My question is this: what constituted being a barbarian in Chinese culture throughout its history? Was any country that accepted Confucianism and was sinified (like Korea, VIetnam, and Japan) considered civilized? What about the Manchu during the Qing dynasty? I understand that who was labeled a barbarian changed, but what about what makes a culture "barbaric"?

Take this excerpt from a letter to Queen Victoria, Jan. 15, 1840 I found written by Confucian scholar Lin Zexu in 1840 in response to the opium trade. He refers to the British as the "barbarians" in this case.



Now we have set up regulations governing the Chinese people. He who sells opium shall receive the death penalty and he who smokes it also the death penalty. Now consider this: if the barbarians do not bring opium, then how can the Chinese people resell it, and how can they smoke it? The fact is that the wicked barbarians beguile the Chinese people into a death trap. How then can we grant life only to these barbarians? . . . Therefore in the new regulations, in regard to those barbarians who bring opium to China the penalty is fixed at decapitation or strangulation. This is what is called getting rid of a harmful thing on behalf of mankind.

I would recommend to you a recent book by Lydia Liu, entitled The Clash of Empires. It argues that the term Yi which the Qing court and ministers like Lin Zexu used to refer to the British was incorrectly translated as 'barbarian' by the British based on it having that connotation in the Confucian classics. However, in the mid-Qing period the term Yi had actually been redefined by the Manchu emperors to simply denote 'foreigner' or 'outsider'. Therefore the Yongzheng emperor freely recognized that the Manchus were Yi before their conquest of the Ming empire, but asserted that Yi-ness had nothing to do with culture and everything to do with geography.



It depends what definition you use for 'civilized', and what definition you use for 'sinified'. These concepts per se did not exist in imperial China. Other countries could never be considered equal because they were not directly under the hua (morally transformative power) of the Son of Heaven, but those who were sufficiently respectful and admiring of the Empire and emulated the Confucian rites and virtues were seen as being in the process of transformation and improvement. You could say that beyond the Empire there were 'morally developing countries' and 'morally undeveloped countries'. The 'morally developing' ones are the ones we commonly label as 'sinified' or 'civilized from the Chinese point of view'.

Korean and Vietnamese kings or ambassadors in the Ming-Qing period were occasionally annoyed at being referred to by the Chinese imperial court as Yi or Man. They believed such terms were only fit for their non-Confucian neighbours. However, it should be noted that this Confucianized hierarchy of states in East Asia only really took shape in Ming and Qing times. Before that, the Koreans and Viet do not seem to have been very interested in asserting cultural superiority over other peoples.

SO essentially the Qing officials changed the definition artificially in order to improve their historical standing? What about the Han Chinese people in general, did they consider the Manchu to be barbarians, or were the Manchu thoroughly Confucianized?





Yes, by civilized and sinified, I mean those who adopted Confucianism and a Chinese "way of doing things." Was adopting Confucianism the only way Yi cultures could be considered "civilized" as opposed to "barbaric"?

That is a question to which there is no easy answer, since there were just so many 'Han' subjects in so many different regions. The Manchus were Confucianized, but never assimilated to a 'Han' ethnic identity because it was not in their interest to do so. For an analysis of Manchu culture and identity in the Qing period, I recommend Mark Elliott's The Manchu Way.



Apparently so, at least in the eyes of the elite (Chinese commoners cared little for ideas of civilization because they were themselves despised as uncivilized by the educated gentry). India was for a time considered a centre of Buddhist culture and learning, a sort of holy land for Chinese Buddhists. But this respectful attitude towards India faded after the Tang period, for various reasons which can be found in Tansen Sen's Buddhism, Trade, and Diplomacy.

Seems I have a lot of reading to do.