Evelyn Rawski

Evelyn Sakakida Rawski (born February 2, 1939) is an American scholar of

Rawski has written extensively on history of the Qing dynasty, and is considered a seminal figure of the school called the New Qing History.^[3]

Education and career

She graduated from

In the early 1990s, Rawski joined a group of scholars who began study of the Manchu language and found new views opened by the materials they now could read. She presented these views in her 1996 presidential address to the Association of Asian Studies, Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History, which challenged the view long held by historians of China that the Manchu had been assimilated, or "sinicized" by the people they conquered.^[6] Her argument met with strong negative reaction from Ping-ti Ho in 1996 but is now widely held.^[7] The New Qing History school started to appear at this time.

Of her monograph, The Last Emperors, Jane Kate Leonard, writing in China Review International wrote "is a remarkable work of historical synthesis and descriptive analysis of the intimate social world of the Qing dynasty’s ruling elite". Leonard continues:

Her purpose is to capture the aims and intentions of the Qing emperors from the Manchu imperial perspective, which she extrapolates from the material culture of the Qing court, the social hierarchy of the inner power structure, and the state rituals and the personal religious practices of the court. Her thesis argues that the unique material culture, social hierarchy, and rituals of kingship demonstrate that the Qing monarchs were multi-ethnic in their approach to kingship and practical governance. She further argues that their success was due not to "sinicization" but to their multiethnic perspective, which enabled them to craft regionally specific approaches to their diverse constituencies of Mongols, northeastern peoples, Tibetans, and Han Chinese.^[8]

Major publications

• Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China, Harvard University Press, 1972.
• —— (1979). Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  ISBN 978-0-472-08753-2
  .
• with David Johnson and Andrew J. Nathan, eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, University of California Press, 1985.
• with Susan Naquin, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century, Yale University Press, 1987.
• with James L. Watson, eds., Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, University of California Press, 1988.
• ——; Crossley, Pamela Kyle (1993). "A Profile of the Manchu Language in Ch'ing History". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 53 (1): 63–102.
  S2CID 192270675
  .
• with Bell Yung and Rubie S. Watson, eds., Harmony and Counterpoint: Ritual Music in Chinese Context, Stanford University Press, 1996.
• —— (1996). "Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History". Journal of Asian Studies. 55 (4): 829–850.
  S2CID 162388379
  ..
• with Murdo J. MacLeod, eds. European Intruders and Changes in Behaviour and Customs in Africa and Asia before 1800. volume 30 in An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History 1450–1800, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1998.
• —— (1998). The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  ISBN 978-0-520-21289-3
  .
• with Jan Stuart, Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits. Stanford University Press, June 2001.
• with Jessica Rawson, eds. China: The Three Emperors, 1662–1795, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2005.
• —— (2005), "Qing publishing in non-Han languages", in Brokaw, Cynthia Joanne; Kai-wing Chow (eds.), Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press,
  ISBN 978-0-520-23126-9
• —— (2015). Early Modern China and Northeast Asia : Cross-Border Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  ISBN 978-1-107-09308-9
  .