”(diji), which“distinguish between
China and the barbarians, between inner and outer.”When Han ruled
non-Han, each remained in their proper place, especially because“bar-
barians live beyond the [Yellow and Yangzi] rivers where there is a
different atmosphere and customs are also different.”Even the efforts of
enlightened rulers such as Shun and King Wen could not overcome these
barriers, with ethnogenic consequences:“the sages were unable to unite
with these peoples in benevolence. Thus, their races became possible.”^32
Wang Fuzhi, who had lived through the trauma of the Qing conquest,
refined a number of concepts visible in Hu’s formulation to produce what
is probably the most comprehensive extant synthesis of dissident Han-
space. In broad historical analytical surveys such asSong lunandDu
tongjian lun, as well as in shorter works such asHuangshu, Wang’s
synthesis included many of the ideas visible or latent in Hu Wei, Zhao
Yi, Hu Han, and Yixing. Without asserting a conscious intellectual linear
continuity between all these thinkers, it is possible to see how Hanspace
provided room for the formation of Han identity in dissident, as well as
accommodationist, mode. Wang’s writings can certainly be read as classic
expressions of crypto-anti-Manchu and protonationalist thought, but this
tends to obscure Hanspace’s larger effects that contributed to the con-
struction of both dissident and accommodationist Han identities.^33
Wang, unable to exert public influence during his lifetime, could not
redefine the whole of Hanspace ideology as anti-Manchu, despite his
influence on late Qing antidynastic movements. He does, however, reveal
in unusual detail dissident Hanspace ideology that the Qing state con-
sidered seditious, capable, that is, of forming dissident Han identities.
Qing Fields in Theory and Practice 33
