The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. By Mark C. Elliott. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. xxiii+580 pp. £47.50, $65.00. ISBN 08047-3606-5.]

Extract

Why does the term ‘ethnic’ sound so odd when inserted into histories of non-contemporary societies? This is one of the problems with which Mark Elliott struggles in his engaging study of the politics of difference in Qing China. The answer is that the term ‘ethnic’ has come into general circulation only in relatively recent times, and then in the context of national societies that have had increasingly to cope with the challenge of accommodating a variety of descent groups.