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REVIEWS
| Reluctant Pioneers: China's Expansion Northward, 1644–1937. By James Reardon-Anderson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. xvii plus 288 pp. $60.00).
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| In the past two decades an influential body of research has emerged on Qing (Manchu) statecraft and Manchu identity (Crossley, 1999; Elliot, 2001; Rawski, 1998; and Rhoads 2001). This literature, written by several leading Chinese studies scholars, has profoundly shaped the field of ethnic and ethnohistorical studies of late imperial and twentieth-century China. The focus in much of this work has been on the assimilation (or lack thereof) of the Manchus into Chinese society. Simultaneously, a separate set of scholars (Duara 2004; Fogel 1988; and Young, 1999) have fruitfully plumbed multiple facets of northeastern China society under the influence of Japan (1895–1945). As is all too often the case in the increasingly partitioned world of academia, these two sub-fields existed largely in isolation from one another; with the former concerned primarily with Manchu identity and statecraft in China proper and the latter appraising the form and character of Japanese activity in Manchuria during the 1930s and 40s. |
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In a narrow sense, James Reardon-Anderson's provocative study of China's `reluctant pioneers' to the northeastern region of Manchuria bridges this significant lacuna in Chinese studies. He achieves this not by attempting to address the concerns central to both of these groups, but rather by coming at the topic from an entirely unique trajectory—that of the Chinese who sojourned and established communities in Manchuria. The book highlights Manchurian's implicit distinctiveness or its special status under the Qing (and later the Japanese). |
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