Manchu Mirrors and the Knowledge of Plants and Animals in High Qing China
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A01=He Bian
A01=Marten Soderblom Saarela
Author_He Bian
Author_Marten Soderblom Saarela
Category=CFM
Category=JH
Category=NHB
Category=NHF
Category=PSAB
Category=PSAF
Category=PST
Category=PSV
dictionary
encyclopedia
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
History of science
Manchuria
natural history
Product details
- ISBN 9780674297517
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 12 Aug 2025
- Publisher: Harvard University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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As the territory of Qing China expanded, so evolved the ways in which birds, beasts, fish, trees, and flowers came to be known in the multilingual empire. The Manchu Mirrors and the Knowledge of Plants and Animals in High Qing China is the first systematic study of how the Qing court sought to codify Manchu and Chinese words for animals and plants throughout the eighteenth century, with a particular focus on Manchurian and other Inner Asian species. Calling for renewed attention to Manchu dictionaries as an important source for Qing intellectual and cultural history, Bian and Söderblom Saarela show how Qing lexicographical practices embodied major revisions to the Chinese encyclopedic tradition, realigned the relationship between words and things, and left a lasting impact on natural historical scholarship in the modern era. The updated form of Chinese learning, along with the malleable lexicon of the Manchu language, proved useful for the Manchu elite in displaying the reach and intellectual depth of Qing imperial power. Manchu was transformed from the language of a single people into the lexicographic façade for an imperial order of things.
He Bian is an Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Mårten Söderblom Saarela is Special Collections Librarian at the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, Boston College.
